AT&T Tests Limits for Internet Bandwidth Usage

posted on Wed Nov 5, 2008 5:03PM EST

AT&T has become the latest Internet service provider to test limits on bandwidth usage, with a trial this month of caps for subscribers in Reno, Nevada.

The company -- the largest Internet service provider in the United States -- said about five percent of subscribers use about 50 percent of capacity.

Most of AT&T's high-bandwidth service is DSL and, at the slowest rate of 768 kilobits per second, the company will limit downloads to 20 gigabytes per month. That limit is raised as speed level is raised, with a top limit of 150 gigabytes per month for users with the 10-megabits-per-second plan. Downloads in excess of the limit will be charged $1 per gigabyte.

The Reno test may be extended to other markets. The usage structure will be implemented for new customers, or for any customers who exceed 150 gigabytes per month.

A user will be considered to have exceeded the set limits if he or she downloads at the top rate for a sustained period of time. Customers will be able to determine how much they are downloading by checking the AT&T Web site. Additionally, AT&T said it would let customers know once they reach 80 percent of their limit.

Initially, the company said, customers will be given a pass for exceeding the limit during a grace period while they get used to the new system.

Comcast, Cox, Time WarnerMovies are the key bandwidth hogs, especially high-definition films. According to Larry Hettick, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, standard-definition movies generally run from four to six gigabytes, while high-definition movies, especially in the highest resolution of 1080p, can be seven to 10 times as much.

At the moment, he said, there aren't a lot of 1080p movies available over the Net, but there are certainly lots of movies in other definitions that take up a lot of bandwidth -- and someday 1080p may be common on the Net.

Hettick said some sort of bandwidth management is needed, as a small percentage of subscribers use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. In some cases, a neighbor who regularly downloads large files could, for instance, cause someone else's connection in the same neighborhood to slow down. Hettick said one approach might be a guaranteed class of service, such as in the business world.

AT&T's trial is the latest by a major Internet service provider to test approaches to excessive bandwidth demands by a handful of customers. Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, and others have also recently been trying out plans for managing such customers.

After running afoul of the Federal Communications Commission for targeting peer-to-peer file sharing without notification and without posting a policy, Comcast recently came up with a plan to slow speeds for the heaviest users when traffic congestion is the greatest. Essentially, the company created a slower, lower-priority lane of traffic for heavy users in those times.

This plan is separate from the usage caps of 250 gigabytes per month that Comcast currently has in place. Cox and Time Warner have limits of 40GB per month.

AT&T Tests Limits for Internet Bandwidth Usage (NewsFactor): Yahoo! Tech