Ok, maybe it died a while back, but for me it died today. I just finished reading an article on ATT instituting the type of bandwidth cap that Comcast has had for a couple of months now. Right now, its only in the testing phase in Reno, Nevada but considering they rolled out service-wide updates for their boxes last month after only 2 weeks of testing, I could see this spreading in a month or two.

I took a gander at the listing, and at my current rate. (I pay for the 3 mbps down rate) I would have access to 60 gigs down total per month.  Now, that seems like a lot upon first glance, and I’m not a torrent-freak or anything so I don’t have constant downloads running. However, lets take a closer look.

In my house there are 3 college aged guys. 2 of whom are webdesigners. You are talking about nightly working on websites uploading / downloading files. For the most part these files aren’t massive movies or anything but they still will add up.

Also, I am a Netflix member. I use the watch instantly feature often. My 60 gigs equates to about 30 movies per month. (Remember, thats just me, not counting my roommates). So I could watch a movie every night and do nothing else, and kick my roommates off the internet.  But… I also have a 360, and in 2 weeks I will be watching HD netflix movies on my 360. Take my movie a night, and cut it in half (its probably even more than that). 15 movies a night with no other things going on.

Add in my web-design usage, roommates etc… and I would have to pick a night a week to watch a movie, and other times would just have to fore-go it or pay more. Ridiculous.

How does online gaming work? I asked the internet.

Online gaming, for 3d games, typically uses around 60kbits/s of download bandwidth and about 10kbits/s of upload bandwidth.

So, thats 3600 kb/min (3.6 mb/min) x 60 = 216 mb / hr

60 gig / 216mb = 300 gaming hours per month.

Nobody in the house games that much, because we aren’t losers, but we have a ps3, a wii and a 360 that get picked up on a decent basis.

I realize I am a worst-case scenario , a web designing, college-aged, technologically proficient, media user with a pension for movies and game , but come on now. All of the major companies are now testing this out (Time Warner’s is even worse apparently) and since my options are Time Warner, Att U-verse or Grande communications… Apparently I’m going to be looking into Grande.

(Verizon should be expanding soon, how about we all jump on the fi-os bandwagon)

Also note : I have no idea what the upload limits are because they aren’t advertised, but considering they are normally alot less than downloads, and I use a disproportionate upload amount compared to the regular non-designer, this could be even more problematic for me.

Personally, I’m a little ticked off Barack hasn’t fixed this already. I’ll keep you informed of my siege of ATT headquarters if this limit comes down anytime soon. A service already riddled with problems (absolutely terrible support, faulty equipment and crappy software) that is trying to gain some ground should probably not be limiting users…. just saying ATT…. just saying.