Bandwidth Caps are Bad, Very Bad

Internet service providers are saying "...caps aren't expected to affect all but the very heaviest bandwidth users."

Last month, probably true.  This month, maybe.  Next month, absolutely not.

It's really not that difficult to use 350gb of traffic where all of it is legitimate, split between services like NetFlix for television and movies, Steam for gaming, iTunes for music and podcasts, and the rest of normal day-to-day traffic. It may be on the extreme end for most people at this point in time, but the point is that technology keeps moving, and eventually usage like this will be the norm, not the exception.

What the bandwidth caps will do is stifle technological progress. To use the required car analogy, they are like putting a 40mph cap on the newly-invented automobile, simply because few, if any, people need to go that fast. At some point, people did need to drive 40mph, then 50mph, then 60mph, and so on and so forth. It will work the same way with internet usage, and that is why bandwidth caps are such a serious problem. A decade ago, most of the country was still on dial-up, and the ideas of streaming video, social media, and the proliferation of modern media over the internet were still in their infancy. 150gb then would have been, literally, an unreachable amount of data to consume in a month. However, times change, and today 150gb is next to nothing for someone who uses the internet to its current full potential.

So many people may look at these, if they notice them at all, and say, "Who cares? I don't use that much data." But the point is that they don't use that much data now, and this is an attempt to keep them from using that much data ever.

Because let's not mince words about this. Infrastructure is fairly expensive, but once it is in place bandwidth across it is extremely cheap (often approaching as low as 3 cents per gigabyte, according to several studies). Corporations like AT&T and Comcast aren't doing this because the bandwidth usage is expensive. They are doing it because they are terrified of a future where consumers don't need their multiple services anymore. If you can get your television, movies, music, games, e-mail, social contacts, phone service, etc. all through your internet connection, there will be zero incentive to pay for locked-down cable television and movie rentals, and highly priced telephone service. They are not about to let that happen, and this is a major salvo in their war on that.

That's what people need to be aware of with this. It's not about the cost, it's about controlling the flow of information and stifling technological progress to secure corporate profits. And nobody should stand for it.

Major portions of this entry came from Anonymous Coward who wrote on tech.slashdot.org/