Internet Bandwidth Plans

So, the internet blogs have been abuzz lately with opinions on many ISP's recent announcement about bandwidth pricing packages. To summarize, it goes like this: several popular ISPs, such as AT&T and Time Warner (my provider) are planning on releasing internet packages with prices based solely around bandwidth usage. For example, Time Warner's basic package provides 5Gb of bandwidth per month for $29.99 with a $1 fee for every Gb that goes beyond the customer's pricing plan.

While it may sound innocent to many, this is a topic of high debate. It flies in the face of digital distribution (ITunes, AmazonMP3, etc), not to mention may be limiting to those of us who are regular gamers and participate in high-download activities - i.e. betas. According to their press releases, this change is targeted towards those users who are p2p'ing and bittorrenting. These people, so the ISPs claim use approximately 40% of their bandwidth.

Those who took part in the Age of Conan beta know. During their testing period, those with faulty client downloads were subjected to 32Gb downloads per week. If these limits go into place, they would be paying overage charges out the yahoo. Rather than go into all of the details here, Keen and Graev, as well as The Greenskin, have made very thorough postings with a plethora of worthwhile comments to fuel your discussion.

Keen and Graev:

http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=1095

The Greenskin:

http://thegreenskin.com/2008/06/19/my-take-on-isp-volume-caps-and-surcharges/

Please read them and comment here or there. It doesn't matter. This is something we all need to be aware of. It doesn't matter if you support it or you're against it; corporate is making a decision that is affecting our lives as internet users. All of us should know the precedent that this could state.

Take care all!

Raegn