US ISPs start capping customer bandwidth

Broadband connectivity isn’t just a problem for third world countries like the Philippines. In the United States, it’s even a bigger problem that Internet Service Providers have started capping bandwidth usage of their customers.

On August 29, Comcast announced that they will be capping users to 250GB monthly bandwidth. Customers who exceed the cap will be disconnected {via}.

Time Warner Cable is also doing a similar strategy with tiered plans ranging from 5 GB to 40 GB. Bandwidth overage is billed at an additional $1PHP 59INR 85EUR 0.95CNY 7 per 1GB. (This is still an experimental pricing plan on selected areas. – GigaOm)

On the other hand, Qwest customers are also facing an “unofficial” bandwidth cap. The limit is yet unknown and Qwest has not divulge this but once customers hit the magic number, they’d get a notice the next time they fire up their browser:

“We have noticed extremely high usage on your Qwest Broadband account. Your service is subject to the terms and conditions in your Subscriber Agreement. We ask that you please reduce usage on your Qwest Broadband account in order to continue using Qwest’s broadband service.

Qwest does provide alternative business-class service that accommodate high-volume, commercial usage and will work with you to upgrade to those services, if necessary.”

If these move becomes successful in the US, local ISPs in the Philippines might get the hint and try them out as well.

For regular users, a 250GB may seem more than enough. My personal all-time high DSL bandwidth usage is about 40GB a month doing a lot downloads (tracked by AnalogX Netstat). Would people prefer bandwidth capping in exchange for better broadband speeds? This will be a split debate depending if you’re a light user who’s looking for better speeds or a heavy user that’s operating 24/7.