Apparently Charter has the potential to cap their internet as well http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusive-Charter-Implementing-New-Caps-100637. Capped internet will probably be a standard in the US shortly.

Maybe, but ISPs throughout Europe, SE Asia, and Africa have bandwidth caps.

Bandwidth caps are becoming more and more common. So while not every ISP in country X may be implementing them, many ISPs have them and more probably will in the future. soft caps (where you get throttled after downloading/uploading x amount) are especially common

This. Like I said--AT&T's really the only option in my area. It's tough to vote with your wallet when your choices are internet or no internet.

I have Comcast. The most I downloaded in a month was ~180GB. Caps do make sense, as long as they don't get too restrictive. Yes, there are people who may exceed 250GB, but this is most likely due to Illegal downloading.

Comcast allows you to keep track of your Internet usage or their site, so it is possible AT&T will implement a similar feature.

***
MMOs and most online games do not use that much bandwidth. Video streaming and downloading large files (ie digital download games) are what consume the download cap.

Not an issue for me. There's no way I'm going to use 150GB a month. I buy my games on DVD and my 1500/384 DSL is too pokey for satisfying video streaming (so I'm still getting my Netflix DVDs by mail).

I have Comcast, so I'm fine.

Incorrect. This household is on an unlimited ADSL2+ connection for $60/month. That particular plan is only available around exchanges which have the ISP's (TPG) hardware in it, but they also offer unlimited ADSL1 for $70, which is available on any exchanges. Some other providers have the option of unlimited, too, though its not widespread at present.

Most common are deals where you have a cap, after which your speed is throttled significantly, but you still have internet access.


(Lets try not to get too political here ) The current government has a plan (which is being carried out as we speak) to install optical fire everywhere that's practicable, and fill the remaining gaps with wireless and satellite. This, in my view and that of most experts, is a wonderful, forward thinking initiative that will more than pay for itself ever time. It will also have the benefit of allowing us to gloat at Americans of any country . The point of this paragraph is to show that Australia isn't (or soon won't be) a backwater in regards to internet, and will, in fact, have a world-leading infrastructure within a decade or so :nod:.

But it shouldn't be free.

It costs your ISP money.

What you want is to pay nothing for an all you can eat meal and just keep eating. Guess what - that food costs the resturant money too.

If you want quality internet connections, they need to be usage based - so those of us who use more pay our way so the network can be improved, rather than expecting low-usage users s to subsidise our internet connection.

There's no such thing as "free".

Tap water isn't free, it costs money to build infrastructure, and you pay through taxes or a private comapany.
Electricty isn't free, food isn't free, gas isn't free.
The only thing I can think of is air.

The only way that you can truly live on no money would be to move into the wilderness and live as a subsistence farmer, but seeing as it's too much effort to build an entire modern infrastructure by oneself, we pay others to do it.

I don't see the problem. I might use 150GB in two months, maybe. I play MMO's and stream NetFlix as well as download from Steam (I juggle games because my hard-drive is puny) and mod. I didn't read the article, but I assume the price for 150GB is reasonable. And for just $10 more, you get another 50GB? That sounds pretty nice to me, actually. I'm currently on an unlimited deal but if AT&T can boost my download speed on the capped plan, I'll switch tomorrow.

I'm capped at 30 GB a month...so far i've used 13.8GB of my bandwidth which is cutting it close. If I go over i'll be charged 2.50$ a GB.
The provider I'm with offers a 150GB bandwidth cap......at 110$ a month.