Internet Usage Based Billing (UBB)
RIVER BENDER - May, 2011
Yep, it's coming folks. It's called UBB for "usage based billing" or sometimes called a "bandwidth cap." You could be charged for how much Internet data you send and receive monthly instead of paying a fixed bill. Canadians are already in an uproar after their regulatory agency - the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), allowed Canadian Internet providers to implement an industry-wide UBB regime in late January. And AT&T just announced a 150GB (gigabyte) monthly download limit or “cap” on its DSL customers and a 250GB cap on its U-Verse subscribers starting May 2. The new caps will have an overage charge of $10 for each additional 50GB of data.
Many
broadband Internet Service Providers in North America and Europe introduced bandwidth caps in the early 21st century. The same practice has been in place in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and South Africa since the release of broadband. So what's going on? Why the move to limit data? Will you be affected?AT&T claims the top 2 percent of residential subscribers use about 20 percent of the bandwidth on their network. Put another way, a high-traffic user uses about the same amount of data as 19 typical households. So who are these high-traffic users and how does one find out if he might be affected by usage based billing in the future?
I decided I'd better find out how much data I send and receive on a daily
basis to see if I'd owe more money should my provider Suddenlink decide to copy
AT&T's UBB program. I suspected those currently paying UBB charges probably had
a way to monitor usage so I googled up a free program called WatchWAN available
from CNET at
http://download.cnet.com/WatchWAN/3000-2381_4-10520334.html. Unfortunately
it's only good for Windows 2000, NT or XP, but I only wanted it on my main
desktop PC which uses Windows XP. I'm sure there are other monitors available.
After monitoring data sent and received for one month on my desktop PC in March I found my total was only 4.1GB or .13GB per day, way below AT&T's 150GB monthly limit or 5GB per day. Of course, to get total usage I should add data on my laptop but I've concluded that I'm probably an average user which AT&T says will not be affected by usage based billing. My guess is that high-volume users are probably those that download lots of video. For example, a typical Netflix movie streamed in high-definition requires about 3.5GB of data so if everybody in a household is watching their favorite movies data will add up quickly. Still, it's hard to imagine a user exceeding 150GB per month but AT&T says about 2% of users do and will be charged extra after May 2.
By the way, WatchWAN is really neat. It lets me see who is exchanging data with my PC. If your PC is sluggish, you might discover that a malicious website is loading your PC with data or one of your programs is being updated and causing the delay.
All articles for the past 13 years are posted at http://pages.suddenlink.net/davew/dwindex.htm