With bandwidth prices increasing, companies are looking for ways to keep costs under control, and one of the strategies is to charge more to users who use larege amounts of bandwidth to download tons of content.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is the latest to look at ways to combat those whose practices make a huge impact on the company.
The major problem is the effect it has on other users, as those downloading huge amounts of content can cause their service to slow down. According to AT&T, the top 5 percent of their users account for 46 percent of all bandwidth used.
"A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable," spokesman Michael Coe said this week. Bandwidth use is doubling every 1 1/2 years the company said.
While it's not the usual concern of phone companies to look at this because DSL isn't shared by neighbors, evidently concerns are for higher up on the network, where it could cause problems.
Cable companies are the ones who have major slowdown concerns because of shared bandwidth access. Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) started a beta version of charging for extra bandwidth in Beaumont, TX in early June. Consumers going over their bandwidth allotment there will be charged an extra $1 per gigabyte.
It makes you wonder what the effects of this will be on music and video content providers like Apple iTunes (Nasdaq:AAPL) and others will be, who are inceasingly looking to the Internet as the chief way of delivering content.
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