[ NNSquad ] Re: AT&T testing DSL bandwidth caps

[Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com>]

The term "sabotage" is unduly pejorative and inflammatory, as well 
as simply inaccurate. In all cases, the goal is simply to lower 
costs to consumers by preventing them from consuming more bandwidth 
than they pay for (and thus causing the provider to lose money). 
Absent such constraints, the price of broadband service would have 
to be increased substantially, especially as consumers begin to use 
more bandwidth-intensive services (such as streaming video). Or it 
would have to be metered by the bit, a strategy which consumers 
have overwhelmingly rejected.

Explicit caps are the tactic least liked by consumers, who despise 
the "surprise" overage fees imposed by cellular providers. 
Throttling and filtering impose implicit limits which the user, in 
most cases, does not notice and which actually improve his 
experience by preventing him from slowing down or degrading his own 
highest priority traffic (e.g. VoIP) by running a low priority 
application (e.g. a file transfer) at the same time.

--Brett Glass

  [ Of course, caps carry a definite profit center bonus as
    compared with throttling, at least when subscribers are being
    charged extra for exceeding the caps (and especially when those
    caps are relatively low).  That is, a circuit that is throttled
    but not capped will never bring in additional revenue since
    there's no cap to exceed (and so no "excess" data to charge
    for).  

    Note also that currently announced caps, even for similar
    technology and speed circuits, are varying widely from different
    companies.  This *suggests* that perhaps their levels are being
    set arbitrarily, or at least that's a reasonable assumption in
    the absence of public data to explain how these caps and related
    charges actually relate to claims of "degrading" other
    customers' traffic.

        -- Lauren Weinstein
           NNSquad Moderator ]