AT&T Starts Capping Broadband

[democracy1st]

The days of all-you-can-surf broadband are vanishing.

AT&T this week began capping its Internet delivery service for broadband and DSL customers. The move comes 11 months after it placed similar caps on its mobile customers.

U-Verse -- AT&T's high-speed broadband, television and telephone network -- now limits customers to 250 gigabytes of Internet usage each month. DSL users are capped at 150 GB. Customers who exceed the limits will have to pay $10 for each additional 50 GB.

AT&T moved in June to set pricing tiers for its mobile customers, offering light users a plan that maxes out at 200 megabytes. The company also sells a pricier 2 GB plan. AT&T (NYSE: T - News) remains the outlier among the three major wireless companies, though Sprint (NYSE: S - News) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ - News) Wireless are expected to follow suit with caps soon.


More from CNNMoney.com:

• New iPhone, iPad Limits: 2 GB Won't Get You Far

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• One in Eight to Cut Cable and Satellite TV in 2010


But AT&T isn't alone in instituting restrictions on residential broadband usage.

Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA - News) -- by far the largest broadband provider in the U.S. -- also has a 250 GB cap, and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC - News) experimented with a tiered billing service in some markets in 2008. Though broadband caps are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, variations on Internet cap structures are quite common in Canada, Asia and in European countries.

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112671/att-capping-broadband-cnnmoney