[Link: hdtvetc.com]

I heard about this from Clark Howard the consumer advocate who is really popular in ATL and on CNN.

Like Comcrap, ATT would like to put Netflix under by charging their subscribers with a metered pricing scheme, rather than flat monthly rates.

Supposedly already being beta tested by Comcraptic in some markets.

I don't think this will be At&t only. No it won't effect your Netflix streaming, just your At&t bill.

Flat rates are a hard game imo, that's why we charge hourly. To do a flat rate they have to charge for an average worse case scenario, so in turn the majority end up paying for more data than they actually use.

I think going to pay per use, would create more competiitive rates and pricing.

We are already having this problem in Canada with Rogers, Bell, Telus charging for overage on internet usage. Our government has decided NOT to allow the big three to move eintirely to Data rate billing (for now) but it will happen.

Netflix Canada has already adjusted how the movies get streamed. We now have a 3 tired selection as to video quality to help reduce the amount if data the customer uses on a monthly basis. The bad part about this is that the average joe wouldn't know where to look or how to adjust this if they don't use thier computer to stream or search.

Check out this link 

I could see this coming especially from companies that offer alternatives like Timewarner or Verizon. They don't want you to stream netflix they want you to be using their on demand and pay per view.

So I'll be the evil guy here and say that they should charge more for the people that use more bandwidth. My Grandmother sends me 10 forwarded emails a day and that's the only time she's on the internet. Should her bill go up because the guy next door streams music and movies all the time? Bandwidth cost money. As much as I hate a lot of the cable providers they do need to make money in order to expand their products and offerings. It's the same as on the cellular side. Streaming content is KILLING bandwidth. I say make a plan for $40 that either has a soft data cap w/expensive overage fees and a hard cap. Then have a $100 plan that has a higher soft cap with not as expensive overages fees and a hard cap. Then have a $200 plan with no limits. There's also all kinds of other things they can do. ISP's can throttle speed and limit downloads based on usage so why not bill it differently as well.

You guys ever use a bandwidth monitor on your routers? 250GB is a LOT.

I know, it's the principle, but still. It's a lot. We've been downloading a TON of crap lately and we use Netflix a LOT and I'm not even going to break 150 GB this month.

The bigger issue will come in when that cap drops to a lower number and the internet speeds multiply. 250GB per month with a 1GB per second ISP speed sounds kinda scary...

You guys have it easy in the US... I wish ours was 250GB/month. I know some people that have 60GB/month "soft cap" and once they reach that they get charged through the roof for each additional GB up to a certain $ value.

You're not the evil guy at all.


I have said here, over and over, during at least the past two years, that the internet is not for transporting movies from place to place. That's just too much friggin' information, and it's entirely different in character from most internet usage.

I'd like to see a totally different type of domain name or category, such as wwm (world wide movies, not web), with its own separate charges. Require the cable companies and other ISPs to separate Grandma's occasional email from the ALWAYS high volume movie services!

Almost hurled when I read THAT line....


TWC, Comcrap and AT&T aren't making money?


Too funny....

The internet is perfect for transporting movies. If it can handle all that spam and porn and government snooping, then it can certainly handle some Netflix.

The problem is that the companies responsible for the delivery of content should not also be able to provide content themselves.

For instance, here in Texass when electrical service was deregulated the companies that maintain the infrastructure(Centerpoint here in H) can't also offer retail electric services.

Same should go for cable companies. Comcast has a sweet franchise deal with the city, paying a monthly kickback to the city for every subscriber signed up.

Slightly OT, but I was on an iPort service call Tuesday when the Mrs. was complaining about cable going out... so we took a look and apparently the SA8300 got a firmware update and the new guide/GUI looks terrible. Looks like it's from around y2k. Mrs. wanted me to fix it back to the old style guide... had to explain that would be a conversation she needed to have with Comcast;)

The Canadian cap was going to be 25GB. Seriously.

The instigating company has apparantly just decided to abandon "UBB" (Usage Based Billing), but has a new, nearly identical trick up their sleeve: "AVP" (Aggregated Volume Pricing).

The problem is the cable companies and phone companies have a monopoly based either on geography or how much their money their donating to the local government, yes I'm cynical. If they made these limits apply to their services also I wouldn't have a problem because it would be a level playing field. Their pushing these, as many have stated, to control Netflix's ability to get programming to their customers.

I have to wonder if restricting bandwidth by a provider like ATT, Time Warner, Cox or another carrier would fall under restraint of trade or some other area of anti-trust law because the bandwidth is used to stream video and music from a competitor.

I think its all excuses for a money grab, for the 1 person who DL's a huge amount of data there is an exponential amount of people who don't even use a percentage point of their available bandwidth.