British Telecommunications (the broadband giant of the UK, known simply as BT) has sent warnings to "bandwidth hogs" on its network, encouraging them to either pay a higher monthly rate or switch to a different broadband provider. As reported in this CNet story, the broadband provider has sent notices to 3200 of its customers who have been pegged as bandwidth hogs.
So what exactly is a bandwidth hog? In BT's user agreement, they tell customers that they will face penalties if their download usage exceeds 40GB per month. They have been pretty lax about enforcing this policy in the recent past, however, so some users have taken advantage of the situation and downloaded as much as 200GB per month. Reporter Will Sturgeon has an idea of how one can rack up those big numbers:
Apparently, the last time BT cracked down on the excessive downloaders was last October. They used the same strategy — pay more money or take your business elsewhere — and only a small fraction of users chose to stay with BT.
It appears that this type of action will make its way over to our side of the pond soon enough. With millions of pirates using BitTorrent to share huge pieces of data like games and movies (which average a little over 4GB each), the telcos are more than likely seeing dollar signs in their eyes. Even with gigabit connections becoming the norm in some areas, we can expect broadband to become more expensive for heavy users down the road.
Just last week, FCC chairman Kevin Martin expressed support for a so-called "tiered internet" pricing structure for broadband subscribers. Much like cable television's pay-per-view or premium channel services, users who want more than just a basic internet package will be required to pay a premium rate for the extra bandwidth. While this shift appears inevitable, it will be interesting to see which strategy U.S. broadband providers adopt to handle the migration to a new structure.
