With the news that AT&T will be introducing volume caps on its DSL and U-Verse broadband Internet service plans, a number of commenters (1, 2) have pointed out the contrast between AT&T’s move and the recent news from BT, which announced that it would be lifting its 300GB “atypical user” cap next month. The trouble is, the comparison isn’t nearly as cut-and-dried as it may seem, because although BT will be scrapping its 300GB cap, BT has made no announcements about changing or removing the rest of the caps and restrictions it already has in place.
BT offers essentially five broadband service plans: BT Total Broadband Options 1, 2 and 3 (which are DSL plans) and BT Infinity Options 1 and 2 (which are fiber plans). Customers on all plans are subject to the 300GB “atypical user” cap, which causes their connection speeds to be reduced when they hit the monthly cap. Customers on all plans are also subject to BT’s network management policy, causing P2P traffic speeds to be reduced every evening and weekend. Finally, customers on Total Broadband Options 1 and 2 and Infinity Option 1 have additional monthly caps (10GB, 40GB, and 40GB, respectively). Customers who surpass those monthly volume limits are charged £5 per 5GB of overage.
So while eliminating the 300GB cap (the details of which were never made wholly transparent in the first place) may be a welcome move, the caps that can cause customers to be charged overage fees (as AT&T’s caps reportedly will do) are all still in place, and no customers can avoid having their P2P traffic throttled every day of the week. Compare that to AT&T’s offerings — with volume caps that will apparently be an order of magnitude higher than BT’s in some cases and where individual applications are not singled out for throttling — and the contrast starts to seem a little less stark.