Netflix is extremely popular in the United States. Perhaps you’ve heard about how much downstream traffic Netflix accounts for during peak hours? Spending hours looking at movies and television programs through Netflix is extremely convenient, but it can also wreak havoc on users with ISP-provided bandwidth caps. That’s why Netflix has added an option that lets you adjust its video quality.

Netflix is offering a new option for Canadian users that in a perfect world it wouldn’t have to give to anyone. That is the option to cap the amount of data Netflix uses by limiting the quality of the streams. Netflix is offering the options to Canadians because of the bandwidth caps imposed on Internet more »

On May 2 AT&T U-Verse and DSL customers will be given caps on their monthly bandwidth. Notices detailing the plans will be sent out between March 18 and 31 though we already know what the notices will be saying. Starting in May, AT&T DSL users will be given 150 GB bandwidth caps. U-Verse customers will more »

It seems that T-Mobile is all set to begin throttling data for users that go over the 5GB monthly limit. The news is coming by way of an official statement from T-Mobile and reads as follows; “Data Speed Reduction Threshold Beginning on October 16, T-Mobile will begin to reduce data speeds when a customer reaches more »

AT&T’s iPhone users who attended this year’s CES in Las Vegas last week found much frustration when attempting to use their phones. There were widespread complaints about the poor service, with many users unable to make calls, send tweets, download emails or do much of anything that required data. Not surprisingly, Verizon didn’t hesitate to more »

“There’s a fee for that.” That may be something AT&T customers will be hearing in the future when it comes to data usage. As anyone who’s seen Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” ads knows, AT&T’s 3G coverage is pathetic. What’s more, iPhones are huge data hogs. For AT&T this is a recipe for disaster. more »

Time Warner Cable recently announced that it would be expanding its tier pricing program. The tier pricing would make TWC subscribers choose a tier based on how much they can afford to pay and how much bandwidth they think they will use. It caused a lot of uproar among the Internet, even with those not more »

Remember the good old days when all we needed to worry about from our ISPs was net neutrality? Those were great days when there were no caps on what we could use our Internet connection for, and we were scared it might turn into cable TV-like subscription. Now not only is net neutrality still a more »

Cox Communications is introducing a new bandwidth management policy that is sure to have many of its users up in arms. The cable and internet provider says it will begin ranking the importance of different kinds of internet use and then limit the bandwidth to those activities they consider low priority whenever they feel their network is too congested.

Cox’s list of low priority traffic includes FTP, peer to peer networking, software updates (including those regular Microsoft updates), and Usenet. Users doing any of those things will experience noticeably slower connections when Cox decides their network needs “congestion management.”

The state of Florida had fined Comcast a mere $150,000 in a settlement with the Attorney General after customers complained about having their service cut off for consuming too much bandwidth. The problem was Comcast refused to tell their customers just how much was too much. $100,000 of the fine will fund future consumer investigations and $50,000 will go toward the cost of the AG’s investigation of Comcast.

The day before the settlement was announced, Comcast announced that starting October 1st a data cap of 250GB would be put in place for residential customers. They insisted that the cap was more than generous, and compared to the recent 5GB caps put in place by mobile broadband providers such as Sprint, it certainly is. Comcast said to go over the cap a customer would have to send 50 million emails, download over 62,000 songs, or upload 25,000 high resolution photos.