AT&T selects Reno for test

AT&T said last week that Reno will be a test market for a bandwidth cap plan that would impose a surcharge on customers who exceed monthly bandwidth limits.

Comcast, Frontier Communications of New York, Time Warner Cable and several companies in the United Kingdom already have instituted tiered broadband access plans.

John Britton, director of corporate communications for AT&T West, says the change in broadband access was prompted by extremely heavy Internet usage by a small handful of subscribers.

"There are a few people who have abnormally high usage patterns," Britton says. "One percent of our subscribers are using more than 20 percent of overall bandwidth, and about 5 percent are using nearly half our bandwidth capacity. With broadband usage surging, we felt a usage-based model which impacts those customers with high usage patterns seems inevitable."

Under the new plan, new AT&T broadband customers will be charged $1 per gigabyte if they exceed the limits set by their plans, which range from 20 to 150 gigabytes and vary in cost from $15 to $35 dollars per month, Britton says. Existing users will receive a 150 gigabyte cap.

Britton notes that current customers won't become part of the trial until they exceed the monthly usage of 150 gigabytes, at which time they will receive a warning letter and will be provided with an online tracking tool to help them manage their bandwidth use. The tool will let users know when they are at 80 percent of their bandwidth limit. If customers exceed their limits a second time, another warning letter will be sent, and the $1 per gigabyte fee will be imposed.

"This will have virtually no impact on 95 percent of our customers," Britton says. "We are looking at 5 percent of customers using up nearly half of the resource and are searching for fair and affordable broadband service for everyone. The trial is intended for us to find the best usage-based model that will impact high-usage patterns."

Britton says there currently is not an option available for customers who would like to purchase more than 150 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. He says San Antonio-based AT&T chose Reno as a test market because the city is a good representation of many of the company's other markets.