[sounddust]

Nowadays, a significant portion of those "bandwidth abusers" are people who are just watching movies and TV shows on Netflix. The use of Netflix instant streaming has grown tremendously over the past year, and for many people, it's become the exclusive source for non-live video content.

[tptacek]

To bust a 250GB cap with NetFlix, you have to watch 250 hours of exclusively HD content; 8 full hours a day, every day, nonstop.

[DrJokepu]

To be honest, in a family of four or larger, that's not entirely impossible to achieve as family members' individual usages add up.

[Bud]

You're also leaving out what the household might be doing with its Internet besides Netflix, and you are conveniently ignoring the 150GB cap on DSL service.

Why are you defending AT&T for lowering its level of service by an order of magnitude and imposing gigantic overage fees?

I did some quick math. I could go over this cap on my DSL line simply by using my connection at full speed for LESS than a tenth of a month; i.e., less than 2.4 hrs per day. Sorry, that's not acceptable on an "unlimited" link.

[prodigal_erik]

Thanks, I wasn't aware that their HD bandwidth requirements were as modest as 2.6-3.8 Mb/s, from both a more effective codec and limiting fidelity to 720p30 stereo.

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html