think yourself lucky, here in UK we have caps between 20-40GB month

Yeah, but isn’t your bandwidth speed out of control compared to ours (USA). I’m barely pushing 6 Mbps on a good day. And that costs money!! The usual 3 Mbps.

Please excuse the horrible grammar and punctuation. I know there are some troll grammar nazis out there.

Not having a smart phone, I’m not clear on how “Data” is used or measured. I have Earthlink DSL with no “cap”, but if it did have a cap - how do you burn data? Downloads? Not streaming or surfing I hope. Please s’plain. d:)

if your inner city and close to the exchange, you will get 16Mbps, but here out in the sticks on a good day it’s 6 and can go down to 512Kbps when the kids are at home playing WoW…

I get 5.5 Mbps for $35/month. earthlink leases AT&T wire, but no data cap… ow what is a “data cap” ?

a data cap is the amount of bandwidth you can use in a month on att dsl you get 150g then after you have to pay $10.00 per 50g on att uverse you get 250g then you pay $10.00 per 50 g . But here the thing if your a gamer or watch alot of tv or movies you will use all you bandwidth in less a month the you have to pay for more . Dose that help with what is a data cap

73
William Biggs
kc8pdr

Dose that help with what is a data cap

Zoning in on it I guess…thanx. I was 1st online in ‘91 via compuserve/aol and then earthlink/earthlink DSl ever since. I just never heard of this ‘cap’ thing. So, it’s accumulative usage(?) but do certain things ‘burn’ more bandwidth - i.e. streaming a movie or Youtube vid, vs. surfing web pages reading the news? Suppose I download a 2 gig movie - is that 2 gigs off my bandwidth or not necessarily?  This seems another way to rip us off.

CudaBoy, think of a data cap as pre-paying for a certain amount of gasoline (or whatever).  You can use up to the amount you pre-purchased before being charged for more.  It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you pump the gasoline.

Before data caps, it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  You could consume as much as you liked as fast as you could physically consume it.

Your broadband “Mbps” refers to the maximum rate you can “consume” your data, but says nothing about the total amount you can “consume”.  (A fork in one hand or both?) 

That means I have to pay for all the Ads that show in my computer…Damn!!

CudaBoy, think of a data cap as pre-paying for a certain amount of gasoline (or whatever).

Funny you use gas as a comparison….not.

So, being the non-mobile, old fashioned land-line based Mac Pro type dude I should just shut my yap and appreciate e-link isn’t capping my ass though they use A,T&T’s copper. Nice.

OTOH: I think the more “plans” they come up with to separate people from their money, the end user should get an equal amount of NO ADVERTISING.

BTW: Mr. Ed. Thank You for your response. Best answer yet. I was wondering how you’d spend these bandwidth “dollars” - seems like a Utility Meter.  ...back to the buffet, d:)

Beware if you are leaving an open or guest WiFi access point as a friendly service to your neighbors.  If they are riding your bandwidth, they could push you over the monthly caps.