Microsoft has released a research paper: “You’re Capped!” Understanding the Effects of Bandwidth Caps on Broadband Use in the Home [pdf, 362 KB] that is an important read. Its abstract says:
Bandwidth caps, a limit on the amount of data users can upload and download in a month, are common globally for both home and mobile Internet access. With caps, each bit of data consumed comes at a cost against a monthly quota or a running tab. Yet, relatively little work has considered the implications of this usage-based pricing model on the user experience. In this paper, we present results from a qualitative study of households living with bandwidth caps. Our findings suggest home users grapple with three uncertainties regarding their bandwidth usage: invisible balances, mysterious processes, and multiple users. We discuss how these uncertainties impact their usage and describe the potential for better tools to help monitor and manage data caps. We conclude that as a community we need to cater for users under Internet cost constraints.
The paper opens with a recognition that ISPs are looking at usage sensitive pricing models because they are faced with “increased network congestion from both the rise in bandwidth intensive applications and the growing number of Internet users”. The study observes that caps exist in countries such as “Australia, Canada, Turkey, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S.” and are not restricted to home broadband but are also applied to mobile internet. The paper suggests that the pricing model is likely to persist.
we argue that it is time to re-examine the assumption that for end-users the only cost associated with network use is speed.
The study concludes that the IT community might want to rethink assumptions about unlimited bandwidth in the design of applications and devices. The paper is a refreshing contribution to the discussion on usage sensitive pricing models.