Just one month after Comcast began imposing a bandwidth cap of 250 GB on all of its subscribers, AT&T has begun testing a cap of their own, however with a much smaller limit, 150 GB.
The cap will have tiers as well depending on how fast your connection is, slower users will only get 20 GB limit while the fastest users will get the 150 GB cap.
The test, beginning in Reno, Nevada today, will “evaluate a usage-based model that could potentially help address today’s trend of explosive bandwidth usage, [and] may be extended to one other market by the end of the year,” said AT&T.
Anyone in Reno who uses over 150 GB per month will automatically be enrolled in the full bandwidth trial at the end of the year.
Any trial participant that exceeds the limit will be given a one-month grace period but if they do it again they will be fined $1 for every GB over they go.
Unlike Comcast however, AT&T will provide all customers with a “bandwidth measuring tool” and will also notify customers when they have hit 80 percent of their limit.
“A small group of customers are using the majority of bandwidth on our network,” added AT&T. “In fact, almost 50 percent of total bandwidth is used by just five percent of customers – customers, for example, who are uploading and downloading the equivalent of more than 40,000 YouTube videos or 40 million e-mails a month. This kind of heavy usage has an impact on all of our customers.”
Result for: youtube videos
Google has announced they will be adding links to select media content on YouTube videos that will allow users to purchase music and games from both Amazon MP3 and iTunes.
The service, the YouTube eCommerce Platform began today and will be expanded internationally over the next few months.
“Our goal is to improve the overall YouTube experience by connecting consumers with relevant information and entertaining content,” Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO, YouTube, said in a statement. “The addition of retail links will enhance the viewing experience and allow people to engage more deeply with the content they want to consume.”
Beginning today, on the pages of “authorized video content”, Google will be placing embedded download links to the online music services of Amazon and Apple.
So far only EMI and Electronic Arts are part of the service although “partners who use YouTube’s content identification and management system can also enable retail links on claimed videos that they choose to leave up on the site,” Google said.
“Amazon.com is always looking for new ways to make discovering and buying products as convenient as possible for our customers, which is why we’re excited to collaborate with YouTube,” Scott Merlino, senior manager of the Amazon Associates Program, added.
“This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube,” according to a YouTube blog post. “Our vision is to help partners across all industries — from music, to film, to print, to TV — offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos.”
Result for: youtube videos
Cablevision has announced that it will be giving subscribers access to another 15 free HD channels, making 60 channels available now to customers.
Beginning at the end of July, the cable operator will be adding Nickelodeon, WE tv, AMC, Animal Planet, The Weather Channel, Travel Channel, FOX News Channel, Discovery Channel, Hallmark Movie Channel and FX.
Cablevision currently has 3 million subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and says that 1.1 million of those have “at least one high-definition TV and HD-enabled set-top box.”
The move is seen as an effort to fight off growing competition from satellite companies such as DIRECTV and DISH and more notably, Verizon’s growing FiOS network.
Analysts have long said that customers are under the impression that satellite TV offers more and better HD quality services than cable, but that is not entirely correct. Although the satellite companies do offer more HD channels, the quality is equal to that of cable. DIRECTV currently offers 95 HD channels and DISH offers 80. FiOS offers 30 but says 30 more are coming by the end of September.
