the tindog coffeehouse

On July 31st I made a decision to monitor by bandwidth consumption for the month of August to see how many bits I downloaded and uploaded.  The experiment was in direct response to the decision of several ISPs who are now imposing usage limits, including New York ISP Frontier Communications’ paltry 5 GB cap.

I installed DU Meter on my home computer and then just used it as I normally would.  The results were pretty surprising.

The total usage for the month came to 21.4 GB, using a whopping 4.3 GB the first day alone.

Admittedly a big chunk of that 21 GB came from downloading video podcasts and a 2 GB documentary using Miro.  But even if you take out all that traffic, I’m still way over Frontier’s 5 GB limit.  Other bandwidth-hungry activities include downloading some songs from Emusic, and watching videos on YouTube and Hulu.

But the biggest surprise was not the numbers.  As I mentioned on August 5th, it’s really the psychology that changes once you know that the Internet is no longer unlimited.  As I wrote:

Something really weird has happened since beginning this experiment.  Even though my ISP doesn’t currently set any usage limits, just knowing that my usage is being monitored has drastically affected how I think about the Internet.  I’m hyper-aware of every song or video I download, every website I visit, every desktop application that polls the Internet for updates.

It used to be in the early days of home Internet access that a dial-up account included a limited number of minutes.  As you used it, you unconsciously counted each minute spent online so that you wouldn’t hit your limit before the end of the month.  Now imagine that same scenario but with a limit based not on minutes but on megabytes.

With a limited number of bits you can push or pull over the wire, are you going to waste them downloading a movie from Netflix or uploading the pictures of your kid to Shutterfly?  Are you going to use them to watch your favorite TV show on ABC.com or Hulu, catch up with your friends on Facebook, or talk to a loved one over Skype?

I think Comcast understood that when they decided to impose a 250 GB limit for their customers.  It’s unlikely that many households will hit that limit, but just knowing that it’s there will almost definitely change the behavior of those users affected, at least temporarily.

It’s for that reason, primarily, that I remain opposed to bandwidth caps, more now than before I started my month-long trial.  Coercing your customers to use less of your product not only is a poor business model, it’s a quick way to stifle communication and innovation, while also hurting so many other companies who depend on web advertising dollars to stay in business.

Here are the reports from DU Meter.  Click to enlarge.

Previously:
Metered broadband: an experiment
Bandwidth experiment, day 2: throttled?
Metered broadband vs. cloud computing
Media finally reporting on broadband caps