Stox, a Chicago-area resident, posted his tale Wednesday morning on Slashdot after AT&T notified him that he was approaching his broadband cap. This is exactly how AT&T’s cap is supposed to work: When a user gets to 60 percent of the monthly allotment consumed, followed by the 95 percent and the 100 percent mark, AT&T sends an email. But in this case, the user was tracking his data consumption and saw AT&T’s totals didn’t match his own records.

From his Slashdot post:

When this was implemented, I started getting emails letting me know my usage as likely to exceed the cap. After consulting their Internet Usage web page, I felt the numbers just weren’t right. With the help of Tomato on my router, I started measuring my usage, and ended up with numbers substantially below what AT&T was reporting on a day-to-day basis. Typically around 20-30% less. By the way, this usage is the sum of inbound and outbound.

He then detailed how AT&T gave him the runaround when he asked about the discrepancy. He was told that AT&T’s measurement of data was “proprietary,” and that if he wanted to dispute it, he would need to write a letter. He ended his post asking if there were any regulatory agencies that monitor the accuracy of ISPs’ meters. So far, there aren’t, something I’ve called on the FCC to address, especially given that more than six in 10 U.S. broadband subscribers have some kind of data cap.

I’ve emailed the FCC to see if the agency is aware of Stox’s issue and if it had reached out to either Stox or AT&T for more information. I also reached out to AT&T with a list of questions, and will update the story if I hear back from either party.

I did speak with Stox this afternoon to find out a bit more about his situation. He says that he’s a customer of AT&T’s DSL service because he cannot get access to U-Verse in his home. (Maybe AT&T’s planned investment in expanding U-verse will help him out on this front). For now, as a DSL customer, he has a 150 GB per month cap. Once he goes over that amount he would have to pay $10 for another 50 gigabytes.

Stox said that he has received several notices from AT&T since the ISP started enforcing its bandwidth cap, so he started tracking his data consumption by using Tomato, a Linux program installed on his router that allows him to write programs to track his data and customize his router settings. He said he couldn’t send me charts of his data because he had mistakenly erased them, but as an example he said his measurements showed the he consumed 5.1 GB on November 8 while AT&T’s usage meter showed he had consumed 8.1 GB. Stox is one of the lucky AT&T customers that actually has a meter he can check.

Now, there are a couple of things that might account for this discrepancy. Stox said that AT&T might be tracking a gigabyte in the more commercial sense as 1 billion bytes, as opposed to the more technical method that would result in a number that would be roughly 7 percent higher (1,073,741,824 bytes). Stox also noted that packet headings and other information that AT&T sends to route his traffic might also account for some overage — those are bytes his router wouldn’t necessarily count. He also mentioned that his timing might not match up with AT&T’s version (for example if AT&T’s daily totals ended at 12 ET while his ended at 12 CT).

For him, the problem is that AT&T won’t share any of its methodology with him. “What’s their definition of a byte?” he asked. “What’s their version of a day? I just want to know,” he said.

AT&T offers the following from its Frequently Asked Questions section:

What is included in my usage?
Usage includes all of the data you have received (downloaded) or sent (uploaded). In addition, we take into account the standard network protocols (such as Ethernet and IP activity) that are used to transmit content via the Internet.

But that doesn’t answer all of Stox’s questions. To him AT&T’s ability to charge him $10 for more Internet access just because he’s hit some cap that’s defined by AT&T and overseen by AT&T without any required disclosure seems anti-consumer. So far, he hasn’t filed a complaint with the FCC, or with the Illinois Commerce Commission, but he did say he had been contacted by Public Knowledge and he might wait for their advice before making any formal complaint. Already the advocacy organization is using the case as an example of why the FCC needs to get more involved in monitoring and asking questions data caps.

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What we talk about when we talk about caps.

The rise in caps has let ISPs influence the internet in subtle ways — most of which seem harmful to innovation. The first is to take away the idea that wireline broadband is an unlimited service, despite the ability of smaller ISPs to build out networks that don’t come equipped with caps. As you can see from the chart below, most of the ISPs are implementing overage charges associated with their caps. This isn’t really about managing their networks for congestion. If it were, they’d implement a different type of pricing model that cost users more to surf at peak times. No, this is about protecting their entrenched TV businesses as well as keeping the price for service high, despite the decreasing costs to send traffic over the network.

It’s also about grabbing more of the profits from the growth in internet services such as Netflix and Google, although caps take out those frustrations on users as opposed to the over-the-top providers. Instead of providing faster speeds for users and encouraging the growth of services that would require users to upgrade to those speeds, ISPs have taken their control of the last mile and are charging for bytes. So instead of paying more for better service, customers will pay more for what they use. This is a model that works for certain industries (think gasoline and electricity) but when it comes to encouraging more usage and innovation on the internet, the utility model seems short-sighted. Other ISPs may be thinking this same way.

For example, what if Intel had told game developers or Microsoft not to write software that would stress its chips — or penalized programmers for every megahertz of performance they used over a certain threshold? We’d end up with crappy software running on slower machines. Instead Intel encouraged people to write software for its chips and invested billions in making them faster so people would upgrade. Along the way it opened up market after market for the PC. Utility industries aren’t typically hotbeds of innovation.

The Federal Communications Commission, which is charged with tracking the spread and quality of U.S. broadband, has so far been quiet on this issue, not even collecting data to track how the shift to capped broadband has affected users, much less the industry. That may be changing. But it’s time that we ask if we want the internet to look like the utility or a source of continued innovation.

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The Extreme 305 tier will cost $299.95 per month and will be available in most major markets in its Northeast division. Concurrent with those speeds, users will also get Wi-Fi at 155 Mbps throughout the home, and Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, says future in-home routers for the Extreme 305 tier will eventually use the new gigabit 802.11ac standard. Current Wi-Fi gear from Comcast uses 802.11n.

But even as it pushes ahead with faster tiers, Comcast is still testing variations on its broadband cap that it first launched in 2008. At the time, the cap was a straight 250 GB per month, but as usage grew and more users hit the cap, Comcast raised the limit to 300 GB per month in May and said it would test out new variations of the cap.

The first of those appeared in Nashville, Tenn. last month with Comcast charging users $10 for a bucket of 50 GB over the 300 GB cap. That rate is fairly common among the ISPs who cap their service — AT&T and SuddenLink charge that much for users who exceed the cap. The Tucson cap is another variation of a common cap — users who subscribe to faster tiers will get higher caps. Here’s what it looks like:

• Economy/Economy Plus, which costs $39.95 unbundled, has a cap of 300 GB
• Internet Essentials, a $9.95 plan offered to select low-income homes, has a cap of 300 GB
• Performance Starter, which costs $49.95 unbundled, had a cap of 300 GB
• Performance, which costs $62.95 unbundled, has a cap of 300 GB
• Blast, which costs $72.95 unbundled, has a cap of 350 GB
• Extreme 50, which costs $114.95 unbundled, has a cap of 450 GB
• Extreme 105, which costs $199.95 unbundled, has a cap of 600 GB

However, because of the pricing in place around the service and the cost of buying a 50 GB bucket, users don’t really get an advantage from switching to a higher tier in order to avoid a cap. In fact, the pricing really doesn’t offer any incentive to choose a higher-speed tier for those solely worried about a cap.

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The inquiry also asked about mobile broadband speeds and caps as well as latency and other topics. But the important thing here is that the FCC seems to be recognizing that the 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload minimum standard for broadband isn’t so useful anymore — not with multiple people in a household all trying to watch Netflix and make video calls at the same time. From the notice:

The bandwidth requirements of a household can increase as the number of devices sharing a broadband connection increases, particularly if multiple users are accessing video content with that connection. How should this usage pattern affect our speed threshold analysis?

That’s a great question, but better ones should be asked, especially when it comes to the topic of bandwidth caps — something FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has said he thinks are acceptable. But in the inquiry, which seems to stem in part from soul-searching done after the FCC had to say for the third year in a row that the U.S. wasn’t deploying broadband in a reasonable and timely fashion, the FCC asks whether caps on broadband should affect how it ranks ISPs. From the report:

If we add a data capacity threshold for fixed broadband in the next report, what data capacity threshold or thresholds should we adopt? What data capacity limits do most fixed broadband providers offer today? How often, and under what circumstances, do consumers exceed these limits? What reliable data sources exist to identify providers’ offerings and consumers’ use? How should we evaluate situations where a provider offers more than one data capacity package to its consumers at a different price or using a different technology?

Right now the FCC has apparently considered a cap of 250 GB per month as a reasonable cap in urban areas, but I’d be curious how it came to this conclusion. Did it just pick that number after Comcast implemented that in 2008 as its original data cap, or did it actually perform some kind of analysis and then dispense that to the industry? And while it is asking questions about caps, I’d like to have the FCC ask the ISPs to explain how a data cap helps them manage their network and deal with congestion as well as why those caps need to be there in the first place. See, I have questions of my own.

The nice thing is anyone can send comments to the FCC answering the questions it raised in this notice as long as they do so before Sept. 20. To respond to the inquiry, write up your thoughts and then head over to the FCC’s Electronic Filing Comment System. Enter the proceeding number 12-228, and then you fill out the form and upload your comments. Good luck!

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Amid concerns that taking advantage of the service could lead broadband customers to consume substantial amounts of data, Techbeast.net conducted a trial to discover how much would be used during a typical gaming session. Playing Just Cause 2 through OnLive for around five minutes used around 200MB of data, meaning gamers can expect to get through around 20GB in as little as six hours.

Before you dismiss the plight of a few gamers across the pond, consider that now that AT&T has implemented broadband caps joining Comcast, more than 50 percent of U.S. homes have some kind of limit on their broadband connection in place. And this week, Suddenlink confirmed it, too, has started implementing caps that range from 150 GB to 350 GB per month depending on the level of service customers subscribe to. Comcast doesn’t use speed tiers to differentiate between its cap, which is set at 250 GB per month, but AT&T has a lower cap of 150 GB per month for DSL users and 250 GB per month for its faster U-verse offering.

So what we have are more ISPs setting caps as well as a sense of what kinds of caps they are planning to set in the U.S. It appears that at the slowest tier, we’ll see caps of about 150 GB, and those willing to pay up for faster speeds will also get higher caps. It’s unlikely we’ll see ISPs raise these caps anytime soon, especially if they can milk $10 per GB overage fees out of users.

But by adding gamers now to the groups of those affected by broadband caps, are we getting to a critical mass of consumers affected, so when an ISP says that less than 1 percent of their users hit those caps, folks will look around and realize that while they may not be in that 1 percent they’re getting a little too close for comfort? The outraged gaming community can join consumers who cut the cord, remote workers, confused folks trying to back up content to the cloud and BitTorrent users in the ranks of those who have bumped up against broadband caps and found it painful.

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