‘Net Data Cap

Recently, AT&T has made a decision to place a 150 GB data cap on the transmission of data. The FAQ that is built on the website assumes that people who are subscribers are dumb apparently.

“150 GB is far more data than most customers ever use in a month.  Our average DSL customer uses only about 18 GB per month.  In fact, less than 2% of DSL users utilize more than 150 GB per month.  We estimate that 98% of our customers will not be affected by this change because the monthly usage allowance includes so much bandwidth.”

Come on, AT&T, do you really think that people need to be told that 98% figure when they already have the 2%? The people who  do need that figure are the same people that will accept the new rules without wondering…why now? Could it have anything to do with the net neutrality laws that are being tossed around?

My post isn’t going to be about that, though. My post is going to be my thoughts on how the ‘net can respond to this.

The data cap talks about user emails, but does it take spam into account? The data cap talks about streaming Youtube videos, but does it take annoying video advertisements into account? No, it doesn’t.

Plus, I don’t see this as one rule. I see this as the first in a series of rules. Rules that are going to be ever more constrictive on the free internet, or at least, the once free internet.

One thing that we can do to fight against this is to increase compression capabilities for the data that we wish to send over the internet. Instead of torrent downloads of entire files, perhaps we can instead torrent compressed files? Surely, we cannot stop torrenting, because that was the battle that was won in court, and it retains a decentralized way of doing things that makes it different from downloading it from the cloud.

And what about the cloud? A majority of applications and industries have migrated to the internet in order to do their business. Are song download pay sites going to suffer? Perhaps they will create a proprietary compression format, along with an app, that you can load into your computer and pay for supercompressed songs, so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about giving AT&T or Comcast your money, so you can give it to the song downloader instead.

The point is, that the internet is like a newly discovered continent. First, the crazies migrate there, and establish their own thing. But then, the Establishment comes in, and imposes the same old same old, and claims it as its own territory, and eventually turns it into a protectorate.

So… who wants to create a Pirate Internet?

My first idea is to somehow utilize amateur radio as the transmission medium. And comments?