Bandwidth Usage

In response to the absurdly expensive tiered structure that TWC was proposing for internet usage (which was recently shelved), I thought I'd share some throughput and usage info. Currently, almost every place that provides internet access pays according to their capable throughput. This is regardless of whether it is public works, residential, or business and regardless of whether they use the full throughput (and in the case of cable modems, actual throughput is often less than the max due to shared bandwidth with other subscribers).

MAX throughput/month (if used every second of every month):

• a 768Kb/s line = 243GB data
  
• a 1.5Mb/s line = 586GB data
  
• a 3Mb/s line = 1172GB data
  
• a 6Mb/s line = 2344GB data
  
• a 10Mb/s line = 3516GB data
  

These numbers are almost impossible to achieve due to latency, content provider's throughput (the pipe at the other side), and minor outages (cut lines, maintanence, spam traffic, etc.).

If you were to download a DVD (4.7GB) over the internet, here's how long it would take (best case):

• 768Kb/s = 13.926 hours.
  
• 1.5Mb/s = 6.962 hours.
  
• 3Mb/s = 3.48 hours.
  
• 6Mb/s = 1.74 hours.
  
• 10Mb/s = 1.16 hours.
  

Watching streaming videos:

• 2 hour long stream at 3.0Mb/s (close to DVD quality) is equivalent to 2,700MB.
  
• 1 hour long stream at 1.5 Mb/s is equivalent to 675MB.
  
• an average 5 minute youtube video (non-hq) is equivalent to anywhere from 11MB to 18.75MB of data.

TWC was proposing $1/GB overage charges for all plans... this means that on top of the $9.99 you might pay on iTunes for a movie, exceding your cap would subject you to have to pay anywhere between $1 and $5 "shipping" to download it from Apple's site depending on its data size (even more for HD quality content).

This sort of turns HD content on its head, not to mention online businesses. If usage caps do become a reality, expect Apple, Netflix, Hulu, and others to start providing physical content distribution hubs.