Charter setting caps on Internet downloads

By MAI HOANG

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Some Internet users will soon have to be careful about the number of songs or full-length movies they download to their computers.

Charter Communications will cap the amount its Internet users nationwide can download in a month, beginning Monday.

Users with service speeds of less than 15 megabits per second (Mbps) will have a monthly limit of 100 gigabytes, while users with service speeds of 15 to 25 Mbps will have a 250 GB monthly limit.

Those who subscribe to the provider's 60 Mbps connection, which was released last week only in the St. Louis metropolitan area, will not have a usage limit.

The new policy is designed to help St. Louis-based Charter better maintain its network, said Anita Lamont, a company spokesman in St. Louis.

"It's really designed so that all users of our service are able to get the optimum service levels, which is what (users) want," she said.

The company will contact users directly if excessive usage is becoming an issue, she said. For competitive reasons, she would not state the number of Internet customers Charter has in the Yakima area.

Charter isn't the first company to enforce downloading limits. In October, Comcast, a Philadelphia-based telecommunications company, placed a 250-gigabyte limit for all its Internet users.

The tech community has strongly been against usage limits as it curtails innovation in technology.

"(Charter) has put a limit that's low enough that it actually impacts services available today,"
said Robb Topolski, chief tech-nology consultant for Free Press and Public Knowledge, two organizations that advocate for free access to information online.

For example, downloading high-definition videos of all the events from the Beijing Olympics, which were available on NBC's Web site, would be about 150 gigabytes, well above the limit for many Charter Internet customers.

Topolski also believes that Charter has an ulterior motive. Charter offers video-on-demand through its cable service, a usage cap could also help the company keep more of its video-on-demand traffic, he said.

Charter will certainly be watching its revenue. Analysts this week have speculated that the company is close to filing for bankruptcy.

And since Charter is likely one of the only companies in most markets to offer Internet at faster speeds, customers who do not like the new limits will have little or no alternative.

"It does call to question whether we have a healthy telecommunications market in the United States," Topolski said.

But Lamont, the Charter spokeswoman, said the company would be open to changing the limits to accommodate the customer's download needs.

"We really feel that more than 99 percent of the folks that use Charter Internet uses less bandwidth than the limits (require)," she said.

But Topolski believes that usage caps won't last long because customers won't put up with it.

"The customer doesn't want Internet service that is capped, it's backward as far as progress go," he said.

* Mai Hoang can be reached at 577-7685 or mhoang@yakimaherald.com.