How common is it to have data cap on cable internet? I lived in a few countries in the last 10 years and have never experienced it. Is US the exception here or other countries also have such limits?
https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage.html
* - they don't say it on that page, but obviously there is some mechanism by which AT&T would stop you from using the full symmetric 1Gbps constantly.
"Called the "Xfinity Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan," the cap restricts the amount of data you consume in your home to 1TB per month regardless of the speed of your plan. Comcast claims 99 percent of customers use less than 1TB per month, but it does now offer an unlimited option for $50 more per month"
Even though most are "unlimited" nowadays, they're still under a fair usage policy which means that if you download too much (usually 1TB+), you will get a call to explain why you download so much or you'll have your internet speed reduced.
I listen to 80 something podcasts, most of which are weekly if not daily, and watch 2-3 hours of YouTube/Netflix/Hulu on Weekdays and probably 20 hours on the weekend and never come close to hitting the cap.
According to this article https://www.androidcentral.com/how-much-data-does-streaming-... Netflix 4k is 7.2gb an hour, if you have a 1TB Comcast cap and they're counting that as 1000gb you should be fine for at east 130 hours (giving an allowance for phone/app/os updates and random browsing).
Also, why 4k? Small room, massive display? Many people can not even detect a difference between 1080p and 4k at normal couch distance. https://www.experienceuhd.com/blog/can-human-eye-see-differe...
Not sure how that is relevant to my comment, but the 2017 nominal median income per capita was $31,786 in the United States. That means even a $650 television is more than a week's gross pay for as much as 40% of the US population.
Most of us are quite content with even 720p too and just because something is 'under $1000' doesn't mean you need to replace a perfectly functional television.
I've got a 55" 4K at a viewing distance of maybe 6', tops, if you're leaning waaaaay back on the couch, and can only barely tell the difference. A good 1080p source (high bitrate h264 or h265, or a normal ol' 1080p bluray) looks a hell of a lot better than Netflix's 4k. HDR matters a ton more than 4k itself does, as far as how good something looks.
[EDIT] and what really matters is having semi-decent speakers in a somewhat-OK 5.1 layout, with a proper receiver. I'd drop to 720p on the picture before I'd give that up.
I’d say the shift to more unlimited offerings happened about 5 years ago.
My local cable internet ISP:
https://www.cogeco.ca/en/internet/packages
The packages under $100CAD/mo have data caps under 200GB.
Currently using a 33GB Daytime + 33GB Nighttime plan(Total 66GB month) for $9.5
You can find a non-capped (at least in theory) plan everywhere if you pay enough of course.
For movies/tv shows/games we probably spend few TB a month.
I had never heard about such thing until now, it's ridiculous to have cap and I'm so glad that I don't have to live in such a place.
lets say a month is 30 days, a day 24 hours, an hour 3600 seconds, then a month is 2.592 Ms.
so an "unlimited" plan at say 1Gbps is actually always upper limited at 2592 Tb (bit) per month or 324 TB (byte) per month
I think governments should ban the "unlimited" names and force the ISP's to simply state actual limits or variable limit calculations if dependent on congestion. Here in belgium we have instead some vague "reasonable usage" policy...
There's one fundamental difference: there's no risk of exceeding that implied "data cap" derived from the speed cap.