shikamaru317 said:
How it works in the US: Mobile- Unlimited plans have a data cap, and if you pass it your speed gets throttled. You can pay more per month to increase the cap, but I think the highest is 75GB currently at $90 per month. Exact details of the throttle vary by carrier, some cap limit you to 4G speeds, some to 3G speeds, some only limit you during peak data hours, others limit your speed all of the time after crossing the cap. Home- The largest ISP in the US, Comcast, has 26.5m internet subs as of last year. Comcast has a 1TB data cap. However, unlike mobile plans, if you cross that cap they don’t throttle your speed, they instead charge you an extra $10 per 50 GB you used over the 1TB cap that month, up to a maximum of $200 at 1 TB over the cap (2TB total). So between game streaming and video streaming it would be very easy for a core gamer to go over that 1TB cap, even more likely for a family to go over it if all the members of the family stream video from Netflix and such, in addition to even a single member of the family using a game streaming service like Stadia. Not sure how many other US home ISP’s have data caps besides Comcast. I know that Comcast is pretty much the only option in my area, the only other options in my area are satellite internet (terrible for gaming due to extreme latency and small data caps) and DSL (too slow for online gaming at just 3 mbps), so gamers where I live are pretty much forced into using Comcast. |
At least in my area the Comcast 1TB limit does not apply to the Gigabit plan. Gigabit plan unlimited. Down side is it expensive ($80 a month for new user for first 3 years then it goes up to $105) but still a whole lot cheaper then $200 if you using that much data and you get a faster speed.
