Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/843963
AACreditUnion.org | | 09 But change is coming, in some fashion. Two words: Data caps. Overall, more than 1 in 3 younger consumers and 1 in 4 of all consumers now have no cable subscription, Pew reports. And when a houseful of people start streaming high-defi nition video to laptops, tablets, smartphones and gaming consoles through a cable connection, the data racks up rapidly. Cable companies have noticed, and one response has been to put monthly limits on the amount of data a cable user can consume. For instance, one data plan that was tested allowed subscribers just 300 gigabytes a month, charging $10 for each additional block of 50 gigabytes after that. While 300 gigabytes may sound like a lot, some estimates are that typical households may use more than three times that much. Data caps aren't new, of course. Cellphone companies have used them — you're probably familiar with the phrase "data plans" — since the beginning. But if you're counting on a limitless broadband internet connection to take the place of cable TV, a data cap can seem like a costly inconvenience and then some. This is more than a theoretical problem. Several top home internet service providers have implemented data caps in limited markets. For the most part, however, they then backed off after encountering complaints by customers and criticism from consumer advocates. For instance, one raised a 300-gigabyte data cap to 1,000 gigabytes per month. In another promising development for cord- cutters worried about caps: The terms of a recent merger of two top-tier internet service providers prohibit the merged company from using data caps for the next seven years. If one large provider isn't using data caps, it will make it harder for competitors to make them stick. In the future, internet service providers will likely try some sort of data cap. But it may not be as bad as it sounds. For instance, providers may not count movies and shows streamed through their own content networks against the cap. New video compression technologies may greatly reduce the amount of data even high-def video consumes. It's also possible that cable companies will come up with new packages and prices for old-fashioned cable TV service that makes it an attractive alternative to cutting the cord. In a Back to the Future moment, that might convince some cord-cutters to do an about-face and re-subscribe to cable TV. I mean, some of us have really missed HGTV anyway.