UseNET; the past 999.09 days…

One interesting thing about GigaNews is that they offer statistics for the life of the account.

I started using GigaNews back in July 2006- and since that time I have downloaded aboit 7.8TB of data from them. Note that is that this does not include downloads outside of UseNET- so any Linux ISOs, youtube videos, driver downloads, etc. would be additional bandwidth added- plus the roommate’s usage.

I would guess it would be over 10TB of downloads in the past ~1000 days; that averages out to about 10GB/day...

I love BellSouth/AT&T DSL (at least until they start imposing caps- like everyone else!)

Period End	Days	Bytes	GB
7/28/2006	1.01	1,541,509,489	1.54
8/28/2006	30.19	90,934,680,314	90.93
9/28/2006	31	76,014,984,772	76.01
10/28/2006	30	127,231,494,643	127.23
11/28/2006	31.04	93,115,099,871	93.12
12/28/2006	30	201,656,977,309	201.66
1/28/2007	31	89,499,356,261	89.5
2/28/2007	31	160,997,335,208	161
3/28/2007	27.96	177,213,293,786	177.21
4/28/2007	31	166,878,257,632	166.88
5/28/2007	30	120,806,887,410	120.81
6/28/2007	31	197,156,876,461	197.16
7/28/2007	30	122,630,877,837	122.63
8/28/2007	31	156,279,896,511	156.28
9/28/2007	31	173,154,857,627	173.15
10/28/2007	30	233,832,735,210	233.83
11/28/2007	31.04	425,133,172,160	425.13
12/28/2007	30	273,933,090,478	273.93
1/28/2008	31	448,206,370,240	448.21
2/28/2008	30.99	318,326,801,360	318.33
3/28/2008	28.97	254,277,316,984	254.28
4/28/2008	31	207,188,288,212	207.19
5/28/2008	30	226,514,534,473	226.51
6/28/2008	31	413,471,989,965	413.47
7/28/2008	30	234,289,881,909	234.29
8/28/2008	31	436,268,274,012	436.27
9/28/2008	31	242,348,217,723	242.35
10/28/2008	30	312,950,914,446	312.95
11/28/2008	31.04	296,106,550,724	296.11
12/28/2008	30	339,469,298,282	339.47
1/28/2009	31.01	455,278,111,757	455.28
2/28/2009	31	368,860,310,089	368.86
3/28/2009	27.95	177,334,569,543	177.33
4/21/2009	24.88	188,427,266,313	188.43
Totals =	999.09	7,807,330,079,011	7,807.33

Honestly- I think if/when they do start offering different tiers of service they are going to see almost everyone opt for the lowest/least expensive plan. All of the people currently paying $33/month for basic DSL will go to the $20/month for ‘under 5GB of usage’ (or what-ever crazy rate they specify).

So what happens when 99% of the the ‘normal users’ opt opt for the lowest tier and cut their monthly bills by about 40%? Can the increased charges on the ‘excessive use 1%’ balance things out? Only if they can raise the charges of the remaining 1% about 4060% (so going from $33/month to about $1,340/month).

Even if only if 60% of the people opt to drop their bills down to a $20 tier, the remaining 40% would need to have a 60% increase in their bills for AT&T to break even (the later individuals would need to go from $33/month to about $52.80/month).

If any of the above would happen, people like myself will cancel and go back to Comcast with a 250GB/Mo cap for $43/month (the same amount that I am paying for DSL Xtreme 6.0).

Please note that the above rates are only speculative, but reasonable; I would hope they don’t opt for a rate of $30/month like the rape that Time Warner is trying.