You probably got the email. Cox Communications is setting limits on your internet access. The company sent the warning out saying it will start next month. Cox calls it a data limit, but basically it just means you have to pay extra if you go over.

Experts tell Eyewitness News, Cox is making this change because so many of us are using the internet so much. And we're using it for high data activities like streaming video.

Those experts say we can expect more changes in the future.

"I'm on the computer all the time," Lesa Bullins says.

She's headed out for a walk with her family Tuesday evening and get some time away from all that technology. She says she's not surprised to hear internet companies are limiting data usage.

"Most of our data, we use on our phones," she said. "So we'll use our phones and they limit that. So it doesn't surprise me that they'll limit our homes, too, now."

That's exactly what worried most of you when you got emails from Cox Communications this week.

Eyewitness News asked the dean of the Newman University School of Business, is that likely to happen? He says it all depends on how we use the data.

"Back in the 90s, when the internet first became active, we simply transmitted information or sent an email," said Brett Andrews. "That didn't require the bandwidth that a two hour motion picture does today."

And, the way things are going, we're using more and more of it for things like online video game playing, streaming high definition video, even turning appliances on and off when we're away from the house. These are all things that eat up bandwidth.

"It does impact the way larger internet companies are responding to what at first were fringe and marginal elements and now becoming to a certain extent more mainstream," said Andrews. "That is a mirror to what we saw with those cell phone data packages. The trend will follow the consumer's usage pattern."

Exactly what those changes might look like, he says, only time can tell.

"Again, the nature of the consumer and the access that we're demanding changes the way the companies will respond to it.," Andrews said.

For now, Cox's new limit is a terabyte of data a month. That's a pretty good chunk.

"I couldn't tell you how long it would take you to get to that, but that's a lot," said Lesa.

Cox says you would have to do all of the following:

*watch 140 two-hour HD movies

*watch 300 half-hour standard definition TV shows

*watch 1,500 three-minute videos, like on YouTube

*surf the web for 3,000 hours

*and, listen to 30,000 songs that are 4-minutes long each.

The fear many shared with Eyewitness News is that that terabyte of data will quickly become less and the cost will continue to go up.

Eyewitness News has verified that Cox is not the only internet company to put in data limits.