Did you know that your Internet provider may have started dictating “how much” of the Internet you may use? Leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as AT&T, have started a new, little publicized billing change that results in your usage being capped–in the form of fines, throttling, or denial of services--for exceeding your allotted usage.

As a user who supports a free and open Internet, I am more than willing to pay for the service. However, just as the DMV cannot dictate how many miles you can drive, neither should your ISP dictate how much Internet you can use. Worse, billions in taxpayer dollars have already been spent to lay America’s next-generation fiber optic lines, which were designed to provide ample broadband to all users--an enormous internet infrastructure which ISPs like AT&T refuse to use.

The Internet is about world-wide access to information, but information is of little use if we cannot obtain it with free and complete access. Having a capped Internet cannot help but hurt access to businesses and home users–particularly with today’s media bandwidth requirements growing by leaps and bounds. What is more, companies like AT&T count viewing Netflix as taking up your bandwidth allotment–whereas using AT&T’s new movie streaming service is not counted as an infraction. This is a clear violation of Net Neutrality, and at its very worse, another potential bottleneck for the freedom of information around the world. Who is AT&T and other ISPs to dictate how you use the Internet? Please sign our petition to ask AT&T to return to a model of billing without caps.

Data Capping as a form of Censorship -

http://dksmediasolutions.com/blog/2012/02/19/why-data-caps-are-censorship-by-david-k-smith/