We have been saying for some time now that monthly data caps just aren’t reasonable as technology continues to expand rapidly leading to higher resolution, faster transfer speeds, and other evolutionary climbs that challenge the limits of these limits.
The biggest issue is that technology has been climbing quickly but those limits aren’t, leading to a terrible balance issue. Resolutions expand from 1080p to 4K, or even 8K. The latter of which is 16 times the resolution of 1080p. In the meantime, ISPs compensate by raising their monthly limits by around 20% (and that was a few years ago).
So it comes as no surprise when recent studies reveal that we are moving too quickly for ISPs that just aren’t offering what’s needed to keep up with it all. One of my colleagues once published that monthly limits that don’t increase reasonably to compensate for speeds and usage (moving to a gigabit account, for example) are “like being given a car and being told you can only drive within a confined bit of space. However, they offer you a crazy fast model for a lot more, but tell you that you are restricted to the same space”. One is faster than the other, but all it means is you get to the edge of your limit faster. Increasing the chance that you’ll be dinged with overage fees.
Since the pandemic, we have massively increased the amount of data we consume every month and it only continues to climb as we reach higher resolutions, fancier VR solutions, and other technologies that put strain on these limits. In fact, the numbers have more than doubled since the pandemic.
Thus, ISPs need to consider a much more reasonable increase to their monthly data cap, or simply let them go altogether. The latter of the two options is something that is becoming more popular thanks to the increase in fiber availability throughout the country.
