Why Do ISPs Hate Beaumont, Texas?

In an effort to crack down on bandwidth hogs, AT&T last month kicked off a test in Reno (NV) that limited monthly usage to 150 Gbytes. That test was expanded to Beaumont (TX) on Monday. New residential AT&T high-speed Internet customers in Reno and Beaumont will now receive a bandwidth usage amount between 20 GB and 150 GB, depending on their broadband speed tier. Existing Reno and Beaumont customers who exceed that 150-GB threshold in one month will automatically become part of the trial later this year. Customers who exceed 150 GB will be given a one-month grace period for their first offense, but will incur charges of $1 per GB thereafter. Customers will be notified when they reach 70 percent of their usage amount, and service will not be cut off. AT&T is not the first company to target Beaumont customers. In January, Time Warner Cable announced that it was testing a usage-based system in the Texas town. Participants were placed on metered billing plans, and Time Warner started with four tiers of 5, 10, 20 and 40 GB. AT&T declined to comment on whether Time Warner's presence in Beaumont had anything to do with its choice to also test that market.