Broadband Breakdown

AT&T’s decision to institute a monthly broadband streaming cap means that managing your bandwdith will become yet another hassle to obsess over. Did that last episode of Arrested Development push you over the limit? Dang, don’t forget about that lonely weekend you spent with your laptop and March Madness. The cap adds up to roughly 64 hours of streaming to keep track of. Go over and you’ll pay $10 for every extra 50 gigabytes. So what to do you view with that time? Here’s how five user segments might manage the stream.

Roughly the hours of streaming allowed under AT&T’s monthly broadband cap. A breakdown of how certain demos might use 250 gigabytes is below.



10 Hours of humor sites
20 YouTube surfing
4 It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
6 SpongeBob SquarePants
10 Jersey Shore
4 Porn
10 Alt radio




15 Hours of movies
10 YouTube viewing
10 Kids sites video
3 Google Video
4 Video vacation research
10 Glee
5 Grey’s Anatomy
5 The Amazing Race
1 Porn
 



10 Hours of Skype
4 Dancing With the Stars
10 The Voice
10 Classic TV series
6 YouTube viewing
5 How-to video content
3 News site video
10 Movies
6 Casual gaming



15 Hours of exercise programs
12 Hours of HBO
5 Cooking instruction video
4 Friday Night Lights
7 Pandora
10 Law & Order: SVU
4 Glee
5 Skype
2 Book.tv videos



20 Hours of NFL Network
10 Movies (The Big Lebowski twice)
5 Humor sites
4 Survivor
6 Arrested Development
5 Ultimate Fighting
2 News video
2 Skype
10 Porn

Illustrations by Kim Bost