By Ryan Krause –
Is 150GB enough data to last you a month?
Well, whether or not you like it, AT&T users will have to comply.
On May 2, 2011 AT&T applied a new data cap to their broadband users of 150GB per month. And every 50GB over that costs an additional $10.
Now, should you be worried? Or will that only affect the data-consuming Torrent users?
Actually yes, you should be worried.
With today’s ability to stream movies over sites like Hulu and YouTube it is very easy to hit the limit if you’re a media user.
An average HD video being streamed consumes about 2GB per hour and a standard video anywhere from 0.3GB to 1GB per hour.

That could eat one’s data up to the cap pretty quickly if there’s multiple users on that one network. AT&T claims that only two percent of their customers are expected to breach that cap.
According to MaximumPC.com, AT&T said that an average user uses about 18GB per month.
But what about enthusiasts who game daily online? Or have daily updates from programs?
One may be thinking, “Hey, this program will provide me with this information! It can’t hurt to slap on top of the other ones I have running in the background.”
But, it all adds up. Especially with weekly updates from online games that can be a couple GB.
And how about iTunes and other media distributors online that focus on downloading their products? Steam, a digital distributor for games, has everything focused around downloading all their games. And a majority of them can be anywhere from 50MB to 12GB.
Luckily for the AT&T “U-verse” members, (ones who pay extra to have internet, TV and phone access) they are capped at 250GB per month. That’s the same amount of a cap as Comcast’s.