18% Lack Adequate Bandwidth for HD Stream → Re: it doesn't matter

Caps are largely irrelevant. I streamed the first 3 seasons of The Office on Netflix last month and my TOTAL usage at the router was only 192GB. That's over 50 episodes plus my normal browsing. If I had to guess, I'd say those 50 episodes consumed 50% of my total usage.

Yeah, but you neglected the favorite strawman around these parts: The family of six, whom all want to watch different HD streams at the same time, while downloading many gigabytes of game purchases, Linux distributions, cloud storage, and porn every month.

I have 10+ years worth of consumption data on my personal connections, and my highest month was ~220GB. If I recall correctly, that was the month I spent on disability recouping from surgery. Most of that month was spent downloading bittorrents of defunct television shows that I wanted to watch. It's amazing how many different shows you can watch from the pilot episode to the end when you can't get off the couch. I only had a 1.5mbit/s DSL connection back in those days, so I definitely got my money out of Verizon that month!

That's YOU as in ONE person. Most people don't live alone. So if there was 3 of you in the household that would have been nearly 600 GB WELL above any cap.

Also as the article state what happens when bitrates go up? What if Netflix makers their bitrates 10 Mbps instead of 5?