CNET has an article up today that notes: Data caps forcing efficiency on developers and the thought of the point of that article actually brings a little smile to my face, despite my own reservations and complaints about how broadband and wireless providers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to "unlimited" internet access.
Realistically, as a user of these services (on my iPhone, and potentially on an iPad if the announcement that shot down unlimited network access hadn't come before I could get my hands on a 3G iPad), I want "unlimited" to mean unlimited so that I never need to worry about being denied network access at an inopportune moment. I'd rather not have to stop and think about how much data I've used and when I'll need to put another quarter in the meter to get just a little more network access. The beauty of the changes over the last decade (and maybe a little before that) is that users typically no longer need to stop and think about how much data they are using.
I remember the not so good old days of CompuServe and AOL in the pre-unlimited days when you had to be concerned about how much data you used, or should I say you had to be concerned about how many minutes of internet access time you needed. There were smaller competitors that helped bring on the days of unlimited internet to which AOL eventually had to join the party with, and I'm very thankful that all happened. Now we've had unlimited broadband and data over cellular and wireless networks for a while and we've got companies such as AT&T trying to put that genie back into the bottle (and before this we've also had the mysterious unannounced caps on cable internet service with companies such as Comcast). These companies have realized that there are a bunch of users that are accounting for the vast majority of the network traffic that they must provide, but that bunch is probably a small minority while most of their customers use relatively tiny amounts of data and bandwidth in their everyday activities.
AT&T may or may not be striking a fair balance between what they are proposing to charge for data access with their new billing plans. The somewhat scary part for me is that they aren't going to offer unlimited data plans at all (at least not if you don't continue an existing unlimited plan) so anyone that signs up for service now finds that they are capped at 2GB before being forced to pay for additional gigabytes of service. I am lucky in that I had been paying for unlimited service before, so I can continue to get it and enjoy the use of it, even if my typical data usage is in the megabytes per month range. If I just so happen to fire up my Slingbox app and stream what AT&T would call obscene amounts of data back and forth (no, I'm not watching pr0n on the Slingbox, I'm talking about large amounts of data, not large amounts of obscene data 
) I don't have to worry. On the other hand, other users can't enjoy that same benefit as things currently sit.
Which brings me back to the point of the CNET article and the originally (perhaps) unintended consequence that should become big benefits over time -- the forced optimization and forced efficiencies in the applications that we'll see on various platforms in the future. Better compression schemes and other developments that should lead to better results for everyone.
