OCN (オーシーエヌ) Capping Bandwidth in Japan

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) owned Open Computer Networks (OCN, オーシーエヌ), one of the biggest Internet service providers in Japan has announced they will begin capping daily upload bandwidth at 30 G Bytes starting August 1. In an OCN press release dated 6/25/08, Tei Gordon, an NTT spokesman in Tokyo is quoted saying the 30 G Byte limit corresponds to about 7 full-length movies per day. Here's another quote from that same press release:

Although OCN has continued to expand its network bandwidth to accommodate increasing data traffic, a small number of individual users have been monopolizing substantial network resources by uploading massive amounts of data, which can slow the speed of the network and lower communication quality for other users.

The provider, which has about 7 million customers in Japan, will first warn customers who exceed the 30 GB upload daily limit. If warned customers do not back off, network access will be cutoff and the company may terminate their service contract.

I find it interesting that OCN is not capping download traffic - but - if you think about it they really cannot if they want to start selling things like movies and other large file products and services. I also cannot imagine what 100 MB must be like and cannot believe customers are only paying a $46 a month for the service. We've got a ways to go in the U.S.

You can bet all providers in the United States will be watching this closely.