IT Blog

Data caps at broadband internet providers might be a coronavirus casualty nobody will miss—except the ISPs that had profited from them.

In less than a week, the top U.S. internet service providers imposing data caps have waived those limits to accommodate the millions of Americans now working and learning from home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

And Patient Zero in this particular outbreak was an unlikely suspect: AT&T, an aggressive adopter of data caps that it, like Comcast and others, had pitched as a fair-minded response to the alleged unfairness of some people using so much more of their connection than you.

Hours after a March 12 piece at Vice’s Motherboard site scolded ISPs for retaining data caps in this growing crisis, the Dallas telecom giant told the tech news site’s Karl Bode that it would suspend $10-and-up overage charges that kicked in after just 150 GB a month for digital-subscriber-line users or 1 TB for its fiber-connected customers.

The next day,…