First it was Time Warner Cable, then Comcast—and now, AT&T looks poised to jump on the bandwidth-cap bandwagon.

TheStreet.com just quoted an AT&T spokesman who says metered Net usage for its DSL customers sound like a pretty good idea.

"Usage-based pricing is one way to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among broadband users," said AT&T PR rep Michael Coe, who called ideas such as bandwidth caps and high-usage penalties "inevitable."

AT&T has yet to detail its plans for any bandwidth caps or extra fees, although the operator is "currently evaluating broadband plans and services," TheStreet.com reports. Uh-oh.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable continues its trial in Beaumont, Texas, which charges top-tier subscribers $54.90 a month for just 40GB of bandwidth (equal to about eight 5GB HD movie downloads from Apple TV or Vudu).

For its part, Comcast has proposed a 250GB monthly limit, after which it would penalize repeat offenders—a plan that sounds downright generous compared to TWC's stingy trial plan.

In the TheStreet.com article, Coe ticks off the usual statistics: About 46 percent of AT&T's DSL bandwidth is gobbled up by just 5 percent of its subscribers, while the heaviest users—just one percent of the total—use 21 percent of AT&T's total bandwidth.

I'm guessing most of those heavy users are uploading and downloading pirated media and movies via BitTorrent—and hey, if AT&T wants to penalize those who are abusing BitTorrent all day (in an above-board manner, that is), I can appreciate that.

However, many believe that AT&T, Time Warner, and other Net providers also have their eyes on the growing number of users who are legally downloading movies and TV shows from services such as Apple TV, the Netflix Player, and Vudu—all of which happen to compete with the VOD and PPV offerings of (you guessed it) AT&T, Time Warner, and their ilk.

In other words, even if you've dumped PPV in favor of Apple TV, you cable and/or telecom provider probably still wants a piece of the action—and through metered Net use, they may well get it.

Related:
AT&T Mulls Surcharge for High DSL Use [TheStreet.com]