Netflix's Biggest Binge Watchers May Be Paying Major Internet Costs

The L.A. Times recently wrote a cautionary piece on the topic of binge-watching that hadn’t occurred to me. In the article, they interviewed a man who recently bought a 4K TV and starting binging all his favorite series as well as viewing movies in all the Ultra-HD glory he could handle. Sounds great, right? It was, except for one hitch. He was blowing through the monthly data limit he was allowed on his plan in no time at all.

The guy saw his bill double and was characterized by the cable companies as a “power user.” While this type of data usage is still fairly rare, the stats show that the number of people in this category has doubled in the last year thanks to all the streaming services and people switching over to exclusive streaming. And there’s nowhere for that number to go but up when you consider the future of TV. We say all the time that we’re seeing new streamers announced so regularly that it’s almost overwhelming, so it looks like the power user will continue to be on the rise.

Netflix and Google both have settings that can be adjusted for their users to help with the data use, but it just seems that for now, if you find yourself in the same boat as the other power users, you may just need to add on the unlimited plan, as it may save you from paying overages in the future. Have you run into this problem?