DSL users now have a monthly cap of 150 gigabytes a month, while U-Verse subscribers get a more generous serving of 250GB. A user who exceeds the new usage caps three times will pay an additional $10 for every 50GB of data.

In the very near future, this could be you--even if you're not an AT&T customer.

While AT&T announced the broadband caps in March, the data limits will certainly be an unwelcome surprise to many of the Telco's home Internet customers, particularly the growing number who use video-streaming services like Netflix.

AT&T says its average DSL subscriber uses only 18 GB of data per month, and that only 2 percent of its customers will hit the cap. This number's almost certain to rise, however, as streaming services grow in popularity. Netflix added about three and a half million subscribers in the first quarter of 2011, and it's now approaching 24 million customers overall.

A high-definition Netflix video stream uses about 2GB of data per hour, according to Netflix. So it's easy to see how an AT&T DSL customer who watches a few hours of Netflix shows nightly (streamed, not on disc), could quickly reach the 150GB cap.