Attention OneDrive Users!

[Corrine]

This announcement will make a lot of people angry. It goes to the old saying about a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. Indeed, everyone will be paying the price for the idiots who stored over 75 TB data.

OneDrive storage plans change in pursuit of productivity and collaboration

We’re making changes to OneDrive storage plans for consumers and are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible.

Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average. Instead of focusing on extreme backup scenarios, we want to remain focused on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of OneDrive users.

Here are the changes:

• We’re no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
• 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
• Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.

We’re taking the following steps to make this transition as easy as possible for customers:

• If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and have stored in excess of 1 TB, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months.
• If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given. To learn more visit the FAQ.
• If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
• Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.

OneDrive has always been designed to be more than basic file storage and backup. These changes are needed to ensure that we can continue to deliver a collaborative, connected, and intelligent service. They will allow us to continue to innovate and make OneDrive the best option for people who want to be productive and do more.
Additional information can be found at the FAQ, and we will continue to update it throughout the transition.
—
The OneDrive Team

 

[blueelvis]

Why didn't they simply talked with those customers rather than making these changes for the entire userbase? I am sure they could have easily closed those accounts on the basis of "Fair Usage" which generally accompanies the Unlimited term in the form of an asterisk (*) or terms and conditions.

Although, I like the below point somewhat -

If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

 

[Digerati]

Why didn't they simply talked with those customers rather than making these changes for the entire userbase?

No doubt they would have cried foul by saying unlimited is unlimited. Clearly, they abused this and MS has no choice but to restrict everyone now. Too bad but I understand their reasoning. If only they allowed a generous amount in the first place, they would not have to cut way back now.

 

[niemiro]

In my opinion this has little to do with the 75TB users. They could have just introduced a cap. The 15GB --> 5GB free storage change, removal of camera roll bonus, and reduction of 100GB and 200GB plans simply means that an ever increasingly huge number of people are using the service and what with so much extra automatic upload which didn't used to exist (from phones and OneDrive folders) of many files people don't really need on the cloud, and without the rate limit of slow upload speeds in years gone by (nowadays internet speeds in general allow for the upload of entire HDDs trivially - no more waiting around whilst your single Word document uploads).

The honest answer I think is that Microsoft has a huge number of customers and because of the massive drive towards automatic upload in recent years, they've become overwhelmed (HDD capacities aren't really keeping pace with the ever growing connectedness of this world). But they don't want to admit that, so blamed it on outlier number one. But I personally don't really see it that way. It was going to happen anyway in my opinion.