AT&T To Impose Caps, Overages

[BadgerKid]

Up until this point, DSL usage has been unlimited. Following the moves by internet cable providers, AT&T will now start placing caps on usage:

Broadband Reports was the first to learn, and has confirmed with AT&T, that the company will be implementing a new 150GB monthly usage cap for all DSL customers and a new 250 GB cap on all U-Verse users starting on May 2. From March 18 to March 31, AT&T users are going to be receiving notices informing them of the change in the company's terms of service. AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom confirmed the news to Broadband Reports after we initially contacted him last Friday concerning a leaked copy of the upcoming user notification. According to Bloom, the cap will involve overage charges. However, only users who consistently exceed the new caps will have to deal with these charges.

...

More at http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusive-ATT-To-Impose-Caps-Overages-113149

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Every gig is a lost voice of freedom.

[Drale]

2. If everyone calls AT&T and says we are going to drop

if you don't reverse this decision it will not happen. As it is I will probably change my internet provider now.

PS. This is the very reason we left AT&T's cell service and went with Verison because AT&T no longer has an unlimited plan.

[groundloop]

3. Well, there goes my one and only alternative to Comcast

[brooklynite]

28. Have you checked DSLREPORTS.COM?

Most people seem to assume their only choices are the Telephone company or the Cable company. There are actually dozens of private companies providing internet services at various prices and rules.

[msongs]

4. internet needs to be a public utility asap nt

[Bake]

12. Like water is a public utility?

You pay for your water based on how much you use.

Just sayin'.

Bake

[Bake]

5. To exceed the cap in any single month,

you would have to download, for example,

75,000,000 one page emails.

or

30,000 mp3s.

or

88 two hour HD movies.

Unless you're a spammer, you WON'T go over the cap.

Bake

[Lance_Boyle]

6. Bull. And shit, too.

Netflix streaming can eat that bandwidth in less than a month easily. No "downloading" required. Stream a couple of TV shows in the morning, another couple in the afternoon and a movie or two at night and you're over.

[Bake]

8. By your terms, that's at least three movies (or equivalent) every day.

3 x 31 = 93.

So that's exactly what I said. Yeah, that'll put you over the cap.

And if you're doing that much every single day, you probably need to get out more.

Bake

[JoePhilly]

18. Got kids?

I have three.

One 18, the girls are 11 and 9.

And then my wife and I.

Three user groups in one house, potentially watching different things at the same, or different times.

I also work from home most of the time. My wife does at times.

They might as well say that every house, regardless of occupants, gets the same amount of hot water each month.

[Bake]

20. But if you use more hot water than anyone else on the block,

you probably pay a higher water bill, too. And your gas/electric bill is higher.

Bake

[JoePhilly]

30. Sure ...

If you use water beyond a certain amount, yes.

But not for heat or electric really, because those are driven more by the size of the house and not the number of people in it. If I heat a room to 72 degrees, doesn't matter if it is one person, or 20. And 2 or 3 light bulbs or TVs don't change your electric bill much.

If the cable companies are going to start charging on "bit-rates", with a cap above which they want more money, they will ulitmatelty kill the goose that lays the golden egg, unless they create very clear tiers.

Land line telcos made similar mistakes. They decided to nickle and dime customers for every service. I worked in Telco for a while. As an example, call waiting was invented in the 60s. To this day, telcos refer to call waiting as "an advanced telephony feature" and they charge extra for it. It would be as if every computer application you bought charged you extra for the "print feature".

Long Distance phone calls are another example. From my cell phone, no extra cost, from my land line, much higher cost. Which is why the land line isn't used for much anymore.

At some point yes, bits will be bits ... phone, streamed audio, video, text ... but people do not think in bits.

These companies still operate with a monopoly mentality. They see themselves as "owning customers". And the outcome is likely to be that the poor will get almost no service because they can't pay enough.

[Denninmi]

9. Good to know.

I just signed up and had AT&T DSL installed last week. Because I was on Virgin Mobile's mifi before that. Which was fine while it was unlimited usage and full speed. In Mid-February, they in essence restored the cap by "throttling" speed after you had reached 2.5 GB in your one-month period. It became about 3 times SLOWER than dial up, and a lot of the time I couldn't get on at all.

Corporate bastards.

[Xithras]

7. They're finally trying to kill off the server users.

One of the few good reasons for sticking with AT&T DSL is that it's the ONLY residential broadband service that doesn't block ports or prohibit the installation of permanent servers on the lines. I have my own mini data center at home complete with email server and a couple of web servers that I run for testing and development. I was running these, in some form, since the late 90's on my DSL line without complaint from AT&T. Starting a few years ago, however, AT&T began to make a bit of noise about people running servers on DSL lines, and how we consume more data than normal home users. While that's true, it's not banned by AT&T in any way, so there was little they could do about it.

Data caps are a reasonable way to shut these servers down, without actually "banning" a particular use.

[Bake]

11. You can get a business account (instead of residential)

No data cap on business accounts. Of course, you'll pay more for the service, but you can also get a block of static IP addresses (which, if you're running multiple servers and you want them exposed on the internet, might not be a bad idea.).

Just a thought.

Bake

[Xithras]

19. They won't do it.

I looked into this a couple of years ago because I wanted a static IP, and just rechecked again to make sure this is still valid. I currently have 3000/512 residential DSL into my house. Their business department won't activate me with anything over 1500/384, cutting my connection speed in half. They also want $65 a month for it. I currently pay $24. $65 a month for a download rate that I can beat on my cell phone, in exchange for a fixed IP and losing a bandwidth cap, is NOT a reasonable trade-off.

I was informed that their faster connections require "business grade" gear, and that AT&T will not install them into a residential home.

If I'm going to get capped anyway and be forced to shut my servers down, there's really very little reason for me to stay with them. Our local cable service blows them away speed-wise.

[Bake]

21. The only "business gear" you need is a Motorola 3347 modem/router

That's $100.

AT&T has up to 6M DSL, both business and residential. 6M isn't available in all areas, just like U-verse isn't available. They'll put it anywhere your "business" is located. But yeah, it costs more.

If you can get U-verse, it's significantly faster (my U-verse is 18 mbps), the cap is much higher, and you can still get a single static IP. I don't know if AT&T does multiple statics with U-verse, becasue it uses a 2Wire router. The motorola router has a very versatile interface that allows for configuring your multiple static IPs.

Bake

[Xithras]

22. It's not a matter of technical capability. It's a matter of willingness on AT&T's part

I'm fully aware that 6Mbit DSL is available. In fact, I've been using DSL since upgrading my old 128k ISDN line in 1998, and have been fairly happy with it.

Three problems with your suggestion:

1) 6Mbit DSL isn't available to my house. Too far from the DSLAM. I'm capped at 3Mbit, which I'm perfectly fine with.

2) AT&T flat out refuses to provision 3Mbit fixed IP business class DSL to my home, even though the wiring is fully capable of it (As I said, I have 3Mbit right now, so it's not a wiring issue). They WILL deploy 3Mbit "Internet Pro" Small Business service to my house, but that still includes a single dynamic IP address and, other than the higher cost, doesn't appear to be different from my current plan in any identifiable way. One of their reps even admitted to me that it's the same plan, but that it's just repackaged for small business owners who want to install it into their stores and offices.

3) AT&T will extend "Small Office/Home Office" DSL to my house via their AT&T Enterprise Business unit, but they will ONLY provision up to 1.5Mbit, and at a cost triple what I'm paying now. I would get a fixed IP that way, and no data caps, but my speed would be slashed in half. They flat out refused to provision my house with anything faster, saying that I would need to move to a line type other than DSL, which can't be provisioned to a home.

Believe me, I've beat this issue to death. AT&T has no interest in SoHo users who want to run servers on their line for a reasonable cost. I can CoLo for FAR less than $65 a month!

[Bake]

24. I'm sure you've been all through it with them.

It makes about as much sense as airline fare pricing ...

Bummer.

Best,
Bake

[angstlessk]

10. People are beginning to get rid of their Pay TV and using streaming

videos from Netflix and Hulu for their TV watching...this will SCRAP THAT IDEA as a cost savings device! GRRR!

[Bake]

13. AT&T estimates that less than 2% of its residential customers

will be affected by the cap.

And if you go over, you pay a small fee - I think it's $10 - for the first 50 gigs over the limit.

Bake

[cbdo2007]

14. That's fine. There is no way any normal person should be using 150 GB per month.

[Occulus]

15. I have, several times.

Between Netflix and a hard drive reformat (necessitating re-installation of my OS and of all my Steam and EA Store games, a very significant fraction of 150GB), I have exceeded 150GB in a single month on more than one occasion. I know for a fact I'm not alone in this. Many Steam users- and people who buy from iTunes, Netflix, the EA online store, and other online retailers- are in the same boat.

You would have us buy an item, and then have us maybe pay up to our ISP for access to that item "if". That's not right any way you look at it.

[Dappleganger]

16. So now there are limits on your slow-as-a-snail downloads and netflix usage...

At least with comcrap we hit our limit quickly, lol. BTW, ours is 250 gigs a month on comcrap but I do have a thing on our router which sends a note to my email when it's getting close. We did used to have AT&T dsl but gave up on it as we have 6 here on the internet and it was too slow.

[Bake]

25. I've got U-verse, so it's significantly faster than DSL (like 18M vs. 3 or 6 for DSL)

Plus the cap is higher ... like yours.

Bake

[Dappleganger]

26. Ours is 42...

it's a new tier and I was able to get it for $29.99 for 12 months, no contract (basic cable thrown in). When the special pricing is up I'll call in a re-negotiate just like we do with some of our other utilities.

[Raine]

17. Well I was just going to have that put in

now I'm now so sure. :-(

[YellowRubberDuckie]

23. Makes me glad I have Cox Cable Internet.

No limits and it's not bad. Great Customer service, mostly because I'm not an asshole when I call for service. =)
Duckie

[RandomThoughts]

27. Again there is a subtext there.

I am polite, I think polite is better. And when talking to some group, like you mention, I am usually polite. I learned both customer and employee relations when young.

However.

When the 'Customer Service' fails to correct the beer and travel money that is due, being polite would be being subservient. That is a totally different thing.

In that case, you take the company and restructure the customer service, then leave the company, then call them again to correct the beer and travel money with a working support staff.


In other words, don't let someone convince you to be polite, or even civil, when you are in the right on an issue, and polite does not correct the issue.

And actually, I have tried politeness, civilized, reason, and many other concepts to give opportunities, at some point going to have to restructure things.


Since someone needs to send me the beer and travel money that is due.

[devils chaplain]

29. Unfortunately...

... It seems like with things like this, when one company jumps off the cliff, the others follow (see: fees for a first checked bag on airlines). I'd be expecting more like this from a lot of other companies. :(