AT&T's new datacaps
polycounter lvl 11
Haven't seen a thread on this yet, and thought it's worth talking about. AT&T now has data caps on internet usage at 150gigs for DSL and 250gigs for U-Verse per month. Of course, it sounds like a complete bullshit move to me, designed to charge people extra for what they're already getting.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/att-officially-announces-data-caps-wont-talk-about-congestion.ars
And an amusing take on it from Cracked:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-secretly-horrifying-implications-atts-bandwidth-caps/
I'm also curious about the impact of online gaming. People seem to be thinking that there will be a return to text-based games? I don't see why it would go that far, as the data that's being transmitted is the same regardless if it's a text-based game, or an xbox360 title. It's not like "next-gen" games transmit audio and video around.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/att-officially-announces-data-caps-wont-talk-about-congestion.ars
And an amusing take on it from Cracked:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-secretly-horrifying-implications-atts-bandwidth-caps/
I'm also curious about the impact of online gaming. People seem to be thinking that there will be a return to text-based games? I don't see why it would go that far, as the data that's being transmitted is the same regardless if it's a text-based game, or an xbox360 title. It's not like "next-gen" games transmit audio and video around.
Replies
Per month.
Wow... one of the most melodramatic things I've ever heard...
This is just underhanded scheming to get people to pay more money for the same, or less, service. They can claim that there are "hogs" congesting the networks, but that's just a convenient lie they sell to the public to justify their position. These so-called "hogs" are just using the connection they paid for to its maximum potential. They don't want us to use our broadband to watch TV, talk on Skype, or download games. They want us to pretend it's still 1999, when everyone was using the internet for email and web browsing because the internet is now a competitor for their legacy TV and phone services.
They make a lot of money keeping us dependent on the old phone and cable TV systems, because the infrastructure was put in place decades ago and most every penny they make goes to profit. It's also easier to divide these "services" up into separate billable features to make even more money. Honestly, do they really need to charge you for caller ID, call waiting, and other features when they already charge you $40 a month for a basic land line? Do they need to sell you a "NFL Season Pass" for about 10-20 more channels that you probably will never get to fully take advantage of when you already shell out $50 or more for all of those non-sports channels that you also don't watch all of? The insane profits they report despite their claims of network congestion seem contradictory.
You can effectively watch all of your favorite programs straight from the internet through streaming video or download to watch at your convenience (ESPN streams live games). It's a la carte in the best possible way. Everything you want and nothing you don't. Your internet can be your phone with software like Skype, which let's you talk to anyone in the world that uses Skype for free. Not only that, you can pay $30 a year to make and receive land line calls too. This scares them shitless, because if everybody figures this out, their monopoly on media will be lost forever and the party is over.
honestly I dont think the average customer has anything to worry about, unless you have your torrent program running 24/7.
Ok, today it's 150GB. Tomorrow, it may be even more restricted because the media has evolved, but the infrastructure is still the same. It doesn't matter that you aren't affected by it today, it's the mere gall they have to try to make people pay more for less because they want to sell you other services and avoid investing in new infrastructure to support the paradigm shift in communications. If you let them get away with it now, it'll bite you in the ass later.
Specifically from a third party not protecting their other investments.
Jesus what the fuck? sorry... but what the hell... Companies are they affected like this also how are some of them gonna operate?
[edit] Also, I wish my cap was at 150 or 250GB/month [/edit]
It's pretty shit.
Good luck with it. I hope it doesn't get worse for the states.
Pretty much everywhere outside of the US has internet data plans, it allows them to stay competitive with one another without completely undercutting their profits in the process.
In the US, where everybody offers unlimited data, the ISPs can only go so far to stay competitive. People who only use the internet for basic purposes pay more because of the kid that seeds torrents all day/night. It's actually a really bad business model.
It does suck to be restricted to a data plan, and I can only imagine how much it would suck to have unlimited internet, and have it taken off you. Atleast data is cheap in the US, so if you go over your limit, the costs of extra data will be alot cheaper than here.
No, it makes no sense at all. This isn't electricity or water here. They're selling space on the network. It costs them the same whether it's at 100% or 1% usage. There's nothing wrong with an unlimited service as long as they don't try to sell it to more people than the network can handle. They are trying to cram more customers into a space that isn't big enough to hold them. The ISPs are just too damn cheap and comfortable in their competition-free market to reinvest into the infrastructure that's making them huge profits in order to provide more people even better service. They do this because they want to do things that will profit today, not two years down the road. I understand why they do it, but that doesn't mean it makes sense.
Still, the UK needs to pull its finger out and get rid of this copper wire and get some decent fibre optic down - although, I still don't understand why we need a phoneline to get a fibre optic internet connection... oh wait... yes, more money for the provider. Grr.
Looking into the situation further, it seems that AT&T are basically just capping their one plan, and not offering tiered pricing for different data limits (which I originally thought). If that's correct, than yeah.. It seems like they're just price gouging and limiting choice.
Yup. And the worst part is that for the most part, there ain't nothing we can do about it. Other than switch to Time Warner, those of us who can, which is a grim choice for sure.
Now they are still using Bell or Rogers lines, but for us it would be unlimited, we would just have to deal with customer service most likely through the providers.
As lame and horrible as it is, sadly we have gotten use to the idea of capped internet, it sucks so much ass, and it seems like we are trying to fight it, but we'll see where that takes us.
I thought that when Obama made that speech about upgrading our internet speed and all that Canada would catch on.. but no news as of yet.
Hmm plus I think people here say it's unlimited.. but it never is.
I find most services are fine with a reasonable monthly quota, gaming, browsing, youtube, steam downloads etc although the area where i do see it being a large issue is with streaming high definition video like apple tv and netflicks... paying for a larger data plan so i can pay to rent movies is pretty rich in my book.
A. Virtually every "unlimited" internet provided has caps, they just aren't apt to advertise them. If you're sucking a huge amount of data, your account will likely get limited. This varies, but 250gb isn't an uncommon cap even for "unlimited" service.
B. Looking at actual legitimate use, IE: netflix, which sucks more data than about anything else I can think of, you would need watch 185(one hundred and eighty-fucking-five) 1:30 long movies each month to hit your 250gb data cap. I think its safe to assume 99% of people will not have to worry about this. I would be curious to see some numbers on data in regards to online games, but again, I can not see this being a real fear for legitimate users.
In other words, you would need to spend 38% of every day watching netflix streaming, or about 9 fucking hours of each day. Unless your day job consists of watching netflix, I wouldn't worry too much about this.
C. I live in a town of 60,000 people, I have no fewer than 3 Corporate level(DSL, Cable, wireless) internet options, and then even more local providers. To say there is no competition is silly, certainly ISPs are not cutting each others throats to get the lowest priced service out to the consumer as possible, but please tell me which products and companies really are?
4. ISPs aren't investing in infrastructure/250gb isnt enough for the long term! - Well first off, I dont know about you, but I see steady improvement in my internet service, and my ISP(and all ISPs in my area) are constantly upgrading their infrastructure, constantly laying new fiber etc. So I dont see where this claim comes from.
Secondly, does anyone really think a 250GB cap is here to stay for the long haul, or that it will SHRINK? ATT is not retarded, once your average users are approaching this level, the caps will be raised, or all of their customers will switch over to a competing service.
This whole idea that all ISPs are in cahoots to charge you $10 per gigabyte can safely be filed under tinfoil hat crazy guy fear mongering. The only people who honestly need to worry about a 250GB cap are people who are TORRENTING OVER 10 GIGS OF DATA PER DAY. Please explain to me what legitimate services use over 10 gigs of data a day, I would love to know.
Would I prefer not to have a cap? Of course. Do I think ISPs need caps to be profitable? Certainly not.
Do I feel this is some sort of corporate oppression? I think thats getting a bit ridiculous.
I live in a 19,123 city of the south end of the KC metro, I have 1 option for internet/phone, I don't mind the caps so much, but the price per gig when you go over the cap is crazy, Lots of places in canada now have a 25 gig cap, and $2 for every gig, $3 to watch a netflix movie? that's fucking retarded. Also all of the phone/internet companies are starting to merge into big monopolies, in las vegas, all they have is cox and centurylink, and cox actually just uses the centurylink lines, most smaller phone companies actually rent out the lines from other bigger companies.
Oh just for fun, to show that your service is likely already caped, here is what I use, Mediacom "unlimited" service.
I am a heavy internet user, and I have not once had an issue. Not only do I stream a few hours of netflix a day, but I work from home and up/download huge photoshop source files frequently.
I'd like to comment on this one. The problem (the way I see it) is the way those companies are allowed to run their ship. They get a government grant to go in and lay down the infrastructure, and "in return" they get a monopoly over those lines. It's almost mafia-like behavior. But admittedly that's a hyperbole.
In reality though, what you're seeing is a situation where you have one company providing a service per infrastructure-type. So even a big area would have only one company doing cable, one company doing DSL, and one company doing fiber-optics. Obviously this limits competition, and is about as anti-free-market as it gets. A government-granted monopoly is just bullshit.
So... if the situation wasn't like that, if the companies had to compete directly, and still they put in data-caps, then I guess the argument would make sense. That they're investing in new technologies, and the caps are reasonable and make sense.
But I'm afraid the only reason you're seeing these developments is because of new technology hitting the market. There are cable-providers, but then fiber-optics comes into the picture and you have a new company doing new things with that. But areas that are already saturated suffer from this.
In my area for instance, AT&T pulled a double-whammy. They laid down fiber-optics up to the streets, then cable from the main-line to the house, and they call themselves a cable-ISP. That means that they have the rights to both fiber-optics and cable at the same time! Which then means that now that they have the caps, I can't switch to say Verizon's fiber-optics because AT&T has a monopoly. Bullshit at its finest.
Yes, I do. Maybe it won't shrink at face value, maybe it will even increase. But the ratio between what we do with the net and the cap will definitely shrink. 10 years ago 250gigs was unheard of. 10 years from now it'll be mundane.
But my worry is that it will never be mundane, because mentally we'll be stuck knowing we can only do a couple-hundred gigs a month. So services won't pop up that would otherwise if you could transfer terabytes a month.
In essence, I'm saying 250gigs will be enough, because we'll never know what we're missing.
Think of it as if they put in a 25gigs limit about 10 years ago. It would have seemed huge. But we would have never had stuff like Netflix's 720p streaming. That whole concept wouldn't have been considered, if you consider that the average person can only do 25gigs a month.
I'm just afraid of the stuff that we'll never even know about.
And then some small third parties, who i'm sure are just renting from Qwest or Mediacom.
I think the fear of never realizing some unicorn-type service that would only exsist if we had 10TB monthly caps or whatever is a little irrational. And honestly, you think nobody is planing services to use higher bandwidth that we eventually all will have? I dont think its really accurate to say, that all of our internet was perfect and unlimited at the time when netflix was planing to roll out streaming video.
Also, to think that we as consumers are entirely powerless to act against legitamtely restrictive services is a falacy. Look at what Time Warner tried to do a couple years ago, bring out tiered 40gb and 60gb(something like this?) plans that real users actually would have hit. The public outcry was so extreme that they dropped those packages entirely.
But if you look at what AT&T is doing, their caps are on par with most other service's "unlimited" caps, they're simply being upfront about it. Like that mediacom quote, if I bust 250GB they can charge me whatever the fuck they want, they aren't even going to disclose the fees. I would prefer to actually know what my limits were and the fees for exceeding those limits. Its just that we freak out when its no longer called "Unlimited" service.
What came first, the ability to stream hi-def and then the bandwidth to do it? Or was it the bandwidth and then the ability?
I'm not sure why you're willing to put good-faith in corporate interest.
Oh, i'm not saying I love AT&T for doing this, like everyone I would prefer to have *actual* unlimited use. But this doesn't *really* exist in the first place, so getting upset over it is sort of pointless. You know what I mean?
If its an honestly restrictive service I get it, if its a cap that only the top 2% of warez kiddies downloading every new app/game/song/movie are using, I dont have much sympathy for it.
I hear ya.
And also it occurs to me that in the grand scheme of things, with all the crap going on in the world right now, me bitching about bandwidth is really moot.
and the government should set a limit of how small of a cap providers can set, plus all of that net neutrality stuff.
I would disagree with that, since it's pretty obvious the government caused this whole thing to begin with. The best thing for them to do would be nothing. But that's not going to happen.
right now i have around 150gigs or so but i have never in any occasion had to check my bandwidth usage up untill now.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/atandt-agrees-to-buy-t-mobile-from-deutsche-telekom/
I still feel Net flicks is a potential issue, sure in a single person household with a 250gig limit it sounds like a ridiculous argument. But as soon as you consider a family - two parents, two teenage children - were talking continual streaming from multiple sources and services, that data allowance evaporates quicker than i expected at least. I cant even imagine trying to untangle the usage mess with flatmates ...
To here they are charged for data usage over your limit is fucking nasty, especially if your not a little tech savvy and haven't ever had to worry about data usage before. Its changed now where i am so that they just slow your service once you exceed your limit, which is allot more reasonable. Now they just need to extend that to cell phone data plans and expand wireless data plans past 10gig.
Yup. I'm a long time T-Mobile customer...totally sucks IMO. I pay $80 a month for a family plan with unlimited data(it actually gives me 3g speed)/text on both phones (Nokia Nuron's but they do have Opera browsers) as I'm a long time customer. I can assure you that ATT will dump all that. I jumped over to Verizon to see what I'd pay a month for what I'm getting now from T-Mobile. $160 a month. So bummed!
B
Yeah I agree here. This is the best argument I've seen for why legitimate users need to worry about this. I read about a family of 7 or something(linked in the initial artifice?) that was using like 275gb, and that isn't shocking. Well, its thier fault for having kids in the first place, stupid breeders.
Again I think throttling the speed past 250GB is really the best choice, but doubtful AT&T will see it that way. =P
I'm sure if this is an issue a lot of households are having, AT&T will introduce a higher tier plan.
bt? sky offer unlimited usage for an extra £7.50 a month, and virgin already have fibre in place for most places
I have their cell service. Dead spots in the middle of downtown all over the place.
Lesson to be learned: AT&T is a budget "brand." It shows it a multitude of unpleasant ways.