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Comments on news posted 2008-11-06 08:52:03: Earlier this week, we reported that AT&T was planning a trail of caps and $1 per gigabyte overage fees in the Reno, Nevada market, with plans to expand the trial into one additional market before the end of the year. ..
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 stewie316
join:2007-04-11
Jackson, MI
| No way I know i got about 130-150 a month at least and thats just watching movies on hulu.com and download games.... reality check has anyone seen how big world of warcraft is and all of its updates....??? 80GB can kiss my ***... Back to comcast at least 250GB sounded reasonable. | |
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Cyrusthevirus81
@sbcglobal.net
| Re: Meet the new Boss.... same as the old boss. said by KrK  :I'm beginning to think the only way to get value from your service provider is if you PIRATE the damn signals and pay nothing for it. I don't know about you guys, but I'm screwed at this point. I have at&t or Cox. I don't hit either of their caps --- yet... but I AM getting into IP video and I am getting streaming movies from Netflix, as well as all my usual Internet (I'm not a P2P'er though) and I think these caps are an innovation killer. And I'm not paying $60+ just to get a "halfway decent" cap. Our only hope is that the FCC is reconstituted under the new Administration and brings the hammer down hard on this type of crap. I agree I'm just getting into Netflix last few months since I heard about the 360 getting its update I love the streaming service even my daughter watches Disney cartoons n stuff on there and now its gonna be offered in Hd through the 360 I'm sure my usage is gonna go way up. I'm not sure what bitrate their Hd streams are gonna be but I would guess similar to xbox lives hd movies 4-5 gig a piece. I average about 1-2 movies a day (whole family) so just my movies on my xbox could be my monthly allotment. | |
| Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT
| Here's an idea... Up till now, ISPs have used the excuse that people are using too much bandwidth to justify the use of caps and throttling. By introducing a new 18Mbit U-Verse service tier, AT&T is clearly demonstrating that their new usage caps have nothing to do with bandwidth issues for the lower service tiers. In other words, if their network can handle 18Mbit, then they should have no problems delivering 6Mbit or less.
This means that the usage caps are due to greed. They're also anti-competitive since they make it impractical for subscribers to use VOD services, like NetFlix, or watch videos on sites like Hulu.
Everyone who objects to such caps should write to both the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission and file a complaint. They won't listen to individual users, but they will consider acting if they get enough complaints.
Stress that the caps have nothing to do with regulating bandwidth and everything to do with squeezing more money out of people and shutting out internet services that might compete with their U-Verse service.
Also, make sure to tell everyone you know, especially if they're an AT&T user. I even called AT&T's customer service to file a complaint. The people I spoke to didn't even know anything about this trial.
Count me as one of the people who thinks this stinks. Capped accounts are ruining the potential of the internet. If such caps were necessary for a company to survive financially, that would be one thing, but to cap accounts just because they think it will make them more money is just wrong.
If they pull that crap here, I'll drop AT&T. There is at least one cable company here that hasn't instituted hard caps. If necessary, I'll look into signing up for a professional broadband account. It would probably be much more expensive, but hopefully, I would be able to get something that wouldn't be capped.
The funny part is, when I signed up with AT&T I specifically asked them if there would be any speed throttling or usage caps and I was told in no uncertain terms that AT&T would not limit my account in any way. %$!#@&* liars! | |
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Nessuno
@sbcglobal.net
| Does nobody understand? When you pay for speed you pay for bandwidth, not just the ability to download your email really fast for a millisecond. If that were really the case then there would be no point to tiered service, everyone would be fine with 768kbps dsl. Caps on cable to some extent have a logical argument for QOS when you consider the fact that they are shared locally and your neighborhood is sipping out of the same straw, only so much to go around at any one time... hence the slowdowns at peak usage times. For dsl the same argument does not hold water because all users in essence have a dedicated link to the CO and the straw there tends to be multiple T3s (Or at least a very large pipe indeed) and it is a much more difficult proposition to claim that a few individuals are "hogging" enough of that bandwidth to impact all the other people linking through that CO. You guys have either drunk the cool-aid or just seem to like to feel smug that the entierty or your internet experience consists of some email and a minor amount of web-surfing. I sometimes feel tempted to feel smug that I use a cellphone to place phone-calls when I really need to, not to text or take photos or play games, nor to conduct my private life in public, but I don't. These "caps" are just revenue generators, there are many technologies that generate traffic that will exceed them without much effort. My personal "cap" is in the vicinity of 1TB/month or so, there is alot of interesting stuff out there, and that was on a 3MB dsl line. I now have a 10 MB line, and my useage has not actually changed that much, I just don't download constantly, I actually have days when I don't download at all and some where I download for a whole day. I'm not a "hog" I just always used what I paid for. It would be like paying for movie channels and not watching them. "Caps" are like paying for Showtime or CineMax and then being told that after watching five movies a day or a week or whatever you would be charged per movie like PPV, I think that is a fairly accurate analogy. Long post, I know, but caps and these responses to them are quite irritating. People arguing about Network Neutrality irritate me also, they either apply no logic to their argument or fail to grasp the most basic principle involved. | |
| jtk
deleted
Premium
join:2008-08-05
Wheaton, IL
| killing online video Well this kinda sucks for me. I got rid of cable with the idea that I would be able to watch everything either online through Hulu or through the Roku Netflix box. With the Roku about to go HD, I'm going to be hitting the proposed cap pretty easily.
But if I go back to Comcast, I might as well use their cable.
So I think this will effectively kill online video that's high quality enough to watch on a TV. Assuming it goes past the test markets, that is. | |
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renoatt30
@pacbell.net
| 10yr DSL subscriber in Reno will cancel if caps implemented! I've recieved no notification about it other than here, but I'm in Reno and have been a Nevada Bell\AT&T DSL subscriber for about 10 years, and on the Elite plan since it came out a few years back. I will be cancelling my account the moment this cap begins. In addition to cancelling my $35/mo DSL account, I will be also cancelling my landline phone service and associated services (call waiting, etc) and go 100% cell, which means AT&T will be losing approximately $1100.00 from me a year. It's been a good run, time to check out Charter Cable, as 80 gigs, hell, even 150 gigs is absurd. I'll go back to dial up at that rate. | |
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DOStradamus
MVM
join:2003-11-04
Santa Rosa, CA
1 edit | Add Logic and Stir.... 1. "Unmetered" isn't exactly "Unlimited". My cell service is unmetered (MetroPCS), and, their TOS is written that way:
MetroPCS reserves the right to manage our phone systems and the calls on our phone systems in the way we believe best benefits our customers and best enables us to maintain Service of the nature described in this Agreement. We have determined that our ability to provide Service to our customers is disrupted when customers place an abnormally high number of calls, or repeatedly place calls which result in abnormally long call lengths. Thus, we reserve the right to discontinue service to customers, or to discontinue or block service to certain telephone numbers or categories of services, which our experience indicates result in disruptive usage patterns of this nature.
2. Unmetered service costs less to administer. Obvious to most Mtered means: more line items on bills - more billing disputes - more accounting work.
3. Telco and Cableco "dinosaurs" excepted, the only purpose for switching to metered service, is when what is being sold becomes scarcer/higher in cost, and/or it is desired that customers use less. Lone example: Water systems installing meters bco drought or other causes of tightening supplies.
4. SBC is now selling PPV and other video content. ("desired that customers use less" from above) I'm sure they're thinking of that $1/GB overage fee as another "unfee" for using another supplier for video content. I just happen to be working on a project that involves streaming/downloading of video.. full-length/high resolution approaches 2GB/movie there, and $2 for SBC.
4b. "Pipes" are getting bigger, and data is getting cheaper, could SBC be wishing customers would use less? 
"ACCOUNTANTS AT WORK -- HART HATS REQUIRED on your backside!"
(edit) 5. HEY DANE!! Sonic really needs to expand to Reno/Carson City, NV anyway.. | |
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Nessuno
@sbcglobal.net
| I've work'd it out a bit. Using the 10mbit DSL as my starting point, it should take about 31 hours to reach the 150 GB cap (1GB in 12.5 minutes). That is 31 hours of constant downloading of course, but it is not entirely unreasonable to project that amount of usage over an entire month for almost anyone, not just a "heavy" user. I've been reseaching the cost of bandwith, and if we are charged $1.50 for it they are marking up 10x, at $1.00 just 6.66x at least by bulk prices of a year ago of .15/GB. So even if you accept the concept of caps, which is really just a pretext to pad consumer's bills and has no data to justify such a business model. We'd be grossly overcharged for the service. What I'm hoping, now that I've done a little poking around, is that either the caps fail, are raised or that business accounts are not capped (then I'd switch to one of those). Only time will tell I suppose. Maybe the new head of the FCC will do something useful for consumers for a change, eh? | |
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emcee
@theplanet.com | Unreasonable caps, and I will quit AT&T!!! I have max internet 10Mbps/1.5Mbps with AT&T here in Chicago. Just got it one month ago. If they implement anything less than a 300GB/mo cap for that tier, I will for sure quit! | |
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Meet the new Boss.... same as the old boss.