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Caps come to ATT Reno,NV

That's 150 GB. ... not 150 MB.

If you do 150 GB/mo, then you must be a bandwidth hog. U-Verse IPTV transmissions aren't part of the 150 GB limit either.

reply to sneekez
I stand corrected on the MB to GB...is uverse pay to view part of the limit? or is it only if users purchase from them and not say net flix, hulu, cinema now, movielink...its suit tactics period...been there done that

and no dL I'm not a bandwidth hog...but I dL movies...I'm an MVP for Microsoft and a beta tester...I'm constantly dLing hugh files for testing. That makes me a hog?! keep suits away from making policy in regards to what they think we should be good to go with. Yeah I'm fuming...

reply to sneekez
Do you have any idea how much you use in a month on average and your maximum usage? I've seen some people (cable users) start complaining about caps and they really didn't know how much they used.

It would be nice to know just what criteria was used to set that 150 GB limit. Is that usage of upper 10% of all users, or is it the upper 20%, or some other percentage, or did they just pick the number out of thin air.

150 GB is 66.7 hours of download on Elite (2.78 days) or about 9.3% of the time in a month.

If 150 GB is the upper 20% or upper 10% or an even smaller percentage, then exceeding the limit means one is in a small minority of users that are using excessive bandwidth. The $1/GB overage charge is intended to drive those users to the competition, not to compensate AT&T for the cost of the extra traffic usage. It is clear that AT&T no longer wants the business of bandwidth hogs.

If you can't live with the caps, then I guess you are going to have to switch to Charter. Be sure to let AT&T know the reason you are switching. It's funny that AT&T would chose a test market with Charter competition to trial these limits. Charter has to be their weakest competitor. A test here might not be representative in a market where they are up against Cox or Comcast.

reply to sneekez
This is terrible. I have to imagine that digital distribution providers are getting nervous with this kind of trend.

I wish we could get FiOS out here.

Do you expect to exceed those caps (we don't know for sure what they are for the intermediate speed plans)? Will you switch to Charter if you do?

This is a marketing test of the bandwidth limits. If you cancel service or reduce any AT&T service plans or levels, be certain to tell the CSR why you are doing so. Let them know that you are in the Reno test area and if they aren't aware of the bandwidth limit test, ask to speak with someone who is. If possible, it would be better that you could speak with retention and explain your reasons for quiting/reducing your business with them. If you have any bandwidth threshold that you could live with, be sure to inform them of that limit!

reply to d_l
150GB sounds alright, but what about people who only qualify for the basic tier? If I know I'm a heavy user and use say 100GB/month, but the best AT&T can deliver is the 768/128/20GB package - I'm gonna get screwed paying $80/month in overages, even though I probably would love to upgrade to the $35/month Elite tier.

That demonstrates just how wrong the $1/GB overage charge is. It should probably be about a tenth of that. Comcast seems to figure they can handle users sucking down 250GB per month for $45/month. AT&T would charge an extra $100 for that usage on their fastest tier.

-- Rob
--
AT&T U-Hearse
Your funeral. Delivered.

Frankly I doubt that very many Basic users would be power users downloading more than +20 GB. I guess they should sign up for cable if they have to have that much usage.

Someone can always buy a second line of dry Basic DSL for $20/mo and use a dual WAN router. That would give them 20 more GB of bandwidth and double their gross (aggregate) throughput.

reply to d_l

reply to d_l

reply to d_l
how do they figure out what is what?? Tv verses internet.

so if you have uverse you do not have the 150 gb cap???

Downloads or uploads of internet data do not affect your IPTV transmissions, e.g. U-Verse can send full IPTV and data speeds at the same time. The different type packets are separated (partitioned) at some layer.

But think for a moment, if the bandwidth limit applied to the IPTV transmissions, then that would mean AT&T would be selling TV service that would be limited by an hourly meter. No one would buy that. That is effectively what these bandwidth limits are -- a connection time limitation -- rather than a limit on the quantity of data transported as Comcast has imposed.

Whether or not the bandwidth limits apply to the broadband side of U-Verse isn't clear. The FCC filing only refers to broadband Internet service so presumably this is U-Verse as well. U-Verse is in the process of being rolled out to various areas in Reno so that may be why we were so lucky for this pilot test. A cap like this would be another reason for someone to NOT to sign up for U-Verse.

reply to sneekez
Another aspect of this cap is it based on only actual TCP data packets, or does it include the TCP/IP overhead? How about PPPoE overhead and ATM overhead as well?

Is it only a limit on download traffic or is it on download plus upload traffic?

reply to sneekez
this bw cap is ridiculous.

the 20gb cap is a ploy to make you pay more for the higher priced packages.

and the upper bw cap is a bandaid measure to alleviate their oversold dsl lines.

you think you don't share bandwidth with your neighbors like cable broadband does???
think again. when the dsl router is overloaded with school kids downloading crap, you'll see a major slowdown and high latency.

reply to sneekez
There's no technical reason for caps, and it's really not the customer's problem that the music, movie, communications, and television industries didn't have the foresight to realize how their businesses needed to evolve to keep afloat. We all know that these caps are simply another desperate attempt by "old media" to continue raking in billions of dollars for the junk they produce.

I have information for the AT&T and Comcast board room decision makers, you made the common mistake of many old school executives, you spent too much time in your crystal palace and don't understand what is happening beneath the clouds. Make plans now for the inevitable closure of your business model. Your caps aren't going to save your 10000% profit margins, old media is in its last days, there are simply too many people on the frontlines that are much smarter than you.

reply to koma3504

AT&T test market caps