US Telco Support > AT&T > AT&T Midwest > Bandwidth caps are a com'in

reply to lkrupp

Re: Bandwidth caps are a com'in

But I'm not talking about the 360 or Netflicks. I'm talking about the "Average" user.
--
"The American Indians found out what happens when you don't control immigration."

Whats average any more? Grandma browsing the web, Johnny on the torrent sites, watching TV via your 360, downloading 300 Linux ISOs a month???

reply to wings10
Average user just surfing and checking email would be 10 to 15 gb. Once you start doing things like voip, music/video streaming, it can get up there.

I used 111gb in October doing nothing illegal. Zero bittorrent and zero illegal downloads. Just my work vpn, web surfing, windows and OS X updates, DirecTV on-demand downloads for my son, voip (Sprint Airave), Netflix movies/tv shows for my wife and I, and my wife watching tv shows off of Hulu and the major network websites.

80gb is way too low for the 6mbit plan. Especially with the $1 per gb overage. I guess its off to Comcast if the caps really happen. 250gb is much better than 80gb. God I hate Comcast.

So it seems 150GB a month would be a safe plan to have?

I wonder if services like Valve's Steam and Netflicks and others will complain about limits for customers? I mean it will effect the way they do business.

reply to wings10

Ok, 150 is a good amount... But one month you go over and it's one dollar per/GB... That could be a lot of cash... This is not good... Why have High speeds if you're capped... You just get closer to the cap sooner... I will be looking for another ISP if this takes affect but it looks like they (the ISP's) are doing the same thing... ...

Oh I think it will take effect sometime next year. ATT has gone to a great effort to install a bandwidth tracking tool. Edit: The BUMT is a fully finished tool and not some experimental, temporary hack job for a localized bandwidth experiment in Reno.

Access to the tool seems to be a phased-in by speed plans with the fastest plans being installed first. The actual bandwidth tracking is only turned on in Reno. Probably as a beta test of the stability of the tracking system.

I think the only questions are when it will be turned on everywhere and will these caps be raised? As to the former question, I'm betting that it will be turned on early in the next year. Maybe the roll out will be staggered by regions or by speed plan.

Edit: If I'm right, then any user that believes they might be bumping up against the quotas or exceeding them should start self-monitoring of their bandwidth right now so that when the official roll out comes, they will be prepared to make a rational decision concerning whether to stay with ATT or leave. If it turns out that you aren't anywhere near the monthly quotas, then you would have nothing to worry about and this new policy wouldn't affect you.

reply to kcazzie
Looks like AT&T is going to loose another land line, because if they implement an 80GB cap for the Elite Plan that I'm currently on I will be dropping both the DSL and the phone line that goes with it. I work out of my home and can easily use 2GB a day. Throw in a few NetFlix movies and I'm right up there by the cap.

Testing this in an isolated market like Reno makes good sense. That way they can easily contain the fallout while they watch forums like this spit and snort, gaining an idea of where to set the limits should they actually do it.

Here, 80 GB ain't going to cut it either. Assuming that they implement such a thing systemwide, they'll lose almost $400 a month in landlines, cell phones and DSL connections from this account alone. Not like they'd care...

Same here between U-Verse triple play and cellphone/data packages. I will go back to comcast and switch to Verizon for cell. Comcasts 250GB cap isn't set in stone and haven't really said how well it will be enforced. I am not even sure if they set a dollar amount for overages like AT&T has set for this beta testing.

I was able to log into that bumt site but nothing shows up and historically date dates to 12/2007. Which I didn't come back to AT&T till 2/2008. So it looks like it's been in the works for this long.

U-verse 10meg.

Thanks for the reply!

reply to Nightfall