AT&T Says They're Working On Meter Accuracy > at&t's usage meter has flaws!

at&t's usage meter has flaws!

People really do want to download their email faster. People want webpages to load faster, e-commerce sites to load faster, and photo sharing sites to load faster. And yet they will only use all those sites 3 hours per day. They do other things not involving the internet. Walking, football, tennis, fishing, laundry, cook, clean, change the oil, fix the fence, paint the room, play catch with a child, and stare at the stars. They want higher data transfer rates so they can do things other than waiting on downloads/uploads.

reply to Rekrul
I know in the past, SBC in fact, DID limit the speed at which customers could hit the Usenet servers!

I'm not sure I recall exactly when this took place anymore, but every news server I built, got beat up pretty good by the early DSL users. It made it tough for other traffic on the network that management told me to limit Usenet traffic to ISDN speeds (128kbit/sec). I did what I was asked, and users hit the ceiling then! They were beyond outraged that PacBell sold them ADSL with up to 6mb download speeds, yet on PacBell's own network, Usenet was limited to 128kbit/s. There were even lawsuits because of it!

There is precedent for doing this in at&t, sadly ... and there just weren't that many customers who left because Usenet speeds got throttled.

I do admit, it was rather fun watching the DS3s and OC-3s connecting POPs in those days, go from pretty available to full, just because a new Usenet server went in

I had some of the first servers on the SBC network with Gigabit connectivity, and within a few months, needed more! It's too bad my naming convention didn't get approved.
HSP01.snfc21.pbi.net (HSP = High Speed Porn). Instead, they got nnrp and nntp names

Here's the funny thing: Usenet services were terminated in 2009 ... yet ALL the server names are still in DNS?

reply to Rekrul
I would think that there would be less congestion on a faster system. If I could download a movie in two minutes rather in two hours, the tubes would be open for someone else to use.

reply to davidhoffman

reply to t3ln3t

reply to Rekrul
I forgot to mention getting software and software updates faster.

The ISPs are imposing caps because of rampant sharing of copyrighted video that cuts into the profit they share with content producers and copyright holders. AT&T would not be imposing caps if UVerse VOD and UVerse television did not exist. AT&T did not care how many YouTube videos of your house construction project, boat building adventure, and children's dance recitals you uploaded before Uverse. I do not think they cared much about the volume of jpeg, tif, doc, and other static files you sent back to the office server from your house while you were home sick, but completing some work project. The AT&T DSL system was probably 80% to 90% complete at the time Uverse first appeared. If everyone was paying for copyrighted video the way the copyright holders, cable companies, and Uverse type operators wanted, you would have seen a more nuanced approach to network congestion issues. As has been noted elsewhere, there are no limits to how many VOD payments you can make on Uverse or how many hours the regular Uverse TV channels stay on in your house. Regular TV and VOD takes up capacity also, but there are no caps, because you are paying for the copyrighted content. The ISPs are like the people in ancient times who scratched out an existence in a dry mountain region. When loads of valuable goods began to pass by them in the river valley below the cliffs, they demanded payment or they took your goods by force. They never cared before when goods they could not use or sell passed, it was just a curious passing of no importance.

reply to pnolte

reply to davidhoffman

Well it is similar to renting a automobile. The rental car company can install devices that limit top speed, track your location, and monitor other aspects of use. They can decide that you are not allowed to tow anything, even if you are renting a Ford F250. The network is AT&T's and they get to set limits even though we do not like them or know the network is capable of more. For example Verizon FiOS should be easily capable of symmetric data transfer rates, yet most of the plans are asymmetric. Other companies, like EPB Fiber, give only symmetric plans for similar fiber infrastructure. It is all very legal.

The whole reason we are getting caps is to stop Netflix and other HD video sources from competing with the cost of UVERSE TV.

If it was limited network bandwidth where AT&T said "we spend too much of our subscribers money on lobbyists to afford the big network feeds to support the use of advertised speed" then logic would be to cut speeds down (like 3mbits max) to match a estimated % of old backhaul to their % of overselling where customers won't notice as much congestion.

However you sell lots of 12 and 22 feeds and cap them at 250 gb then "customers can all still use high speed at same time" very easily creating the same problems. Using this model you have only removed only %2 (as AT&T says) of your subscribers from tying up their % of bandwidth at semi-frequent times. It's not going to improve limited backhaul bandwidth much at all.

However if you want to use your monopoly on your internet service to create new monopolies for your video service by stopping internet delivery of any competing services then you "cut off" your competitors from any volume bandwidth, buy out or sign-contract content companies from selling to smaller and cheaper alternatives, and then tell congress your too dirt poor or afford backhaul demand on what money you charge your customers and at the same time give lots of money to congress to vote on your bills that hurt your competitors).

IF you wanted a monopoly in the video services then the goal of capping makes perfect sense. It's congress's job to tell you otherwise (AT&T is just too $$ poor).

Monopolies OWN their customers. Customers CAN'T vote or chose with their services. So without regulation or oversight monopolies do ANYTHING to increase profits.