AT&T Wages Quiet War on Grandfathered Unlimited Users → att plans

We all know unlimited is dead,to think that you should be able to do what you want without limit is a joke. Every business out their would go bankrupt if they offered unlimited usage for a flat rate, just imagine if gas was a flat rate based upon how much a person used last month ,well you would have people getting gas for other people causing a shortage. I think ATT should lower there prices so that those that use much less than 2gb pay much less than the data hogs.......it seems like they have no need for most of us people that don't use over 2gb per month.

you can't use up bandwidth the way you use gas or water. it's there whether you use it or not. att towers are sitting unused at night but they don't offer unlimited during off peak hours. it's obvious congestion isn't a real issue for them, and they should be taken to court for their practices.

Terrible analogy. Oil is a finite resource and gas requires refining of said oil which can be limited by a set production rate. There is no data factory and as such data itself is not a limited resource.

Reasonable, limited, and local throttling like Verizon puts on their unlimited customers is the way it should be done. An across the board throttle is the easy and lazy way to do it; but since this is ATT it should come as no surprise.

Congratulations, you've just demonstrated that you don't know a damn thing about either networks or bandwidth. I can only assume that you are a United States Senator.

Wireless spectrum is a limited resource, which is why ATT wants to buy more spectrum and will by more spectrum....can someone please tell me why ATT is looking to the government to auction off more spectrum if they don't need it or won't ever need it.... By the way Verizon is making deals for more spectrum as well,because it's need and not some unlimited resource......if it was there wouldn't be dropped calls in highly populated areas like new York.

Because they have the biggest piggy bank to buy more spectrum, and if they have the spectrum, they can prevent a competitor or startup from obtaining it and drawing users away with a better product/service.

there are no new start ups coming own the pike. Spectrum is a limited resource for mobile. Anyone thinking otherwise is being obtuse.

yes yes yes ....most people around the world still use a feature phone which is why nokia is still the top phone maker.......just wait till 98 percent of people start to use a smartphone...

i just wish they would charge less for limited services than they do for unlimited services.

Data, whether wireless or wired, is unlimited by nature. I think the phone companies should offer unlimited night and weekend data use. It does not cost anything extra to serve 3 gigabytes of data at 3 in the morning if you're the only one on the tower using data. At 3 in the afternoon it would cost more because it reduces the capacity of that tower. The only way to increase capacity is to purchase more spectrum, use a different technology like 4G, or build more cells and reduce the size of each cell. It's expensive to build new cells, (have to actually build a new tower, run the fiber backhaul to it, put the equipment on the tower). But in cities like New York, there can be a new cell every few blocks because there's no shortage of tall buildings and fiber runs all over the city. One way to expand the network is to install wi-fi routers. If AT&T installs a wi-fi router in every block in Manhattan, they probably won't have to upgrade their 3G/4G network in Manhattan.

Yes, it's limited. But if AT&T is so short on spectrum, how come we aren't seeing widespread issues caused by it? They just had a record quarter with smartphone sales, yet no networks are grinding to a halt nor do I hear anyone with AT&T complaining about data speeds.

My take on it is that is it was really that bad, they would have gotten everything upgraded to HSPA and shut down the EDGE network. But that didn't happen and they skipped onto LTE. Wonder how many more years the EDGE network will be around.

Of course the same could be said about Sprint still operating the Nextel iDen network. Can't believe that dinosaur isn't gone just yet.