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. djrob writes in to note that AT&T has defined their new limits in more detail, and have confirmed that the caps will also impact their U-Verse VDSL service. The new usage allowances, according to AT&T's FAQ for trial participants (see screenshot below if the link doesn't work for you):
quote:
AT&T Basic (DSL only) Up-to 768 Kbps 20 GB per month AT&T Express Up-to 1.5 Mbps 40 GB per month
AT&T Pro Up-to 3.0 Mbps 60 GB per month
AT&T Elite Up-to 6.0 Mbps 80 GB per month
AT&T Max (U-verse only) Up-to 10.0 Mbps 150 GB per month
It's not precisely clear if AT&T has already decided to move forward with the caps and is simply testing the billing and network systems, or if they're seriously looking at consumer reaction before moving forward. If, like
Time Warner Cable, the idea is to simply test and refine the marketing message to better sell consumers on caps, that shouldn't be too hard -- most consumers
don't even know what a gigabyte is.
Update: We're seeing a lot of inbound hits from
Cracked users, who should note this article is from a trial AT&T attempted in 2008. Details on AT&T's 2011 effort to implement metered billing can be found
here.
