AT&T To Cap DSL Internet Data Usage At 150GB

Why can't they be reasonable, you get like 80% to a computer so let's take the advertised price
6016 80% = 4812.8kbp/s turn that into Kbp/s = 601.6Kbp/s
let's go with the union's motto of 8 hours work 8 hours sleep 8 hours for yourself so 8 hours a day not to be unreasonable but this makes up for weekeneds extra time sense few people can do 8 hours every day and it fluctuates. So 601.6*60*60*8*30=519782400Kb or 495.703125 Gigabytes for that advertised speed.
 
This is absolutely garbage. They are doing this so you have to choose their streaming and downloads instead of netflix. This is one of the few times I wish that the government would step in to slap these companies around.
 
fuck ATT.
I use their dsl, and this does not make me happy.

first, they hike up monthly fees, and now they put stingy b/w caps.

how am I gonna get my porn now?

ATT is like ebay- always fucking people in the ass. Comcast gives a 250gb allowance.
ATT has to be cheap, and give only 150gb.

we need to petition against this shit.
 
they better have some per-gigabyte rate in addition to the $10 per 50gb bucket rate.

what happens when people use 152 gb ? They have to pay $10 for the additional 2gb ?

bandwidth is cheap. I can get a 100mbit dedicated server with 2TB of data per month for $120.
That comes out to 13x 150gb.
$120/13 = $9 per 150gb.

bandwidth is cheap.
ATT is gonna charge $10 per 50gb.
ripoff.
 
Semantics said:
Why can't they be reasonable, you get like 80% to a computer so let's take the advertised price
6016 80% = 4812.8kbp/s turn that into Kbp/s = 601.6Kbp/s
let's go with the union's motto of 8 hours work 8 hours sleep 8 hours for yourself so 8 hours a day not to be unreasonable but this makes up for weekeneds extra time sense few people can do 8 hours every day and it fluctuates. So 601.6*60*60*8*30=519782400Kb or 495.703125 Gigabytes for that advertised speed.
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uh..

are you sure you mean KBps and KB instead of Kbps and Kb? It makes a critical difference.
 
Bomber18 said:
This is absolutely garbage. They are doing this so you have to choose their streaming and downloads instead of netflix. This is one of the few times I wish that the government would step in to slap these companies around.
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Its got a lot to do with streaming services like Netflix but its a slap in the face to consumers instead of increasing competition with competitive pricing its "pay up or fuck off"

I'm a Uverse customer and I'm ditch Uverse internet and switching to Comcast Business internet with no bandwidth limits but I'll have to pay an extra 80 dollars a month so thanks a lot At&t.

I feel for people who have Time Warner ... don't think for a second they won't impose bandwidth limits within the next few months as they have been dieing to do it but the worst part is that they will raise general service prices to offer higher "limits" and they won't give you any overage they will likely give you one warning and cut you right off. I hate Time Warner with the fury of a thousand suns , they love to rape customers for every penny they can get.
 
Further proof that this is just another way for them to generate revenue : http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/25-Of-Your-Bill-Actually-Goes-To-Bandwidth-113131

2 cents to 5 cents per gigabyte. The actual bandwidth cost to a large carrier like Time Warner or AT&T, depending on how you do the accounting. $1/month/customer. The industry standard figure for the cost of bandwidth. Fortunately, Moore's Law has been bringing down the cost per bit of bandwidth at 25-40% per year, allowing the industry to thrive as video drives usage. When fiber is in place, the main cost for additional bandwidth is upgrading routers, switches, wave division multiplexers and the like. They've become much cheaper at a predictable rate. Result: the cost per customer of bandwidth has been about $1/month since 2004 or so. Since broadband prices are $20-$50, that's 2-5% of the price charged.
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I used to work for ATT management. Let me tell you something. That company is pure evil period end of sentence. They don't give a damn about anything but $$$. Customers are sheep and employees are cattle. Working there was the worst two years of my life. Don't buy SH1T from that company.
 
I have roadrunner and we are getting 30 megs from them I pay 50 bucks a month but its worth it I never have a high ping in game.
 
I wonder if Netflix and other companies similar to it (eg. OnLive) will get involved and try to stop this ISP bandwidth capping, because its going to hurt them in the end in addition to the ISP's customers.

So much for digital distribution being the future with the attitude our ISPs are taking. Things between both sides is going to get very ugly. :rolleyes:
 
Cerulean said:
I am speaking for myself and myself only here, but I use NetLimiter to keep track of my bandwidth usage. I can view bandwidth usage to the very hour of any day, any week, any month, any year (so long as it is in NL's records). I compared it to my ISP's usage meter and I have to say that it's somewhat accurate.

I have Suddenlink btw.
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I can do that with Tomato on my router :D
 
Cerulean said:
uh..

are you sure you mean KBps and KB instead of Kbps and Kb? It makes a critical difference.
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Yeah but you can't edit here haha:( Why couldn't At&t be cool and confuse people advertise their Internet as unlimited calling out comcast for using caps and throttling and people may think it's for their phones too if they are lucky
 
Ha.. Bye bye cloud computing for sure now ;-) I wasn't really sure I liked the idea of not having the software locally anyways.. Bandwidth cost and the overages could rank up in the future..

Where's the innovation?!? Sides from more profit
 
I had the local AT&T rep within a fists throw today, had I of known this before I got home I woulda threw a haymaker at his cap ;)
 
Huan said:
Ha.. Bye bye cloud computing for sure now ;-) I wasn't really sure I liked the idea of not having the software locally anyways.. Bandwidth cost and the overages could rank up in the future..

Where's the innovation?!? Sides from more profit
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Which makes one wonder if this will last, the software giants really want to go cloud.
 
What's going on with all the ISP and this cap shit?

I mean, it's 2011 guys? They should be offering unlimited BW, not this crap..
 
nobody_here said:
Which makes one wonder if this will last, the software giants really want to go cloud.
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It is pretty funny. On the one hand you have streaming HD and cloud computing becoming more popular, and on the other you have ISP's limiting bandwidth usage per month.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I used to work for ATT management. Let me tell you something. That company is pure evil period end of sentence. They don't give a damn about anything but $$$. Customers are sheep and employees are cattle. Working there was the worst two years of my life. Don't buy SH1T from that company.
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I work there now, I know what you mean. I tell people to go to Verizon. :p
 
This is a disaster. I have charter and i went over 250GB for a few months and they gave me a call saying to back down the downloading or else i would get cut off for 6 months. There is more than one person online at any time and 250GB cap is crap on 25/3 meg connection. 60/5 meg connection isn't worth it with a cap. Only other way is a business connection which is unlimited but it costs a fortune. Bandwidth is getting cheaper everyday by a lot and they are artificially inflating the costs for their own financial gain. I hate this crap. Bunch of corruption and greed is holding back technology. Already around 140GB myself already this month. I watch streams from justin for cnn and do a lot of youtube viewing and other video content. Thats just one computer in the house not including the few others that are online also. I hope this crap bites them in the back.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I used to work for ATT management. Let me tell you something. That company is pure evil period end of sentence. They don't give a damn about anything but $$$. Customers are sheep and employees are cattle. Working there was the worst two years of my life. Don't buy SH1T from that company.
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As much as I read about how crappy at&t is. What allows them to grow every year. Are they like a black hole, like they have gotten so big nothing can stop them. Or is the fact they survive because they have enough of monopolies in areas that feed their bottom line.
 
Uncle said:
As much as I read about how crappy at&t is. What allows them to grow every year. Are they like a black hole, like they have gotten so big nothing can stop them. Or is the fact they survive because they have enough of monopolies in areas that feed their bottom line.
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There growth has been continual for ages. They've been split apart in the past by the DOJ for basically becoming a "Monopoly" so its no real surprise that At&t is again acting in its greater greedy interests.

I know more than a few guys that work either directly with At&t or as a contractor and without a doubt all I hear is the fucked up shit they do on a daily basis. They took over SBC here in Atlanta and haven't done any real infrastructure upgrades since then even though the demand continues to grow faster than can be predicted.

The worst part is that cloud computing isn't going to be a choice , all of the major players are moving into it like it or not and we will get dragged along for the ride. Our cost of usage goes up and up and there profit margin goes up along with it. Its a fucked up cycle that doesn't seem to be slowing down but instead increasing.

There are so many motivations for this kind of behavior it would take forever to possibly dive into it and truly find the direct cause. But I can say that streaming sites like Netflix scare the shit out of At&t because they have no control over it .. except for bandwidth caps. At&t pays lowest amount possible to provide there content and that keeps profit margins high .. a smaller far less extensive company like Netflix comes in and threatens there business model you can bet that At&t will go to the ends of the Earth to see it either die out or be bought out.

None of these ISPs can get away with this behavior for ever the internet growth is so incredible that bandwidth caps won't have any longer place in it .. at some point in the future its going to hurt profit margins to have bandwidth caps in place instead of it currently being a cheap way to generate revenue and scare customers into paying it.
 
SirMaster said:
I go over 1TB a month and no, most of it's not from video. Though I do consume a lot of video. I don't use the crappy "HD" streams that are out there.

A 1080p movie that I stream is usually around 20-25GB for one movie. I'm looking for BluRay quality and nothing less.

I also rip my BluRays to hard disk and sync it with my crashplan account for online backups.

I also download and upload lots of data for work from my home.

There are plenty of other ways to chew through lots of data.
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I'd love to hear of the website is streaming 1080p 20GB movies. MU?

Yea, it's "easy" to chew through 1TB of data a month if you're downloading and unloading uncompressed rips of the largest video files available.
 
Also, U-verse is by far the best ISP I've had for the price ($68/month), ever.
 
That's fine.

However, I demand an itemized bill. If you're charging me per byte, I want every byte you are charging me for accounted for.... and I want it in paper. I wonder how much it costs to compile and mail a 2500 page document monthly.

If you can't show me each and every thing I downloaded, it didn't happen. I'm not going to take AT&T's word for it that I used it, I want documented proof. If you can't prove it, I'm not paying it.
 
I'll admit that these caps are crap, but, if At&t told me that Uverse 12/18/24 was available in my area (near Downtown Mobile, AL), I'd sign up in a heartbeat. It'll be worlds better than what's available from Comcast: 6/1 for $47.95/mo or 12/2 which is more like 8/1 (yes I said 8/1) for $57.95/mo.

For what I understand At&t's cap works like this: They allow you to go over the cap 3 times, on the 4th time, you get an overage fee (I bet there is a $50 100 or 150GB overage fee). Every time thereafter when you go over, you get hit with the fee again. In some situations, it's better than being cut off for 6 months. Pick your poison.
 
So you're saying a lot of people are about to not have AT&T internet anymore? Cool.
 
1st:
They claim that 2% of the users are the problem.
2nd:
They claim that 2% of their users utilizing the purchased data package are overburdening their network.

What if a bank could only underwrite 2% of the credit they extended?
Their CEOs would fucking GO TO PRISON. Or they'd at least go out of business.
 
canna said:
That's fine.

However, I demand an itemized bill. If you're charging me per byte, I want every byte you are charging me for accounted for.... and I want it in paper. I wonder how much it costs to compile and mail a 2500 page document monthly.

If you can't show me each and every thing I downloaded, it didn't happen. I'm not going to take AT&T's word for it that I used it, I want documented proof. If you can't prove it, I'm not paying it.
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Rest assured, they will be counting every single byte that you download. I mean, weather they put it all in print on your bill or not, they will be hanging onto it.
 
stop!theradio said:
Rest assured, they will be counting every single byte that you download. I mean, weather they put it all in print on your bill or not, they will be hanging onto it.
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That's fine, however I want it in print so I can review it and make sure it's accurate, because you and I both know, companies never screw up a bill right?

Think about getting a long distance bill for your phone... it says you owe $73.42... but there is literally no listing of usage, just, "pay us $73.42 in LD charges." So you call then phone company and they tell you that you can't have the records, you just need to trust them.

Fuck that. There is a reason they legally need to provide you with usage details - because they are billing you for said usage.

Once you're billing me for usage, the level of documentation required goes up dramatically. If you are going to charge me for something, you need to prove it was consumed/used. If you can't prove it, I won't pay it, it really is just that simple.
 
dgingeri said:
Are you kidding???? Do you even know about the costs involved with these connections?
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Yes I do actually. It's not near as straight forward as you're portraying, but let's just say the economy scales better than you apparently realize. Large Internet providers peer at Internet exchanges with other providers, they don't pay straight bw costs. They negotiate cheaper interconnects with regional and international providers. They aren't hurting for money because I watched Netflix every night for two weeks and ate through my bw up to the shitty cap. They actually dream up ways to rape us harder and get apologists to stick up for them.



dgingeri said:
YOU DON'T NEED 77GB OF MUSIC AND 32TB OF MOVIES! YOU COULD NEVER WATCH THAT MANY MOVIES OR LISTEN TO THAT MUCH MUSIC IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE!!!!! (IF YOU ARE, THEN STOP BEING SUCH A LAZY BUTT AND ACTUALLY WORK FOR A LIVING!!) STOP MAKING MY GAME HAVE SUCH HORRIBLE LATENCY WITH YOUR MUSIC AND MOVIE DOWNLOADING!!!!!!
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80gb of music isn't that many albums @ 256k stereo mp3, certainly not a lifetimes worth. 32tb is less than 1300 blu-ray movies.
 
Good thing satellite is going to become more mainstream, along with everyone migrating to wireless only (using cell towers and such).... AT&T is crapping in their own bowl of cheerios on this one.

There are cell companies that have unlimited $49 a month cell service (unlimited everything) and it uses 4G cell signals from the big 3 GSM carrier towers. You can buy a SIM, activate it on their site, and put in the SIM in any phone, then program your phone (1 setting list, simple on android) and you're good to go in 5 minutes with a new phone number. No name or anything required! No contracts either.

Why am I or anyone else going to sign a limited-connection CONTRACT with AT&T? That is the only reason to have broadband over wireless 3G/4G these days.... honestly, I use my wireless mostly now unless I want to download a big file. For everything else on the internet, newer 3G+ wireless is overtaking these landline based broadband businesses.... I know I'm not the only one, especially when it comes to the home phone line... haven't had one in almost a decade now, but have always had a cell.
 
Dylan80 said:
Good thing satellite is going to become more mainstream, along with everyone migrating to wireless only (using cell towers and such).... AT&T is crapping in their own bowl of cheerios on this one.

There are cell companies that have unlimited $49 a month cell service (unlimited everything) and it uses 4G cell signals from the big 3 GSM carrier towers. You can buy a SIM, activate it on their site, and put in the SIM in any phone, then program your phone (1 setting list, simple on android) and you're good to go in 5 minutes with a new phone number. No name or anything required! No contracts either.

Why am I or anyone else going to sign a limited-connection CONTRACT with AT&T? That is the only reason to have broadband over wireless 3G/4G these days.... honestly, I use my wireless mostly now unless I want to download a big file. For everything else on the internet, newer 3G+ wireless is overtaking these landline based broadband businesses.... I know I'm not the only one, especially when it comes to the home phone line... haven't had one in almost a decade now, but have always had a cell.
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If im not mistaken, those "unlimited" cell plans are really capped at around 10gb. No way they would let people go over 150/month.
 
OldSchool said:
UVerse = DSL

DSL is actually not that bad of a technology, it has just been so poorly implemented by ISPs in the US that it has gotten a bad name. UVerse is delivered over ADSL2+/VDSL, yet they have resorted to calling it "UVerse" because nobody would buy it if they called it DSL.
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Very much this! When I did some basic research on differences between DSL, 56k, cable and fios (which wasn't available yet in my area) I considered DSL acceptable because in theory it should work very nicely if you aren't streaming 720p. Since I wasn't interested in getting in bed with cable again I tried out verizons dsl and it was my worst online experience ever.

The network would disconnect so frequently during low traffic hours it was barely any better than using dial up. DUring high traffic hours dial up internet usage was dramatically more time efficient. Eventually Verizon was able to get fios in my neighborhood and I was extremely happy with that but to this day I tell people never touch DSL unless they live in a rural area possibly suburban area.
 
150GB actually seems fairly ...reasonable. You could game on that 24/7 + vent chat/skype + download ...30 movies or 5-6 games so and you'd be approaching 150GB but not really going over. I know some people are big game-purchasers on steam-etc but most working-people I know don't have enough time to play thru more than 6 games a month.

Considering the cost of this connection... $19.99/month. If you did choose to legally download 30 movies or 5-6 games or some combination, play games 24/7 and Skype a lot to replace your phone connection, $19.95 doesn't seem that horridly expensive at all. If I paid double that amount... $40.00 for two internet connection, I'd have 300GB which if Iused the 150 extra GB just for movies/games I'd have 70 movies -- 15 games.

Really, if your downloading MORE than that, I'd be suspicious about what your doing on the Internet and how legal it is. The only legitimate uses I can think of off the top of my head would be .... off-site backups of home movie/picture collections, website server /w large traffic and/or website with a lot of a/v. Two of those uses, I'd lean towards your using the internet connection for business purposes and yeah web-hosting bandwidth can be expensive and you might need an internet connection as part of your business costs thats > $19.99 or $40.00. Keep in mind, that expensive would likely be tax deductible so ...
 
WBurchnall said:
150GB actually seems fairly ...reasonable. You could game on that 24/7 + vent chat/skype + download ...30 movies or 5-6 games so and you'd be approaching 150GB but not really going over. I know some people are big game-purchasers on steam-etc but most working-people I know don't have enough time to play thru more than 6 games a month.

Considering the cost of this connection... $19.99/month. If you did choose to legally download 30 movies or 5-6 games or some combination, play games 24/7 and Skype a lot to replace your phone connection, $19.95 doesn't seem that horridly expensive at all. If I paid double that amount... $40.00 for two internet connection, I'd have 300GB which if Iused the 150 extra GB just for movies/games I'd have 70 movies -- 15 games.

Really, if your downloading MORE than that, I'd be suspicious about what your doing on the Internet and how legal it is. The only legitimate uses I can think of off the top of my head would be .... off-site backups of home movie/picture collections, website server /w large traffic and/or website with a lot of a/v. Two of those uses, I'd lean towards your using the internet connection for business purposes and yeah web-hosting bandwidth can be expensive and you might need an internet connection as part of your business costs thats > $19.99 or $40.00. Keep in mind, that expensive would likely be tax deductible so ...
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We're not all soccer moms about our internet usage. And there will be more and more heavy internet usage as the years go by.

It would be nice if we could catch up to countries like Bulgaria, Estonia, and Ukraine in internet speed, don't you think?
 
While I am not happy about it as an AT&T DSL customer, 150gb for $20 a month isn't too outrageous. Yes, it is starting a bad precedent that will only get worse in the future unless a new company (unlikely due to monopolies/oligarchies), but I do not have cable and use hulu and netflix daily and won't come close to this. There's no reason people can't use more than 150gb/month, but you shouldn't feel like you're getting screwed if you have to pay more. Just to go from 6/1 DSL to cable here (12/??) is jumping from $20 to $50+, and that seems to be more of price gouging than usage caps. No, I don't torrent (assume there are few good legal reasons to do so, perhaps I am off on this), but I do download ISOs occasionally and find myself reformatting at least one computer every month or two.

I think people should try to focus more on the fact that there is a usage cap in general, not that 150gb is too low, because it isn't. Not for the price at least.
 
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