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

Only founded on what I have been told by one guy and other random internet reports, that satellite is not as smooth as hardwired. Could be totally off.

The data can travel 20K miles from source to destination... you think there might be some packet loss (latency) in there?
 
Only founded on what I have been told by one guy and other random internet reports, that satellite is not as smooth as hardwired. Could be totally off.

Is satellite two way these days?

I remember when it first came out it was one way. You would have to be hooked up to the internet via 56k modem (or another source). Your downloads would be faster than modem speeds, but your uploads would be transmitted via the modem.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037190762 said:
I haven't had a landline phone since 2002, bit back when I did I recall it being almost $60 a month just for the basic phone service alone (without long distance).

This was the biggest reason I just dropped it.


Your state's phone services regulatory agency usually mandates there be one cheap stripped down phone service available, usually around 11$ - 16$ buck. Obviously, you have to specifically ask for this service, so you should know what it's called. If you need a landline and don't need all of the other junk, its a good way to go.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037198515 said:
Is satellite two way these days?

I remember when it first came out it was one way. You would have to be hooked up to the internet via 56k modem (or another source). Your downloads would be faster than modem speeds, but your uploads would be transmitted via the modem.

Yes it is two way these days.
 
Only founded on what I have been told by one guy and other random internet reports, that satellite is not as smooth as hardwired. Could be totally off.
I said Earthlink DSL, which uses the same lines and network hardware as AT&T. There should be no additional packet loss.

I have no idea where you got satellite from...
 
Switching to TWC Saturday. It's really sad I have to go this crap to make a statement. I've been perfectly happy with the service. It never drops; speeds are fast. Oh well -- TWC is a bit cheaper and has faster base speeds. Ping should be better with cable as well.

Vote with wallet!

I have TWC coming this Saturday as well, same reasons.
With Cable co's at least I can call them every few months and try to get a promo deal, UVerse was in no way flexible like that.

I miss Charter at my old place.
 
I don't think earthlink is available. ATT is the only provider, and even then I can only get 3mbps (So I would have a hard time hitting that cap) although I'd switch anyways because I don't believe in these policies, it is a backwards step. I think companies want to stomp out netflix etc because they will lose money on selling their own crappy products, and netflix is obviously what the people want. Easy solution - impose network caps, don't allow the consumer to have those things (or at least limit their usefulness) and offer them something else. I'm not a damn Sheep!

If I lived a few blocks closer (within city limits) I could get cable, or any other provider, but I'm a couple blocks outside the city limit so we get no love.
 
I don't think earthlink is available. ATT is the only provider, and even then I can only get 3mbps (So I would have a hard time hitting that cap) although I'd switch anyways because I don't believe in these policies, it is a backwards step. I think companies want to stomp out netflix etc because they will lose money on selling their own crappy products, and netflix is obviously what the people want. Easy solution - impose network caps, don't allow the consumer to have those things (or at least limit their usefulness) and offer them something else. I'm not a damn Sheep!

If I lived a few blocks closer (within city limits) I could get cable, or any other provider, but I'm a couple blocks outside the city limit so we get no love.

According to my calculations earlier in this thread, in order to hit 150Gb in a month all you need to do is average just under 500kbit/s down, or in other words average approximately 60KB/s down for the month.

That's not very difficult to do at all...
 
Switching to TWC Saturday. It's really sad I have to go this crap to make a statement. I've been perfectly happy with the service. It never drops; speeds are fast. Oh well -- TWC is a bit cheaper and has faster base speeds. Ping should be better with cable as well.

Vote with wallet!

It's really cheaper in your area? what are the prices? The fastest Roadrunner offers around her is their turbo powerboost (up to 15Mb) for 55. Isn't powerboost 12Mb when you don't get it? Anyways u-verse is 18Mb for 55 and 24Mb for 65 around here
 
It's really cheaper in your area? what are the prices? The fastest Roadrunner offers around her is their turbo powerboost (up to 15Mb) for 55. Isn't powerboost 12Mb when you don't get it? Anyways u-verse is 18Mb for 55 and 24Mb for 65 around here

Yeah - I'm in Austin. 2/20 + Powerboost for $55 a month. Paying that right now with U-Verse for 1.5/18.
 
So, are we supposed to get an email or something? I have not seen anything, and that website still does not work.
 
So, are we supposed to get an email or something? I have not seen anything, and that website still does not work.

They sent it to my att.net account rather than the one have on file for me.
The subject of the email: Updates to your AT&T Internet Terms of Service

This was a bulleted section from the email. The link has to be clicked to actually find out that they're placing a threshold on downloads. Most people won't even read the email much less bother clicking the link. It's all carefully crafted to not be read (not to mention buried under today's headlines). I hope it comes back and bites them square in the arse!

-Usage: We've added a link at www.att.com/internet-usage where customers can
go to get information about AT&T's data usage policy and managing their data
usage.
 
Switching to TWC Saturday. It's really sad I have to go this crap to make a statement. I've been perfectly happy with the service. It never drops; speeds are fast. Oh well -- TWC is a bit cheaper and has faster base speeds. Ping should be better with cable as well.

Vote with wallet!
You're lucky that you have a cable modem option!
 
At some recent point, the telecoms realized that all their lobbying and bribery (same thing?) had paid off and now is the time to crush us.

You hear constant outcry from the people being crushed, but then AT&T says "We only made $3,400,000,000 last quarter! You're robbing us by using your connection more than 5% of the month!"

Then they have blind supporters who believe them, too. "Well America has a low population density, so it costs too much to build and maintain it". Really? Latvia is pretty close to us in population density. Iceland, Finland, and Norway have have lower population densities. Yet they still manage faster speeds. And even if we didn't, are we not the richest country on earth? Did not Verizon and AT&T recently report combined profits of $6.7 billion dollars in a single quarter? How are we not keeping up with freaking Latvia?
 
Vote with wallet!

A lot of people don't have this option. AT&T DSL will be their only available option other than 56k modem...

The sad part is, that either way AT&T Wins.

If you stay, you go over the limit and pay them more money.

If you leave, they got another high usage individual off their network, which increases the ratio of grandmothers who use 1Mb a day to check mail to high usage subscribers.

I really want this to backfire on them SOO badly, but to me it really looks like AT&T Gets what they want no matter what.
 
I said Earthlink DSL, which uses the same lines and network hardware as AT&T. There should be no additional packet loss.

I have no idea where you got satellite from...

I must have been.looking or thinking of the wrong thing..my bad.
 
Then they have blind supporters who believe them, too. "Well America has a low population density, so it costs too much to build and maintain it". Really? Latvia is pretty close to us in population density. Iceland, Finland, and Norway have have lower population densities. Yet they still manage faster speeds. And even if we didn't, are we not the richest country on earth? Did not Verizon and AT&T recently report combined profits of $6.7 billion dollars in a single quarter? How are we not keeping up with freaking Latvia?

This. A standard BBB connection in sweden is 100mbit both directions. Sweden only has 2/3rds of our population density.

("population density doesn't matter, we're bigger" argument from fucktard who has no idea what they are talking about in 3... 2... )
 
Zarathustra[H];1037200117 said:
This. A standard BBB connection in sweden is 100mbit both directions. Sweden only has 2/3rds of our population density.

Oh, and those are unlimited in the real sense of the word...

(unlike the U.S. unlimited which really means "unlimited only on monday's when its not raining between the hours of 4am and 4:15am")
 
Broadband availability outside of major cities in the US is a complete joke. I'm out here in the country in Missouri and forced to pay $59.99 a month for 1.6 Mbps 3G broadband from Verizon Wireless. No DSL or Cable availability in my area and so my only other choice as an upgrade would be to go to a T1 connection which the download speed wouldn't be any faster and it would cost me around $400/month.
 
Yes, and they are responsible to tell you how much you've used.

What if your bank didn't make a monthly statement available to you?

No they are not. They are only obligated to give you a reliable service. Not baby sit your use of it. You are responsible for you own bandwidth usage. What happens if the bank tells you you actually have $10k balance when you truly only have $1k and you go spend $5k? You pay fees. You know what they tell you? That it is YOUR responsibility to keep YOUR balance. Trust me. I know what you are saying but real life doesn't work that way. At the end of the day if you use more than you alloted amount they will charge a.fee.or whatever and be well within their rights. I bet you can't find where the availability of your nanny page has anything to do with the service contract.
 
Capped DSL is a such a joke, nothing more than a money maker. Cable, I could maybe see caps because of how the system works... But DSL, not at all.

AT&T needs to upgrade their backhaul/backbones if they have overloaded COs.
 
With Cable co's at least I can call them every few months and try to get a promo deal, UVerse was in no way flexible like that.

Says who? I called up ATT last month just by asking for a better deal, zero change to my service but almost $50 decrease in my bill per month
 
Says who? I called up ATT last month just by asking for a better deal, zero change to my service but almost $50 decrease in my bill per month
That's the kind of crap AOL pulls with their dial-up service...

They drop the rate, but they don't drop YOUR rate unless you call up and ask them to do so. My grandmother was paying $60 a month for dial-up in 2009 because she simply never called to have it adjusted to the new $10 a month rate. We moved her over to DSL instead, which was still less than half of what she was paying.

You know it's time to jump ship when your ISP becomes comparable to AOL...
 
real life doesn't work that way. At the end of the day if you use more than you alloted amount they will charge a.fee.or whatever and be well within their rights.
In real life, banks can charge you a fee if you go over. And in real life, banks are legally obligated to give you an itemized list of what you used. Why should AT&T have the privilege of billing its customers without having to account for it?

I think they should be required, just like banks, to provide an accurate and itemized statement every month, down to the smallest amount they charge. For banks, it's a penny. What's the smallest measure AT&T charges for?
 
No they are not. They are only obligated to give you a reliable service. Not baby sit your use of it. You are responsible for you own bandwidth usage. What happens if the bank tells you you actually have $10k balance when you truly only have $1k and you go spend $5k? You pay fees. You know what they tell you? That it is YOUR responsibility to keep YOUR balance. Trust me. I know what you are saying but real life doesn't work that way. At the end of the day if you use more than you alloted amount they will charge a.fee.or whatever and be well within their rights. I bet you can't find where the availability of your nanny page has anything to do with the service contract.

Yes, it's your job to keep track of what you have in the bank, but that's just the thing - banks give people the tools they need to keep track of that stuff. Why shouldn't an internet company like ATT have to do the same thing? Do you expect your regular, every day, average joe to know how to calculate his internet usage, bit by bit? No.
 
That's the kind of crap AOL pulls with their dial-up service...

They drop the rate, but they don't drop YOUR rate unless you call up and ask them to do so. My grandmother was paying $60 a month for dial-up in 2009 because she simply never called to have it adjusted to the new $10 a month rate. We moved her over to DSL instead, which was still less than half of what she was paying.

You know it's time to jump ship when your ISP becomes comparable to AOL...

Except the rate I got was lower than their advertised rate
 
http://www.myusage.att.com/ still doesn't work for me. :mad:

How is AT&T allowed to impose this cap when their damn cap app doesn't even work? :rolleyes: :mad:

They arent imposing it yet, thats why it says


The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes.
 
In real life, banks can charge you a fee if you go over. And in real life, banks are legally obligated to give you an itemized list of what you used. Why should AT&T have the privilege of billing its customers without having to account for it?

I think they should be required, just like banks, to provide an accurate and itemized statement every month, down to the smallest amount they charge. For banks, it's a penny. What's the smallest measure AT&T charges for?

Plenty of ISP's do it. One flat fee per month for network access and you agree to the ToS by using it. A simple statement of acceptable use is all that's needed. There's no reason to itemize a service like this.

Yes, it's your job to keep track of what you have in the bank, but that's just the thing - banks give people the tools they need to keep track of that stuff. Why shouldn't an internet company like ATT have to do the same thing? Do you expect your regular, every day, average joe to know how to calculate his internet usage, bit by bit? No.

While that may be true you are still responsible for it. If the banks system has an error and you miscalculate its still on you. That's what I'm saying. You can fuss about their system giving you false info but its you responsibility to keep track of your usage. It's 2011 and everybody has broadband equipped computers in their pocket. For those that would even come close to the cap yes, I expect them to know, they aren't average joe. Average Joe will never come close to that cap.
 
That usage site is pretty awesome.

I had no idea I used ~90GB a month. And that's during the busiest time of my work year. I can def. see myself going over cap come summer ><

No, I don't use bittorent services at all. I mostly stream HD content, be it movies, online tournaments, or webisodes.
 
They sent it to my att.net account rather than the one have on file for me.
The subject of the email: Updates to your AT&T Internet Terms of Service

This was a bulleted section from the email. The link has to be clicked to actually find out that they're placing a threshold on downloads. Most people won't even read the email much less bother clicking the link. It's all carefully crafted to not be read (not to mention buried under today's headlines). I hope it comes back and bites them square in the arse!

Where is the threshold on the downloads in the new TOS? I read through it and can't find a thing.
 
I called in yesterday to cancel my fios TV service and when asked why said I was doing it partially because I wasn't watching it that much anymore and partially out of protest of them implementing bandwidth caps.

They talked me into staying with 6 months of $25 off a month and 6 months of $10 off a month after that. I may still cancel in a few months (planning on going the htpc/netflix/hulu/whatever route instead once I actually get a htpc setup), but for now that sucked me in.

Thought y'all might be interested in saving a few bucks if you're thinking of bailing on TV like I am.
 
In our house there are:

Wired:
2 Desktops
1 Linux server
1 PS3
1Xbox 360

Wireless:
2 iPhones
1 Android
3 PC Laptops
1 Macbook pro

I'd be curious how much data we use combined on a monthly basis. Currently I have no idea.
 
My choices are AT&T DSL, Charter or UVerse. I hate Charter and they will never see another penny from me. I do not need TV and with the Uverse it requires a TV package.. so I am left with 6mb DSL. I only pay 19.99 a month for it though, so not that bad. I wonder how much heavy Netflix usage amounts to a month..

The average PC/console Netflix bandwidth per user is 1mbps (megabits) and the average mobile Netflix bandwidth is 125kbps (kilobits). This is just in the United States.

Canada's Netflix bandwidth is 66% lower than the US due to more restrictive bandwidth caps. In Canada you would be able to watch about 30 hours of Netflix streams on 9GB of data.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037202761 said:
In our house there are:

Wired:
2 Desktops
1 Linux server
1 PS3
1Xbox 360

Wireless:
2 iPhones
1 Android
3 PC Laptops
1 Macbook pro

I'd be curious how much data we use combined on a monthly basis. Currently I have no idea.

Does your router log your bandwidth?
 
Where is the threshold on the downloads in the new TOS? I read through it and can't find a thing.

They never give any kind of amount in a TOS. They'll usually in a clause about you being throttled if you deteriorate their services. They'll never put an actual amount, so they can change it easily, without changing their TOS.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037202761 said:
In our house there are:

Wired:
2 Desktops
1 Linux server
1 PS3
1Xbox 360

Wireless:
2 iPhones
1 Android
3 PC Laptops
1 Macbook pro

I'd be curious how much data we use combined on a monthly basis. Currently I have no idea.

If you search back for my posts in this thread you will find my house is also very actively connected. I thought originally that was exceeding the cap by huge margins. But found out it was only when I had a particular client running. "Normal" daily usage which looks a lot like yours was well under the 100Gb mark.

Get yourself a DDWRT enabled/compatible router. Not only will you have a more robust router you will have entire network bandwidth stats automatically collected. I posted mine since last quarter of 2010 in this thread. I'm not on ATT but if I were the cap would be no problem unless I decided to do some really heavy torrenting. But with two Android handsets a laptop my desktop, consoles, and plenty of HD Netflix streaming I was seeing 30-70 Gb per month total.
 
If you search back for my posts in this thread you will find my house is also very actively connected. I thought originally that was exceeding the cap by huge margins. But found out it was only when I had a particular client running. "Normal" daily usage which looks a lot like yours was well under the 100Gb mark.

Get yourself a DDWRT enabled/compatible router. Not only will you have a more robust router you will have entire network bandwidth stats automatically collected. I posted mine since last quarter of 2010 in this thread. I'm not on ATT but if I were the cap would be no problem unless I decided to do some really heavy torrenting. But with two Android handsets a laptop my desktop, consoles, and plenty of HD Netflix streaming I was seeing 30-70 Gb per month total.

Interesting.

Good info!

Unfortunately I am stuck with the supplied Verizon FiOS, router. Due to the way they implemented MOCA on it, I lose certain TV functionality if I switch to a non Verizon supplied router.

The two routers that come with FiOS are either an Actiontec MI424WR. This unit is supported by DDWRT, but the coax/MOCA interface does not work in this mode, so loss of TV function. (this particular router also has a very limited NAT table resulting in loss of service whenever anyone does a big STEAM server list refresh.)

The other router Verizon supplies (which I picked up used on eBay as I had the game refresh problem with the Actiontec) is a Westell EM9100. It seems like a pretty solid router, and has a large enough NAT table to not be a problem with Steam server refreshes, but unfortunately has no DDWRT support at all. I've had some Wifi problems with it lately, so I plan on just turning its wireless capability off and use a third party Wifi access point. The upgrade to 802.11N instead of the built in G won't hurt either.

I haven't seen the Westell router have built in bandwidth monitoring, but it might. I am going to poke around in the settings.

Apart from the limited router selection, and a recent glitch which I had to keep contacting support about (an edge router was bad giving me 200+ pings during high traffic times, and it took them a good 4 weeks to fix it) FiOS internet has been perfect and fast. Great improvement over comcast. I just wish I had more router flexibility.
 
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