AT&T Putting on Caps on DSL and Uverse

[xanis]

Oh lord, not this thread again.

My two cents: As long as it's made clear that there's a cap, I don't see anything wrong with it. Sure, Comcast/AT&T/whoever might just be doing a cash grab, but they're a business and they're #1 goal is to make money. Do I dislike it? Absolutely. Do I blame them? Not really.

As far as I'm concerned, 250GB is more than enough. As it is now, streaming technologies (which some are using a defense for having no caps) will not, as some have pointed out, use anywhere near 250GB a month.

When streaming content requires more bandwidth and the caps stay the same, then it's time to raise a stink. For now, while the caps have no impact on the majority of consumers (and probably event you), just relax.

 

[SunnyD]

As far as I'm concerned, 250GB is more than enough.

No one gives a shit what you're concerned about, unless you're planning on paying my overages and whatnot.

 

[Merad]

This has got to void my contract with AT@T right? I signed up for unlimited Internet through uverse. They can't just switch the terms without my approval. Or is this for new customers only? I probably use less than 20gb a month but it's the principal.

Thread is tl;dr, so I dunno if this has been responded to yet, but.

The way it worked for AT&T cell phones at least, when I worked there: if they change the TOS you get notified of the change on your next bill, and you have a month to cancel the service with no ETF if you disagree with the changes. If you keep using it after that, you imply your agreement with the changes.

Since DSL doesn't have contracts AFAIK, I don't know what affect if any it would have.

 

[adairusmc]

No one gives a shit what you're concerned about, unless you're planning on paying my overages and whatnot.

Why cant you pay your own overages? You are the one using the bandwidth after all, you should pay for it. Get over it.

 

[Phokus]

Just a reminder that spidey is full of shit when he cries about how the cable companies are hurting and they need those caps... here's a flashback when spidey cheered on TW's attempt at 40 gig caps... more customers, higher revenue, falling costs:

 

[herkulease]

While I personally won't come close to the 250GB limit, ATT doesn't have a bandwidth issue.

If you have uverse tv setup with them data used for TV will not count towards for limit. Its an attempt by them to get you to buy their TV service and nothing more. More and more people are spending time watching episodes online through hulu or through the network's website and ATT isn't getting a penny of that.

A family averages about 5 hours watching TV per day. Assuming att streams HD feeds at 5Mbits, in one 1 day you've already used 112.5GB. Over 30 days that would be over 3 TB.

even if a family only spent 5 hours per week on TV alone they'd already exceeded the 250GB limit 2 weeks a day into a month.

Do you think they'd care if everyone of their uverse users also had tv service and consumed a crap load of data?

 

[ch33zw1z]

When streaming content requires more bandwidth and the caps stay the same, then it's time to raise a stink. For now, while the caps have no impact on the majority of consumers (and probably event you), just relax.

If the caps have no impact on the majority of customers, then why install the cap anyways? If you purchase cable TV, do they not allow you to use it over X number of hours? No, you get the service. If there's no impact on the majority of customers, I don't see what the big deal is letting the heavy users continue to use what they pay for.

If the ISP's are having problems keeping up with demand during peak hours (in fact they are in my rural area it seems) then it's not actually the heavy users causing the issue. But the ISP's are using that as an excuse to gouge consumers. This is just the beginning, while you sit there all lax and content, up on your soap box: "Caps are ok with me", they're sitting there plotting the NEXT money grab...which will be in the form of Tiered services WITH more outrageous caps. The big ISP's are like children: greedy, don't want to share, screaming "mine" all the time, and if you give them an inch then you've already given then the mile.

 

[Thump553]

Is there a way to easily tell how close you are to the cap? For my cellphone plan I can check very easily onliine or over the phone how many minutes, etc. we've used this month. For my car or home oil tank I look at the guage.

But I think it is grossly unfair to be exposed to "overage" charges without an easy system of monitoring your use, no matter what the cap is.

 

[ViviTheMage]

haha, join us

<-- on comcast

 

[cronos]

Is there a way to easily tell how close you are to the cap? For my cellphone plan I can check very easily onliine or over the phone how many minutes, etc. we've used this month. For my car or home oil tank I look at the guage.

But I think it is grossly unfair to be exposed to "overage" charges without an easy system of monitoring your use, no matter what the cap is.

You didn't bother to read the article, did you

Customers will be able to check their usage with an online tool, and get notifications when they reach 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of their monthly rates.

We just spoke with AT&T representative Seth Bloom and confirmed the whole thing -- rates are exactly as described above, and the company will actually begin notifying customers this week. He also told us that those customers who don't yet have access to the bandwidth usage tool won't get charged until they do, and that AT&T U-Verse TV service won't count towards the GB cap.

 

[her209]

If the ISP's are having problems keeping up with demand during peak hours (in fact they are in my rural area it seems) then it's not actually the heavy users causing the issue. But the ISP's are using that as an excuse to gouge consumers. This is just the beginning, while you sit there all lax and content, up on your soap box: "Caps are ok with me", they're sitting there plotting the NEXT money grab...which will be in the form of Tiered services WITH more outrageous caps. The big ISP's are like children: greedy, don't want to share, screaming "mine" all the time, and if you give them an inch then you've already given then the mile.

I posted this in the other thread, but I'll repost it here:

If you assume that a majority of customers will be on their Internet connections during peak hours, then the heavy downloaders have to compete with everyone else for bandwidth. Since heavy downloaders make up a small percentage of the customers, even if all of them stopped downloading during peak hours, the casual user will, at best, experience said small percentage increase in performance.

A rather crude example that illustrates my point: During peak hours, 100 customers share a 100Mbps connection, therefore, each customers gets (100 Mbps / 100 customers) 1Mbps if everyone is using their connection at the same time. Now if 5% of the 100 customers are heavy downloaders and they stopped using their Internet connection during peak hours, then each customer gets (100Mbps / 95 customers) 1.053 Mbps. That's an increase of 5.3% increase in speed.

Even if the 100 customers were sharing a 1Gbps line and the same 5% were to stop downloading, the other 95% would still experience the same 5.3% increase in speed.

 

[spidey07]

I posted this in the other thread, but I'll repost it here:

If you assume that a majority of customers will be on their Internet connections during peak hours, then the heavy downloaders have to compete with everyone else for bandwidth. Since heavy downloaders make up a small percentage of the customers, even if all of them stopped downloading during peak hours, the casual user will, at best, experience said small percentage increase in performance.

A rather crude example that illustrates my point: During peak hours, 100 customers share a 100Mbps connection, therefore, each customers gets (100 Mbps / 100 customers) 1Mbps if everyone is using their connection at the same time. Now if 5% of the 100 customers are heavy downloaders and they stopped using their Internet connection during peak hours, then each customer gets (100Mbps / 95 customers) 1.053 Mbps. That's an increase of 5.3% increase in speed.

Even if the 100 customers were sharing a 1Gbps line and the same 5% were to stop downloading, the other 95% would still experience the same 5.3% increase in speed.

That's not how it works. The top 5 or 10% consume 60+ percent of all the bandwidth. If they stopped you're get a tremendous performance increase not to mention much less packet loss because links aren't saturated.

 

[SunnyD]

Why cant you pay your own overages? You are the one using the bandwidth after all, you should pay for it. Get over it.

Because I'm not currently paying overages because there's no cap. Because people like you defend such practices, you pay the overages once my line gets capped.

haha, join us

<-- on comcast

You know, I wish I could. If I'm going to have a cap, might as well have at least a decently fast connection.

That's not how it works. The top 5 or 10&#37; consume 60+ percent of all the bandwidth. If they stopped you're get a tremendous performance increase not to mention much less packet loss because links aren't saturated.

You're so full of shit it hurts. On a DSL infrastructure, I'd get literally zero performance increase as my bandwidth is capped, my latency is already as low as my destination allows, and I get zero/<0.1% packet loss already. There is no such thing as node congestion on DSL.

 

[her209]

That's not how it works. The top 5 or 10&#37; consume 60+ percent of all the bandwidth. If they stopped you're get a tremendous performance increase not to mention much less packet loss because links aren't saturated.

Wow... that number keeps going up. First it was 2%, then 5% now 10%. LOL. And everyone is competing with everyone else for bandwidth during peak usage so the heavy downloader is just another user during that time.

THE PROBLEM ISN'T HEAVY DOWNLOADERS but rather the ISP not having the capacity to handle the load of customers using Internet at peak times. And the caps do nothing towards the goal of improving user experience if the majority of users are experiencing the Internet during peak hours.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I posted this in the other thread, but I'll repost it here:

If you assume that a majority of customers will be on their Internet connections during peak hours, then the heavy downloaders have to compete with everyone else for bandwidth. Since heavy downloaders make up a small percentage of the customers, even if all of them stopped downloading during peak hours, the casual user will, at best, experience said small percentage increase in performance.

A rather crude example that illustrates my point: During peak hours, 100 customers share a 100Mbps connection, therefore, each customers gets (100 Mbps / 100 customers) 1Mbps if everyone is using their connection at the same time. Now if 5% of the 100 customers are heavy downloaders and they stopped using their Internet connection during peak hours, then each customer gets (100Mbps / 95 customers) 1.053 Mbps. That's an increase of 5.3% increase in speed.

Even if the 100 customers were sharing a 1Gbps line and the same 5% were to stop downloading, the other 95% would still experience the same 5.3% increase in speed.

Repost of good info is good