So AT&T is testing usage caps

[13Gigatons]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Get used to it. The all you can eat model is going to be dead soon.

This is the hottest topic in the consumer broadband arena - how to remain profitable and get rid of the abusers or at least make them pay for their abuse. All kinds of new products being released to address this very problem. As mentioned it's a commodity now as far as price and they can't provide that kind of capacity without charging for it somehow.

There has never been an all you can eat model. You were always limited by the tier you were in like 1.5, 3.0 and 6.0 etc.

This just proves America is truly corrupt. The country that invented the internet has allowed BIG BUSINESS to ruin it. Japan, Norway, South Korea and other countries have the right idea and turned it into a public utility.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: 13Gigatons

Originally posted by: spidey07
Get used to it. The all you can eat model is going to be dead soon.

This is the hottest topic in the consumer broadband arena - how to remain profitable and get rid of the abusers or at least make them pay for their abuse. All kinds of new products being released to address this very problem. As mentioned it's a commodity now as far as price and they can't provide that kind of capacity without charging for it somehow.

There has never been an all you can eat model. You were always limited by the tier you were in like 1.5, 3.0 and 6.0 etc.

This just proves America is truly corrupt. The country that invented the internet has allowed BIG BUSINESS to ruin it. Japan, Norway, South Korea and other countries have the right idea and turned it into a public utility.

Obviously people like Spidey work at AT&T and personally benefits from the destruction of the Internet in America. Very sad.

 

[0roo0roo]

well,
found at&t's conflict of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-verse
they want to deliver tv over the web+dvr.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo


well,
found at&t's conflict of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-verse
they want to deliver tv over the web+dvr.

This is their way around network neutrality.

 

[Queasy]

And now AT&T is announcing 18 mbps DSL.

Wonder what the cap will be on that. 200 GB?

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Get used to it. The all you can eat model is going to be dead soon.

This is the hottest topic in the consumer broadband arena - how to remain profitable and get rid of the abusers or at least make them pay for their abuse. All kinds of new products being released to address this very problem. As mentioned it's a commodity now as far as price and they can't provide that kind of capacity without charging for it somehow.

I don't have that much of a problem with it, but the question is whether or not their "solution" is going to be reasonable and whether or not they are willing to take the bad with the good. As it stands...


1. No mention of rollover bandwidth even though they are basically charging us a set amount per month like cell phone minutes.

2. No tools to monitor our usage so we cannot even accurately and responsibly make sure that we are following the rules.

3. The kinds of price numbers that are being talked about are much higher than they should be for users that use more bandwidth than most but are not what one would consider an "abuser".

4. Not enough powerful competition out there to ensure that the above 3 are fixed for the consumer.


Fix at least these issues and I will be happier.

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: God Mode

Originally posted by: Leros
Is there not some legal basis requiring them to provide a good bandwidth measuring tool?

How do you check how many minutes you used on your mobile phone? Electricity? Gas? If its not in some kind of legal contract does ethics fly out the window? $1.00 extra per gig over. I would imagine that they're counting on people going over their amount.

What I dont understand is why they didnt kick these so called bandwidth abusers from the start instead of pulling this shit on every customer.

Comcast got away with it and now AT&T is doing so too with an even lower cap. They probably get together to see how low they can take it.
Its rediculous how bandwidth is progressing in other Countries but here they want to regress it. Elsewhere the prices are going down and yet they go up here too even considering how much cheaper some technologies keep getting.

 

[uhohs]

Originally posted by: Queasy
And now AT&T is announcing 18 mbps DSL.

Wonder what the cap will be on that. 200 GB?

and it looks like the upload is at 1 or 1.5Mbps? haha, geez.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
If they are going to cap then applications need to ask permission before using your connection. And dont tell me firewall either.

I don't believe that any of my applications update themselves without my permission. This is usually an option or something available during set-up.

Originally posted by: God Mode
This will only stunt technological growth and people will soon find every way to decrease their consumption. This means no internet ad's which a lot of free services depend on for revenue, no websites with excessive scripts and pictures etc etc.

Innovations that require a lot of consumption ie streaming HD video, downloading games from services like steam, will be pretty much obsolete since file sizes for a lot of these products seem to be getting larger every year.

We all know the people that consume the so-called <3GB a month dont browse youtube or do any of these activities.

This will just cause problems for a lot of markets. Free wifi even if its nannied from the government is better than this. If Time warner or verizon pulls this shit, they would be losing $500+ a month from my household.

I'm not saying caps arent fair. Its the implementation and the lack of a realtime usage meter, rolling over unused service and penalties/price for going over that irks me.

I've seen it mentioned that people can monitor their usage online. As far as "innovations" such as streaming HD movies... Maybe now isn't the time to roll out such innovations. Read Fritzo's response above. If in the next year, 25% of customers decide to switch to an online service to download HD videos, and download 2 videos a week, that alone would triple bandwidth usage. (Based on Fritzo's 7GB per month average, and saying that an HD movie would also be 7GB)

Does anyone reasonably think that the ISP's can keep up with that kind if infrastructure growth without losing a fortune?

Originally posted by: Xavier434
1. No mention of rollover bandwidth even though they are basically charging us a set amount per month like cell phone minutes.

2. No tools to monitor our usage so we cannot even accurately and responsibly make sure that we are following the rules.

1. Why is this an issue? I didn't drive my van at all last week. I don't expect my insurance company to "roll-over" my coverage. If I go several days without watching television, I don't expect my satellite provider to "roll-over" a couple days worth of television. And, I don't have a cell-phone plan that allows me to "roll-over" unused minutes. Those plans would cost me more money. If there are enough people willing to pay a little extra so that if they don't use all their bandwidth, they can use it later, then let the market respond.

2. There are plenty of tools to monitor your bandwidth usage. And, as mentioned above, you can log into your account to check it. And before someone posts some nonsense about logging in wastes a lot of bandwidth, b.s. A couple hundred KB is completely insignificant compared to to caps that are being proposed.