Technology
AT&T to Throttle Data Speeds for ‘Unlimited’ Hogs
- Posted on July 29, 2011 at 4:57pm by
Scott Baker
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NEW YORK (AP) — AT&T says it’s going to start limiting speeds for the 5 percent of its customers with “unlimited” data smartphone plans who clog the airwaves the most.
The company said Friday it will put the measure into effect Oct. 1.
T-Mobile USA already throttles users who go over certain limits for data consumption.
AT&T stopped signing up new customers for “unlimited” plans last year. Instead, it now lets heavy users pay extra when they go over a certain data allotment. Verizon Wireless also recently stopped signing up new customers for unlimited service.
AT&T says it will warn users who approach joining the top 5 percent, and anyone subject to the speed limits will experience them at least until the next billing cycle starts.
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gr8guy
Posted on August 3, 2011 at 10:21amFor what it’s worth, AT&T’s service is amazing compared to satellite service like Hughesnet. Their service is already moving at turtle speed, when you go over the amount that was sold to you as unlimited, they will invoke their FAP or Fair Access Policy. This restriction is like punishment, and what makes it worse, the connection is slower than dialup. When you violated their FAP after the third time, they restrict your service (cuts off) your service for several weeks.
Report Post »ejbonk
Posted on August 3, 2011 at 4:42amThank God,I use a Phone as a Phone and not the end all be all TV, Computor, Gaming System, Library and what not. This has gotten out of control. Thjank God,I’m Old school. A phone is a Phone. A T.V is a T.V.. A DSI Line is a DSL Line. A computer is a computer. and so on. I still keep my Land Line,because,I have greater consumer protections with it than a Cell Phone. Why? Because a Cell Phone has NO Consumer Protections at all.DUH!
Report Post »scruffycat
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 1:43pmAT&T told me that most people use around 1.5 gigs of data a month, so if they buy the 2-gig package they are usually ok and do not get overage charges. If you are using much more than that a month then you have some kind of an agenda which is beyond the Consumer model, which is mostly a recieve mode, not ment for pushing content out to other people beyond, say, your mouse clicks going back to some website as you surf around. You can still be a hog with the consumer recieve model by constantly downloading downloading downloading big files all day. Those HOGS should be throttled to move them out of the way. Pulling crap like that on a bandwidth limited aether (radio) path is detrimental to their whole network. Thinking that everyone on a radio path internet feed can have full unlimited internet all the time is stupid. GET CABLE or something
Report Post »2cool4mn
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 10:25amAT&T had to do this. People steal smartphone hack in and create data ‘hotspots’ where they let all their buddies on. Business are doing it too so they dont have to pay for it through other providers. What is essentially unethical and theft is going to cost me more dropped calls and slow data streaming. Instead of yelling at AT&T how about people hold the crooks accountable? I’m sure we all know someone who has cracked an iphone and isnt paying for service. But then again, it is easier to blame the company, and not our friends and family.
Report Post »jado1981
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 4:02pm2cool4mn, you are wrong. Sure a hacked iphone or any other “smart”phone can turn into a hot spot, however, it is not fast, plain and simple. So if you decide it’s a great idea to tether your phone to your computer or two or three, you get a crawling slow speed, Don’t try to make it like they are tethering to a whole coffee shop or business office. The speeds at a 5 bar 3g network is around 300 KB/s which is slow, split that by 3 and you have a barely faster than dial-up network, no one does that. Also, if it was such a tax on at&t’s network, why would they sell the option to tether their phones? You are just not informed on this deal. Just because someone has a hacked phone doesn’t mean that they are doing illegal things, don’t pigeon hole people, we aren’t all like you think. Some of us are legal, law abiding citizens.
Report Post »gr8guy
Posted on August 3, 2011 at 10:11amSo what you are saying is that you buy the cheapest plan designed for 700 customers, sign up several thousand customers,tell them that you will offer them unlimited service. When these customers use their unlimited service, you don‘t or can’t buy a plan for more listeners as you call them, you throttle down their unlimited service. Oh, by the way, At&T owns almost 90% of the bandwidth you are buying. If it weren’t for their lack of decent infrastructure, this would not be an issue. The government has the best, and some of the fastest service on the planet.
Report Post »Old-Hippie-Patriot
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 5:10pmJust wish I could get Glen Beck TV I miss him so much like a good friend gone…we still have dialup so don’t know what will let me watch him every day, thought some kind of phone might work…maybe not.
Report Post »Hugo Stiglitz
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 4:58pmThis is why I switched to Sprint last year.
Report Post »jado1981
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 10:28amTo At&t, don’t be surprised when I throttle my pay to you for you throttling my bandwidth. Oh, that’s not fair?!? Et tu Brute?
Report Post »slvrserfr
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 5:56amThat’s alright, Virgin Mobile prepaid is better than their plans anyway.
Report Post »endgamer
Posted on July 31, 2011 at 7:33amI am an internet provider meaning I deliver content to you.. I pay for the bandwidth to stream radio content and it’s costly. There are different plans out there and many are unmetered and unlimited bandwidth. My listener “you” pays for access to the same internet to receive the same bandwidth I pay for deliver radio to you.. Again I pay handsomely do deliver the content and you pay AGAIN to get it. in radio a server that has a 100mbps dedicated connection costs anywhere from $700 to $3000 per month or more and it can service about 700 concurrent listeners. That isn’t cheap.
There are companies that own racks of these servers and they resell and repackage this bandwidth and oversell it. They sell new people packages they know they will not use and resell what they don’t use. The sales reps ask “how many listeners do you have”? If you have too many they say we can’t help you. If you only average 10 or 15 they love you and sell you a 100 slot plan. They do this over and over! if someone gets popular and taxes the system your listeners get buffering or stream drops.
The listener goes to another station,, You lose! You are then faced with the choice of moving on or staying with a provider that is ripping you off. Sometimes they simply drop you OR set your server to drop listeners after a certain period of time. That’s bad too.. That is an example of how bandwidth is oversold and how we are being ripped off..
Attention2Detail
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 3:06pmIf your content is anything like this post, I think your listeners are dropping off on their own. You obviously have just enough technical knowledge to make you misunderstand how things work. Your listeners are not paying for the same bandwidth you are paying for. “Overselling Bandwidth” is required to keep costs from being even higher, which would drive many people off of the internet and many providers out of business. If what you call unused bandwidth was left unused, the cost per GB would probably increase by 10 to 20 times. AT&T with all it’s faults is trying to keep prices down.
Report Post »endgamer
Posted on July 31, 2011 at 6:58amIf it is unlimited then it’s unlimited, right?. Wrong. The real reason is dividing & repackaging the product as something “better” but costly for all of us. If you visited the AT&T Facebook page at the start of all this they had employees posing as consumers telling you it was bad for the “collective” because certain people were using more bandwidth than others. The issue is, AT&T OVERSELLS their bandwidth, PERIOD. This means AT&T sells the bandwidth that you are not currently “using” to someone else. For example, You buy an unlimited plan and only use 1 GB of the 5GB allocated. AT&T sells what you don’t use to another customer! That is overselling bandwidth. It’s risky because if everyone used their bandwidth the system would fail. You were also ridiculed for being angry that AT&T was removing the unlimited plan. We have less and less competition in the industry as wireless providers keep buying up each other and antitrust laws are ignored or not enforced. The fact there is obvious price “collusion”, and less value for the buyer of these products means we need more competition. AT&T was telling people to use local WiFi for their internet instead of their unlimited plan? HUH? The unlimited plan secretly “limited” you to 5GB transfer? It’s an UNLIMITED plan, right? Should companies earn a profit? YES, but price fixing and collusion with other companies is another story. Secondly, fraudulent misrepresentation and harassing customers for complaining about it is
Report Post »endgamer
Posted on July 31, 2011 at 7:16amThe blaze left this off:
Report Post »Secondly, fraudulent misrepresentation and harassing customers for complaining about it is CRIMINAL!
dr_funk
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 5:48amProof AT&T is overcharging: my parents were paying $230/month for 6Mbit internet, VERY basic TV, and local phone.
They just switched to a local competitor, and are now paying $70/month for 10Mbit internet, 3 times the channels, and local phone.
Do yourselves a favor, folks: ditch AT&T.
Report Post »Wilma
Posted on August 1, 2011 at 10:41pmCheck out the “I hate AT&T” Facebook page. It was the only place I was able to vent.
Report Post »Attention2Detail
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 2:53pmAny company that didn’t “oversell bandwidth” would go out of business. If they could just get their customers to all use exactly the bandwidth they pay for and spread it out evenly over time, then things would work perfectly, but that’s not real life. Communications companies provide a service and have to do it as efficiently as possible. The unlimited data plans and the “data hogs” have made it impossible for them to do this so they are eliminating them. It’s called the market. BTW, I don’t like AT&T, but this isn’t the reason.
Report Post »yooperjo
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 7:49pmPeople need to get a life. We are slaves to a phone. How dumb is that? I just ended my contract with Verizon and bought a Jitterbug. No camera, no internet, just voicemail and talk. Stress free!
Report Post »Smokey_Bojangles
Posted on July 31, 2011 at 10:19pmTrac Phone.Dial a Number.Say Hello.Hang Up.Who really needs all that other crap?Self Important people?
Report Post »Watchingtheweasels
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 11:40amThey already do this with their dsl service.
Report Post »swampbuck
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:15amVerizon it’s getting ready to do the same thing…..
Report Post »Howyinthehills
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 1:38amIn Radio, time bandwidth product is king. On any radio link there is a maximum amount of traffic it can carry. As the number of users increase and their data requirements increase a ceiling is reached where no more traffic is possible. At this point rationing, in some form, has to be imposed if new users are to be allowed. The capitalist system uses price as its rationing agent. The socialist “good old boy club procedures.” If you really want higher speed fiber is the way to go, lots more bandwidth.
Report Post »Lesbian Packing Hollow Points
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:12amThen they need to stop overselling their network. If unlimited data is not limited only by RATE, but by absolute quantity, then they need to sell their plans based on the limiting quality and sell 20 GB plans or 10 GB plans, etc.
Report Post »swampbuck
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:16ammy son does 20 gigs in a week..lol
Report Post »the_ancient
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:42amATT is famous for NOT being able to thing more than 5 years into the furture
Uverse is a perfect example of this, they went FTTN for uverse while Verizon went FTTH for Fios…
ATT thinking was that FTTN was more than enough to compete with Comcrap, that is until DOCSIS 3 came out, now there is no way ATT’s “new” crappy FTTN network will compete with either Fios or “Xfinity”
The same is true for ATT’s “4G” which is NOT actual 4G, but extended 3G, 4G is LTE of which only verizon is rolling out a full LTE network right now, Sprints “4G” is WiMAX which is ok, but is not a good as LTE.
Further if you can not provide UNLIMITED data, which no company can, THEY SHOULD NOT MARKET IT HAS UNLIMITED. that is just strait up false advertisement.
Report Post »bassboat
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 12:22amTypical at&t, overcharging for a crappy network that is crappy because they won’t attempt to keep up and innovate. Miserable, arrogant company. I am a customer.
Report Post »Gunz.Art
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 12:10amNot surprising in the least. There is still one major carrier with truly unlimited service, you may want to sprint over and check them out :)
Report Post »swampbuck
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:17amsprints rural coverage sucks..that is why we are with verizon….
Report Post »hamburgerdude
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:28amSprint has poor coverage…
Report Post »Unlimited, where you can receive/transmit.
Flyboy172
Posted on July 29, 2011 at 10:50pmAs a member of the 5% I think this is a bad idea. The only people with these plans are long time customers. To be honest, unlimited data is the only thing keeping me with AT&T. They’re free to do as they wish, but shouldn’t be surprised if they see some customers leave. Also, these customers are the ones paying the most, so why should they be punished with slow data?
In the big scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. I just hope the competition for big data users leads to the development of better, higher capacity networks.
Report Post »Marci
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 4:32amAgreed Flyboy–this sounds like a punishment for those who actually pay for what they use and because AT&T can’t keep up (or won’t), they’ll just punish the achievers. I say achievers–because these are the SAME customers that make their market what it is. How? They are the ones most likely to buy the newest product as it comes out, the innovators. Meaning, they pay the introductory high prices for the product and the services. But alas, the everchanging (name) AT&T (back and forth) will suffer the consequences. It could also be they are giving us a preview to what life is going to be like when the government forces them to provide smart phones to certain customers. Section 8 for phones anyone? Housing is one thing…but…
Oh well…as a sales rep I had for a phone company (Sprint) in Florida told me how they ended up with the new name Embarq was in a conference they said “you know, we really suck, people hate us, we need to change our name.“ He said someone threw a paper plane across the room and said ”Let’s embark(q) on a new adventure…”
Yea..they sucked just as bad, but with a new name.
Report Post »the_ancient
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:51amLTE(Verizon) and WiMAX(Sprint/ClearWire) are both built for Data, The first commercial wireless networks that are.
BOTH are fully capable and designed to be access replacement for all connections not just Mobile Devices (aka Residential Service) and can do so at a price point that could complete with Comcast, and other Traditional ISP’s
The Problem is the Networks are owned by the Phone Companies, who are enjoying massive profits coming and going and until forced to do so they will not lower wireless prices.
However Timewarner and Comcast have both invested in Clearwire (WiMAX) to be able to offer Residential net access to customers outside of their Cable Footprint, so I am hopeful this will start to bring down prices in the wireless market, but it will probably be another 3-5 years before we see good prices on wireless net access
Report Post »better red than dead
Posted on July 29, 2011 at 10:25pmUnsurprising.
Report Post »Cold War Vet
Posted on July 29, 2011 at 10:23pmI have mixed feelings about this. I agree that there should be enough bandwidth for everyone. On the other hand, capping it is kind of like socialist wealth redistribution.
I say we settle this the Free Enterprise way. Let the top 5% users have their massive usage, and just charge them big for it. That’s how we do things in the free world!
Also, a good, competitive atmosphere will encourage higher capacity networks, keep prices stable, promote commerce and create jobs.
I think that would work…
Revelation at a Shopping Center!
Report Post »http://neuezeitgeist.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/a-ha-moment-at-the-strip-mall/
stinkybisquit
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 8:58amI agree and disagree. I signed a contract with AT&T for unlimited usage, and they are breaking that contract.
Report Post »the_ancient
Posted on July 30, 2011 at 10:59amAny commodity that is limited such as bandwidth, should be metered and sold as such, It is false advertisement to claim to offer 1 thing and then really offer another. Companies and Persons have been fined and Jailed for doing less blatant false advertisement in the past, why the Phone companies can get away with ti is beyond me.
I always use water as an example, I know internet is NOT nor should it be a utility, but it makes for a good analogy. your Water company charges you a small “access fee” or “meter fee” normally based on the size of the incoming line, on top of that you pay a usage rate for each gallon of water you use. In internet terms you should pay a SMALL fee based on how FAST you want your connection to be, the faster the connection the higher the fee, then you would pay a small usage rate for all usage on that connection. This could also be packaged in to “10GB” or “100GB” plans and other pricing schemes,
That is how the pricing will HAVE TO end up at some point in the future, That will be the natural progression of Internet pricing
Report Post »Loki
Posted on August 2, 2011 at 11:06am@The_Ancient
the issue is, bandwidth isnt a limited commodity. they can continue to add pipes to the system to increase how much bandwidth is available. But these companies would rather sit on the profit they receive from their wired, wireless and digital systems for conquest of other smaller companies(t-mobile anyone) instead of improving the quality of service.
One thing to take note, this bandwidth throttling is for those cell phone users that still have the unlimited plan. ATT mobile, dsl and uverse do not have unlimted services anymore.
Report Post »DSL is capped at 150GB, Uverse is capped at 250GB, and im not sure on ATT wireless.but the standard is around 2gb.
Inbred Jed
Posted on August 3, 2011 at 9:27amWell as a side note, the whole 4g things is crap as well. I am a Sprint customer and when I purchaseda 4g capeable phone, I had an exra 10 dollas a month tacked on my plan for a service that won’t even be available in my area until 2014. Thus over a 40 month period I have paid $400 for a service I can’t even access. My bet is that in time, there will be a class action lawsuit and I may end up getting a 25 dollar credit on my account.
Report Post »Muckdog
Posted on July 29, 2011 at 9:53pmAnother sad news story. Throttling.
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