

AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees - tenaciousJk
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/

======
gergles
I love the paper-thin justification here the most. "We have to do this because
people don't want to pay for bandwidth they don't use!"

OK, where's my $10 a month refund for every 50 GB I go _under_ the limit?

~~~
bradleyland
Be very careful what you ask for. AT&T would be more than happy to implement a
fully-tiered system like they do for cell minutes.

I'm not saying this is right, I'm just pointing out that this is far from the
worst case scenario.

------
oneplusone
The idea that 2% of users using 20% of the bandwidth is hurting "normal"
people is a PR move that is going to do great harm to future innovation. The
way I see it those 2% of users are early adopters and a couple of years from
now "normal people" will be using as much bandwidth as the current 2% does.
Limiting bandwidth now hurts future innovation.

~~~
tptacek
Isn't it a bit disingenuous to suppose that we don't know exactly what those
2% are doing?

~~~
oneplusone
Just because people are downloading a ton of illegal content right now doesn't
mean 5 years from now the average person won't be downloading it legally. This
is how progress is made.

~~~
tptacek
It's funny, that's exactly what people said about binaries on Usenet.

~~~
adbge
Are you suggesting that average bandwidth usage isn't going to increase?

~~~
tptacek
Caps will move, rates will move, usage will move, prices will move. I'm not
sure what your point is. I'm saying (or, strongly implying) that virtually the
only people who will be hit with this cap today are the ones using BitTorrent.

------
jarpadat
I think instead of being able to advertise "up to" speeds, ISPs should have to
advertise the overall average speed you can use in a month taking into account
usage caps.

150GB/month works out to .47MBit/sec sustained throughput. If AT&T had to
advertise that rate instead of 6Mbit for DSL lines, they'd think twice about
caps.

UVerse is even worse--~1Mbit/sec instead of 24.

~~~
thefool
That said, burst speed is what matters if you are streaming or doing something
else that is similar.

The typical user has no need for sustained output unless they are torrenting
things, being used as a supernode for skype, ect.

I do like the idea though.

~~~
jarpadat
It depends on what is meant by "burst". With a 250GB cap, you can use your
24Mbit UVerse "burst" speed 3.2% of the time.

I don't think it's unreasonable to look at something that is true 3% of the
time and call it an unfair claim.

------
megamark16
Our family watches a lot of Netflix. My kids will watch several movies or
shows throughout the day, my wife watches her shows, and we might throw a
movie on in the evening after the kids have gone to bed. If the average size
of a 2 hour movie on Netflix is 1.8GB (source:
[http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/200...](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-
on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html)) and if we watch on average
move than 2.7 movies a day, then we will almost definitely hit our 150GB limit
every month. Especially considering that we use the internet for a lot of
other stuff too, like video chatting with out of town family members, work
related file transfers, offsite backups, etc.

We don't use bittorrent, we don't download music illegally, but we will most
definitely be dropping AT&T for a different service, as soon as we find one
that won't cap our usage (since Comcast is the only cable provider available
in our area).

This is crap.

~~~
dholowiski
FYI I'm in Canada and use Canadian Netflix. I have a 175GB cap on my cable
internet (it's the biggest I could buy). This month I was sitting at about
120GB transfer with average netflix watching (several TV episodes a night and
1-2 movies a week), with about a week left.

Then I acidentally left the live.twit.tv stream on for about 12 hours. I
haven't checked, but I expect to either have to heavily conserve bandwidth
until my next bill, or get a friendly letter from my ISP. Offsite backups like
carbonite or mozy are totally out of the question obviously. I had planned on
downloading MS Server 2011, but I'll have to put that off until the next
billing cycle too. I also rent and buy movies and TV shows off of itunes, but
I have to balance that and my netflix watching so I don't go over.

Everything I do is 100% legal, yet without vigilance I could easily blow
through my cap within two weeks. The phone company offers a slightly higher
cap (you can get up to 250GB) but it's much slower. Welcome to life in
Canada...

~~~
dholowiski
Sure enough, now that I'm home I see I've been throttled to slow DSL speeds (I
pay for a 50 mbit cable connection). Go Canada!

------
jrockway
I like how they claim that keeping prices the same for less bandwidth is "good
for the average consumer".

~~~
tptacek
If the alternative is a rate hike, then it is.

~~~
Bud
The alternative is what we will get next, which is that everyone gets a rate
hike AND these draconian overage charges go up and increase in number and
complexity. If you think that this single cap will magically keep your rate
down, whilst penalizing only those big bad pirates, you're dreaming. This is
the same company that has a 200MB monthly cap on cell data, because its
internal data says that lots of customers tend to just barely go over 200MB,
thus forcing them into the 2GB tier.

------
bherms
I feel like this is less about ability to handle the 2% who go over the
bandwidth limit and more a means to fight piracy. I would assume the 2% who go
over 150/250gb/month are people sharing large amounts of media (sure people
like me download tons of legal soundboard recordings from bands, etc, but
probably not the majority of that 2%). By capping the bandwidth, they can
effectively cripple the ability for some to share large amounts of
movies/shows/music.

~~~
amock
I think it's more about making things more difficult for services like Netflix
and Hulu as well as extracting some extra revenue from their top users who
don't have any other choice for internet service.

~~~
jrockway
I think anyone that has AT&T DSL could also have Speakeasy DSL. It's just that
Speakeasy costs a lot more.

~~~
tptacek
It also sucks a lot more. I had Speakeasy for over 5 years; AT&T has been a
dream comparatively.

Slow. Friendly-but-useless customer service. Multi-day outages.

Let's not forget, Speakeasy is just another BigCo. If you want to stand on
your principles, go look up the ISPFH people in Chicago. They'll sell you a
DSL line.

------
gs8
It's amazing how much has been given to ATT & Verizon to build out new fiber
networks (which they still haven't finished) and now when people start using
them to their potential we will be hit with overages, awesome.

It won't get any better until the cities/localities remove exclusive territory
rights for companies that provide phone and cable.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
Telecoms also fought hard to make it illegal for cities to offer ubiquitous
broadband for free. It started being a small trend for cities to do this as
incentive to live there, but it was quickly squashed.

They also sat on DSL for over a decade until the telecom act of '96 allowed
others to roll-out DSL. They finally started to market it themselves when they
were forced.

------
Groxx
My calculator tells me that, with my low-end DSL connection, I could eat that
up in about 10 1/2 days. That's not _too_ bad of a limit, but I do worry about
what precedence it helps set. When I signed up, they were very clear about
saying that it was unlimited*.

------
ronnier
We are having big shifts to content distribution over the internet with things
like itunes, netflix, Amazon streaming movies, Apple TV, Skype, video chat,
games, and software. Comcast (xfinity) and AT&T are going to do their best to
cripple the internet to protect their other sources of revenue.

I recently moved to Seattle and had no choice but to sign up with Comcast. I
wanted to have streaming video of NHK Japan coverage open while I'm doing
things around the house. I'm to worried about eating into my monthly limit to
do so.

~~~
adbge
> I'm to worried about eating into my monthly limit to do so.

Depending on the area, the limit may not even be enforced. I've pretty
drastically gone over the cap every month since it was implemented and have
yet to receive a warning, and I've heard the same thing from other users. Of
course, YMMV.

------
paul9290
Comcast has the same thing 250GB cap and has such for 3 to 4 years. No one is
blowing through 250GB watching netflix, hulu and such, which I think is the
reason behind this move by AT&T.

~~~
gergles
Actually I burn up about 190GB with netflix, hulu, Xbox 360 games, OS updates,
Zune pass, pandora, etc.

I don't use any illegal means to acquire content and am already flirting with
the cap regularly. The "bandwidth hogs" of today are the "regular users" of
tomorrow. Imagine telling somebody from 10 years ago "the average internet
user will be using 10 GB of bandwidth a month." Their mind would be blown.

------
alexqgb
This actually sounds pretty reasonable.

Now I'm wondering if they'll continue being reasonable with a clear commitment
to a specific speed, or - at the very least - a decent and reliable average.

If so, they'll be in a position to run marketing campaigns where they start
assaulting those godawful "up to" claims by demonstrating what their
competitors actually average.

Alternately, this really is about offering less for more. I suspect we'll know
one way or the other within six months.

------
vomjom
I think this is fair. Bandwidth costs money, usage likely follows a power law
distribution, and their fees are reasonable:

AT&T: $10/50 GB = 20 cents/GB

Amazon S3/EC2: 10 cents/GB

It's not like we're being gouged here...

~~~
Bud
$10 is fully half the monthly fee for ATT DSL. So they are charging quite a
bit more for data if you go over the cap.

I'd be less ticked off if the rate above cap were more similar to the rate
below cap, and if the cap allowed saturating your link more than 9% of the
time, which is what this cap does for DSL users with a typical 6.5 Mbps
download speed.

To buy a connection that can actually be used 24/7 with the new price
structure would cost well over $200/month. That's not cool.

------
dholowiski
Glad to see US ISP's starting to take a note from Canadian (and Australian)
ISP's. Next, you can look forward to unabashed packet shaping, as practiced by
Rogers.

------
kin
Anyonw know if they'll introduce lower rates, much like their move with mobile
data?

------
geuis
Bullshit. Nearly every broadband ISP in the US has had unlimited download and
upload for the last 12+ years. When I got my first cable modem in 1997 and
since then, its always been unlimited. While our access speeds have gone up,
they haven't gone up in comparison to other nations. What AT&T and other
providers are saying is that they haven't been investing in their backbone and
regional connections, while increasing customer speeds. This is complete
bullshit.

~~~
jerf
Bullshit. Nearly every broadband ISP in the US has cut you off with varying
levels of warning if you use "excessive bandwidth" for years and years now.
It's been a continuous stream of complaints about such things over the years.
I actually give kudos to Comcast for finally putting a marker down on
"excessive usage" a couple of years ago, and even more kudos now to AT&T for
not only being explicit but providing an overage plan that is not terribly
unreasonable for consumer internet. Despite my disinclination to give kudos to
either company for anything.

There's no such thing as a truly unlimited service. I prefer that they be
upfront about the limits.

Since Comcast put the 250 GB cap in place, I've had a hard time breaking
100GB, and I do several things that chew through bandwidth, like hi-def
Netflix and a lot of OS updates and downloads. (Been shopping around for a
Linux distro the last couple of weekends, for instance.) I have a hard time
complaining.

~~~
thematt
Broadband and wireless ISP's have for years have been advertising unlimited
plans of service while silently cutting you off if you cross some vague limit
deemed as "excessive". You're right, kudos to Comcast and AT&T for putting a
hard number out there to monitor against, but forgive me if I don't have the
least bit of trust or respect for the ISP community.

------
georgieporgie
If this isn't simply a way to generate more cash while still appearing price
competitive to the newcomer, why not implement soft caps?

I anticipate many technically disinclined people receiving very large bills as
a result of running an open wireless network.

~~~
Bystander
maybe blocking open wireless networks is one of their goals. They want to be
able to maximize revenue - if a couple of thousand people have to now actually
buy access, rather than riding off of their neighbors - it's a win

