AT&T bandwidth caps to take effect today

Brian Ambrozy 2 May, 2011 at 10:51am ET Article published in Tech

Today, AT&T has instituted their previously announced bandwidth caps: 150gb/month for DSL subscribers and 250gb/month for U-Verse customers.

Those who go over the caps will be charged an additional $10/month for every 50gb over the limit, with a “three month grace period”; you will be charged on the third month.

While those numbers may seem liberal, in a busy household with roommates, kids, and Netflix or Hulu subscriptions, they can add up very quickly. AT&T claims that only the “top 2%” of their customers will be affected by this change, and that it’s really a solution to discourage bandwidth hogs from causing undue network congestion, rather than a cost issue. As we all know, bandwidth is cheap.

Of course, network congestion wouldn’t be a problem if the infrastructure were robust enough to support people who want to truly utilize the internet for all of its potential. AT&T reported very strong first-quarter profits, even as the US broadband infrastructure continues to be surpassed by other nations. Consumer broadband advocates suggest that AT&T and other major ISPs could be doing more to push America’s infrastructure into the modern age. There’s also the problem of uncertain metering technology and the fact that there is no regulatory oversight of this type of billing.

While some of us are fortunate enough to be able to vote with our wallets, not everybody has a choice about their broadband provider. If you are a customer who is stuck with AT&T, you can always write a letter or make your frustration known on Twitter. At the very least, try not to quietly roll over and accept bandwidth caps—if you do, they may only get worse.

Comments

2 May 2011 ~ 10:54am Linc So AT&T finally lured Icrontic HQ away from WideOpenWest for a year, only to guarantee we go running back. Nice work, dummies.
2 May 2011 ~ 10:55am AlexDeGruven I'm glad for those who have real choice in their market. Many people (like myself) are not so lucky. When U-Verse DOES finally roll out in my market, however, I will have a choice... and I will choose to stick with Charter, who has yet to institute caps (and also runs me at 30/3).
2 May 2011 ~ 10:57am Jokke A shame to hear it. It's not any better in Norway. Most cellphone companies have a cap of 500mb/month, then it's 10kr ($2) per 50mb or something, in addition to slower speeds.
2 May 2011 ~ 11:03am ardichoke sonofabitch. Now I need to find a new broadband provider. There has to be a decent one that isn't AT&T or Comcast in Lansing... right?
2 May 2011 ~ 11:25am SpencerForHire Ardi, WideOpenWest should be available. They aren't the best but they sure beat the alternatives.
2 May 2011 ~ 11:38am ardichoke Does anyone know if this is a download limit or a combined upload/download limit?
2 May 2011 ~ 11:40am primesuspect Can't be sure yet; AT&T's website is down for maintenance, most likely to attempt to answer all these questions. I tried for an hour to log in to my account to see what I could discover, but to no avail.
2 May 2011 ~ 11:53am Thrax It was only a matter of time, really. Comcast implemented a 250GB cap a few years back, and their massive consumer base rolled over and took it like champs. AT&T U-Verse offers even higher potential for significant consumption, and of course the shoe has dropped.

I would also be remiss if I did not point out that 20 cents for 1GB is about six times the actual cost to deliver 1GB to a customer. Those figures presumes the fixed costs of deploying infrastructure, paying employees and keeping the lights on have been covered.

"But Thrax, doesn't shouldn't my activation fee and monthly payment cover that?"

Not if profiteering is your game!

We all should have expected no less from AT&T. Vehement lobbying against net neutrality, complicity with federal warrantless wiretapping, explicit support for immunity against wiretapping suits, first to abolish unlimited wireless data... this company doesn't give a shit about you. It just wants your money.
2 May 2011 ~ 4:03pm RootWyrm WOW is only an option if you don't mind all your traffic being hijacked, logged, and entries into the IE8 search box going to this: http://yfrog.com/h7rkwpp - they also are sniffing traffic thoroughly enough to cleanly insert HTML into webpages, so they have content visibility.
They're also transparently hijacking all DNS queries, even those to root servers, and spoofing results or blocking them depending on the site.
Of course, absolutely none of this has been disclosed to customers - the same way they handled their NebuAd deployment.
2 May 2011 ~ 4:16pm ardichoke All of which can be foiled with an SSH tunnel through a proxy server! Not that one should HAVE to do that.

Regardless, I'm thinking that ACD.net is looking like a better option for me right now.
2 May 2011 ~ 4:22pm primesuspect Despite all that, I still had a perfectly fine SEVEN YEAR RUN with WoW. I'll be switching back. I don't give a fuck if they hijack my DNS queries.... HEY, GUYS, HE GOES TO ICRONTIC AND GOOGLE A LOT.
2 May 2011 ~ 4:22pm RootWyrm

ardichoke wrote:

All of which can be foiled with an SSH tunnel through a proxy server! Not that one should HAVE to do that.

Oh, that's absolutely mandatory. Unless DNS doesn't work and they decide to block it. And pretty good chances DNS won't work; for some unknown reason they've decided to screw up is.gd

Regardless, I'm thinking that ACD.net is looking like a better option for me right now.

Well, anybody selling DSL is just reselling AT&T. And AT&T loves to jerk their chains by impeding traffic transparently and refusing to fix problems. If your DSL goes down? Minimum 24 hours before AT&T will even look at it long enough to say "user problem."
2 May 2011 ~ 4:45pm fatcat I haven't met a telecom that DID give a shit about their customers. I have Mediacom and they have a "soft" 250GB/month bandwidth. I haven't hit the 8.3GB/day to go over it that I know of yet.

I do plan to switch companies once my contract is up, like I have with cell phones (AT&T to T-Mobile(AT&T now) to Sprint

Luckily I have options in this shittowne
2 May 2011 ~ 4:49pm Thrax Things that I care about:
[ ] Improper NXDOMAIN responses
[X] Bandwidth caps
2 May 2011 ~ 4:53pm ardichoke

RootWyrm wrote:

Well, anybody selling DSL is just reselling AT&T. And AT&T loves to jerk their chains by impeding traffic transparently and refusing to fix problems. If your DSL goes down? Minimum 24 hours before AT&T will even look at it long enough to say "user problem."

Wanna back that up with some proof?

I can't find any direct confirmation or denial of that fact anywhere. I do see that ACD.net apparently owns some large chunks of it's own fiber in various places in MI including in Lansing.
2 May 2011 ~ 5:13pm RootWyrm

Thrax wrote:

Things that I care about:
[ ] Improper NXDOMAIN responses
[X] Bandwidth caps

Wrong.

[ ] Improper NXDOMAIN responses
[X] Returning Advertising Server for valid A records
[X] Redirecting HTTP(S) traffic based on URL
[X] Inspecting HTTP(S) content to perform insertion of content
[X] Bandwidth caps
2 May 2011 ~ 5:28pm primesuspect You can't say "wrong" about what somebody cares about
2 May 2011 ~ 6:46pm RootWyrm

ardichoke wrote:

Wanna back that up with some proof?

I can't find any direct confirmation or denial of that fact anywhere. I do see that ACD.net apparently owns some large chunks of it's own fiber in various places in MI including in Lansing.

AT&T owns the copper, period. For anyone to NOT resell AT&T they must own pole space and run separate copper pair from their own CO to your residence. Otherwise, they are reselling AT&T. Period.
At the CO, AT&T does ATM bundling - that is, bundling multiple DSL links into a single ATM mesh and delivering that typically as L2TP to the ISP over DS3. It's not economically feasible anymore to colocate Redbacks in the CO, because AT&T no longer even has to allow it. (Thanks, FCC.)

So no matter who you get your DSL from, the transit path is this:
CPE -> Telco Owned Copper -> Telco DSLAM -> Telco ATM -> ATM Leased from Telco -> ISP Termination Point (typ. Cisco router)
Even unbundled dry-pairs? That's telco owned copper.

They also had a policy of excluding SLC+DLC from copper length for resellers, to prevent selling higher end services. (SLC/DLC for ADSL, ADSL+, ADSL2 should be measured as copper to SLC/DLC, then +3Kft. Meaning my run is not ~11,500 - it is ~7,000.)

I've worked for ISPs, Telcos, and Cable. So yeah; dealt with it all first-hand.
2 May 2011 ~ 10:03pm ardichoke I'm still not seeing any proof there chief. Just because they use AT&Ts lines for the last mile, doesn't mean they're a reseller of AT&Ts service completely. The fact that they can offer speeds that AT&T can't touch suggests they're not reselling their service directly. Plus, if they're reselling AT&T's service, why do they own their own fiber?
2 May 2011 ~ 10:29pm Thrax The CLEC provisions of the Telcommunications Act of '96 enables CLECs to lease infrastructure and then do basically whatever they want with it. If they want to buy 10Gb and sell 10x1Gbit lines, they can.
3 Jul 2011 ~ 2:36am FPSDeSniper just be glad they arent charging over a dollar per gigabyte like GCI does here in Alaska for its low cost low bandwidth cap plans.
But they did just lower their prices increase the speed and increase their caps now mmy 18/1 connection has 150gb cap instead of 60 or 70 and is $60 cheaper
3 Jul 2011 ~ 1:14pm AlexDeGruven Alaska's infrastructure has a long way to go. As your second sentence states, things are changing for the better. It will just go more slowly.