Interview with AT&T on BitTorrent Filtering 179
An anonymous reader writes "Slyck is running an interview with AT&T's Vice President of Legal Affairs, Jim Cicconi. AT&T discusses the latest in their effort to filter, however one interesting point tends to show they aren't moving anywhere until they discuss this with their customers.
"We hear from our customers directly and indirectly. It's a very competitive business, ravenously so. I think our company is very, very sensitive to customer attitude — we have to consider this," Jim Cicconi told Slyck.com."
Not even close (Score:5, Informative)
Hearing that hurt my ear. I've been a relatively unwilling AT&T customer 3 times now, due to various mergers and acquisitions, and they've managed to go against the consensus opinions of their customers on every issue that I have encountered, where such a dichotomy existed.
For instance, I purchased my Blackjack from an authorized Cingular dealer, and received unlimited internet for $19.99 per month. I was really happy with the service. After Cingular became AT&T wireless, I began getting service outages, and now it takes me >2 minutes to connect to the internet, and the connection will time out after 2 minutes of being idle, rendering it almost useless. When I called, I was told that AT&T has different internet plans than Cingular, and my Blackjack could only get the $40/month plans, and they wouldn't help me with my service problems. I am still under contract, but it seems that AT&T isn't interested in their part of the deal.
It is perfectly clear that as a part of a government-sanctioned mono- or oligopoly, they have no interest at all in their customer's opinions.
If True, Then Not Going To Happen (Score:5, Informative)
If this is true, then it isn't going to happen. What customer is going to say, "Hey, block some of the applications I could otherwise use with this broadband pipe I pay for."
Even if a customer isn't using it at the moment, they won't be in favor of blocking it since they might want it in the future.
If this is true, then it will never happen at AT&T, and they were just blowing smoke to appease everyone since they know their filtering solution is impossible anyway. You can't filter what you can't read, and you can't read strongly encrypted packets - end of discussion.
Re:EDGE (Score:1, Informative)
I guess more bandwidth actually means less bandwidth but that less bandwidth will be delivered in a shorter time period.
Re:EDGE (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not even close (Score:5, Informative)
I did that and now I get no problems with my blackjack. I even get over 740k in metro detroit when I am in 3G land.
Also, do NOT sign a new contract with them. Stay with the old cingular terms. They will screw you hard if you change, and as long as you are a "old" customer you still fall under the old terms and you are safe from them screwing you on data plan rates.
I dont care what they promise you, do NOT upgrade your plan or change it in any way until it's really worth your while as your data price will go to the $40.00 a month.
Re:Competition? (Score:4, Informative)
This is what has been termed The Big Lie [wikipedia.org], which if you sidestep the Godwinian implications allows AT&T to assert its barely bearable level of competition like Microsoft does with its own form of stiff competition. What they're competing against is "lack of complete domination," which is retarded in the broadest sense and an impossible Utopia in the specific.
Re:Hey slick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't shed a tier for me (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.consumer.att.com/plans/internet/ [att.com]
Get unlimited high-speed Internet access over your existing phone line at great low rates.
So fucking stupid, it's no wonder you post as AC.