AT&T Suspends Broadband Data Caps During Coronavirus Crisis (vice.com) 51
AT&T is the first major ISP to confirm that it will be suspending all broadband usage caps as millions of Americans bunker down in a bid to slow the rate of COVID-19 expansion. Consumer groups and a coalition of Senators are now pressuring other ISPs to follow suit. From a report: Telecom experts told Motherboard this morning that broadband caps and overage fees don't serve any real technical purpose, and are little more than a glorified price hike on uncompetitive markets. We in turn reached out to ten of the nation's biggest ISPs, only one of which (Mediacom) was willing to go on the record. In the wake of that report, AT&T has confirmed to Motherboard that the company will be suspending all usage caps until further notice. "Many of our AT&T Internet customers already have unlimited home internet access, and we are waiving internet data overage for the remaining customers," a company spokesperson said.
AT&T? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess their data cappers called in sick, that's more plausible.
Re:AT&T? Really? (Score:4)
Oh, don't worry, AT&T are still assholes. This is a strategic play to expose the backhaul limits in their competition when they either voluntarily (and begrudgingly) follow suit, or are forced to by regulators.
At the end of this thing, AT&T is going to be bellowing about how their network held up, and others just couldn't handle a "true unlimited" or some other such horseshit.
Telcos never do anything out of kindness. Ever.
Re: Wait, what? (Score:3)
When I had ATT broadband years ago, they had a cap of 300GBs per month, after hitting this limit they were supposed to charge you for more. But as far as I can tell, they never enforced this while I was with them.
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I don't watch porn. I simply record it on external hard drives, load them into water proof containers, and then bury them underground in order to preserve the precious footage for the future generations.
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When I had ATT broadband years ago, they had a cap of 300GBs per month, after hitting this limit they were supposed to charge you for more. But as far as I can tell, they never enforced this while I was with them.
Twice my backup software went loco and hit my data cap. Both times they said they would let it pass (and did) but said I'd only get two freebies. We'll see what happens if I hit it a third time. I can't complain, they're being quite upfront and more lenient than they need to.
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AT&T DSL has a 150GB data cap [att.com].
What are the data allowances?
AT&T internet service data allowances include the following:
- 150 Gigabytes (GB) per month for customers with DSL service.
- 250GB per month for customers with Fixed Wireless Internet service.
- 1 Terabyte (TB) per month for internet speed tiers up to and including 768 Kilobits per second (Kbps) through 300 Megabits per second (Mbps).
- Unlimited home internet data for customers with the internet 1000Mbps speed tier, combined bills for home internet and U-verse TV or DIRECTV as a benefit of bundling, or the $30 unlimited usage option.
I exceeded the 150GB cap once and got a notice/warning that the next time I exceed it, I'd be charged $10 for 50GB. That never happened again (changed service provider).
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Two two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism at its "finest".
Re: Wait, what? (Score:1)
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Whatever you call it, it is necessary. Capitalism does not care about people and people are more important than money.
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Whatever you call it, it is necessary.
Whatever the motivation, I'm glad they did it. I'm an AT&T customer and was just wondering if this would matter. My cap is pretty high but it's possible all the Zoom meetings might approach it.
Whatever you call it, it is necessary. Capitalism does not care about people...
I can't let this pass. Of course people in capitalistic systems care about other people. I don't stop caring about people just because I got to my office. And once I get to my office, the people I get paid to care about are my co-workers and my customers. If they don't do well, I don't do well.
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People usually do, but corporations often make choices that people in a similar interpersonal setting would not. They are literally required by law to prioritize money over people. This mostly works fine as evidenced by capitalist democratic countries being prosperous, but taken to the extreme this system can be very bad for people. And so there need to be legislated limits.
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Sorry AC, but the courts agree with Graham.
EBay vs. Newmark [litigationandtrial.com].
And even though the Supreme's may have adjusted that recently, but Maximizing Shareholder Value was the law of the land for decades. Even if it no longer enforced by the courts, there are generations of corporate executives that just except MSV as gospel.
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People usually do, but corporations often make choices that people in a similar interpersonal setting would not.
No doubt. As you say, a corporation is almost by definition impersonal. I know very few of my customers on a first-name basis. That doesn't mean I don't consider their needs and feelings (but I'm also not in sales--I couldn't do that job). And when it's all said and done, the vast majority of transactions are voluntary on the part of the buyer and seller, meaning it would be bizarre if either party didn't think they're getting more than they're giving up.
They are literally required by law to prioritize money over people.
I don't believe that's literally true. How would you
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Impersonal is one thing, but capitalism taken to the extreme means huge companies, lots of amalgamation and little competition, and that invariably produces anti-consumer (and anti small business for that matter) behaviour (see: ISPs). I don't mean to suggest that every little thing should be overseen by the government - you're not China - but I believe there should be legislative systems in place to counter this dangerous phenomenon.
I was paraphrasing :) Generally if a company is not doing this it will get
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You know outside of Europe and Japan, bandwidth caps are pretty common. Even in Canada, it's only the rare TPIA's(teksavvy/start.ca/e.box) that don't have any caps on some of their plans.
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Re: Wait, what? (Score:1)
Why wouldn't they make this permanent then? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Obviously their system will support it. They shouldn't be creating artificial scarcity to drive up prices simply because they have no real competition and they can.
Not only that but they are suspending caps at a time when they expect higher than normal usage. It couldn't be clearer that the whole point of the cap is to extract more money from subscribers without raising the nominal price, and has nothing to do with congestion management.
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These are government-granted monopolies (Score:2)
For data caps in particular, the government should be auditing ISPs' monthly bandwidth usage data to make sure
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We don't know whether their system supports it. It's entirely possible that this will lead to major network congestion at peak hours and congestion for services that you don't really want to be congested in order to account for the guy trying to download every movie ever made.
Let me cleanse my palette a bit by saying that AT&T is an awful fucking company and I absolutely wouldn't put it past
Look! (Score:2)
"We're not that awful a company after all!"
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Or, they just got done expanding it and they want to see if their competition (what little there is) can follow suit, or if they get to run ads for the next year talking about how they did "good" in a time of crisis and the other guys just couldn't keep up.
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As you indirectly point out, they may have ran the numbers and figured out the good pr would outweigh the losses when it came to the bottom line.
No doubt. I'm sure they had a discussion which included increased costs, pressure on their competitors, "let's not be dicks", good PR, and the representative from the FCC in the lobby waiting to talk with us.
Whatever their motivations, I'm glad they did it. Classy move.
What's the chances of hitting the caps anyway? (Score:2)
Re: What's the chances of hitting the caps anyway? (Score:1)
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Kids no school and telecommuting (Score:2)
Stupid question, even I admit it being so (Score:2)
So, my question is. They still going to throttle at high volume time when people are over a certain amount?
Any explanation? (Score:1)
Re:Any explanation? (Score:4, Interesting)
There. Does that sound more like the AT&T we all know and loathe now?
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It's their equipment, and they're in business to make money; that's the business plan.
I hate everything ATT with a passion I could never express online, but I can't fault them in this.
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They learned from Verizon (Score:2)
But will they? (Score:2)
The overage will still show up on your bill, you will call and complain,
they will say they fixed it, and it will show up the next month with a late fee.
You will repeat this many times until you give up and pay them and move on with life.
This is their business model.
VPN Data Usage (Score:2)
I typically burn around 150-300MB per day of my available data plan just in the VPN I use for work.
( The higher end of this is usually the company pushing down updates or Win 10 patches and whatnot )
So about ~3 - 6GB per month.
If it's a really heavy update or patch month, I've seen it touch 10GB.