AT&T Caps Bandwidth On Former @Home Users

graznar writes: "It seems that AT&T users have been limited to 1.5 megabits of bandwidth. According to AT&T (after calling and waiting for 30 minutes), the service my friend was originally on went bankrupt (@home maybe?) so they were transferred to an alternate network. AT&T claims they will be getting this back up to speed soon. What I would like to know is if this is a nation wide problem, or if this is just in California where he lives?" More generally, I wonder what type of experiences -- good or bad -- the people who've just gone through a forcible @home weaning are experiencing.

Comments

My status in Richmond, VA

[omega9]

I'm in Richmond, VA, and my cable access provider is Comcast@Home. Our network has not been purchased by AT&T, however my speed has dropped (only slightly) since @Home went down. Comcast has been rolling commercials like nothing happened around here: deals if you subscribe to digital cable and cable modem access together.

I must hand it to Comcast. They've kept the network up with no outages that I'm aware of. They're not as fast as other cable access companies (my avg. speed is ~400kbps), but they have had killer uptimes while I've been on.

I wouldn't get to worried about AT&T limiting your bandwidth anyway. You have to expect something in a time of adjustment. If this becomes prolonged practice, then I might start bitchin', but sometimes you just need to let the industry figure itself out.

Charter Pipeline ...

[SuperDuG]

Well Charter Cable customers now have the wonderous Tioga spyware installed on their systems. It's been posted to slashdot a few times and been rejected. Members from the MadLug (Madison, WI). Have noted that the new service listens on a specific port to monitor and "Assist" The county board is also investigating this.

The software is supposed to be a VNC-Type program that helps Service Reps service computers. Basically I see this as a way for them to not only monitor, but have their way with your system. Along with this software also comes a real annoying Internet Explorer with Charter MSN crap everywhere, diabling network shares, and reformating TCP/IP to their network. Basically everything you can do yourself, but they won't tell you because they want you to install their software.

The whole thing stinks and the company is hiding behind lawyers and PR reps to try and get the whole situation worked out. Basically they released a new service, and the MadLUG guys were on them in 2 days when they noticed weird activity.

Moral of the story ... don't screw with geeks ... we'll find you ... we know who you are :-)

SuperDuG

Haven't noticed a huge speed difference though