AT&T Broadband Introduces Tiered Pricing

Joey Patterson writes "It had to happen sooner or later. CNET reports that AT&T Broadband has introduced a tiered pricing plan called UltraLink (3 Mbps down/384 kbps up) for $79.99/month if you buy your own modem and $82.95/month if you lease one of theirs."

Comments

Is this bad?

[Saib0t]

Could someone please explain why this is bad? I fail to understand...

Re:Is this bad?

[StupidKatz]

Why do you need more than 384kbps up? If you wanna run a warez server, buy a T1. :P

The big deal should be whether or not they put restrictions on what you can do with that 384. (I have 128 and run a full suite of services, tho obviously I'm not serving more than a half-dozen people.) "Give us our 384 and begone!" should be our battlecry. Since an ISP is an Internet Service Provider, that's all they should do: take your money, give you the line, and shut up.

1.5Mbps for $45.95/month

[hendridm]

Must be nice - we're enjoying 500kbit cable for $50/month here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Damn cows must be sitting on our optic cable.

Re:1.5Mbps for $45.95/month

[Clay Mitchell]

yeah, but once you run it through the Canada->US exchange, it's only like 1.25MB/250KB :(

Power users?

[Ioldanach]

AT&T Broadband said UltraLink will serve power users, which it described as those who have "set up home networks, send or receive large files such as when downloading software, or enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications."

Why must providers always assume that someone who sets up a home network is a bandwidth hog? Personally, I have several computers on my home network. However, none of them hog bandwidth unless I'm downloading a system upgrade. It just happens that the best way to have everyone able to access e-mail and surf at once is to network the computers. (Duh)

I'm on Time Warner Cable, and they prohibit servers. If they were to enforce that prohibition, would that mean their bandwidth usage would go down? I doubt it. How much e-mail does a normal, non-spamming personal e-mail server handle in a day? Come to think of it, the traffic isn't any more than I'd handle if I had to POP it all at once!

Re:Power users?

[Sentry21]

Why must providers always assume that someone who sets up a home network is a bandwidth hog?

One of the techs at Shaw Cable told me, long ago, that the reason they didn't support home networks is that people buy cheap, and don't understand the difference between a hub and a switch... so they buy a hub, because it's cheaper, and then all your lan data gets thrown to the cable modem, which dutifully passes it on to the upstream gateway, which then deals with (and disgards) it.

While I'm not sure if this is necessarily applicable in all (any?) cases, it sounds like a good indicator of what's wrong - stupid or ignorant people doing networking badly. Networking can be a very finicky thing if it's not extremely well done, and it's easy for people to cause problems.

--Dan

Re:Power users?

[Enigma2175]

so they buy a hub, because it's cheaper, and then all your lan data gets thrown to the cable modem, which dutifully passes it on to the upstream gateway, which then deals with (and disgards) it.

I don't think that is the case with AT&T, at least with my service. The cable modem acts as a bridge, it should only pass traffic that is destined for the MAC address of my default gateway (and broadcasts). I don't have my network set up in that way, but if I did I don't think it would cause much more data to be pushed up my cable. Maybe the NetBIOS(except AT&T explicitly blocks NetBIOS) broadcasts from the Windows machines and ARP requests, but the bandwidth consumed would be negligible.

Re:Power users?

[Master Bait]

Stupid and ignorant people with home networks could benefit from clever and informed cable network companies. Don't you understand that home networking is an economic opportunity for cable ISPs, rather than a trouble? The ISP COULD sell switches and install everything for profit. I have yet to see the government-supported monopolies that sell cable go much beyond a stupid minimal revise of the failed @home's Terms of Service, which was only a rewrite of old-fashioned dialup TOS.

People want and need services that the government-supported cable monopolies are too lazy to supply. Some want fixed IP numbers, some want domain hosting. Some want fatter upstream, some want home networking, some want to serve their own email or web pages. Some don't want ISP-supplied webspace of ISP supplied POP email or a newsfeed. These are economic opportunities for ISPs in a free market, but competition in both cable and DSL is next to nothing, and this absurd level of service is our reward.

Comcast too

[kawika]

Comcast has been offering a premium service for a few months now:

http://comcast.comcastonline.com/memberservices/ Ad ditionalProducts/serviceupgrades.asp

They don't seem to promote it though.

3.5Mbps for $32/month

[red_gnom]

In Canada, company called AEI offers 3.5 Mbps download speed and 800 Kbps upload speed ADSL for $50 Canadian/month (US$32).

The link is over here here

Re:What is the big deal?

[mosch]

Look, you may not realize this is a total ripoff, but I installed a network, so I do.

These people are buying T1s for hundreds of dollars a month, then selling us a lousy 3Mbps for $80/mo. That's a rediculous amount of profit!

We need to contact our government representatives, and do something to prevent this sort of gouging now, before it's too late.

Hey, how about $14.50/hour for 2400baud!

[jgsfcaus]

Oh how quickly people forget the early days of being online...text based bbs software, arcane keywords and CompuServe with tiered access pricing:
300 baud 6.50/hr 2400 baud 14.50/hr (prices are in 1982 dollars, so let's say roughly double for 2002 dollars?) Sign me up!

Then the world was invaded by the likes of PCLink, the Commodore 64 version of PCLink and the Mac based version which bore the same name that these three companies were known as once they merged in the mid 80s...AOL. Now downloading new artwork at 2400 baud, only 30 minutes left to go...but aint it pretty!

Hey, at least they aren't rolling out METERED BANDWIDTH pricing ... at least yet...

And funny how they chose 3Mbps for the enhanced services...similar to RCN in it's fiber network markets...however, RCN didn't raise its price one cent. Still appx. $40/mo in my bundle from them...that includes modem rental.

However, I daresay that AT&T may have difficulties consistently delivering the higher speeds as their digital network nodes are already overcrowded causing traffic jams and more general angst in the world....

Re:I can't believe some of you would complain...

[forkboy]

What they're offering is NOT better than a full T1. Sure, it might be faster on the download side, but the advantage of a T1 is that you have equal bandwidth upstream, as well as a block of static IPs to have your way with....not to mention no restrictions on use. (barring legality of course)

Of course, a T1 is still around $800 per month and this is $80, so obviously this is the better choice for the home user with a limited budget.

Just don't say it's better than a T1....it's a far cry from it.