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AT&T Quietly Introduces $10/Month DSL
prostoalex writes "As part of the deal with the FCC to approve the AT&T/BellSouth merger, AT&T started selling, but not advertising, a $10-per-month DSL service in 22 states, AP has learned. 'The service provides download speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps, matching the speeds of the cheapest advertised AT&T plan, which costs $19.95 per month in the nine-state former BellSouth area and $14.99 in the 13 states covered by AT&T before the acquisition.'"
...oversubscribing on a small amount of bandwidth and end up clipping real-world performance down to ISDN or dial-up levels on a regular basis?
Dealing with AT&T is just not worth it for cheap Internet Service. Even if it were free, I don't think I'd go for it. Besides, if it goes anything like my experience getting phone service from them, that $10 will really be $25 a month with all the extra fees and surcharges they are sure to add on.
So let's review. It forces people who don't have a line with AT&T, and presumably don't want one, to get one -- upping the price. And people who already have service with them, can't get it.
Nice work, FCC, nice work. This is a 'concession'? What did you have to give them? (Besides your bank account numbers, to deposit the cash.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The article mentioned that it was difficult to locate information about the service. Does anyone know if the FCC has the power to not only force them to offer the plan, but also to make it (reasonably) accessible? I'm not talking about posting it on every billboard, but hey, it looks like they're banking on people not knowing about this service.
I'm a student. I write iPhone apps.
To get ATT DSL, you need to sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract, pay an installation fee, and buy their landline service.
Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point, these terms basically mean their $10 DSL costs $35 (=$10 for DSL + $25 for worthless phone service) PLUS the amortized cost of installation and the effective cost of an illiquid 1-2 year contract.
Note: Last time I priced DSL, these were the requirements. They may have changed, and if so, feel free to correct me. Until T unbundles their services, though, I'm sticking to cable.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
DSL is available in my area, but not my prefix. So I'd have to change my phone number to get it. OK, I could probably deal with that, but then they'd charge me for the line change too. So I stay with cable for now. DSL would probably be cheaper per month, but I just hate dealing with the phone company soooo much....
Sure 768k is underspeed for some purposes, but that's plenty fast for most people's day to day usage: web, email and a bit of youtube. 768k is a huge step up from dial up.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've had Comcast cable internet and it's like $60-70 a month around here. It was alright, but my big beef was the upload was only 40kB/s. How hard would it be to get like six of these lines and rig them up so that I have almost 100kB/s upload bandwidth for the same price?
And then the real question, if they can offer me that service for that price, why the fuck won't anybody just sell me a cable or DSL line with more upload bandwidth? I would be willing to pay more.
I just ordered it for someone today that already had POTS.
Got the 1.5Mbps package for $20/month. Did it online,
which probably helps.
The catch is that you also have to purchase a DSL modem ($50)
or a combo DSL Modem/Router ($80), plus another $27 for S&H.
And you'll definitely want to skip the $200 technician option
to install it for you.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
They got more money.
You would probably need six separate phone lines, each with its own monthly costs.
A quantity of states is provided in numeric form, but how about a list?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Its there for anyone signing up, as its on their page.
:(.
I'm still stuck on crappy dialup or one way services.
lol: You see no door there!
I don't care what it costs. If they restrict my ability to get to things on the internet, their service is worthless.
-ted
I would be more concerned about the 128k upload than 768 down. I mean, you do want to be able to talk to the other party right? That being said, even 128k is enough for 2 POTs lines using standard compression (64k/DS0), though the VoIP packet overhead would probably force a higher compression to actually use 2 lines at the same time. It sounds nice and all, until you compare price/kbs against other countries and remind yourself again, that the US is still falling off the backend of the broadbandwagon. Its cheap, and ideal for people like my parents, who would only be downloading emails and the occasional video or picture page forwarded by me or other family members. The upstream is a bit weak compared to other offerings, but I wouldnt get this service if I were serious about gaming anyways (yes, you can play WoW over it, even over 56k modem, just not very well and if it gets into a complex scene, forget about it).
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Does anybody know if this will be eligible in Southern California?
Does anybody know if this means I can finally download and upload torrents of UbuntuStudio and other FOSS without being throttled down to dial up and repeatedly disconnected?
For the record, those of you who live near San Diego and have Cox communications probably know what I'm talking about.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
At&t also quietly forgets to mention that all of your traffic is being spied on and sold privately. Enjoy!
http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/inetsr vcs_agreement_plans_pop.html right there on their website, thanks consumerist!
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
AT&T requires a phone line for discounted service. The subscriber still qualifies for service at a higher price.
It's as fast as my 3g phone.
Cool. If they're willing to pay me $10 a month to go to the Dark Side, sign me up.0.00
If your using dialup currently and its doing the trick, this isnt a bad option. it mght be a few bucks cheaper and a lot better.
Sure, if you want to do gaming, or 'warez' it migt hurt, but how many average people really need more bandwidth then this? If its still around, I might even consider it when i drop my real broadband after the big squeeze starts across the industry and i cant use my line for what i want anyway. Why pay extra just to be throttled and filtered?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
* shrugs *
:D
I use AT&T DSL, and it works great. I didn't pay any installation fee. And it doesn't cost nearly what cable does.
Besides, your statement that anyone with a clue uses VOIP is a little ridiculous. Like all blanket statements, it's absolutely false
Seriously, why do you say that? Personally, I prefer POTS to VOIP. If nothing else, POTS has proven reliability. It's certainly much simpler than VOIP. When it comes to essentials like telephone service, the simpler the better; it has fewer failure points. How could you possibly argue that something that relies on a high speed internet connection and a working PC is better than a simple POTS line and then imply that anyone who has POTS is clueless?
blah blah blah
I've had Ameritech or SBC or ATT DSL for over seven years now. Here's what it costs for May 2007: Telephone (excluding calls & Call-Waiting): $16.08, DSL Basic:$14.99. Tonight's line test: 1313kps download / 313kps upload. Other than the fact that the DSL charge will go up to $19.99 upon renewal, it's done nothing but get less expensive. My only grip is that on the rare occasion when I have to call customer service, I have to deal with some off-shore help center. I always demand level two support immediately.
www.itjerk.com
FYI, there are two VoIP codecs which are common: G711 is relatively uncompressed, and when Ethernet overheads are included, comes out to about 80K per stream (yes, much more than POTS). G729a is highly compressed, and runs about 8K. There is a significant MOS score difference between the two codecs, and many IP Telephony add-ons (lots of voice mail, for instance) requires G711.
-David
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
I used to have DSL- yeah you had to have a POTS to sign up but I cancelled that 8 seconds after the loser installer left the house. They never followed up to see if I kept the POTS. If there's any industry that needs a shakeup it's the telecom one- those early days of small companies offering internet access and the hope (make that a dream) of equal access need to stange a comeback. I will never get any product via AT&T but I do wish they'd start challenging the cable companies so both of these butthead monopolies would start to compete.
There was a time, before the FCC reneged on Local Loop Unbundling, when some of the "premium" DSL services (e.g. Speakeasy) would sell you 'naked' DSL service, without a POTS line, I'm pretty sure. I think there was a price premium for it over bundled service, but it wasn't as bad as POTS service in some cases, if you had zero need for local dialtone. I looked into it, because I was in a house for a while that had copper running out to it, but no local service. (I would have been a good candidate, but unfortunately after a lot of hemming and hawing with the local telco, they said they couldn't do it. Somehow the line-foot estimates were off and it was just too far.)
So I'm stuck with Comcast.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You can get 100/10mbit/s here (in Finland) for about $40/m.
100+10 = 110 - Total bandwidth.
0.128 + 0.768 = 0.896 - Total bandwidth.
110mbit/$40 = 2.75mbit/$ - How much penis a buck buys you.
0.896/$10 = 0.0896mbit/$ - How much penis a buck buys you.
2.75-0.0896 = 2.6604 - Calculating the difference.
2.6604/2.75 = 96.7418182% - The difference (per cent).
The ultimate conclusion: Newsworthy DSL deals in the US tend to suck nearly twice as much as the better deals in some random country (Sweden has even BETTER deals).
I didn't even consider all the silly bandwidth limitations or the actual price ($35) as some users pointed out, which would make it suck thrice as much. I'd expect more of a country that created this wonderful thing called Internet. What's the reason behind this? Sorry if this post offended anyone ): 3.
Ever notice how high speed internet connections are always sold as "up to" so-and-so speed? That doesn't mean anything to me - I want to know the lowest it can go and the typical up/down speeds. I'm just glad my salary isn't an "up to".
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
But they're not the only options for service, even if they're the only ones bringing wire to your house. There are lots of non-facilities-based broadband carriers that provide the upstream Internet connectivity and resell the telco access - I use Sonic.net, and a number of friends use Speakeasy, and there are numerous others. And there are other carriers like Covad who rent the copper from the telco and provide their own DSLAMs over it, either selling directly or selling to the non-facilities-based carriers who offer them as well as telco service.
For basic service, the resellers and niche ISPs usually cost more than the telco, though they're usually giving you a real price and not some three-month-trial rate. But if you want static IP addresses, you'll find that most of the telco services end up charging just as much as the resellers, even though their actual _costs_ are probably lower. Another big difference is policies about things like running servers; many of the resellers are quite upfront about "yes, we're giving you *Internet* access, not just couch-potato consumer service", and you can do anything except spam and maybe run some kinds of IRCbots. By contrast, telco and cable broadband providers used to have policies against using multiple computers on the same connection, or using wireless, or required you to use PPPoE which they wouldn't support on Mac or Linux (even though there's perfectly adequate Linux client.)
They also tend to give you better customer service - more responsive and more competent. It's not always faster for repairs - I've had DSL go out three or four times in the last 5 years, once because the DSL modem failed (they helped me diagnose it, and shipped me a replacement box next day), and a couple of times because some telco installer did something in one of the junction boxes down the road (the ISP was probably a bit slower at getting it fixed than going directly to the telco would have been, but reaching the ISP's techs was a lot faster which helped make up for it, and the last time that happened I could use a neighbor's wireless to stay on the net.)
In some places, there's cellular-phone wireless data (everybody hates their cellphone companies also, and most of them want to charge you old-pager-service pricing per KB, or not let you connect your phone to your PC.) And there's satellite service (which has technical limitations due to the geosynchronous-orbit hop, but I'm not going to say they suck, because you knew it was satellite when you ordered it, and you probably bought it because it was the only thing you could get other than paying business prices for a telco T1 circuit.)
Oh god, here we go again with the geographic dispersion argument. Stop it already. Even in densely packed urban areas in the US we still can't get broadband as fast as they do in other developed nations. So your argument is crap. We deserve better after all the hundreds of dollars per capita we've thrown at the telecommunications companies through our tax dollars. Don't forget that.
This is really perfect for my needs. I already use my neighbors' wireless and high-speed cable connection for things like bittorrent anyway. I just need something that's always on that I can configure for port forwarding so I can ssh in to my desktop when I need to.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Manhattan still doesn't have fast enough broadband to rival a Swedish village. You tell me if it's a fair comparison.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
My home and residential neighborhood were built in 1973. A state highway with the highest traffic flow in Illinois (Il-159) passes just 200 yards from my home. The Metro East area across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, MO has a population of well over 200,000 yet since 1992 I've been unable to order anything but POTS from Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T. "Not currently available" is the perennial status. The cold hard truth is that AT&T refuses to upgrade its physical plant from the classic copper-based exchange-centric service model. Oh, for years they've made widely-publicized promises of universal broadband service to the Illinois legislature, then refused to install the fiber-connected satellite equipment needed to expand DSL coverage beyond the 16,000-odd cable feet radius limits around their existing dial central offices (exchanges). A pin map shows that AT&T offers DSL service ONLY within those areas served by their existing copper cable plants, and they don't give a damn about investing in the infrastructure needed for universal service. They just keep milking that ol' copper cable plant for all it's worth.
that this service is going to be the one of the new monitored systems to help stop movie and music pirating. You like AT&T filtering your traffic at the request of hollywood? F*CK THAT!
IMHO AT&T became a 'no touch' in my book when they announced they'd be helping hollywood. Yea, good job AT&T, make the net less effective and while your at it, monitor everything your customers are doing so Bush can whip out his jedi mind tricks and pull another WMD senario.
A ssholes
T yranny
&
T otal domaination
AT&T is not AT&T now, because the name was sold to SBC. My understanding is that the SBC trademark was worse than useless because the company is so abusive. So, the managers decided to use another name.
Those interested in how that happened can watch Stephen Colbert explain in a 1 minute 14 second video: The New AT&T.
SBC taking the name AT&T is, in my opinion, a kind of legal fraud, but fraud nevertheless. People are bound to be confused and misled. AT&T had a very good reputation. SBC-AT&T is a completely different company, and has no connection in its culture with the old AT&T. At the very least, the SEC should require the company to disclose in the first sentence of any prospectus for its stock that there is no connection whatsoever.
The growth in market capitalisation, in this case, apparently does not necessarily mean success. The growth is only because SBC is buying companies. (I have done little research on the history of SBC, so I say apparently.) So, there is a huge potential for investors to be fooled.
The recent history of the former AT&T is interesting. David Dorman, a manager who presided over the failure of his company made $30 million from selling the company to other managers who are reputed to be just as inept and corrupt.
The Wikipedia article says, "Dorman's management finesse can be ascertained by tracking the value of AT&T stock during his tenure." Dorman became president in 2000, Wikipedia says. The stock performance tanked beginning just before that, and continued down until the AT&T name was sold to SBC.
Is this a correct summary of the story? The suspicion is certainly raised that the former AT&T manager got $30 million for reducing the value of his company so that the cost to the buyer, SBC, would be less.
http://sf.meraki.net/overview
From Meraki's home page: I'm in !
Hooray for Maps!
I have an idea! Let's merge AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon, so they can "better leverage economies of scale!" Then the sons of the lawyers of the early '80's breakup can do it all over again.
The 21st century might be the Age of the Oligopoly. 3-5 competitors = just enough to avoid pure monopoly considerations in name, but a little collusion keeps them all the same.
The tricky part is figuring out the playoffs between the chunk of "telephone" companies and "cable" companies. Comcast is pretty big too. So a consumer's choice is only "one member of each of two oligopolies".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Of course it should have-- it was a blantant troll!
And I wasn't attempting to use an acronym-- the OTHER reason people sometimes capitalize words is for EMPHASIS.
But keep reading, you'll get there
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I have ATT (one other choice in the area is accounts managed by Comcast so internet alone would run $80 a month). The trick is to get the lowest possible phone line you only get a few calls a month with it which is fine (you can use vonage, grandcentral or other such services). They of course will jerk you around and try to sell you more phone service than you need. I got signed up with no problems but the installation tech didn't show up during his 4 hour window. So I called told them I was going back to work and he couldn't show up until after 4 and he needed to call before he came. He didn't call when he showed up but he did call to ask why I wasn't there for my appointment. I told him to call his office they had a message for him. I eventually got the installation fee waved after a few trips between billing, customer service and a large conference call with people from 3 different departments. Back when I signed up they were offering a cash card to offset the installation fee (so yes I got free installation and the card) when I signed up I was told I would get a $100 card. When I got the form for the card it was only for $50 I called and complained. They said they would credit my account for $50 (I made the CS worker stay on the line while I checked my online bill). I filled the card form out mailed it in and eventually received a $100 card (plus the credit). When I signed up they said I could combine my billing with my Cingular phone and monthly discount. When I called to get that they said they couldn't since I didn't actually have an ATT phone number, I protested and they said I still had a Bell number it hadn't been switched to ATT. That call ended in a conference call between them, me and Cingualr, they could do nothing. A few weeks later I was at the Cingular store so I asked, they lady there said she couldn't help that ATT in our state couldn't combine and she was receiving about 10 complaints a day.
I ordered DSL because their website said I was close enough, but when they came out to hook me up they said they couldn't because I was "homed" to a different CO too far away. It was then explained to me that even though there is a CO less than a mile from where I live I couldn't have my line moved to it because that CO was already at max capacity.
Why would you *need* to continue to update every time a new version of your favorite linux distro comes out? Even if you did have an itch for the 'latest and greatest', you can buy the disk for a minimal amount ( or free, if you use u(k)buntu. Microsoft sells cds of updates for a small fee. So its still not a deal killer.
The average person doesn't care much about 'media rich', they check their email and do the occasional on line shopping. So it takes bit longer to download that youtube video, but once its cached it plays fine.
I still don't feel that the average Joe will care that much. And once the feds crack down on content, he will care even less. If they end up using net-terminals and renting their apps like the Microsofts of the world want, it really wont matter then.
But, that's just me, your view of the future may vary.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't see any reason why what you said, which I think is correct to some degree, means that what I said is wrong. I am speaking about the management and management attitudes, and you are speaking about working for the network as an employee.
First off, it was virtually impossible to actually find the page. I finally had to go over to Google and do a search for the exact page(ie - you practically have to scan/crawl their entire site to find it!)
THEN I put in my number. It jams. It seems as if it will only "check" your availability if you are a current customer. Same with Bell south. So essentially you have to call them directly and confirm with an operator that it is possible in your area. But it says online ordering only - so you have to go through that as well.
Finally, as others have pointed out, they often tell you that the local connection point is full. Call them again asking for normal service and presto - hey - they have space.
It's such a typical ploy by them to skate around the law. Sure they offer it. Good luck getting it, though.
Last time I inquired about one of these (similar) offers, I was told there was no support for Linux, there were no Linux DSL modems (available from them), each of my computers had to have a separate modem (versus networking them), there was a $50 charge for self-installation per modem, there was a penalty for dropping the service, at the end of the promotional period it would cost me $49.95 per month to keep DSL--and I could not go back to my "legacy" dialup connection. Does anyone know what the details are for Linux users under the current offer? Cost is an issue because we are a low-income household (one of us is disabled).
Sorry for being 2 weeks late. Whats a linux dsl modem? Are you talking about the internal ones they havent been selling anymore for years now? Nowadays external modem just merely convert ATM to ethernet, and you connect to your standard nic to use your protocol stack of choice, PPPOE/A or whatever.