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.'"

Comments

And what's to stop them from...

[bluemonq]

...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?

Re:And what's to stop them from...

[latras]

But at $10/month, if you can get even 128k, then that's a win. Since nowadays, dialup service is $9.95/mo. plus with not having to wait for the connection to establish, etc.

Re:And what's to stop them from...

[lord sibn]

Hehe, "Linux ISO." *wink wink*

If it were free it would still be overpriced

[javakah]

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.

Re:If it were free it would still be overpriced

[tknd]

I hate dealing with both the phone companies and the cable companies. I only have two options where I live: ATT or Timewarner. I think both companies are equally incompetent and the services are crap. For example ATT phone bills don't make much sense and have lots of additional charges. If there is a technical problem, they will charge you an arm and a leg. Meanwhile, Timewarner prices are too high and they will only offer lower rates as long as you purchase more services from them. Even then, the service you do get may have problems or have setup fees and miscellaneous tech charges associated with having some idiot tech come to your house just to flip a switch. (Side note: we all know that he's not really just flipping a switch, but rather intentionally making it so that only the cables connected to the TVs you asked are functional while the other cables are not!)

And because both companies know they're so close to having a monopoly over the services, they do not put any effort into making the service better. Instead they offer less service at cheaper prices and increase the top end service (which was really yesterday's normal service), call it "Pro" and charge an arm and leg for it. At the end of the day, no matter who's charging you, you're still paying a premium for poor service.

It's the new business strategy of America: don't hire engineers or researchers to improve your technology to have a superior product or service, instead just hire more marketers and business people to come up with new ways to sell the same crappy product.

Re:If it were free it would still be overpriced

[Reaperducer]

I've been with AT&T DSL for about a month. There were lots of problems getting it installed (turns out the problem was that none of the four telephone lines to my apartment were physically hooked up, but only the last tech bothered to go into the building's phone closet to check). But now that it's on, it works well.

I have a plethora of high-speed internet choices where I live. I went with AT&T because it offered twice the speed of Speakeasy and the other resellers at half the cost AND NO CONTRACT. That was the big problem I had with most of the resellers.

Another option would have been Comcast, but the Comcast lady told me that cable internet doesn't work with Macs (which I know is a lie because I've had Roadrunner in the past). She said if I can't install Comcast's software on Windows XP I can't have internet.

In the end, I'm paying around $25/month for three megabits from AT&T that work fine so far. Comcast would have been six megabits, but for $75/month.

I have a lot of reasons to hate the beast that is Southwestern Bell/SBC/AT&T/Ameritech/MegaGiantConHugeCo, but this time around I'm moderately pleased.

Re:If it were free it would still be overpriced

[Reaperducer]

Funny. My AT&T heartache story has to do with moving, too.

I moved from the third floor to the fourth floor of a builiding. AT&T wouldn't move my phone service insisting that there is no fourth floor in my building. AT&T claimed it was only a two-story building, which doesn't explain how it was able to hook up phone my original service on the third floor. AT&T refused to send someone out to verify the building had four stories. One hypothesis they proffered was that it was a new building. Nope. The building is older than AT&T.

I ended up getting Roadrunner and Vonage since AT&T for some reason didn't want my money.

That price is basically a lie.

[Kadin2048]

From TFA:

Local phone service and a one-year contract are required.

$10/mo my ass. You have to sign up for a POTS line with them, and I'm willing to bet that's going to be at least another $10, not counting all the taxes, fees, and bullshit they attach on to that. ("Cost recovery fee" my ass. Do they still have that one?) And if you already have AT&T for your POTS line, then you're screwed! You're not eligible for the price anyway.

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.)

Re:That price is basically a lie.

[Constantine XVI]

If you re-read the TFA, it also said:

who have never had AT&T or BellSouth broadband

Re:That price is basically a lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's $10 a month, with an additional feature of sending all your packets directly to the NSA at no extra charge!

Oh yeah, you can't opt out of that feature. It's a bundle.

Worthless

[Lord Ender]

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.

Re:Worthless

[jc42]

Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point, ...

Except that many people (more every week) live in areas where the only ISP is the phone company, and they block user-level VoIP (while using it internally themselves).

In such a situation, all the clues in the world won't get you what you want.

It's the old "If you don't like it, you can move."

Re:Worthless

[Wilk4]

"Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point..."

Kind of arrogant aren't you? (oh, yeah, this is /. ;-)

Hate to tell you, but lots of people who have clues don't use VoIP and don't really want to, myself included. DSL for a regular phone line + net access works great, phones are cheap, and I have a working phone when the power goes out. (if you're close enough to the phone company office as I am anyway).

So why do you think VoIP is so freakin' mandatory for the clue-full?

Plenty fast for most people

[EmbeddedJanitor]

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.

Random thought.

[iamdrscience]

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.

Re:Breaking AT&T news:

[WrongSizeGlass]

I just pooped my cute little pants. Then I guess right now DSL means do some laundry to you.

Au Contraire

[SpaceLifeForm]

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.

Re:Au Contraire

[Anonymous Coward]

$27 for shipping? Are they out of their fucking minds? For $27, I expect it to be hand delivered to me same-day by a hot female courier, with a big ol' sloppy blowjob thrown in to boot.

Re:Au Contraire

[wirelessbuzzers]

That's the "handling" part.

Which states?

[thc69]

A quantity of states is provided in numeric form, but how about a list?

Re:Which states?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Nevada, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee

Link

[g0dsp33d]

Its there for anyone signing up, as its on their page.

I'm still stuck on crappy dialup or one way services. :(.

For voip??

[Tmack]

FTFA:

However, at 768 kbps, the download speed may be too low to appeal to the relatively sophisticated customers who use the Internet for phone calls

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

Not a bad option

[nurb432]

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?

Cost in Chicago

[djfake]

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.

G711

[thegameiam]

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

Re:cheap prices mean nothing...

[HikingStick]

What was that last article, US is now 24 in the list of nations for good broadband all over? Every year we keep dropping?

While I take no exception to most of your observations, I must ask if the ranking to which you refer is a fair comparison. Compared to most nations of the world (excluding Russia), we have a huge geographic dispersion of our population. Sure, we may have greater population densities on the coasts (where broadband has become ubiquitous), but you cannot make an apples-to-apples comparison of the United States to most other countries in such rankings. Most European nations are only as large as some American states (no offense intended to European /.ers), bringing to bear a greater population density which makes a broader deployment easier in many regards.

Re:cheap prices mean nothing...

[The One and Only]

Manhattan still doesn't have fast enough broadband to rival a Swedish village. You tell me if it's a fair comparison.

AT&T's cherry picking service model

[kaaona]

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.

Re:Other problems

[gavink42]

Okay, working for a telco, I throw the bull$hit flag on this one! DSL is either available to your cable pair, or it's not. It's all based on your distance from the CO or SLC DSLAM.

So, unless you're getting your dial tone FX'd in from another CO, as long as your pair is qualified as good (distance and not loaded), it doesn't matter what your phone number is! Heck, we even have people with ported numbers and DSL on their line!