Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Begins a Trial To Cap, Meter Internet Usage
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of Comcast's decision to implement a 250-GB monthly cap, and Time Warner Cable's exploration of caps and overage fees, DSL Reports notes that AT&T is launching a metered billing trial of their own in Reno, Nevada. According to a filing with the FCC (PDF), AT&T's existing tiers, which range from 768 kbps to 6 Mbps, would see caps ranging from 20 GB to 150 GB per month. Users who exceed those caps would pay an additional $1 per gigabyte, per month."
Next month: Slashdot meters trolls posts. Only one per day, or you get charged $4/troll.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
At least they should be required by law to use sarcastic air quotes when they say "Unlimited." I don't buy their attempts to redefine "Unlimited", either. That's pretty much my definition of "Consumer fraud".
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about software updates? I'm just curious if software sellers will be coerced into offering quality software on the original install disks, or mailed updates, instead of just expecting that every user will happily download 1/4 of their monthly cap just to keep software current.
When your bandwidth cap is exceeded your ports are all shut except 80. Your web browser can only get AT&T's page. You have options to (a) pay for another XXX GB of transfer or (b) upgrade your plan.
It ain't all that hard to do this. Making people pay a dollar-per-gigabyte without giving them notice that they've exceeded their limit is clearly not informing the user.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
-- thinkyhead software and media
So now they will need to monitor the amount of bandwidth you use, set up a database to keep track of it, change their billing software so it can deal with variable billing, and verify that the customer actually paid the (variable) correct amount. All to collect a few bucks from a few customers.
There's a reason the phone companies go to unlimited calling plans. It means they save big bucks on the hardware and software needed to keep track of your usage. Those systems are not cheap and they eat into the computing power that could be used for routing calls. So instead they jack up your bill by the average amount you would spend, and let you go to town. They still get the money, but they don't have to maintain (as much of) a billing system.
AT&T will try this for a while, realize it's a losing proposition that annoys their customers, and go back to the way it was.
(This assumes rational behavior, of course. That is definitely not a given)
I'm fine with schemes like this provided the ISP makes it perfectly clear and obvious when you sign up what your download limitations are and the costs of running over. This allows consumers to make an educated choice about which provider they want to use. Unfortunately, I see this being shoved in the fine print while still advertising "unlimited" internet access. I mean, we are dealing with telecom companies here. I know my bill is a surprise about every other month after all the "taxes and fees" are tacked on to the advertised base price...
That's all well and good in markets where customers actually have a choice. In the markets where the options are Cable Company A or dial-up, the heavy internet-usage customers lose out and end up paying the exorbitant price of $1 per gigabyte.
...or charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
One upside to a unilateral application of bandwidth billing by the ISPs: The implications for Botnets and other malware.
- It provides a financial incentive to users to get their machines cleaned out and keep them that way.
- It provides an easily measurable cost of the traffic imposed by malware, which can then be used in prosecutions against those who deploy and use it.
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Nothing to do with net neutrality as long as you meter all traffic the same way.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
At 1Mbyte per sec, its 250000 seconds worth, or about 30 days worth.
Nice try, but you're off by, oh, an order or two of magnitude...
At 1Mbyte/sec, you're looking at less than 3 days until you hit the 250GB cap.
At the same rate, it would be less than 6 hours until the 20GB cap would be hit (although presumably plans with that much bandwidth would have higher caps.)
charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
I'm a female troll, you insensitive clod!
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
From extensive research on the behavior of modern ISP's, I can answer all of your questions with 100% certainty, including the one you didn't type out:
- Yes, Hell yes.
- You can't.
- They will.
- Of course.
- Lube will cost extra.
Speaker wire is the reason "unlimited" will never exist in pure form. The same people who purchase $8,000 speaker wires are quite convinced that even if they were capped at 1TB/hour for their holographic porn, it would still be a curly hair shy of the real thing.
I'd have no problem with capped download if the cap decayed at a sensible exponential rate, the same way that gmail's free storage ticks ever upward. If the cap doubled every two years (corresponding to a 40% annual cost reduction in the cost of carrying traffic, which I'm certain the optical portions of the backbone achieve), then ten years from now, the current monthly cap would have evolved into the daily cap. At that rate, you're already watching a three hour HD movie every day of your life, or multibooting every Linux distro that every existed at the same time onto your 256 core processor.
Depending on the cost of your speaker wire, this might or might not suffice.
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting? Let logged-in users check the checkbox and post 'anonymously', but keep ramifications for people's actions. It would solve this BS troll problem once and for all, since persistent trollers could eventually end up with such negative karma that they couldn't post for a month.
Everyone wins.
I'm fine with schemes like this provided the ISP makes it perfectly clear and obvious when you sign up what your download limitations are and the costs of running over. This allows consumers to make an educated choice about which provider they want to use.
Most customers have no idea what 50GB or 150GB monthly caps would mean. I definitely wouldn't expect my mom to be able to make an educated choice about usage caps.
Hell, I'm good with PCs and I don't know how much bandwidth I would need in a month. How many people would really know how much bandwidth they use when you consider flash advertisements, youtube, etc.?
I noticed that here in Pittsburgh, we have a relatively new entrant into the DSL space (Cavtel) who are offering the maximum possible speeds(up to 8 Mb/s, depending on line quality) with no caps and no tiers and they advertise a price lower than Verizon's 3 Mb/s service. Basically, they set themselves up as a CLEC and have access to the last-mile copper and their own backbone (probably transit) links.
I wonder if the caps will make it profitable for more of this type of activity to take place? Could we see some alternative DSL providers open up shop?
True. But they won't meter all traffic the same way. Movies on "ATT Movies" won't count against the tier. They will partner with lets say Amazon for unmetered music downloads. In all practicality,, this is the end of net-neutrality.
Nothing to do with net neutrality as long as you meter all traffic the same way.
The next step is clearly going to be "free" downloads from paying partners.
Unless there is a radical change in direction, I give it no more than 2 years before we see the first such offering.
$1/gigabyte is just too prohibitive in a market where netflix and others are offering pseudo-HDTV movie downloads to anyone with a game console, the time is coming.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So why don't we get together and start municipal fiber projects in our respective towns? I mean, municipalities can get cheap bonds to build out the infrastructure, and than let companies sell internet access over the fiber (similar to how Speakeasy/Covad can sell ILEC DSL lines). Are we not tired of this bullshit yet?
And if you think they are going to meter their partners (aka : people who pay them money), you should share what you're smoking. Barring regulation forcing them to meter everything, this is a direct path to the end of net neutrality.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yeah but that's communism and evil and prevents competition.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time.
And I thought you were just saving bytes to avoid the cap.
I particularly like "caps ranging from 20 to 150 gigabytes per month, depending on which service speed tier a customer signs up for (AT&T offers DSL tiers ranging from 768kbps to 6Mbps)." If they were really doing caps to keep the internet faster for everyone because they cannot handle the traffic they would cap everyone at 150 GB. But no, they are shrinking the cap based on your connection. They want more people to hit to hit the cap so they can charge a premium. Otherwise people might just buy the less expensive connections so that they never hit their cap. I mean if they are capping me at 150 then I don't need 6 Mbps per month, I'm more likely to hit the cap, I would buy a slower link. But to stop me from doing that they are nice enough to lower the cap on slower connections to make sure I hit it. This is hardly fair.
it's funny as hell to see so many people talking seriously about how many gigs / months you can download, or about municipal fiber. i live in romania, and i bet 99% of you don't know where that is. the lowest plan comes with unlimited internet, 100 mbps metropolitan download, tv, and a phone with unlimited calls in the same network, all for about 15 euros. competition is a beautiful thing, isn't it? the only competition americans get is how companies get to screw you harder.
funny pics