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AT&T On Data Throttling: Blame Yourselves
zacharye writes in with a story about Senior EVP of AT&T technology and network operations John Donovan's blog post detailing why customers with unlimited smartphone plans are getting throttled. "In an effort to justify its policies surrounding data service throttling for subscribers with unlimited smartphone data plans, AT&T on Tuesday issued a brief report regarding data usage on its nationwide wireless network. Senior EVP of AT&T technology and network operations John Donovan wrote on a company blog that data traffic on AT&T's network has grown a staggering 20,000% over the past five years. Usage has doubled between 2010 and 2011 according to the executive, due in large part to the proliferation of smartphones. AT&T sold more smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in any other quarter in its history. And because its smartphone subscribers use so much data, AT&T seems to suggest it has no choice but to put measures such as data throttling in place."
...for trying to use the product they bought.
AT&T needs to learn from the insurance companies - the REAL profit is in selling a product you never intend to deliver.
This space available.
If their infrastructure wasn't up to it, why didn't they throttle sales of smartphones?
Alternatively, they could not sell a service they can't actually deliver. Crazy, I know.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
for your selling of a product and features that we will use? FU
Looks like ATT didn't plan or execute their long term strategy well. And they wonder why they weren't allowed to buy T-Mobile
I agree with him. They only have themselves to blame for picking AT&T in the first place.
If they wanted good honest service then they had every reason to believe that AT&T was the last place they would find it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
so selling it as unlimited is fraud.
For purchasing too much of their product? Why are they selling a service they can't provide?
Dont use data! Wifi only people.. if we all do so together for a week, they wil be forced to start charging less for something that costs them less to use in the first place. yes your texts and FB posts all use less data than a simple 2min phone call. so why are you paying for it?
In one of the rare moments of clarity our federal government has, they told AT&T to spend some of the cash they wanted to use to buy out competition to expand their infrastructure instead (there was a link on slashdot a while ago).
Seems like they do have a choice, but aren't willing to do anything but screw their customers.
Bonus points if the relevant voice from the Princess Bride read the post title to you.
I cannot believe that any sane company would simply ignore that it is falling behind and instead punish its customers for attempting to use its service.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is like selling 5,000 tickets to a show that can only host a thousand people, and blaming the people who complain about not getting what the paid for.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
It is called build up your damn infrastructure. Stop taking our money and using it to give the excutives bonuses, and start investing in infrastructure. They get gobs of tax breaks and straight up funding to build infrastructure.
Now they have the gall to complain about folks actually using the unlimited data plan they get sold, because they have not properly built up their infrastructure. Fuck them. Fuck them in the skull.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I like the way AT&T mandates that all smart phones on their network have a data plan. God forbid someone have a smart phone, do smart phone stuff over wifi, and just use it as a regular phone the rest of the time not eating into AT&T's precious bandwidth.
If they're selling more smart phones than they ever have... and they're overselling their resources, which they seem to know they're doing... why not just upgrade the network?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Can't they solve it with a free market solution? Or I us somebody going to blame obstructive government regulations?
Call me crazy but the billions of dollars you were going to spend on the t-mobile acquisition...dump that into improving your infrastructure. The heavy user of today will be the average user tomorrow.
Sounds like AT&T has only itself to blame.
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
so you have a product that people want in record nubmers but your response is to punish them; sounds like it's akin to the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Logic does not seem strong with this one.
1) Provide unlimited data
2) Sell people devices to use said data
3) Take away unlimited data because people are using it.
Unlimited data was (I think) introduced with the original iPhone in 2007 (or at least that's when a lot of people got the plan). AT&T then continued to grandfather people with the plan as they renewed their contracts. And now that we've been paying AT&T for 4.5 years of unlimited service, they are taking it away because our devices made it easier to consume the data.
I'm sure by the data usage models AT&T was using 4 years ago, they didn't think people would use all that much data with their phones. But companies like Apple and Google have made cooler services and made it easier to use bandwidth. Now AT&T is calling foul? AT&T should either stop grandfathering the plan forward or leave us alone.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Seriously, they stated the top 5% in congested markets would be throttled, which would be fine, if they utilized the actual top 5%. Not the arbitrary number they pulled out of their ass that stated the top 5% used approx 2G of traffic.
Yet they are selling tiered plans with 3G caps.. If throttling should occur, it should not start until the 3G mark.
I was going to go on a rant, but I have been ranting about this shit for months now every since I found out about the throttling, and ended up being throttled at 2.2G.. in the DC area, I seriously doubt 2.2G is even close to the users in the top 5% for the DC Metro area.
This is strictly a money play, ATT can go fuck themselves for all I care.... The only reason I stay with them.. is because when I am not throttled, I get between 30 and 50mbit rates on the LTE network in DC... Verizon does not even come close, and I hate Verizon more than I hate ATT..
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Upgrading your crappy network?
So we buy the phones you want us to buy and actually USE them and you want to blame us for that? Talk about insane. The genie's long been out of the bottle, AT&T - get real and build up your infrastructure to handle the massive smartphone use you're going to be seeing more and more of in the next ... well, the next forever.
Since they have no choice but to throttle the plan, I have no choice but to switch providers.
So what business is AT&T in. If they cannot honour contracts they have with their customers, they should get out of the business. When you try and cancel a contract with them they sure charge a lot of penalties. The FCC needs to look at this. The FCC should tell them to provide the service they committed to or they will lose their cellular and data frequency licenses. That would wake them up. If we all start calling the FCC at the number on their market disputes page maybe they would take notice. http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/market-disputes-resolution-division
standard /. car analogy for AT&T mgmt:
1. The new Ford Focus seems to be selling well. .....
2. I know, lets manufacturer fewer of them!
3.
4. Profit!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I am so sick of watching commercials, doesn't matter which carrier, of watch this, watch that, surf, surf, surf, unlimited (sort of), etc, etc, etc. Then they turn around and blame the users, their customers? Build a better network and quit bitching. Better yet, stop telling your customers they should really use your network and we are the fastest, the best, more coverage when there are plans to limit use not encourage it. Truth in advertising needs to make a come back and have some bite. Corporatocracy needs to end and consumer rights re-emerge as the standards bearer.
The problem is not throttling per se, but that the threshold for reaching throttling on an "unlimited" account is *lower* than on a tiered plan (the top 5% is allegedly between 1.6 GB and 1.8 GB), and that using a sliding metric will trend usage downward over the long term. People will be fearful of reaching the throttling threshold, and so they will be unreasonably conservative in their use, which in turn lowers the bar for what constitutes the top 5%. Theoretically, "unlimited" could eventually be even more limited than a 200MB plan.
Obviously the best (and only) way to push back is to use as much data as possible on an unlimited plan, driving the ceiling upwards.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
IT IS A LIE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
"unlimited", "infinite" and the various other terms used to define "limitless" services should be BANNED.
They are an outright lie that has been abused by pretty much every industry.
If I actually get an unlimited package, then damn it, I expect to be able to download the entire internet on it at full bandwidth until completion.
But I don't. I pay for a capacity which I know I stick to, with a backup of an extra 40gigs if I do go over on the months where I am consuming a little more, only for an extra £5.
I pay for electricity I use. I pay for gas I use. I don't pay for others use of the service through some crap flat-rate nonsense. It is a broken model.
AND I AM HAPPY WITH THAT.
I don't like being lied to. I want to know exactly how much I can use of a service. If I don't get that, then they can go the hell away since I don't want to do any business with liars everywhere.
Same goes with the whole "All you can eat" thing. If I can't eat the very store itself, NO DEAL.
It should already be banned under advertising standards to be honest. It still isn't even in the UK, which is annoying since we made such a huge fuss about it with help from The Gadget Show campaign and many others.
Me thinks another campaign is needed. I'm getting sick of seeing this unlimited making a comeback again.
Funny enough, my data usage has plummeted.
I only use it now for email and GPS navigation. If I could, I'd drop to a 50MB plan since I only use about 5-10MB a month.
Even when I did use it a lot, and would use it for everything since I got a free upgrade to 5GB, I would only end up using
1-2GB on months when I did my app updates away from home.
What the hell have you people been doing?
Thats like blaming rape victim for not putting out.
And they should invest in some new machinery.
I was going to post the same thing. "She was dressed slutty!"
1. Sell tons of smart phones.
2. Discover that the infrastructure is overtaxed.
3. Blame the customers.
4. Profit?!?!?!
AT&T broke your contract.
So... cancel! We have a consumer driven economy. AT&T is too big anyway. Cancel your acount!
Consumer action works. When GoDaddy's CEO sponsored SOPA we dropped GODADDY! Look at the results!
So Cancle your AT&T contract due to the fact that the contract is null and void!
Just don't advertise your data plans as "unlimited"
When in the end it gets throttled and the extreme end your service gets cut. Poor and misleading choice of marketing words
And this is one of the reasons why I stay with Sprint. Yea, they have a a more limited coverage and WiMax is slower then LTE but their unlimited data plans are truly unlimited.
A phone plan that filters all ads at the central office end would cut way down on over-the-air bandwidth.
20,000 % is 200 times. That's not a lot when you're considering total data, and not just maximum theoretical speed. For a start, if I use something everyday now that, five years ago, I only used one a month, that's 30 times more data already.
But it would be a lot in speed capability. The mobile I had when I was a kid years ago could only handle GSM data (i.e. 9600 bps at best at the time). If that speed had increased 20,000%, I'd have a 230Gbytes/s phone today.
I'm sorry but it's just poor planning. You know exactly how many customers you have and are likely to have. You know exactly what the theoretical maximum of those phones are. You know exactly what the average person will do (slowly use it more as time passes and upgrades pass by). Yet you still sell an unlimited package.
It's just bad business, but they don't want to admit that, like the small businesses that let Groupon sell 20,000 coupons for a free cupcake, etc. You didn't plan. You didn't extrapolate. You didn't price your products properly. You didn't expand the capability of your network. You didn't do anything that I would expect a large business like AT&T to do.
Ramp your prices up. Then wait for your customers to see all those Japanese telco's that give everyone huge allowances at top data rates for manageable prices on both mobile and fixed-line broadband. I don't care about your bad business planning, all I look for is value-for-money. If you can't provide it, I won't buy from you. If I do buy from you, I expect to get what I bought without any wording-tricks and revisions of the contracts. How hard is this to understand?
I recently changed cell providers to Sprint. My number one criteria when shopping for new cell service was "anybody but AT&T"
Complain.
Complain to the FCC, FTC, BBB, etc ...
Some other places
There used ot be a website called "Hear me now." or something and I can't find it - at least from Google.
Write letters to AT&T.
Make a stink everywhere.
You bitched here on Slashdot? Just do the same thing everywhere else.
Stick to the facts and they won't dare sue. If they did, then every little nitty gritty detail about their business proactices will come to light - especailly to their competitors.
They can't have that.
...finally STFU about how "evil" regulation is when it comes to telecommunications companies? Your mythical "free market" has failed here. Utterly and completely. If there were a viable alternative, it would be kicking AT&T's ass by now (along with the rest of the telecom giants). Obscene profits and they still won't build out their infrastructure to support what they are selling. The word for that is "racket".
- Im not getting the service what i have paid for ! ........
- Blame yourselves
capitalism ? didnt it have a premise of trade, in which you paid for something, and you got it ? it seems, in capitalism, even the basic premise of capitalism does not work, unless you go socialist and put forth regulations and laws.
Read radical news here
Traffic shaping by ISPs seems to be the norm, but can they do deep packet inspection of encrypted SSL traffic like these programs can:
http://go.mail.ru/search?mailru=1&iewtf=%E2%98%A0&rch=e&q=ssl+packet+sniffer
That's the mark-up on text messages right?
AT&T buys all you can eat shrimp restaurant. Complains that it attracts too many fat people.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
I don't know if it was a local thing, or nation wide, but in the late 1990s, after AOL went to per-month rather than per-minute plans, they got hammered. You'd have to leave the machine re-dialing 'til you finally connected. So they had a 'no busy signal' promise.
Instead, they'd not connect a modem to the last number in the rollover, so it'd just ring and ring and never pick up .... but it wasn't the busy signal.
(disclaimer : in the late 1990s, I worked for a small regional ISP)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
that they could not deliver on. They sold more smart-phones then their system could handle even with overselling already calculated into the business model.
Unlimited - Last time I checked selling me a product that is unlimited and then reducing my unlimitidness is bait and switch.
Now maybe they're still looking at the Internet salesman book from the late 90's where Unlimited was referred to Unlimited access to the network not unlimited usage of the network.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
You DO have unlimited data......
Just not at unlimited speed
Am I missing something here?
Burma?
...instead of giving you a service you paid for, they're just going to say "fuck you". Don't you just love one sided contracts?
Hey AT&T, here's a novel idea, if you're selling all this crap and making all this money, INVEST IN YOUR GOD DAMN INFRASTRUCTURE TO HANDLE THE NEW USERS.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Example
2,000,000 million smart phones x $100 monthly payment = $200,000,000
$200,000,000 x 24 month contract = $4,800,000,000
I know AT&T has sold more than 2 million smart phones, so the overall number is a lot larger.
AT&T is saying it is the user's fault for buying a smart phone and is throttling customer's download speed.
AT&T how about you take some of the billions you make in profit and put it towards upgrading your archaic infrastructure?
Facts pulled from ATT.com 2011 4th Quarter Earnings Data
-For the quarter ended December 31, 2011, AT&T's consolidated revenues totaled $32.5 billion
-9.4 million smartphone sales
-Best-ever quarter for Android and Apple smartphones, including 7.6 million iPhone activations
-571,000 branded computing device (tablets, aircards, etc.) sales
"All right, this is it! I'll talk to this Humungus! He's a reasonable man open to negotiation."
As recently discussed here on /., AT&T is about to cash in big by shedding un-needed real estate.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/12/0340214/all-ip-network-produces-100b-real-estate-windfall
Perhaps they can use that money to build out their infrastructure. Build it to the point where they can actually deliver on unlimited smartphone data plans and watch the customer count soar as people flee other carriers that can't keep up. Seems like a smart business decision to me.
I don't know how long this hack will last but here's what I'm doing... I just went to StraightTalk.com, bought a Nokia E-71, activated it. (It's WalMart's $45.00 a month unlimited text, web and phone plan). Pulled the SIM card from the Nokia and put it in the iPhone. Turn on the WiFi connection on your iPhone. Using Safari, go to http://unlockit.co.nz. I changed my IMEI to ATT and BAM! Unlimited phone, web and text. I just pay 45.00 a month to WalMart. Just YouTube search for iPhone on Straight Talk. Works with the 4 too.
No way AT&T would stop selling smartphones as they are not adding any more bandwidth to their network...
the product must be consumed, but never at our expense.
expect the latest generation of slave-labor constructed smart phones to come out next week, and always remember to upgrade every two years regardless of the quality of your service. Finally, as a reminder: Your telephone, its screen size, and proprietary applications define your human worth regardless of your comprehension or our truthfulness in marketing.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Rogers and Bell has been pulling this s--- for a decade now, if not more, in Canada. And it's every bit as silly, and every bit as much "our fault".
I was reasonably happy with having a data plan for my iPad, but since it hurts AT&T so much to use data I'll learn to live without it and save a few bucks in the process.
That's bad news for AT&T, it's not an unlimited plan I'm dropping.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, I think I should go get the latest, greatest 4G phone from AT&T so I can hurry up and consume all my monthly bandwidth in a day or two. If things are so tough, why doesn't AT&T just downgrade their entire network back to EDGE and call it a day? I'm sure they can handle the bandwidth for that (maybe)...
I posted this the other day, but I'll post it again: AT&T is trying to fundamentally go against the basic tenets of Capitalism. And although it seems pretty well established at this point that Americans don't understand Capitalism, this is actually pretty easy to grok.
Capitalism 101 says that pricing acts as a regulator between supply and demand. AT&T is arguing that they have a supply problem. The capitalistic approach would be to price plans such that moderation would be rewarded, and excess would be limited. We would expect to see AT&T increasing data caps at the lower end to try to get more users onto those plans at a price they find equitable, to promote a more balanced usage pattern that includes cellular data and WiFi. Yet AT&T, has done the exact opposite. They have continued to increase prices on the low end, such that any user with even half a brain sees that the value proposition lies with the more expensive plan. The low end plans are NOT sufficient for even a near majority of users, by AT&T's own numbers (700MB - 1200MB per month average use).
It is ridiculous to believe that a company the size of AT&T doesn't understand basic Capitalism. The only other option is that they are lying. And their recent price hike disguised as a data cap expansion is proof. The "new" plans do nothing to ameliorate the proffered issue of too much data use, since they do not fundamentally change the value proposition of the data plans. Their continued insistence on pushing this particular narrative belies a strategy of thinking the American people are stupid. They might be right; but we'll know they aren't truthful until we see a FREE base plan that includes Visual Voicemail and AT&T WiFi access, and a $10-15 plan that includes 250MB-750MB.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
1. Sell tons of smart phones.
1a. Profit
2. Discover that the infrastructure is overtaxed.
2a. Profit some more from 'overage charges'
3. Blame the customers.
3a. Even more Profit while simultaneously screwing the few who were smart or lucky enough to have gotten an unlimited plan prior to the new "screw the customers as much as possible" policy took effect
4. ?!?!?!
4a. More inexplicable Profit derived from future morally questionable corporate ethic decisions
FTFY.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
AT&T has the second-best thing: SMS.
The funny thing is - they used to.
With iOS5, any iPhone owner who sends an SMS to another iPhone owner actually sends it through Apple, not over SMS! So suddenly the vast numbers of iPhones they are selling mean a dramatic drop in SMS revenue.
It makes you wonder if that's why the sudden squeeze in other areas, as they need to adjust for making less money from the same customer base.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OK, so here's the process as it is supposed to work:
This normally means that prices have downward pressure as your infrastructure gets paid for. In opposition to this is the upward pressure of the cost of investing profit into improved infrastructure. Generally, people do a good enough job at forecasting adoption rates, infrastructure costs, and other product costs to have prices drop over time. Failure to do so basically means you've screwed up pricing your product.
What they're claiming is that they have to limit the bandwidth because they don't have the infrastructure to support the level of average utilization they're seeing because they have the "problem" of too fast an adoption of their product (bandwidth). But the reality is this falls under the heading, "nice problems to have." They *should* be able to simply scale up the infrastructure to handle it, but they have not invested the required money and man-hours to do so fast enough to meet demand.
The difficulty is that what they sold people was "unlimited" data usage. Data usage is just bandwidth over time. You can't call it unlimited if your response to too much demand is to throttle what's supposedly unlimited. Hint: throttling is also called limiting bandwidth. Unlimited data usage != limited bandwidth.
Failure to plan and invest properly on their part does not free them from the obligations they've made to their customers.
-- Begin thoughtfuly, end insensitively.
It has more impact that way.
So even if it were not throttled, if it's an unlimited plan then who cares how many devices I'm using to take advantage of it. If I connect my tablet or netbook to my phone for access it shouldn't make a difference. Once again here is something that we, the unwitting public, have let them get away with.
Seriously, does AT&T think we can't compare the much larger data usage in Japan and South Korea in one day compared to their fake limited monthly caps?
It is to laugh.
Get real, AT&T.
Stop lying to the customers.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"It's not that we didn't maintain our infrastructure, or improve it, didn't do cost analysis on expected usage, expect that our heavily subsidized sales would result in an explosion of users, or were incapable to realizing that you would actually believe our marketing.
No, it's because YOU surf to too much."
Right. I have some wonderful retirement property in Death Valley I'll sell ya cheap.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
So let's talk truth (something AT&T has never been fond of).
20,000% - about the markup on a txt msg by the way.
But lets talk 4G. How much faster is 4G than 3G?
Cellular cost of service is tied to tower utilization cost - connectivity. When I connect and make a 60 minute phone call. I have put 60 minutes of draw on AT&T's celluar capacity.
AT&T makes the argument that if I download 100 MBs verus 1GB that clearly, we are talking about a 10 time utilization, right?
And at first it would appear to be so. But I call BS!!!!
If 4G offers 5x-10x the performance over the older 3G. That means I can download a 50MB-100MB file on 4G in the same time it used to take me to download a 10MB on 3G.
The amount of time I must be connected to the cell tower has been reduced by an order of magnitude (theoretically).
In which case, I am in fact not putting as much of a draw on AT&T's system. Now granted there are other aspects, theoretical performance is never the same as actual performance.
But AT&T's celluar system usage per MB has very likely gone down dramatically with 4G. And every 4G phone while it may be downloading twice as much content as a 3G user, it's in fact using less resources.
Something AT&T is NOT talking about.
Basically it sounds like "Well you only have yourselves to blame for buying so many of our products and for making our company grow so much. Its not our fault you are paying customers and we cant deliver good connection rates so we have to throttle all of you instead of trying to improve the quality on our end like a company that cares about its customers would do".
Bottom line is I have a smartphone and when my contract is up Im going back to a normal phone because data packages are too fucking expensive. There is no reason for me to be paying as much as I do simply for a phone. Im going back to just a standard phone and thats it. Ill use my current android on wifi or buy a tablet for browsing the net since its rare Im outside a wifi range of someplace for long.
perhaps they shouldn't sell more plans and phones than they are prepared to handel. The people signed up for, and should expect to get the plan they origionally signed up for. It's AT&T's job to work out the infrastructure needs to support that.
You think China and India are using copper?
Never buy the "premium" connection. You are just asking to be throttled. Instead, buy the "light" connection. You know, the one capped at 1Mbps. The one that's designed to sound like it's not enough for you, but in fact is plenty for you.
Why am I advocating the "light" connection? Because they have no incentive to throttle it. You are a small fish in a big pond, and therefore, you will get exactly what you pay for. Nothing more, but more importantly, nothing less.
With the premium connection, on the other hand, you have nowhere to go but down. Sometimes it pays to be a bottom feeder.
AT&T sold more smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in any other quarter in its history
So they should have enough money to make some upgrades to their infrastructure.
I've had an AT&T iPhone since the beginning, and have lived through their dicking around with their data plans. I was fine with the 200 MB plan and switching to the 2 GB plan when I go on vacation and consume a lot of data. With their latest data plan revisions, I will be locked out of my current 200 MB plan if I ever try to temporarily switch to a plan with increased capacity, and would have to switch back to the 300 MB plan which is $5 per month higher.
I live in a rural area that is slowly being upgraded to 3G. I propose the following: AT&T's data limits should only apply to 3G service. Anything downloaded over EDGE should be free. If you run out of your limited data plan, you should be able to switch to EDGE and download as much as you want. Texts should be free or something reasonable like $5 per month for 1,000 messages, not $20 per month for an unlimited plan. I'm tired of paying $80 per month for a phone I seldom talk on in order to get a limited data plan and texting capabilities.
Since I know they won't do this, I'm planning to switch to one of the MVNOs once my contract is up. Either Republic Wireless if they open their beta again, or TracFone's "bring your own phone" program which recently launched (yes, it uses AT&T's network, but at a lower cost to the consumer).
Sent from my iPhone
are you fucking kidding me? no, AT&T it's YOUR fault for wanting to be the exclusive iphone service contract. you can't tempt users with the promise they can use these devices like average computers and then dictate how they use data. if you can't provide the data, then you shouldn't have tried to monopolize the service contracts. go fuck yourselves.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
The mobile I had when I was a kid years ago could only handle GSM data (i.e. 9600 bps at best at the time). If that speed had increased 20,000%, I'd have a 230Gbytes/s phone today.
You're off by several orders of magnitude, as well as being wrong with simple integer multiplication.
9600 bps = 9.6 Kbps
9.6 * 200 = 1920 Kbps
1920 Kbps = 1.92 Mbps.
1.92Mbps != 230GB/sec. Not even close.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I have an unlimited plan, I use less than 100 megs a month and I am throttled, so it isn't always done by usage it seems to be a b;blanket throttle where I am.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Which costs more and which puts more stress on the wireless network:
1. A 1 kilobyte packet transmitted between my phone and the tower.
2. A 1 kilobyte packet transmitted between my phone and the tower.
(Please note in the case of (1) the packet was from my mobile browser, and in the case of (2) the packet was from my laptop browser.)
If I have a 2 GB monthly data limit, which of the following activities will use more data on the network:
1. Downloading 2 GB of data to my mobile phone?
2. Downloading 2 GB of data to my laptop?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If a data company throttles any data plan, they may only advertise what the lowest capped rate is. Actual rates may be included in the contract between the subscriber and the utility.
If a data company limits total download capacity, even if it is a "soft" limit (TOS limit), the plan must be advertised with the cap noted at the same relevance as the speed of the connection.
If the connection has a minimum acceptable (or guaranteed minimum) speed for a given price point, only the minimum speed may be advertised. No advertising of temporary, limited, or "burst" speeds is allowable. Maximum or burst speed may be included in the in the contract between the subscriber and the utility, provided the minimum allowable speed is also provided.
Utilities may not advertise speeds in markets where such speeds are not available in at least 1/2 the landmass area. National advertising may only note the minimum speeds or availability available to all subscribers in the US.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have an interesting situation. My water utility sells me metered water for washing dishes, watering the lawn, showering, and other limited purposes.
The utility offers a Tasting plan for an additional monthly charge. Under this plan, I am allowed to use the water also for cooking and drinking. (Even though my water use is metered, and each gallon of water for cooking and drinking is delivered by the same pipes!)
Dear customer: our records indicate that you have been using water for cooking and/or drinking. Please upgrade your water rate plan to our convenient Tasting plan that allows for this usage. If you continue to use water for cooking and drinking, you will be signed up for the Tasting plan automatically.
I think the Tasting plan is just a fee that they made up. It isn't a service they provide. They just want more money from me. I've got a workaround of using a container to obtain water from another room for the purposes of cooking and drinking.
Some people shout: Theft of service! But what service? They're already delivering water to me, and metering it, and I'm paying for it, and its delivered by the same pipes!
Some people shout: but you signed an agreement and using the water for cooking and drinking is a breach of that agreement! Ask a lawyer about the term "unconscionable contract". Nobody in their right mind would agree to this if they had any actual choice in the matter. Just because they have the power and can force you into paying this ridiculous fee or doing without doesn't make it right.
I say that this Tasting "service" is no service at all, it's just a fee for delivering nothing at all extra to me. It's a case of the utility wanting something for nothing. Yet people seem to think it is somehow wrong to use the water I'm paying for for drinking or cooking unless I sign up for the more expensive Tasting plan.
In order to add legitimacy to their Tasting plan, the water company says that the Tasting plan is actually delivering something: it includes an additional 2 Gigabytes of water per month, giving you 4 total Gigabytes of water.
But what if I only need 2 Gigabytes of water and therefore my existing monthly 2 Gigabyte plan is plenty? The water company already charges $10 per extra Gigabyte of water I use over the limit. So if I used excess water, it's not like they wouldn't get paid.
Furthermore, once I sign up for the Tasting plan, they don't make any distinction between water used for drinking/cooking and water used for other purposes. I could use 3/4 of it for tasting, and 1/4 for bathing/dishwashing. Or any other split. Or all of it purely for tasting. So then if I paid for Tasting and used only 2 Gigabytes of water, which I already had paid for, then why did I need the Tasting plan?
I seem to be very confused about stealing water for tasting. Someone please set me straight.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Either complain about dropped calls and other service defects OR complain about rationing or usage-proportional tariffs OR complain about AT&T attempting to buy out a competitor to absorb their under-utillized network. But you cannot take all three sides.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
I don't know what to call that... is it fraud? I'm not sure. They honestly thought they did have it but at what point in smartphone sales did it occur to them "you know we've sold more of these then we have data capacity to support!" I don't believe that didn't occur to them. And despite their statement about too many smart phone buyers are they still selling more?
The whole thing seems odd. I don't know... ATT has always had a crap network.
Happily a sprint customer. I don't know what people's experience is with it where ever... but where I live, rock solid on all counts. ATT doesn't work in half my city.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
because i'll go back to Sprint and get rid of my crappy Android and even crappier AT&T service. don't ever say shit about your customers!
Right before they drop nationwide 4g? They drop this bomb? lol some PR campaign. Back to Verizon we go.
Go sit on a large, dark phallus.
Seriously, they are all too eager to take our money, but then they get all upset when we complain that they don't deliver what they promised. If they want out of the smartphone game, then all they have to do is STOP SELLING THEM!!!
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
Here's a similar gem, made by Steve Case in 1997, in response to gripes from people unable to connect to swamped AOL servers after their switch to unlimited hours:
In other words, it's your fault for trying to use what you've paid for.
I think we have a misunderstanding here. I did not see any place where AT&T said it's the customer's fault. What I read is that AT&T did not prepare itself for the business. They sold all these plans and had no idea that people would actually use them to their limit? Come on. They should have been prepared for this and they weren't and now they say they have no choice.
That is not because customers screwed up AT&T's wonderful plan; it is because AT&T failed plan for its own success and failed to react to their responsibilities fast enough. Once more, AT&T proves that it is a bloated, overpriced service. AT&T is a dinosaur that feeds off government contracts, special arrangements, and naivete of customers. I left AT&T more than a decade ago and I'm never going back -- even if they pay me.
Perhaps if you all stopped using smartphone, and hit the carriers bottom lines, then they would be forced to upgrade their networks to allow for the extra bandwidth that people want.
People have the right to choose NOT to use a smartphone to begin with.
As for the people who got limited unlimited data packages, well, threaten to cancel your account.. If more people actually voiced their opposition to these corporations that refuse to invest in their network, then maybe the corporations would do something about it.
I'm not saying their profits aren't good, but you're talking revenue.
My question would be, since the first I phone was released in June of 2007 (4 2/3 years ago), when an AT&T vp says data usage has grown by 20,000% in the last five years, what is the increase in the number of customers with data plans?
Seems to me that five years ago the number of customers with data plans would have been about 1000, a 20,000% increase would be on the order of 200,000 new customers. Since I know that AT&T probably has more than that...
If you limit speed you will limit the plan. If you limit the speed to 10 Kb.s-1 , then it comes down to a maximum of 843 Mb a day or about 24 Gb a month (assuming a 24/7 download rate of 10kb.s-1).m
If you limit the speed you are essentially limiting the data plan. You cannot have an "unlimited quantity to use" if you throttle intentionally the speed of consumption , this means throttling the data quantity. Now if speed was limited by hardware , or by network congestion that would be something else. But it is misleading to say that limiting speed still leave the plan "unlimited".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
I remember when it was just the connections that got throttled.
Just curious: heard anything about Sprint's unlimited data plan and whether Sprint customers are being throttled? If Sprint is, in fact, doing it, why can't AT&T?
(Sprint was my first wireless carrier way back with my Kyocera 6035. I hated them and couldn't wait until my contract was up and can't see myself going back. Hence, I have no recent experience with them.)
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
are we all forgetting about this little gem?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/12/0340214/all-ip-network-produces-100b-real-estate-windfall
with 100 Billion in real estate revenue pending, why cant they afford to make the necessary upgrades to their network to meet their contractual obligation to their subscribers?
AT&T's failure to understand the marketplace and to invest in a timely manner is NOT MY FAULT. I paid for unlimited and I damn well DEMAND what I paid for. If I can not have what I paid for (dialup speeds are NOT acceptable, NOT reasonable, NOT going to stand up in a jury trial where the jurors have iPhones)... then let me out of my damn contract so that I can go over to Verizon.
If and when Verizon becomes as evil as AT&T, then it is time to revert to a stupid prepaid phone that just makes calls.
The sales side of the company has no reason to slow things down. They get paid on commission or on number of accounts generated. They never have to deal with the costs of delivering service to those accounts.
The production side of the company has to deal with providing service to those accounts. It takes a considerable amount of time to upgrade systems. Before you can do that, they have must fight for the budget to do it. Before that, the need to find out that they have a need.
if att spent the same amount of money on their network as they spent on advertising, they wouldn't have a problem. why are you advertising when you can't handle the customers you already have?
You should see the percentage increases in data use over the preceding twenty years!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
American Telephone & Telegraph.
Now you're seeing the telegraph part of the network.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Is it possible at all to pay for a service and be reasonable about the expectation (from both sides)?
If you rent an apartment and electricity comes for free, would you feel guilty if you use more than you normally should?
I am sure there were times when we all tried to get our money's worth when we dined in a buffet restaurant. Is this the same mentality here as well? In all likelihood, it is possible to break the buffet restaurant business model as it is to the AT&T model.
When a market player has a monopolistic position, it will optimise price to maximise profit/income.
They price the higher plans higher because they know options are limited, and anyone who at all can afford it will pay for it.
You don't have to do this anymore (the buying the E-71 part). See http://www.straighttalksim.com/
AT&T needs to totally re-think the way they charge for services.
Eliminate the need to buy a "data plan" to have a smartphone and just have people sign up to different plans.
Bring in new plans that are closer to what it actually costs to provide the services
So a $20 per month plan could have 300 minutes of voice, 100 texts and 500mb of data.
A $50 per moth plan could have 500 minutes of voice, 150 texts and 1GB of data.
And so on with a top tier $100 per month plan having maybe 2000 minutes of voice, 500 texts and 4GB of data.
Any minutes, text or data you use above the plan is charged at the relevant per-minute, per-text or per-megabyte rate.
Oh and change the way charging and billing works so that people no longer have to pay for incoming calls and texts and make the originator of those calls and texts pay instead.
I wonder why that seems outlandish to AT&T. It seems like common sense, covert 70% of your user base from 0$ data plans and 1kbytes used per month to 30+$/mo and phones that actually consume mb/gb data? I would expect a number like 200,000% before I would accept complaining about supporting the bandwidth. The data growth on your network is because you are _selling it_ now and you have converted your customer base to pay the monthly fee.
AT&T and the other CLEC's basically got billions in subsidies and tax writeoffs to build out fiber optic broadband in the US, which they promptly diverted to building out the cellular infrastructure. Which they did an admirable job of rolling out 2G services. But 3G spec had the writing on the wall already, and they did so little to prepare (taking profits instead of building infrastructure)(WTF why are commodity infrastructure utility companies taking huge profits and dumping huge dividends?!? Sure cellular was a niche a while ago but it was destined to become a commodity/utility like landline service!). The iPhone was the wakeup call for this. They should have started dumping HUGE amounts into 3.5/3.9G and backhaul infrastructure (as well as invested in distributed datacenter based baseband controls to allow using the network like a phased array and allowing intelligent forced handoff to more lightly loaded neighbor cells), but they put only moderate effort into the towers and squat for backhaul.
AT&T isn't the only one guilty of this. NTT DoCoMo in Japan, which has less land area to cover though similar tower counts, was also caught with its pants down. They even had the benefit of seeing the pain Softbank went through to introduce and operate the iPhone. This gave at least 2 years warning (and 2 years is about the hardware rollout cycle) so they had their chance. Now, DoCoMo is having regular core packet switching capacity overloads that brings the ENTIRE network to it's knees. They are currently using the BS excuse of a particular android VoIP app causing the recent overloads, when they were reporting to METI the true reason (lack of fundamental core switching capacity).
AT&T has no other options right now. They know a fair number of people will switch, but the other carriers are taking the opportunity to kill off their own unlimited plans, as a form of collusion to hide the fact that they collectively oversold capacity.
Back in the '60's, I remember a municipality in California that had a water shortage, so it created a clever and effective campaign to get people to lower their water consumption. It worked. In fact it worked so well that the utilities revenues fell to a point that they had to raise the rates to cover the over-head.
overselling service to a point you can no longer cover the service contracts sold. It is fraud isn't it?
IF AT&T sells *Unlimited" contracts they they should be held legally to providing *unlimited* service. IF OTOH they do not have the capacity to provide it then selling such is false advertising. If I *pay for* unlimited then I expect to be able to run 24 X 7 eve though it would be almost impossible for me to do so. IOW if they can't provide it then they are breaking the law by selling it any way. As individuals, if we advertised like that we'd most likely end up in jail because we have to deliver what we advertise.
"Unlimited" means "as much as any device we support can use" rather than "any device anywhere that could exist could potentially use."
When you sell "Unlimited" to 500 uses who can potentially use 50GB daily, then you are stating that you have the hardware to support 500 users using 50GB daily. There is no abuse here; there is no misrepresentation here. When you sell it to 5000 users and advertise "Unlimited" then you are lying.
I really don't mind that I am sold tiered bandwidth allocations. I like knowing what I'm paying for and so long as they meter it fairly, I make the decision to buy and use or not buy the service. I do mind that they call it 4G ( 4G is a lie.)
Really annoying is thinking (but not having done sufficient research to know with certainty) that when I purchase 5GB/monthly service, what I'm really getting is sometimes maybe throttled without telling me and often insufficient for demand service. If I buy "5 free donuts daily" and I get "5 free donuts daily when maybe not everybody we sold them to is actually picking up their donuts and sorry, today you get 1 donut because it looks like a good dounut day" then yeah, they've sold me something they are incapable of guaranteeing delivery of. Fine. I can deal with that. You sell something thinking you can deliver it and you can't, then you failed; your bad, you broke the contract. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.
You sell me 5 donuts, I expect 5 donuts. You can only deliver 3? I don't care about your other customers, that is between them and you, but I have every right to depend on 5 donuts and you failed. You failed. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK. Okay, so you acknowledge that you can't give 5 donuts a day to eveybody you sold 5 donuts daily to? Fine, you broke your contract, offer only what you really can deliver. Sell me 1 donut a day guaranteed and if you give me 5, then I'm your biggest fan.
So while the blame doesn't fall upon the customers who were sold and bought unlimited plans, neither do I think it's realistic for them (and me) to truly expect unlimited data.
You sell me A, you owe me A. It is that simple and I have every right to truly expect A.
The FTC needs to say "the new rule starting June 1, 2008 is: you sell only what you can really supply. You can say 'up to 5GB' but you must also say 'actual guaranteed rate of 'X' where X is what you can actually deliver if every customer you have is using everything you sold them."
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.