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AT&T On Data Throttling: Blame Yourselves

Posted by samzenpus on from the reap-what-you-sow dept.

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."

24 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. It's all the customers' fault... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.
    1. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by AmigaMMC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Data throttling is happening after 1.5GB to people on an unlimited plan whereas it doesn't happen to people who have 2GB or 3GB plans. That tells me that AT&T is coercing customers with an unlimited plan to drop it and go with a limited plan. It would be just fair for Data Throttling not to occur before 2 or 3GB of usage, to be in par with the other consumers. I think the FCC should step in and stop this abuse of consumer rights.

    2. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by 18_Rabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sounds like that's exactly what they were doing. UNLIMITED data plans, shouldn't, you know, have a LIMIT.

    3. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by MikeFM · · Score: 5, Informative

      As somebody that had an unlimited data plan for a couple years.. AT&T already has this down. My unlimited data plan on my iPad, with a solid 3G connection, struggled to pull down data fast enough to pull down a simple web page or email. So when are they going to refund money to people with unlimited plans that didn't get what they paid for?

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    4. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by BDZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the main reason they don't throttle the customers with the limited plans is that they very much wish to see those people go over the limit so they can then charge them for additional usage.

    5. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...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.

      I'd mod this to +6 if I could.

      AT&T is still running a lot of traffic, last mile/last feet, in copper and doesn't want to go through tens of thousands of neighborhoods and replace copper with glass. They also don't want to upgrade switches. It was such a shock to their crappy infrastructure when the first iPhones saturated their networks in New York City. Excuse me while I mock the blank, stupid looks on their faces, because some engineer, somewhere must have done the math and warned them it was coming. Dur. Got some great publicity out of that gaffe, didn't they?

      And so little of that, if any at all, was dependent upon copper.

      I sit and read about Euro telecoms running networks up to 100 Mb/s all over the place and see AT&T (among others) looking for ways to throttle the pokey 6 Mb/s I'm getting, or even figuring how to charge me for using it, effectively threatening the Golden Goose of the Internet for any company selling a product requiring high bandwidth, which really is the future growth direction. What do they want, a government subsidy? Of course they do, just like Big Oil, I bet.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    6. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can forgive airlines overbooking, to a degree. Most airlines only overbook a few seats, and it works out fine the majority of the time (I don't have exact numbers, but I'm a very frequent flier and rarely hear about people being bumped) And in the few case when it doesn't work out and too many people show up, the airlines go out of their way to accommodate people. They'll ask for volunteers, provide free upgrades, meal vouchers and anything else.

      ATT on the other hand, has overbooked their network by a LARGE margin. They've invited easily double the amount of people they can handle, and all of those people are showing up. And in response to this problem, ATT says "just deal with it," I received no free upgrades, no discount on my bill, nothing to offset the fact that they didn't provide the service I payed for.

    7. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by cixelsyd · · Score: 5, Interesting
      What I want to know is, why do they throttle down to ridiculously low throughput?

      Is there no way to traffic shape over wireless? Why can't I choose between several "unlimited" packages with varying speeds, like I can with a regular wired ISP?

      Wouldn't this solve their "problem" users issues? Or is there something about wireless networking that I'm not aware of making this difficult/impossible?

      --
      Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
    8. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by PRMan · · Score: 5, Funny

      One time my family was going to Hawaii on vacation and we were overbooked. This one family was completely rude to the airline staff, screaming profanities at them and making a giant scene in the terminal. They boarded the plane with them still standing there. Finally, after boarding, they brought the family to the front of the plane and said "Can we get 4 volunteers to be bumped to the next flight that leaves in 2 hours?"

      I told my mom, "Let's do it! We might get free flights or money off the tickets. It's only 2 hours and we gain time during the flight." So we raised our hands and the flight attendant said, right in front of the rude family, "OK, if you 4 would come up to FIRST CLASS, we can get underway."

      That was cold revenge right there, but we had a great flight.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    9. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Data throttling is happening after 1.5GB to people on an unlimited plan [...]. I think the FCC should step in and stop this abuse of consumer rights.

      The real abuse of consumer rights is that an "unlimited" plan even exists. Because of bandwidth overallocation, it's impossible for a company which promises unlimited bandwidth to actually deliver it to all its customers. Common sense says that tiered plans are the way to go. It's just that the marketing department found the term "unlimited" so sexy they overruled the engineering and accounting departments to be able to call their plans "unlimited". And as a competitor, how can you compete with your 1 TB plan when your competition is offering unlimited? You can't. You have to adopt their crappy marketing decision and label your plan as unlimited as well.

      Now they're being hoisted by their own petard. The FTC should've cracked down on this a decade ago back when it first began, with wireless companies selling unlimited data plans but having secret data caps, which if you surpassed they would warn you and/or drop you as a customer. That practice has come under increasing criticism from the government, so they're now resorting to throttling. The root cause of the problem isn't that consumers are using too much bandwidth. It's that "unlimited" plans are snake oil. Yes I know that tech geeks love their unlimited plans (I'm on one myself). But be realistic - given your pipes to the Internet have a finite amount of bandwidth, can you think of any way in which you can make your "unlimited" plan truly unlimited? You can't. It's unlimited only as long as the bandwidth per customer * number of customers
      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.

    10. Re:It's all the customers' fault... by Obfuscant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Those elaborate models you cite make most flights into cattle cars, sardine cans, with overhead storage bulging to the bursting point.

      What has made overhead storage bulging is not the practice of overbooking, which is a natural response to the tendency of people to book flights and then not show up, expecting a full refund, so the airlines would have empty seats that make no money.

      The cause is the creation of baggage charges for every checked bag. This, naturally, makes the frugal among the fliers buy the biggest bag they can that will meet airline standards (and often those that obviously don't) and try to stuff it into the overhead for free, because it won't fit under the seat in front of them.

      These are the people, of course, who would take advantage of the free gate checking of bags but they've managed to pack something valuable into the bag and don't want to let it go baggage class.

      I do wish the airlines would enforce their policies on carryon bag sizes and number, which would go a long way towards easing the crunch in overhead space. Stop the people at the gate from carrying on the big bags (or bypassing the pay-to-check system by gate checking them) and force them to check everything more than 2.

  2. Throttle sales by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If their infrastructure wasn't up to it, why didn't they throttle sales of smartphones?

    1. Re:Throttle sales by puto · · Score: 5, Informative

      I work for ATT and none of us are happy with the decision. As to your phone. What is going to happen is once every couple of months our systems match imeis on file, to the imei actually in your phone, and when it does a data plan will be added automagically to your account.

      --
      The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
  3. Alternatively by macemoneta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Alternatively, they could not sell a service they can't actually deliver. Crazy, I know.

    --

    Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.

    1. Re:Alternatively by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or, perhaps they could use a portion of the money they've obtained from their "staggering 20,000%" growth over the past five years to improve the network instead of lining their higher-ups pockets? You would think that since "AT&T sold more smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in any other quarter in its history" they would have SOME profit available to them for reinvestment?

      Oh, but investing in your company's future means that your share-holders see less profits short term, and thus sell shares. It's really too bad that stock price is based on opinions and feelings instead of actual value...

      Sadly, it's more profitable to increase prices and reduce service quality than to actually provide better services. YAY FREE MARKET!

  4. Instead they should... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. IPhone by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  6. Bullshit by swv3752 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Bullshit by Dhalka226 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree completely.

      I could maybe, maaaaaybe feel sorry for regular ISPs. There's undeniably a lot of piracy that goes on that inflates bandwidth usage beyond their predictions for reasonable.

      But that's not a significant issue on phones. Instead the phone companies are complaining about users doing the exact fucking things they market their phones as doing! "Your phone now plays YouTube videos!" "Whoa whoa whoa! Why are you guys watching so many videos on your phone? How could we possibly have predicted such a thing?" "Hey, now you can review that PowerPoint presentation in the cab!" "Whoa whoa whoa, why are you downloading files and shit?!" Well let me think about that for a while guys. Clearly the thought I've given the matter in this post alone exceeds what AT&T and their billions of dollars of profit gave it.

      Infrastructure is expensive. We get it. Hey, guess what? So are your phones, the mandatory data plan, smartphone fee and regular service fees over a multi-year contract. Nobody feels sorry for you for overselling your service even more than you calculated you were going to. Shut up and provide customers the service they bought with those billions of dollars of profit you make every quarter, even in one of the worst economies since the Depression. You'll find nobody here shedding a tear for you.

    2. Re:Bullshit by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I could maybe, maaaaaybe feel sorry for regular ISPs. There's undeniably a lot of piracy that goes on that inflates bandwidth usage beyond their predictions for reasonable.

      no you cant be sorry for them. pirates pay for their bandwidth. period.

      --
      Read radical news here
  7. no opt-out either by fred+fleenblat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:It's not unlimited... by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Virgin Mobile (my provider) recently announced your speed will be throttled to 350kbps once you've downloaded 2.5GB for that billing month. Once the end of the month comes, or if you pay your next bill early, the cap is lifted. I still consider this to be "Unlimited" because I associate the word with how much you're allowed to download - that is, there's no extra charge for going over the "cap". I like Virgin Mobile, although their coverage could be better - but none of the carriers have good coverage in New York.

    Sure, you can argue there's technically a cap because you can only download X gigabytes over the course of Y hours when limited to Z speeds, but this is the case on any sort of infrastructure, including roads and pipelines.

  9. Wow, 20,000% eh? by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  10. Re:Horseshit by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    They're plans for T-mobile probably included making a lot of money in bonuses and executive backslapping. It had nothing to do with improving service.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar