AT&T Should Be Investigated For 'Fraudulent' Data Policies, Says PK

zacharye writes "AT&T on Monday announced a new plan that will let developers pay for the data used by their apps and services. The data consumed by apps that make use of this new feature would not apply toward a user's data cap. The new service was pitched as a way for content providers to ease customers' growing concerns over wireless data usage, however one public interest group sees the feature as a slap in the face to AT&T subscribers. 'This new plan is unfortunate because it shows how fraudulent the AT&T data cap is, and calls into question the whole rationale of the data caps,' Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, said in a statement. 'Apparently it has nothing to do with network management. It's a tool to get more revenue from developers and customers.'"

Comments

Re:makes sense

[tkrotchko]

"So for any given app you can either bill the dev a little bit, per installation or per use, or you can eat into the user's data plan."

The point is that AT&T said that the bandwidth was the scarce resource in their network and that caps were necessary to conserve that resource.

But as soon as a new revenue source was available, then the network was magically unconstrained. This is not "good idea", unless you're an AT&T shareholder, and then its magically a fantastic idea.