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After Complaints, AT&T Solidifies, Increases Data Limit
New submitter rullywowr writes "After many users expressed anger, AT&T has moved the slowdown throttling bottleneck from 3GB of data to 5GB of data for users of 4G LTE smart phones. 'Previously, AT&T slowed speeds for subscribers who reached the top 5% of data users for that billing cycle and geographic location. Customers were outraged, arguing that the percentage method meant they had no way to know what the limit was — until AT&T informed them via text message that they were in danger of exceeding it.' AT&T still maintains the position that less than 5% of its users exceed the 3GB threshold each month."
What about 3g users?
So "unlimited data" means 3GB/5GB now?
Anyone in the industry or in the know want to take a stab at where the numbers come from? It seems that 5GB is a common enough number for phone carriers. Is that just a metric that was settled upon, is it arbitrarily set, or are they crunching numbers and coming out with 3GB/5GB as a theoretical "optimal" limit for a network? Feedback welcome from people who know how/why such decisions are made!
For 3G (read, ALL iPhones) its still 3GB.
So for iPhone customers on the old unlimited plan, they still have a choice:
For the same amount of money, either stick with the "Unlimited" plan which goes useless at 3GB, or go to a metered plan where you get 3GB and above that its $10/GB in overages...
As for the 4G/LTE phones, those are in a much smaller minority, as the big grandfathered ones that AT&T dislikes are the iPhones.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I've avoided AT&T and Verizon for this reason. I should be able to use my phone all I want.
Sprint is definitely in a winning position.
The limits are too low. You can blow half of that limit away on one game download if you're not careful.
I really surprised that AT&T listened to its 5% users that complained regarding that situation. Most companies like these have a higher threshold and, I'm sorry but, they don't really give a crap about them too until the complaints gets to a certain level. In the end, I'm happy that they finally listened but something tells me it's not free and/or not without any concequences...I hope I'm wrong on this one.
I will stick with Sprint for now.
"...AT&T still maintains the position that less than 5% of its users exceed the 3GB threshold each month."
Really? Seems to me AT&T is causing an awful lot of pain and bad publicity for themselves by creating such limitations around what supposedly accounts for only 5% of their consumer base. Seems like the effort would be worth a hell of a lot more than 5% of revenue.
AT&T promises users a service (unlimited data access) they have no intention of providing. That's false advertising.
Tried to find where AT&T actually says what speed their LTE is (their website only says "4x faster than our existing!"). So let's assume the slowest LTE speed, 100 MBit. 5 GB is roughly 50 GBit or 50000 MBit, the slowest LTE is 100 MBit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G). 50000 / 100 = 50. So you can go at the really fast LTE speed for 1 minute total in a month before being throttled. Oh boy.
buy a smartphone they said
watch tv, movies, videos they said
you can't use that bandwidth we advertised and sold you they say
These companies should lose all their spectrum for even thinking about throttling connections.
FCC start the investigation. They advertise unlimited (they did, even if they don't now) - throttling is just another way to *restrict* data - it breaks unlimited.
I for one would love to see AT&T and Verizon lose all of it's cellular spectrum because of these greedy shenanigans.
Cost for unlimited/unlimited/unlimited should be about $20.00 a phone per month. That covers any and all uses of bandwidth in use today and yet to be conceived of.
Leave the market alone, it'll be just fine they said.
Bullshit, we're getting robbed blind by these people, costs should be nowhere near this high.
If they took one day of bonus away from the CEO, they'd probably be able to upgrade their infrastructure enough to handle all of the current users without breaking a sweat.
Oh, but no, CEO man has to have his 7 yachts and 5 mansions. We would be terrorists if we wanted him to go without just one yacht.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
That is what it means if they decide that only 5% of the people go over 3GB a month and they throttle those users.
Piss Off only 5%. Great plan. Piss Off the 5% that use your services the most.
Are downloadable handheld games that big yet, or just console and PC games? If you want to download a big console or PC game, take your console or PC to a coffee shop and use Wi-Fi. That's the same workaround people tended to repeat when fielding complaints about how the 4 GB download size of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) would eat up nearly all of a satellite Internet user's monthly cap.
1) Given that there are only so many seconds in a month, a rate cap automatically limits a plan that was sold as "unlimited". You cannot download more than 9GB/month at 14.4kbps. 2) Every time I see the AT&T ads with people exclaiming "that was so 29 seconds ago" I chuckle. They are selling performance as the primary feature of their service, then hobbling that performance when customers make use of it. 3) AT&T is framing this as a tragedy of the commons problem: unilimited access to a finite common good leads to a collapse. (Grazing sheep on public property, fisheries, etc.) Is this really a finite good of just a failure to invest in capacity?
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
They advertise unlimited (they did, even if they don't now)
You just hit it: they don't advertise the service anymore. Therefore, they don't have to continue to offer it on contract renewals.
Cost for unlimited/unlimited/unlimited should be about $20.00 a phone per month.
That doesn't sound like enough money to buy land for more towers and deal with NIMBYs who don't want a tower on their skyline. Each cell tower can handle only a given throughput to all radios associated to it.
I can forsee with iTunes Match this limit being breached more frequently, which could be AT&T's nefarious motive.
Is this really a finite good of just a failure to invest in capacity?
Capacity is proportional to spectrum times number of towers. Spectrum is a finite good. Land on which to build towers is also a finite good.
will dunp my phone. The $65.00/month pays for my 2 weeks of gasoline for me. I'd rather have a quite ride and no distractions. Why do I need to take a call that to remind me to pick up milk on the way home, or that my brother would like a ride home, when you get home can you look at this for me? Or you do you want to go to a movie tonight ? I drive a Jeep Wrangler so I need two hands to drive. If someone wants to reach me bad enough they can leave a message on the home phone. If work wants to reach me they can supply me with a phone w/data I have a smartphone for streaming audio and gps anyway. Well if AT&T wants to limit like this then I don't need it. I can find better use for my $65.00 I'll sell my iPhone 4s on ebay. I urge everyone to do the same. The cellular providers bled us enough already. Supply and demand drives price right ? So dump your phones! Tell them that when they throttled you down they broke your unlimited contract. I can live without a cell phone. It's two weeks of commuting fuel for me. Ahah!
I have no issue with throttling heavy users to increase the customer experience for all. My issue is that this plan will not really solve that issue. If I am on a little used tower at 3AM it costs ATT nothing extra if use 1GB, 100GB, or 1000GB, neither does it hurt anyone else. However on a crowded tower it makes sense to throttle heavy users so that the other users on the tower will be able to have a better experience.
What they should do, to be open and fair, is throttle heavy users on congested towers and then restore their speeds to normal when there is no more congestion. Annoying, possibly, but at least reasonable and purpose driven to the stated purpose. In this light the proposal that they have outlined is simply designed to make the unlimited plan so unpalatable that the users will switch to the tiered plans that have the possibility of garnering more income for ATT. If they truly want to do that, that would be fine, but do it openly, maybe by saying that the next time these subscribers contracts expire, they will have to switch to the tiered pricing or something similar. At least then they would be honest in their approach.
That was the original story they gave us, IIRC. They would selectively throttle anyone, anywhere, when their area couldn't support all of the data traffic. Now that looks not to be the case at all, and they won't throttle in that specific area but will do it to anyone, anywhere, as soon as they hit a fairly common (5% of all their subscribers is a LOT of people!) but arbitrary "ceiling". So how does throttling someone in NYC help network congestion in LA?
Bell Canada? I'm pretty sure that Bell Canada said 90% of their subscribers use less than 15GB a month, right up until they were required to prove it before the CRTC.
Om, nomnomnom...
AT&T user here. I was more pissed off about these limits until I started using an app that shows me my data usage during the month and I had a surprising result: I only use 200 MB a month!! I thought I was someone who would be near the 2GB cap I have, but I am quite wrong. During my afternoon commute (~2 hours) on Amrtrak I use my phone to Facebook (including a lot of picture uploading), Twitter, web browsing, e-mail, light gaming and app downloads & usage. All of this is on 3G (or "4G" if I am to believe AT&T's marketing speak that HSPA+ is 4G). Weekends out around town is the same profile, though evenings and such at home I am on Wi-Fi. So to be using only 200MB was a shock to me. All I am saying is that we should all look at our usage before we are outraged. Yes: it is RIDICULOUS that they market "unlimited" data when throttling is, by any reasonable definition, limiting. But how many of you are really at or near the caps? I would really like to know!! I wonder how many of you are like me, thinking you use more data than you do.
It's a trick, they should give a full connection and not assault users with their own software updates, etc. I would not dare put ANY limit or choke on myself, in the light of current debate.
The purpose of existence is to make money.
They say that only 5% of users reach that point... it doesn't matter if its only .01% its still dishonest
Though the throttling issue is a nuisance, it only affects a few. And they are likely the ones that are using their phone as an internet replacement at home, so there is no wifi to shift data use.
I would have no problem giving up my unlimited AT&T plan for a 3GB/5GB plan, and pay extra if I go over. But I do have a big problem with them telling me that the data can only be used by one device.
For me, I'm paying for the data. What I do with the data is my business. If I need to tether my phone to my laptop for a few minutes, there should be no penalty. But, AT&T wants to charge extra $15 for the 'right' to use the data elsewhere? No thank you.
I'm about to play with T-Mobile in my unlocked phone to see whether it will be a good replacement. If it is, good bye AT&T. I'm so glad the merger was killed, otherwise, AT&T would be one of the only GSM providers in the US.
These idiots need to invest in infrastructure. This "people using mobile data" problem isn't going away.
I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further!
How about I throttle your payments? I think I'll mail AT&T boxes of pennies each month my data is throttled.
Sometimes I think that people like to throw around numbers because they realize how few people understand the true impact.
Let's take "Only 5%" in real terms...
That means one in twenty people are being throttled. Crit in a d20 system? You're throttled. 1,000,000 Customers? 50,000 are throttled. That's a medium rural city being throttled. AT&T's nearly hundred million customers? Potentially five million throttled customers each month.*
5% is not a lot with a small total, but can be a pretty big number when you get to the subscriber count they have.
(* I am aware of the fact that they had around 95 million subscribers in January 2011, and that not all of them will be data users. There are plenty of dumb phones still around. Feel free to cut it down to, say, twenty million smart phone users at risk of bring throttled, and you still catch a million.)
@Whee
Why would it matter where you connect to the Internet from - whether your phone or a Coffee Shop WiFi point?
Because it costs more to send bits over cellular last mile than over Wi-Fi to a wired last mile.
It all goes to the same internet
Over different last miles. Different last miles have different costs per bit. That's why Comcast can afford to charge the same for 250 GB that a cellular carrier charges for 5 GB.
It's always nice to know that I'm paying for 4GB and get throttled at 3GB, which I have experimentally proven for 2 billing cycles in a row now.
Can't wait until my contract is up.
You are all deeply, deeply naive if you think any carrier's data plans are designed to do anything but create overage charges. They know exactly how much data the average smart phone users uses and they've been dialing down the data plans to make sure that they're below that.
Any telco that whines and complains about their users in liu of building actual infrastructure needs to be slapped around HARD by the three-letter agencies in charge of overseeing their licensed monopoly status.
If it only affects less than 5% of their users, why do they bother to throttle and piss them off?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I can't imagine anyone thought top 5% would be a good idea.
Throttling based on top X% is a completely reasonable idea ... as long as you don't ask "what about next month/quarter?"
You would have to be awfully new to have missed the rhetoric and diatribes about the negative impacts on corporate behavior that have resulted from years of "Wall Street" lash-training management to think only of this quarter's performance while ignoring long-term profitability and effects.
My question is "Why bother to upgrade to 4G or any other speed?". A high speed phone isn't any use if you can't use it for what it's meant for. If enough people just drop the most useful aspects of their phones (Internet) and use then for just them as phones, the shoe would be on the other foot. My phone still works with WiFi and I don't even HAVE a carrier. I find that for me a cell phone isn't viable because I only make a call or two a month. On the other hand I still can check my email and browse when in a WiFi zone like my house of a place of business that offers it, and it still works great as a media and game player.
If anytime someone gets close to 3GB of usage they get a threatening text telling them that they will be throttled, of course most people will use less than 3GB. They need to let it go unthrottled (and unmessaged) for a few months to see what the true usage would be if people were not being threatened. I rarely use a lot of data but discovered this last month that if I watch a half hour of video every day, that is enough to throw me into the 5%. Apparently a half hour of video a day is considered unreasonable.
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
Everyone seems to have found a new shiny and forgotten that AT&T's DSL services - the ones that don't carry its own IPTV service - are still being subjected to data caps.
And your network cant handle it. I would say then your have over sold your capacity by 10 percent.
You should not take on any new customers until your bandwidth has caught up.
I pay for a higher end connection from Comcast
If you pay enough, you get into the "Comcast Business Class" tier, which has no such cap. Telecommuters should consider asking their employer to pay for it as a business expense.
Comcast throttles if and only if the local CMTS is swamped and it throttles top users first. This is by FAR the most fair system.
Unless Comcast decides to keep the local CMTS swamped on purpose because shareholders want short-term dividends more than medium-term network improvement. See a previous Slashdot story about congestion by choice.
the carrier can't simply put in bigger pipes
Why exactly can't the carrier put up more antennas to make more cells?
The initial outlay for wireless equipment and towers may be higher, but just like land lines, the costs are fixed and extremely low per MB. There is no more different necessity to meter wireless service than there is to meter fiber or copper service.
I got no problem voting with my feet.
Cable and DSL took off only because a large part of the fixed costs (i.e. copper) was already in the ground, and speed upgrades over those physical mediums have taken the form of new modulations or new multiple-access modes. Wireless service doesn't have that luxury; volume is growing faster than the big four can put up new towers.
This isn't due to user complaints - those are uniformly ignored.
This is due to ATT being sued over this and losing.
Another quality summary from Soulskill
Has anyone else noticed that this "less than 5%" number keeps changing? Previously they were using as little as under 2gb, now it's over 3gb. Given all their other misinformation, I wouldn't be surprised if they are making it up completely. AT&T needs a class-action lawsuit filed against them, otherwise they are going to keep pulling this nonsense and keep lying through their teeth about it. The current situation where unlimited means "limited to 3gb/mo" is still unacceptable. Why don't they just cancel those plans if they don't want to honor their terms?
AT&T still maintains the position that less than 5% of its users exceed the 3GB threshold each month.
5% of users hitting 3GB this year means 25% of users will probably be hitting that data limit next year. The amount of data the average person is using is increasing at an incredible speed. To place a limit so low when use is increasing so rapidly makes no sense to me. Plus 5% of about 100 million users means there are 5 million people out there using that much data.
This isn't just an issue of slashdot-types hogging up the network. You're talking about average people at this point.
LTE is NOT 4G. No one is offering 4G yet. Of course the marketing drones are continuing their assault on human language by telling you otherwise, but please people, dont fall for it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
do you think isps and computer makers are pissed that they didn't create this type of bullshit system?
...
Getting a Comcast or Charter Business account costs about the same as a Residential account; the only difference is you get locked into a 1 to 2 year contract. (2 year for Comcast, 1 year for Charter; YMMV.) I had Comcast at my old place but am now on Charter's slowest/most basic 20/3 plan which is $79/month. Equivalent Residential plan is like $10 cheaper I think. 50 and 100 meg pipes are also available, but they're a bit pricier.
The real difference comes in the level of service you receive with a Commercial account. For example, if you have a problem with your Residential service you call a 1-800 number and wait on hold, or stand in line at a window and get some bullshit thrown at you by a monkey reading off a script. With my Commercial account I call the area business account manager on his cell phone. Ten minutes later I get a call back from an actual engineer who walks me through troubleshooting. It feels like the good ole days again, when companies actually appreciated their customers and gave exceptional service.
With a Business account there is also ZERO data caps or hassle about excessive bandwidth usage. I leech torrents 24/7 and it's never been a problem. They offer faster speeds in some cases, multiple dynamic or static IPs, email addresses, decent web hosting, and don't care about any servers you may want to run.
They are far from hitting those "practical limits".
Other comments to this article, such as this comment by TraumaFox, tell of NIMBYs who "violently oppose having cell towers within a 50 mile radius of their house" and are apparently happy with their land lines. What makes you think the carriers "are choosing not to put up towers" and the NIMBYs aren't choosing for them?
There are NIMBYs but do you see any court battles?
Yes, as a matter of fact. The first Google search I tried (sue cell towers) listed a few news articles about such lawsuits.