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AT&T Clarifies Data Limitations On "Unlimited" Data Plans
MojoKid writes "Several months ago, AT&T notified customers that it would begin throttling network speeds for users who exceeded a certain threshold, with the definitive throttle point defined as an imprecise "the top 5% of mobile data users." The company has issued a statement clarifying this policy after irate customers with unlimited data plans demanded to know what the cap was and how the company determined who should and shouldn't be throttled. The magic number is 3GB, which conveniently happens to be the maximum amount of tiered bandwidth AT&T will sell you. So why would AT&T want unlimited users to move to tiered pricing when its maximum tier is also set at 3GB? Simple — the amount of money the company makes on customers who exceed that 3GB limit. The fine print reads: 'If 3GB is exceeded, an additional 1 GB is automatically provided at a rate of $10 for each additional 1 GB.' Anyone using above 3GB on an unlimited plan is a customer who isn't paying enough for the privilege (from AT&T's perspective)."
Those mobile phone networks are seriously hammered. If you want to know the exact price you pay, get non-unlimited right away. But it will be cheaper to get unlimited. However, unlimited only works because not everyone is using it to download 5TB off the internet a month. In turn, you get cheaper internet than dedi line.
Hypocrisy thy name is "insert your choise company here" ?
Because it is enough for most customers. They do specify these limits too. IF you want truly unlimited, non-capped bandwidth, buy it yourself. But expect to pay 25x more!
In my experience, AT&T doesn't even deliver the data I bought. So when they throttle you at 3Gb, they may actually be throttling you at 1Gb (the difference is far larger than what can be explained by network overhead). Run a data counter on your phone to see what is actually going on, and compare that with the data they claim you used.
So then don't call it unlimited? it's not that hard -_-
It's not the plan that's the problem it is the entire concept, which is based on a logical impossibility.
So how much longer are ISPs going to be allowed to use this lie when promoting their products? It's not even misleading, it's a plain falsehood. Very little in life is "unlimited". We live in a world of limited resources. No company can sell you "unlimited" anything.
Or are we witnessing a lexical change to the language where "unlimited" merely means a vague "lots"?
There is something inhertly wrong with an unlimited plan that is not unlimited. It's not about what is enough and what's not enough for most customers, it is simply that in this cases some customers are beind decieved ( because they expected to recieve something they were offered), to remedy this issue is to just don't call it unlimited. No one is forcing them to offer unlimited plans!
You would think AT&T would learn from the response of their customers. But that will never happen at this point. It would seem that a lot of companies want to follow this as well. This is probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
They don't offer one. But they have grandfathered old unlimited plans so as not to piss off existing customers. It's a strange idea, though, because anyone still with AT&T at this point is already a certified masochist.
Bait and switch.
There is something inhertly wrong with an unlimited plan that is not unlimited. It's not about what is enough and what's not enough for most customers, it is simply that in this cases some customers are beind decieved ( because they expected to recieve something they were offered), to remedy this issue is to just don't call it unlimited. No one is forcing them to offer unlimited plans!
Generally, you cannot walk into a restaurant and just eat for as many days as you want, even when they advertise unlimited buffet. There are expected limits to unlimited offerings, and considering the state of the mobile network, it's not that surprise.
Better yet, get rid of the ridiculous idea of "data plans" in the first place. Charge users a certain per-megabyte fee on their bill for the data they use and offer them the option to pre-purchase data per-gigabyte at a discount.
One of the important prerequisites for a free market is informed customers. I have no problem at all with ISPs providing caps. If everyone saturated their connections 24/7 then they would not be able to provide the service, and the cost of actually providing that amount of bandwidth to everyone would be far greater than most customers are able to afford. The problem is not the capping, it is misleading advertising. If you are going to offer 5GB per month, advertise 5GB per month. If you are going to offer 50GB per month, advertise 50GB per month. If you are going to deploy a transparent proxy that resamples images, specify that. If you are going to block access to certain sites, or only permit HTTP traffic, don't say that you provide Internet access. Tell people exactly what service you will provide and allow potential customers to decide whether they think it is worth what you are charging.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I agree, If I have a 10Mb/s connection my theoretical limit is 25Tb per month. I don't think I will ever reach that limit. But the issue is that if my company offered me an unlimited connection, then it is not logical for them to say I used to much if it was more than 100Gb in one month. The problem is not with the limitation with the network, the problem is with the naming of the service.
Thank you so much! That is the whole point! please mod parent up.
When I shop, I make a bee line for the charts that compare services and their agreements- after consulting Consumer Reports to see if they have anything.
Advertisements and sales fluff are just lies - to state the obvious.
Once I was in a very large home center. There was the guy with the table calling people over to buy their overpriced installation services (if you compare prices they charge 40% more than you local contractor - even though they too use local contractors.)
Anyway, while he was giving me his BS spiel, I was looking at the brochure and noticed these asterisks by the "guarantees". When he asked if I had questions, I just replied, "See these asterisks? That means somewhere in the fine print you're going to screw me."
"Oh no no! "
"And under state law, whatever comes out of your mouth is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what is in writing."
*Big dopey grin from sales dweeb* While I walked away happily - I enjoy wasting salespeople's time when I have nothing better to do.
lim data ->inf = 3 gb ;)
Seems to be following the same line of thoughts as the calculus test I am correcting right now
Oh wait this guys looks be be failing....
No, capping the monthly data volume is not fine. The total amount of data is not a cost to the provider. The cost of the network is determined by the maximum concurrent data transfers, i.e. peak load. You can construct the network for the minimum speed that users will tolerate at peak times, but no less. That is your cost driver. If you cap the total amount of data per month, the first to go is the bulk downloading, which is not timing sensitive and much more evenly distributed than typical "must have on the mobile" usage. In other words, caps are mostly ineffective at reducing a network operators costs.
So why are caps used anyway? It's price-gouging. Caps are not meant to reduce costs, they're meant to increase earnings per customer. If you accept caps, you have already accepted the price gouging. How they call the service is irrelevant. Suppose they stop advertising "unlimited" plans and start advertising "one price, no matter how much you use".
is there a bandwidth cap on these networks or is it what can the device (phone) muster ?
I've never seen the logic in capping usage as something that can prevent congestion. if all hell Should breaks loose at a given time in the day it will caps or no caps (especially for a conventional ISP). One can argue that the diffidence with cellphones is that ppl always have them and if there were no caps everybody will use them. but I think that ppl have better things to do during the day to just watch videos on their cellphones all day long.
Eh, it's not like it's a new idea.
Consider for instance how buffet's offer you 'unlimited' food or the 'unlimited' access passes you can get from many establishments.
The business model is that you offer the customer 'unlimited' access so they can use the service as much as they want, however most people get stuffed/bored fairly quickly and usually end up paying for much more then they actually used.
Buffet's would get rather ticked off if they suddenly got invaded by people with bottomless stomachs and would rather quickly start putting up 'Max 3 refills' signs.
So then don't call it unlimited? it's not that hard -_-
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED. So you still get "unlimited" bandwidth.
People need to remember that companies are going to sell you with the most non-obvious definitions available to them. How often do you hear "it's a steal at less than 14 thousand dollars!" Meanwhile it costs $13,999... sure it's true, but that doesn't make it misleading.
Cynics however are in the know, and we're constantly looking for how they could be using these words to their best benefit.
Other people just don't seem to get it, and no less always act surprised every time they get burned by assuming good faith in advertising.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Yeah like fucking Virgin Mobile Australia charging 2c per KB over.. which means you can clock up $thousands in a very short time.
Yes, Virgin Mobile, I am talking about you.
They are the damn pirates.
50MB over = $100. Ouch. For a lousy $600 phone on a $40 per month plan. You go over.. you PAY.. bend over boy.
My first over the cap bill was $5500. You can't kill me. Wife already tried and damn near succeeded.
I live in Finland and I can't understand what is going on in all those countries where they start charging more while giving less. I wanted to get an extra set of text messages in my mobile package. So the guy looks at my info and says "I see you have the '500 minutes + 100 text messages' package and a 3G package on top of that. Let's improve on that." The result was that I have those 2 packages for the price I used to pay for just the minutes+texts. Making my 3G (1/3rd of the price of the old agreement) 'free', really. And there's no data limit. Maybe it's the advantage of having a 'large' country with a big network, but very few people.
Here's the secret to immortality:
That comes with network congestion... or more precisely with congestion of the RF spectrum: more and more users are competing for a larger and larger chunk of what amounts to a finite resource. Maybe Finland's RF spectrum isn't congested yet as that of other countries?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
But buffets generally are not advertised as unlimited. They're somewhat vaguely advertised as "All-you-can-eat" .. so, arguably, when you stop eating then your buffet privilege is over. Its a limit. Or they state all you can eat for an hour. The word I have never seen describing a buffet is "unlimited"; however, there are plenty of unlimited data services with quaint limits.
Please read until the end of the post, because I'm going to be in the minority here. Some posters say that AT&T shouldn't use the term "unlimited" if it means 3 GB. Another poster says they declare that you have reached 3 GB when approximately 1 GB has gone over the wire -- which cannot possibly be accounted for by network bandwidth. I'm about to express a minority view here, but I will tell you why I'm doing it so please read to the end.
The minority view is: AT&T has a fiduciary and legal obligation to promise whatever will convince the most customers. If it's unlimited, it's "unlimited" if it's "ten times faster than fiber" they should promise that. Further, AT&T has a fiduciary and legal obligation to reduce its costs as far as the market will bear: in other words, if it were possible to keep its customers to THEIR promise (their contracts) while closing down ALL of their network towers, then AT&T should do that. AT&T has an obligation to the shareholders to promise as much and deliver as little as it can get away with.
Now let me explain why I'm expressing this minority viewpoint: out of sarcasm and irony. Go fuck yourselves AT&T, one day every one of the three hundred million Americans you attempted to fuck over will fuck you right back and you will have to deliver a coupon to each and every one of us, and every one of your leadership will be replaced. On that day I will look at that coupon and laugh at you, you sorry fucks.
Unfortunately, even when they are up-front about their bandwidth management policy, sometimes they make it so complex that it's still hard to know if you're complying. Check out the policy for my ISP, Virgin Media. Props to them for publishing the policy, although you do have to keep checking that it hasn't changed while you weren't looking. But give me a break - two different periods during which traffic is metered, one including an upstream cap, one not, with different levels in each. Plus separate DPI-based management of P2P "between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends". And if you do exceed one of the caps, they throttle you to 25%, which would be fine, except that however they've implemented that throttling, it makes your connection almost unusable. Download a game from Steam at the wrong time, and you might basically lose the ability to stream video from the web for the rest of the day. Fun.
Oh no... it's the future.
I disagree. You're trying to rationalize away the definition of unlimited with a poor analogy. An all you can eat buffet is not advertised as "unlimited". Usually plainly just "all you can eat". It becomes obvious after a certain point you cannot eat anymore. That is your limit. They are not offering "all you can eat for the next week/month/year/lifetime", but for your current meal. So if you're sitting there after having pounded down several plates of food, they're perfectly within their rights to ask you to leave since they satisfied their end of the bargain.
AT&T once upon a time did offer completely unlimited bandwidth. It was of course at a time when there was very little to consume while mobile so if anything, it was little more than a marketing strategy. The problem came when there was a boom in mobile internet activity, where people had a reason to consume copious amounts of bandwidth. They realized they could get far more money by removing the unlimited plans and moving to tiered plans. Their "unlimited" plan outlived its usefulness and they've been trying to remove and cripple it as much as possible to get everyone grandfathered out of it.
It is, however, and always will be shady to still claim something is unlimited if it is inherently not. No amount of rationalization of "expected" or "obvious" limitations will ever change that. If you're offering a finite resource, do not claim it's unlimited with an asterisk explaining the limitations. Offer the service with a proper name. We should not be tolerating this sort of false advertising.
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED. So you still get "unlimited" bandwidth.
To be a bit pedantic, throttled is the exact opposite of unlimited bandwidth. What they are talking about of course is unlimited data.
Finland has Nokia and just across the border there is Ericsson. This means that the local telephone companies get to test a lot of new networking hardware before it goes into mass production, which lowers their costs. The problem in much of the rest of the world is that phone companies sold data plans for early smartphones that had tiny screens and could just about do web browsing if you had a lot of patience and just about managed email. An unlimited plan for one of these phones was well under 1GB - irrespective of how fast the network was, you just couldn't consume much data on them. Then people took the same plans and started using modern smartphones with them. A single YouTube video on a modern phone will use more data than a month with an early Blackberry, for example. The networks were very slow at adapting, and are now trying to readjust their prices to levels that actually make sense.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"The magic number is 3GB, which conveniently happens to be the maximum amount of tiered bandwidth AT&T will sell you."
that's funny because I am paying for 5Gb from them. It's available on the website and at any location. Sounds like the article writer did not know anything about it's data plans.
Yes you can get a business 5GB data plan on your phones, and it had better be outside that 3Gb data cap or they are refunding a lot of money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The thing here in Finland is that usually the upload/download speed is limited, not the amount of data you can use. E.g. I'm Saunalahti-customer and they offer this mobile broadband-thing in various "sizes." The smallest one, the Mini, costs 4.99€ a month, has absolutely no throttling or data cap, but the speed is limited to 512KB/s. I think such pricing works great and there is absolutely no worries of going over the cap. Oh, and before someone asks: no, you're not required to sign a 2-year contract or anything, you can end the contract whenever you wish.
That said I have full package myself; no caps, no throttling, and I can upload/download at full available speed. It still costs only 15€ a month, so it's still tens of times better than anything those poor Amercans are gettin'!
Yeah, I'm with Saunalahti, as well. So now I have 500min + 100 SMS + 1mbit no-cap 3G for €19,90. Could do worse. :)
Here's the secret to immortality:
Your minority view is like a luminescent gem that glows at night and during the day dazzles the eyes with its untamed bending of the rules of physics -- twisting light, bending it, and re-emitting it in ways that should not be possible but are of mesmorizing beauty -- creating magnificent rainbows of wonder and inspiring awe. I truly have no idea which minority you support or even if there is a minority but, whatever the case, I support you because your comment is so clear in expressing its opinion that transparent takes upon a new meaning; transparent just does not do your comment justice. Super-transparent-with-added-beauty-and-succinct-vision is probably a more apt term, but that it hard to type.
Do you even know how much it costs provide dedicated bandwidth. It's not cheap. The only reason we home customers have as good lines as we do (arguably, i know) is because it's burstable bandwidth. Want dedicated? Then buy dedicated, at much higher price.
They knowingly and willingly over sold their infrastructure (bait) and now that customers are trying to use the service they signed up for, their service is being throttled (switch). Period.
The real truth here is that they offered services which they knew they could not provide and rather than do the correct thing and increase their infrastructure capacity, they opted to increase shareholder profits and to purchase the other smaller companies who were coerced into selling selling off their business for lack of ability to compete with the unlimited plans. Now that they have a large percentage of the market share, their strategy is to punish the customer that they probably wouldn't even have if it was not for the unlimited plans. Basically they gambled that customers would not utilize the service and lost. However, unlike when we get our pockets emptied at a casino, they're somehow able to pawn their losses on the customers.
I couldn't imagine a more clear example of a ponzi scheme than this.
-- L8R, guitardood
Alternatively, if AT&T can convince the network abusers to leave and go to another network, they will be able to avoid spending billions on network improvements just to cater to the 1% of customers who use 90% of the network capacity. They have a legal and fiduciary duty to do that, and as the beneficiary of AT&T's profits (i.e. shareholder to whom they pay the majority of their profits), I am all for that.
So, go fuck yourself, and have a nice day.
Allow me to quote myself:
You can construct the network for the minimum speed that users will tolerate at peak times, but no less.
That's not dedicated bandwidth.
Most people I know with a smartphone use around 1gb. No one cares about your revolution
At&t wants you to go to sprint to kill them off
Ah Telecom companies, the biggest scammers on earth right behind polticians.
They never ever disappoint you.
Reminds me of my first web host back in the 90s, crosswinds.net. Free unlimited storage and unlimited data transfer -- the only catch being you had to upload through a browser interface that required files to be less than a couple megabytes, took forever, crashed half the time... and then the site would be down for power outages every weekend. "Unlimited" is something I try to avoid.
This space intentionally left blank
I have an unlimited 3G plan with Verizon Wireless for my smartphone, and this made me curious. Verizon has a nearly identical throttling policy: http://goo.gl/RIXbF
-- Who am I? How did I get here? My God, what have I done?!
This is easily the best comment I've read on the subject on slashdot.
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED. So you still get "unlimited" bandwidth.
To be a bit pedantic, throttled is the exact opposite of unlimited bandwidth. What they are talking about of course is unlimited data.
Indeed, but we all should know that unlimited bandwidth is physically impossible, anyways...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
So then don't call it unlimited? it's not that hard -_-
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED.
I agree that this is the definition AT&T wants to use, but it's not advertised as "uncapped," it's advertised as "unlimited." Throttling is limiting. I'm sure there are many synonymous ways you could define "bandwidth throttling" which doesn't include the word "limit," but by reducing the available bandwith, you are limiting. Something which is limited cannot be called unlimited.
When AT&T first started throttling, it was supposed to be the top 5% of users, who apparently consumed something like 90% of the overall data. Now this seems to have come to serve another purpose.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Unlimited Billing
Alternatively, if AT&T can convince the network abusers to leave and go to another network
Network abusers? What are you, a corporate shill?
These people are using the bandwidth they purchased and paid for.
If you buy a tank of gas, is it ok for the gas company to say you can only drive 10 miles, then have to pay more for the gas that's already in your tank?
If you buy a car, should you have to pay more for how far you drive past some arbitrary mileage? (I'm not talking leasing here....buying your car outright).
If they don't want people using their network, why are they in the business of being a provider?
This whole thing came about because Internet Service Providers started selling faster and faster connections, without building the back-end networks to handle the increase in use. Why should I care if I can download something at 50Mb/s if I'm limited to 3Gig of data per month? I'd rather have speeds around 10Mb/s with no limitations.
'Network abusers'? You really did drink the coolaid. How about your duty to deliver what your customers have paid for?
The argument in the UK always used to be that "Unlimited" meant whenever you wanted, rather than however much you wanted; it was something of a holdover from the dial-up days when a lot of ISPs offered a totally free service (no subscription, freephone number) with a 2 hour connection cap whereas their new services were "always on".
It was a bullshit weasely definition then and it's just as bad now.
Just throttled.
Besides, no one should be mad about the use of the word unlimited, it doesn't ever mean truly unlimited. You can't get unlimited bandwidth, at an "all you can eat" they will eventually kick you out if you stay past closing, etc.
Also known as Zeno's Paradox.
A finite amount of bandwidth for an infinite amount of money.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
So then don't call it unlimited? it's not that hard -_-
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED.
I agree that this is the definition AT&T wants to use, but it's not advertised as "uncapped," it's advertised as "unlimited." Throttling is limiting. I'm sure there are many synonymous ways you could define "bandwidth throttling" which doesn't include the word "limit," but by reducing the available bandwith, you are limiting. Something which is limited cannot be called unlimited.
When AT&T first started throttling, it was supposed to be the top 5% of users, who apparently consumed something like 90% of the overall data. Now this seems to have come to serve another purpose.
But the bandwidth has always been limited... you can't have unlimited bandwidth. Shall we say that I can't say "unlimited soup and salad" because eventually the restaurant closes, and you have to stop? Is it unjustified for a restaurant to say such as well, if they require that you can only order one plate at a time? "Because you cannot send me 1 billion plates of soup and salad at one time, your 'unlimited' deal is limited, therefore you're lying to us!"
As the person above you commented, it's about unlimited data, and indeed, your data is unlimited, because you can get as much data as you want, as long as you're willing to wait for it. I didn't think it were necessary to explain that bandwidth cannot physically be unlimited, so it shouldn't be necessary to mention... apparently, they built a better idiot though...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED. So you still get "unlimited" bandwidth.
To be a bit pedantic, throttled is the exact opposite of unlimited bandwidth. What they are talking about of course is unlimited data.
I owe you an apology... apparently, there are people who need this explained to them... :(
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
This is just the same bullshit which reminds me that the word is "nigga" not "nigger" and only black people can say "nigga" so don't even try it. "Unlimited" means there is no limit in the same way that "nigger" is an obscene, derogatory and abusive word. But, if somehow a different party uses the word, it's "okay" especially when they redefine the whole meaning of words for the purpose of causing confusion.
It's okay... dat's AT&T ma nigga!
I'd like to see AT&T's upstream provider start to put limits on their access and then claim unlimited doesn't mean what you think it means.
We all live in "starbucks coffee land" where "tall" is the smallest size... I saw some "tall" people the other day at the circus... uh huh...
No, when they advertise unlimited bandwidth, what they mean is that they don't put any limits on it. If they put limits on it then it's not unlimited. The overly pedantic definition you're using is of no value to anybody ever.
If they're placing any throttling or limitations on it, then it's not unlimited.
That is exactly the argument used here in Canada to justify the exorbitant prices charged.
Cellphone contracts in Canada are criminal. All of them state: "no guarantee of service". i.e. Give us your money and we may or may not give you something for it. No other business is allowed to get away with this. I am constantly amazed that people sign these agreements. I guess the desire to look cool overwhelms all reason.
The credit reporting agencies are complicit in this extortion scheme. People continue to pay for something they may or may not receive, because if the criminal networks (Rogers, Bell) decide to report you, then you can never own a home, buy a car, rent a motel room... etc. Want to contest the report that a fraudulent corporation makes to the credit agency? That will cost you at least $50. It is an extortion racket, nothing more. It seems this is perfecctly legal for these companies. Just try it as an individual and your ass will be in jail before you can say "extortion racket".
All cellphone services in Canada are fraudulent and criminal. I guess if you are a corporation, then that is OK these days. I think I will incorporate so I can be a criminal with no fear of punishment too!
Forces you to go with their XXL package of 50mb. I don't have fibre right now but I will soon. I will need to get the 50mb package, to avoid throttling (they still throttle P2P but there is no download threshold like the other packages), even though I cannot actually get 50mb speed (probably tops out at around 40). Thats the only way unfortunately. It used to be 20mb was the highest and that was unlimited. Traditionally, VM's best package is the only unthrottled one.
[clipped]
It is, however, and always will be shady to still claim something is unlimited if it is inherently not. No amount of rationalization of "expected" or "obvious" limitations will ever change that. If you're offering a finite resource, do not claim it's unlimited with an asterisk explaining the limitations. Offer the service with a proper name. We should not be tolerating this sort of false advertising.
I have to disagree on this, to a point. Namely, I'm willing to let my current subscription to be called unlimited, with asterisk explaining limitations. No, don't yell at me yet, let me explain.
My current plan let's me download unlimited amount of data each month, no throttling, no caps. This truly is unlimited, but with an asterisk. See later.
My plan also doesn't cap my bandwith, at all, ever, but allow unlimited downloading each month, for the whole month. That, also, is truly unlimited, but with the aforementioned asterisk.
Okay, see here. The asterisk: Please note that these are limited with the current technology. The network available here is limited by the hardware and infrastructure to about 15-20Mbps, theoretical. It usually sits anywhere between four and twelve. So the amount of data, while unlimited in the meaning that no company limits your downloads, is still limited to a finite amount by limits in the hardware of the network and the device you are using. You cannot download 34579823475 TB of data each month, since the devices you own and the network provided are physically incapable of such speed that would be required for that amount of data.
If the company who sells the product/service to me does not intentionally limit the use in any way, I'm fine for them to call it "unlimited", even if it comes with an asterisk explaining the limitations of the underlying system.
Go read the terms of service in your AT&T contract before you make such stupid statements.
they faced impossibility of adapting 'unlimited' to real world. The first to do so will have to bite anger of customers who do not give a damn about realities of running networks. They do not have to know anything but a little thinking would help. Still this does not mean it would ever happen so we have this dance till first operator scraps all unlimited one way or the other and the rest will follow. OC the first one to do so will have to pay the sucker's fee.
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
Your tank of gas analogy is flawed.
The real analogy is that gas stations have the absolute right to ration purchases to make sure everyone has at least some gas.
If you buy a car, you do have to pay more for how far you drive, by purchasing more gas, and paying for more maintenance, and paying higher insurance, and paying tolls in some places. People who use more should have to pay for.
In any case, if you would go read your AT&T terms of service, you would find that you are not paying for unlimited service. You are paying for use of the network on an as-available bases without a set data cap. You are not paying for and are not entitled to 100% utilization 100% of the time to the detriment of other users of the network.
I live in Finland and I can't understand what is going on in all those countries where they start charging more while giving less
Here is some clarification:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company
Palm trees and 8
Hmm, at least here in the UK we get unlimited SMS (subject to Fair Use Policy, usually 2500 per month)
"Unlimited" here means "without artificial limitations." At least that's what it used to mean when they first advertised it.
Vodafone finally has started to put simple clear limits on its dataplans, granted this is pure data (tablets, laptop) but at least you know what you get. Two years sees the first year for half the price, so it is in reality 75% of 47.50 with either a cheap dongle or wifi/3G modem for "free". 19% sales tax is included in the price.
Net result, roughly twice the data for the same price. But no sign of LTE so far in Holland.I suppose one way or another, you get what you pay for. In Holland the competition is rather strong with few people staying with the default subscriber. Raise the prices, loose customers. Seems Americans still give AT&T enough room to control them. Vote with your dollars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No, when they advertise unlimited bandwidth, what they mean is that they don't put any limits on it.
I don't think you understand what "bandwidth" means.
Actually, the 50MB package still has some throttling in place - but only on upstream, not downstream (but I guess that isn't a problem for you as you've already researched). Only their 100MB package is totally unthrottled with no bandwidth caps. Seriously considering upgrading because a 75% throttle is intense butthurt at weekends (the only time I actually seriously use the 30Mb speeds to let BBC iPlayer download series links, Steam games etc).
What you said is what is same situation in many other places, like what "toilet flush day" tries to do, that every person in US would flush their toilets at same time. The sewer system couldn't handle that amount of water but it would fill all sewers with waste water and it would come up to streets and even empty water towers and other local reserves.
But the sewers and water distribution systems works because it is balanced by statics that everyone does not flush same time or take shower same time.
Same problem is with networking and especially when it comes to US where the networks structure lacks severely behind many European countries and all Nordic countries. In US, the network structure was never designed from the beginning to handle that amount of data transfer as in Nordic countries were. One of the reasons for that is there in Nordic countries government build and paid networks to every home. It was 99% coverage that every building had telephone lines and every town and city block were stand-alone distributing everything alone but together they build big network what is very well balanced.
But as in US, some Nordic countries the creed government officials got idea that there is need to private the network. So they stopped building new networks and they trusted private companies to handle situation. Prices went up and quality came down. And last 30 years that has been cause why ISP's are now whining not wanted to invest to network as they didn't do that for 30 years and now they would need to do so in once. It is big number to invest (like 1-2 billion) for a country to pull a fibernetwork to every home, and companies do not want to do that because they want to give that money to investors, who are usually foreign people. If government would have done that, it would pay about 800-1100 billion, time to upgrade all networks would take less than 1-2 years and every home would have at least 100MBits connections. And it would maintain the basic infrastructure of modern society, but capitalism and competition is cause why everyone is suffering now even by networking system.
Marketing has evolved since 1900-1940 to modern model where marketing is just a technic to push illusions and dreams to peoples minds. It is about quest to wake up the needs what people like at that moment.
For decades marketing has not been about informing people about your product, but to sell crap and do so again and again in endless loop.
Charge users a certain per-megabyte fee on their bill for the data they use and offer them the option to pre-purchase data per-gigabyte at a discount.
Which would be different than the current tiered (non-unlimited) dataplans... how, exactly?
Did you mean "cut off the service when the cap is reached instead of assraping the customer with overage charges?" If so, then good luck with that. These guys are certified bastards.
Yeah when I move into my fibre house, I will bite the bullet and pony up £35pm for the full (50mb) package (100mb is not offered here, presumably because they know we cannot consume it with our FTTC infrastructure). It's just about tolerable a price (though I won't get any other services like phone or TV. Not that I use those things anyway). Also, I doubt I would ever hit the upload throttling limit, unless I am backing up large files to my website or a storage locker, in which case I could do that during a time it isn't throttled.
I live in Finland as well and a 15 months ago I wanted a data plan to my phone.
So I called to two operators and asked their services. In three days I had unlimited speed and amount (unlimited as by companies, only limited by current network situation on area where I might be at that point and my used device) and price for that was 2 euros a month (about $2.8). And the SIM and phones are unlocked, so I can freely just swap card where ever I want. I don't need to care about where I am or what carrier network I am using as in Finland you automatically use every carrier network without any extra price or limitation. If your own carrier network is slower than competitors network, your phone automatically switch to strongest one so you swap even carriers networks on the fly without any limitations.
I have enjoyed a lot about unlimited speed & amount. My data usage has been between 20-40 gigabytes by avarage, some months it has gone up to 60 gigabytes. But then it means I use a lot tethering and hotspot feature in my Android phone.
Oh and did I forget that in Finland you are not charged extra for features like tethering and hotspot or even amount of laptops and desktops using your mobile network device?
You can even place your SIM to 3G WLAN 802.11n router and share your connection to 100 people if wanted.
The now typical data package from cheapest carrier in Finland is about 5-9 euros a month. And it is usually 1Mbits to what network/device can handle (un-locked SIM and devices).
I just bought a few day ago for friend a 3G modem and it is 24 month contract, price being 9,90 euros a month for unlimited speed but amount is capped to 60 gigabytes and after that 60 gigabytes your connection is throttled so you are second class user for that cell tower when others are using it but your connection speed does not drop under 1Mbits ever (that is quaranteed) so you do not get anymore those 14MBits or higher speeds after 60Gigabytes.
And for me it is hard to use that 60 gigabytes a month, for typical users it is even harder. Only way to get that 60 gigabyte line crossed is to watch lot of HD streams. But when the HD television and services are trough DVB2-S or DVB2-T it does not matter for your data.
Exactly this happened in Australia with fixed-line broadband. ISPs offered 'unlimited' plans, in small print noting you get throttled after a certain figure. They got smacked down by the ACCC (the government consumer watchdog) and now plans are either "x GB - throttled" or "x GB - $y/GB excess fee", or genuinely unlimited.
Unlimited is defined as: /nlmtd/ Show Spelled[uhn-lim-i-tid] Show IPA
unlimited
adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unlimited )
Legally the customers have a case in my humble opinion. They were sold "UNLIMITED" usage on data.
After they purchased it, then the company changed their plan. This is both unethical for the business and bait and switch.
Most likely what happened is the "sales" people sold what marketing told them they had to sell. Then the technical department said "hey our network is getting hammered" and management said "hey we need to fix this"
If I were an AT&T customer I would be taking my terms and conditions to my lawyer to fight the additional charges wherever possible.
"People are stupid" "there is a sucker born every minute"
If you believe those things, you get to be the ass who takes advantage of people.
let all that extra money buy you a couple of friends while you are at it.
So.... Anybody want to fire up a class action lawsuit?
I meant eliminating the data plans completly (including the requirement to buy one because AT&T thinks your phone is a "smartphone") and replacing it with the ability to buy data in 1gb blocks at a discount to the normal per-megabyte price. In particular, there wouldn't be a hard limit on how many of these data blocks you can buy.
So then don't call it unlimited? it's not that hard -_-
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED.
I agree that this is the definition AT&T wants to use, but it's not advertised as "uncapped," it's advertised as "unlimited." Throttling is limiting. I'm sure there are many synonymous ways you could define "bandwidth throttling" which doesn't include the word "limit," but by reducing the available bandwith, you are limiting. Something which is limited cannot be called unlimited.
When AT&T first started throttling, it was supposed to be the top 5% of users, who apparently consumed something like 90% of the overall data. Now this seems to have come to serve another purpose.
So, sue them.
The magic number is 3GB, which conveniently happens to be the maximum amount of tiered bandwidth AT&T will sell you.
BANDWIDTH is the RATE at which bits are transferred.
USAGE is the AMOUNT of data that has been transferred.
After 3GB of USAGE, AT&T will limit your BANDWIDTH.
I'd expect this kind of confusion on CNN, but Slashdot?
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Not the way I read it. You want to sell me unlimited data, it'd better be unlimited. As in, no limits at all. Not "no limits on the amount". I'm talking "no limits on the amount, no limits on how you use it, no limits on how fast you can use it."
Otherwise, you'd better stop calling it unlimited.
I'd think caps as low as 3GB per month are going to be discouraging video streaming as well as bulk downloading.
That asside while bulk downloading may be more evenly spread it can also be massively higher in volume, should a user who is maxing out their connection most of the time and wose is doing so with agressive protocols like bittorrent really pay the same as someone who is just browsing the web and checking email?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
There are limits placed upon us by reality, the laws of physics, and what not. Then there are the artificial limits placed upon us because some company waved their collective hands and said "We're going to place limits on it."
I'd argue that most (probably not all, there's a few nutcases out there) under an unlimited plan fully understand that "unlimited" does not mean infinite. It means "not limited by the provider".
I have as well Saunalahti but for me it is 2€ a month for unlimited upload/download speeds without amount limitations.
I can download/upload as much as my device or the current cell can handle.
Right now my speeds were 742KB/s for download and 435KB/s upload so my phone full 7.4Mbits download speed is available and full 5.76Mbits upload as well. But that is now possible middle of day, but after the school ends and hundred kids gets homes and people returns from work it drops to 250-400KB/s download and 150-300KB/s upload almost exactly when time hits 16:30, as there are about 150 houses covered with one cell tower.
But I can live with that well.
Everytime I read about any US carrier network speeds and "amazing services" I laugh (ok, I used to laugh but now it is just boring) and I hope they would demand that carriers would start investing money to their customers instead shareholders. Why does US citizens allow corporations to rip their rights away, slowdown and limit their nation development by capitalism? God damn.... someone stop that grazy thing there and demand government to build the information network and that then to rent it to small local carriers who will maintain and upgrade the local network for every US citizen. Capitalism does not work but it just slows down and delivers bad qualities (were it then technology, healtcare, electricity etc).
I don't have an AT&T contract. Pray tell me, does it include the definition of 'network abuser' or is that only in the shareholder's reports?
Granted. So, that means either (a) AT&T is lying and hence committing fraud* or (b) they're using a more limited definition of the word "unlimited".
That's a bad analogy. The "restaurant" closes at the end of the month for everyone. If it closed early for you, it'd be a limited plan.
So long as it's the standard convention that you only get one plate at a time, then it can still be called unlimited. However, if after eating n plates of food, they take away your plate and give you a tiny cup saucer, they're clearly limiting your ability to eat.
Hardly. If the standard bandwidth for the first 1/4th of the month allows you to download 3GB, but after that point you're throttled to 1/10th the standard speed, you can only d/l an additional ~0.9GB. No amount of waiting will grant you d/ling 4GB in a month. And it's not like the discussion is merely about granting a "fairer", higher priority to other users who have used less bandwidth because that would at least hypothetically grant you the possibility of d/ling even up to ~12GB/month if there's few enough other users sharing the bandwidth. Throttling, after all, is a different beast than simply QoS or other prioritizing.
*Well, I guess that falls into the area of "a company can lie as much as it want, be as deceptive as it wants, etc, so long as the lie is so grand or the deception so vast that no reasonable person would believe it". That's obviously stupid because there's a clear intent and that's the critical aspect of why they'd even bother to advertise the plan as "unlimited". If you can't physically have unlimited bandwidth, then a reasonable understanding that unlimited in the stated context means the dictionary definition of unlimited mean unrestrained. Well, throttling is clearly a restraint. I can only imagine that as others have stated, the unlimited plan came first and the heavy bandwidth came later, which lead to those in charge thinking more of how in some vague, twisted way a plan may be interpreted as "unlimited" while still in a common and obvious way not be.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
The majority of the "profit" telcos make is from their business clients. Residential customers are not profitable at all. The only reason they care in the least about resi customers is because, in order to own the territory you have to service both. What little money they do make in the residential market is usually due to large government subsidies, like Obama's recent DSL expansion project. And trust me, all that money went strait into the bank. The telcos just listed projects they had already had on the books in planning for years, and then collected the money. Thank you uncle sam.
But, this is the whole problem with selling something as "unlimited". The whole point for using the word "unlimited" is to mislead. It may *appear* unlimited for 95% of the consumption patterns, but there will always be a percentage of consumers who have a different definition of "unlimited". It would just be better for all to avoid using the word.
AT&T have been good for things like this forever. They've always either assholed themselves out of markets somehow, or they've priced themselves out of it, or they've simple fed too many people too much terrible customer service out of it.
With any luck, this will make AT&T shrink and possibly go away someday. Leave us with T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Verizon and Boost. All of which are better services (yes, even boost and MetroPCS) with better customer service (though Verizon isn't that much better in customer service) and better phones.
Exactly.
But when it comes to downloading stuff, many people have the data equivalent of a bottomless stomach. And this has been known for a long time. Several years ago, when DSL was new, we hade some ISPs going into bankruptcy in Germany, because they unwisely sold unlimited plans and their upstream bills killed them.
Today's ISPs should know better and go straight to the equivalent of 'Max 3 refills'. Something like 'Max.50GByte/month'. If they still sell "unlimited" pland and throttle those, I guess its time to go after them for fraud.
C - the footgun of programming languages
>It becomes obvious after a certain point you cannot eat anymore
1Mbyte/s=2,500,000 Mbytes/month
Your analogy would work only if a visitor to the aforementioned buffet (you must be hungry - I have no other reasonable explanation for your absurd analogy) can consume 1000 goat karahis at a time.
For those who does not get it:
1Mbyte/s=2,500,000 Mbytes/month
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Saunalahti and Elisa offer unlimited full-rate 3G (and 4G where possible), but DNA rep told me they have 30GB throttlecap. Don't know about Sonera, never asked them.
>One of the important prerequisites for a free market is informed customers
No. Informed customers is a result of regulation of a free market.
Free market is when somebody sells you a snake oil and you are responsible for figuring out if it is snake oil or not.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Since I am a longtime AT&T iPhone customer, since the iphone edge model. Does this nullify my contract with them? If my unlimited data plan as a limit, that changes the terms of my contract with them, right? I can bail out now. Right?
When Blockbuster started their "Total Access" plan to compete with Netflix about a year ago now, they advertized it as "Unlimited Free Rentals*". The asterisk sentence said "Limited to one free rental a day for a Limited time".
I said something to the clerk at the check out counter and he said that it didn't make sense to him either.
A week later the sign was gone.
No, but it does say you can't use the network in a way that prevents others being able to use it. There are specific disclaimers saying there are no guarantees of speed or availability.
"Unlimited" only means there is no cap on the amount of data you can use in a month. There is still no cap, even with the throttling. AT&T has every right to ensure availability to all users by limiting speeds to those who, in their opinion, use the network in a way that is detrimental to other users.
There is not now nor has there ever been a promise, advertisement, or guarantee of 100% speed 100% of the time to 100% of the users.
Neither does AT&T. They cap transferred data, not bandwidth. If they throttled people who went over 3GB on their network, that's one thing... but capping your monthly slice of the bit bucket is not unlimited either, no matter what marketroids call it.
Unlimited Data (they say that, of course not now, but AT&T did when these people signed up) means you can transfer ALL the bits you want and not be charge for them if you go over some magical amount.
We ALL need to stop talking bandwidth and start talking bytes transferred... Any plan that limits the amount of data you can transfer does NOTHING to ease network congestion (throttling does, btw.) and it merely is a way for companies to squeeze a few people and scare others into underusing their phone's data plan because of the specter of being charged cash per gigabyte.
So, Unlimited is no longer unlimited to AT&T... as if we needed articles to clarify. Frapping idiots.
I agree that this is the definition AT&T wants to use, but it's not advertised as "uncapped," it's advertised as "unlimited." Throttling is limiting. I'm sure there are many synonymous ways you could define "bandwidth throttling" which doesn't include the word "limit," but by reducing the available bandwith, you are limiting. Something which is limited cannot be called unlimited.
To be completely and utterly pedantic, I feel the need to point out that it's not advertised at all. They don't still sell the "unlimited" package, it's a legacy package that people who were subscribers to another carrier were grandfathered in on when they took it over. It was advertised as "unlimited", and for a while it was "unlimited", but this is not a service they still sell.
It's also worth mentioning that I have not seen their contract in writing, so I have no idea how they define "limiting". It could make it very clear that they're talking about data usage caps, and not bandwidth... in fact, while they may use different nomenclature, I would be very surprised if they didn't point out that they're not talking about bandwidth, because they have no way to ensure that there will be enough bandwidth available on a given cell at a given time of day to handle your data use.
Ultimately, I don't care. ATT shafts their customers. Ok. Thanks for the warning. Next time I'm shopping for a carrier, I'll keep that in mind. But the carrier I'm on has a flex data plan, and my usage is so low that I'm on the bottom tier of it ($5/mo for data on my smartphone), so I doubt that I'd be all that worried about the upper limits of data tiers: no other carrier has a data tier as low/cheap as the one I'm using right now.
...our Supreme Court basically agreed consumers don't have a right to Class Actions any more.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/scotus-rules-att-can-force-arbitration-block-class-action-suits.ars
Then it's not unlimited.. sheesh, they've even got customers doing it now!
Not the way I read it. You want to sell me unlimited data, it'd better be unlimited. As in, no limits at all. Not "no limits on the amount". I'm talking "no limits on the amount, no limits on how you use it, no limits on how fast you can use it."
Otherwise, you'd better stop calling it unlimited.
I agree. That's what UNLIMITED means unless it's defined with an asterisk fine print thingy.
Exactly.
There are limitations inherent in the system (natural limitations, if you want to call 'em that), and then there are "artificial" limitations imposed by a carrier.
Call up AT&T and cancel your plan. They DO NOT CARE about your feelings. They DO NOT CARE about your feelings. Go to Sprint or Verizon or T-Mobile or anyone else.
Cellphone contracts in Canada are criminal. All of them state: "no guarantee of service". i.e. Give us your money and we may or may not give you something for it. No other business is allowed to get away with this. I am constantly amazed that people sign these agreements. I guess the desire to look cool overwhelms all reason.
No the desire to keep in contact when on the move overwhelms the dislike of the one-sided contract terms.
Cellphone service is always going to be "no gaurantee" because there are just too many things beyond the network's reasonable control that could stop you getting service be it too many people converging in a small area or buildings screwing up the radio propagation.
BTW here in europe we have our own issues with cellphone prices. Europe is divided into countries comparable in size to US states but as soon as you cross the border your cellphone prices go through the roof.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
If you pay for all-you-can-eat soup and they make you start waiting 30 minutes between each bowl after your 3rd bowl, you'd still feel cheated, wouldn't you? That is some thing that really should be a PART OF the advertising, and not some fine print.
Plenty of people would pay more for (and make use of) throttling to start at 5 GB instead of 3 GB or 1 GB, so it should definitely be clear that this is happening.
I have seen 1st hand how wasteful cellular networks can be. They have 20+ price plans, each with detailed rules like when to turn on your mailbox.So, their billing systems aren't cheap.
Then they know most customers don't care about which network they are on. So the networks spend a fortune to keep reminding you about their brand...
I wish they would just sell wholesale. Governments should allow anyone with a commitment to setup a decent network in an area to go ahead. Then have companies (similar to ISPs) who buy up access from the wholesalers and provide customers with nationwide coverage.
I just think cellular networks are one way the rich keep getting richer!
It's easy - just do what ISPs do in many other parts of the world. You have a monthly subscription fee and a monthly cap. The better plan you're on the bigger the cap and better value-for-money you get, but the more money you pay overall.
If your cap isn't enough for the current month you can top up at a rate that's better than the price-per-gig that you pay for the cap on your plan but not quite as good as the more-expensive plans. That way you are encouraged to upgrade your subscription if you go over your limit regularly.
When you hit your cap you are either cut off or throttled heavily depending on your ISP's policy, but you can top up manually or use an optional auto-topup with configurable thresholds. The customer should never be charged for anything involuntarily or be punished for overage.
No, when they advertise unlimited bandwidth, what they mean is that they don't put any limits on it. If they put limits on it then it's not unlimited. The overly pedantic definition you're using is of no value to anybody ever.
I think you'll find that the overly pedantic definition is useful to someone... advertisers.
As I explained elsewhere, advertising always uses the most pedantic definitions possible, stretching meaning to be misleading to customers, while still technically true, so that they're not hit by truth in advertising laws.
So, these pedantic definitions are quite valuable, and are consistently used all over advertising, which is why it is important for advertisement watchers to be aware and keep a skeptical (cynical?) eye on all advertising-speak.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
You'd lose of you went to court over this. The AT&T lawyers looked over that contract long before yours ever saw it. It's cheaper to pay the fees than the Lawyer...
The fact is, I just spent some time on the AT&T Website looking for data speeds, and can't find any. So unless they have mention of their speeds in your contract, they don't guarantee any level of service in regards to speed, from what I can see. No guaranteed speeds in your contract means they can throttle you whenever they feel like it. Which means their definition of unlimited data is what matters... they don't even advertise what they'll throttle your speeds down to.... If they want to give you 1kbps (kilo bit per second) down, they can...It's technically a connection... The only argument you'd have is at that speed, you can only download 316.4 Megabytes worth of data at those speeds in a month, if you're phone went non-stop at the throttled speed....
Mathematically, an 80 kilo bit/sec throttle speed is approx. 25 Gigabytes of data non-stop. that's 5 times more data than what their largest tier package is, and most of their customers on that plan don't even hit that... If you include the fact that they'll be able to download even more with the extra 3GB at faster speeds, It's as good as unlimited.. At least in the eyes of marketing and legal. Who cares that you don't download non-stop... The fact is they'll argue that they gave you the capacity to do 25GB or more, and you were unable to use it due to your personal traffic patterns, thus unlimited..
How many stories are we gonna see about this? AT&T is expensive and their "unlimited plan" isn't unlimited. We know that. I think that the whole world knows this. No need to post yet another story about it. Whichever /. editor that has an AT&T plan: SWITCH COMPANIES!
Better yet, get rid of the ridiculous idea of "data plans" in the first place. Charge users a certain per-megabyte fee...
That would not benefit the provider, so that won't happen
The beauty of tiered plans is that everyone overpays. You either pay for stuff you don't use (like on those months when you don't use 3Gigs or whatever your tier is), AND you get the privilege of paying a ridiculously high price for going over limit ($10/1G, seriously?). Naturally, they encourage you to plan high, pointing out that over-plan costs are very high.
And since humans lack the capacity to predict their monthly usage, EVERYONE overpays - one way or another. Allowing you to buy what you need stops the overpaying bonanza.
Not the way I read it. You want to sell me unlimited data, it'd better be unlimited. As in, no limits at all. Not "no limits on the amount". I'm talking "no limits on the amount, no limits on how you use it, no limits on how fast you can use it."
Otherwise, you'd better stop calling it unlimited.
I want to be able to access the internet as it will exist in 5 years, and if you can't provide it, then that's a limit, and by golly, I'm going to sue you for providing an unlimited plan that is limited by the rules of physics.
People need to get over this shit, the "unlimited" was always restricted to the amount of data that you can download, and I've known this for years. But so many people seem to be taking this approach of, "I can distort your words to mean something that you never promised, and since I never got it, I'm upset, and going to threaten to sue you!"
Advertising is misleading even when it's not deceptive. That's how advertising works. Drinking Dos Equis will not make you the most interesting man in the world, and you will not own a pet cougar as a result of drinking a specific brand of beer. Yet, their advertising sets viewers up for a false-correlation of "that guy drinks Dos Equis, that guy is awesome, therefore, if I drink Dos Equis, I will be awesome, too!"
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I guess the other bonus is the free upgrade to 100Mb you'd get at some point over the next 9 months that VM are currently implementing. :)
"But they have grandfathered old unlimited plans so as not to piss off existing customers" - and are pissing off those same customers by limiting them ..?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
when AT&T first started their unlimited data plans, 5gb was their limit. data caps are limits, and the definition of unlimited is without limit. so AT&T has been lying through marketing since day 1. recently a supreme court judge stated that consumers should expect hyperbole from the marketing they read, so one cannot bring charges against company's false claims. after giving corporations all the rights of citizens but not requiring any of the responsibilities, I would expect no less from the cabal of geniuses who decided that a state's arbitrary deadline for counting votes was more important than actually counting all the goddamned votes (bush v. gore, 2000). so basically, if you live in america, suck it up. SCOTUS has AT&T's back, not yours.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
So the amount of data ... is still limited to a finite amount by limits in the hardware of ... the device you are using.
What happens when the cell provider 'updates' your phone to limit the transfer speed to 'prevent overheating' or to 'increase hardware reliability'?
How do you know they don't already impose artificial limits on the transfer speed that lower the effective rate below the phone's native capabilities?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
This just released....
American Telephone and Telegraph is now.... Astounding Tasteless and Terrible.
F*ck you at&t and your deceiving bullshit.
That's not unlimited then.
If network management was AT&T's real purpose for throttling, they wouldn't do it on a monthly basis. That's an incredibly coarse control period! If they really wanted just to use bandwidth more evenly, they'd use per-MB rates that varied based on the time of day or location. They're the phone company; they invented that kind of billing!
No doubt they think they have it right, but it really won't solve the problem..... competition.
The rare AC comment worthy of mod points...not that I have any, of course.
I agree, the whole cap bullshit is just their way to squeeze out a new revenue stream, now that something like 50% of adults are rolling with smart phones these days, the days of unlimited anything are fast coming to a close. They don't have to entice people to dump their dumb phones and switch as much anymore, so now it's time to start gouging those that did by figuring out the most efficient way to bill them for the maximum amount they possibly can without having a net loss in total customers each month. Even outside of the contracts locking people into their service for 2 years, what are the odds that a person is going to downgrade to a dumb phone anyway? We're hooked on our smart phones now. The first hit is always cheap or free.
As someone that worked at Blockbuster for a few years back in the day, believe me, that's nothing new. In my day we had just rolled out the "Rewards" program, and holy crap was it a nightmare with all the fine print and random rules they had attached to how people could collect their rewards. Hell, they had us pushing "Gold Rewards" plans on people, promising them that, as a "Gold" account they could call down to the store and reserve any movie, but we were also directed by corporate not to hold a movie if a customer came into the store wanting it.
That place was awful for giving conflicting direction (among many other things). Probably why they're a smoldering heap these days...
Well, without getting into the problem where "bandwidth" isn't the same as "data transferred", bandwidth in my mind describes a bit rate, not amount of data transferred, even unlimited has a theoretical limit.
If a mobile customer transfers data at say 1.5 Mbps (assuming that is their speed) continuously for 1 month then that would be a theoretical limit to what "unlimited" would be, my quick calcs show that to be 486 GB.
I've heard that comcast has a threshold of 200 GB a month or so. THAT could be a problem given that a cable connection is typically way faster than 1.5 Mbps.
Assuming a 12 Mbps cable connection that's 3.88 TB/month maxed out 24/7, where 200 GB is about 5% of theoretical max. Which makes sense with how many heavy users get "the letter" saying "stop using your unlimited bandwidth, you're using too much."
Right...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
That might make people start wondering why voice data is so special as to require comparatively exorbitant prices to transmit.
Right now AT&T can say that people using 3GB are super users that use WAY more data than the normal person, but that number is going to go up in the future as people start watching more video on their phones (netflix, Sling, HBOGO, etc.). If they try and fight this same fight a few years from now they will have to set their limits much higher since that is going to be the 'norm' and not just the super user. By setting their limits to 3GB now, when people start using more data later they can start hitting them with the overages and say "hey, this is what you signed up for, not our fault". Its evil but still a logical strategy. Fighting this fight now they only have to deal with pissing off the super user, fighting later they piss off everyone.
It's funny that AT&T restricts their "unlimited" data for users who have those plans while charging users actual unlimited amounts of money for going over their capped plans. I think I'm going to start throttling the amount that I pay them once I hit my 3GB cap.
For every MB that I exceed, I will pay them 5% of the charged amount. I'm sure AT&T will appreciate that about as much as the "unlimited" users that they are throttling. Except that in their case, they'll do whatever it takes to get their money while the end-users have no repercussions.
They don't still sell the "unlimited" package, it's a legacy package that people who were subscribers to another carrier were grandfathered in on when they took it over.
I'm still on an AT&T "Unlimited" package. It was sold to me BY AT&T in an AT&T retail location. It is the reason I switched to AT&T in the first place. Over time this definition becomes increasingly strained.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Is everyone forgetting that Verizon does the EXACT same thing? I'm pissed about my "unlimited" data plan being throttled (I get there in about 3 days...), but my friend (and neighbor) who has Verizon gets the same treatment (throttled after 3GB). Did you ever think all this hype might be caused by a competitor of AT&T? Just a thought.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wait for my download to finish on the last day of my billing month...
Exactly, and it's illegal. Why are they not being prosecuted for consumer fraud? Of course, when Sony removed OtherOS that fraud was even worse. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that in the US, corporations are above the law?
Free Martian Whores!
>
People need to get over this shit, the "unlimited" was always restricted to the amount of data that you can download, and I've known this for years. But so many people seem to be taking this approach of, "I can distort your words to mean something that you never promised, and since I never got it, I'm upset, and going to threaten to sue you!"
It's no different that W=VA except that it's D=BT for Data, Bandwidth, and Time. The indignation stems from AT&T advertising unlimited D then restricting how much B you get. That in turn directly impacts the max potential for D and that is where people are getting confused. D is still unlimited. There's no limitation on how much D you can get other than how much T you're willing to spend to get it. Of course there is a maximum D which can be obtained based on T.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Firstly, there is no such thing as an 'unlimited buffet'. All you can eat buffets are always, at the very least, limited to the actual buffet. You can't get any food which they are not serving on the buffet, you can't get any drinks as part of the buffet, etc. And hence, they are not called 'unlimited', they are called 'all you can eat'. An all you can eat buffet is all purchasers can eat...of the buffet, not of other stuff.
And just like every other meal in the place, as part of how restaurants operates, you have to stop eating and leave when they close.
And, just like all meals served at restaurants they consider the meal done, and forget who you are, when you leave.
If there were places open 24 hours but kicking people out after a certain amount of time, you'd have a valid point, but no restaurant owner is stupid enough to make an all you can eat buffet open 24 hours without clearly explain in advance exactly how long your 'meal' can last, or homeless people would start living in there. So if there was a place open 24 hours, I'm sure they actually have a time limit stated or a better explanation than 'all you can eat'.
In fact, your point is a little strange, because every 'all you can eat' buffet I've ever seen, it says, underneath, 'limited to a single visit'. No, this isn't the same thing as asterisks, because cell phone companies do not _explain_ the actual limitations. They just offer 'unlimited' things and then think it's reasonable to randomly and secretly limit them after people have purchased them.
This would be akin to an all you can eat buffet saying 'Subject to certain limitations' on a sign and then trying to kick people out who keep choosing 'expensive' stuff. They do not do this, because restaurant owners are not part of a small group of abusive businesses that hold the entire market so can feel free to mislead customers.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Anyone using above 3GB on an unlimited plan is a customer who isn't paying enough for the privilege
Excuse me? You're robbing people blind with your ridiculously high prices.
There's some months where my phone bill is higher than my damn electric bill.
You can't tell me that electricity is easier to make. |:
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
anyone still with AT&T at this point is already a certified masochist.
Guilty as charged, although I'm planning to port my number to a VOIP service soon & discontinue cell service almost completely. My VOIP provider has an app, so I can still use my old cell phone number as long as I have a decent wifi connection. I'll pick up a pay-as-you-go cell for those few times when I just can't wait for said wifi connection. I'm finding that I use my cell phone for actual phone calls less and less anyway.
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
Hardly. If the standard bandwidth for the first 1/4th of the month allows you to download 3GB, but after that point you're throttled to 1/10th the standard speed, you can only d/l an additional ~0.9GB. No amount of waiting will grant you d/ling 4GB in a month. And it's not like the discussion is merely about granting a "fairer", higher priority to other users who have used less bandwidth because that would at least hypothetically grant you the possibility of d/ling even up to ~12GB/month if there's few enough other users sharing the bandwidth. Throttling, after all, is a different beast than simply QoS or other prioritizing.
Well, not exactly. Your bandwidth has never changed. You receive a packet at the same speed you always did. So your bandwidth is always the same. However, your throughput has been reduces as the packets are transmitted to you at a slower rate, but at the same speed. In slashdot-ese, it's like a highway. The cars can always travel at 55 MPH (bandwidth), but they only allow cars to enter the highway at a slower rate (throughput). It is technically, unlimited bandwidth (within the law/physical law). They aren't doing anything to artificially limit it.
Better yet, get rid of the ridiculous idea of "data plans" in the first place. Charge users a certain per-megabyte fee on their bill for the data they use and offer them the option to pre-purchase data per-gigabyte at a discount.
But they would lose money from that over the current scheme. With the current tiered plan, they get everyone to pay for 3Gb per month, whether they use it or not. AT&T offers two tiers for smartphones: 300Mb and 3Gb. If I had to guess I would say that most smartphone owner use just over 300Mb per month. This allows AT&T to use FUD and the threat "per Mb" overage charges to get people to buy 3Gb of capacity. Will they use that capacity? Unlikely, but it nets AT&T an additional $10 per subscriber. What they want to get rid of are the people who actually use close to their capacity. Even worse are those darn "unlimited" users who don't have to pay to go over 3Gb. It looks like AT&T is trying to find a way, short of just eliminating the grandfathered plans, to migrate those users their current plans without losing them.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
So if you're sitting there after having pounded down several plates of food, they're perfectly within their rights to ask you to leave since they satisfied their end of the bargain.
Almost all 'all you can eat' buffets offers have 'limited to single visit' printed underneath. As does all signs saying 'free refills of drinks'. (1) People just don't notice that text, because it's what they assumed anyway.
Hence, if you sit there after eating, they will not throw you out.
I get a little confused at people who think they will. Seriously, everyone's talking about it, but has anyone ever tried eating two meals for one? I once ate at an all you can eat buffet, sat there and read a book for four hours, got a tiny bit more food, and left. They don't care, because people already gorge themselves at all you can eat, and can't functionally gain the ability to eat more after sitting there for a bit! (Granted, that was exactly one location, one time, so I have no idea how other places act, but assuming they all go 'You've eaten lunch, and you're clearly trying to stick around for dinner, so leave!' is probably wrong.)
They will, however, throw you (And all their customers) out when they close, at which point you are not longer on your original 'visit', so you must purchase another buffet the next day.
1) This is not the same thing as cell phone companies with random restrictions they claim they can change at any time and don't actually tell you before signing a contract. It's one restriction, that generally is identical everywhere that most people already understand, that they usually put on the sign itself so people can see it before purchase.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
boy, this got on your corporate radar fast. If you've ever used the word "unlimited" then you've made a promise, advertisement, and guarantee not to limit it. You are absolutely right that this does not guarantee that a single rainstorm won't limit 100% throughput, and it's obviously true that less than 100% of users 100% of the time will have 100% speed. why, if a single iphone is taken into a cave, that happens.
It simply means you won't limit it. That's the definition of unlimited, and it's what you promised.
but hey, dig yourself as deep as you want, as I will relish the class action fallout. Go back a hundred years and try to tell a judge that when you said "Free ID card for anyone who requests one" that did not mean you would give a free ID to a hundred percent of people or, indeed, to anyone.
you guys are in such deep shit, and I love it when it hits.
some please call the consumer protection bureau and force them to call it a 3GB plan!
What really pisses me off is they don't clarify what 'throttling' means, either. If it means "phone no get web pages", then no, it's not 'Unlimited'. If it's throttled to something like 500kbit, then I can get web pages, just not video.
I'm also hacked off that I've been paying for an 'unlimited' plan since 2008, I *know* I haven't been hitting 3 gigs a month (more like 1), I've been paying a premium for this privilege and I'm the one getting shafted.
AT&T, you have a new project: Convince me to sign another contract in the next few months.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And yet, people STILL continue to give their money to companies like this.
I don't want or need unlimited data.
I only want as much as I need.
I have two lines with AT&T. My wife and I share 600 minutes on two iPhones, or which I use more minutes. Each phone also has a data plan which costs $30 per month. I use a lot of data, my wife uses a little. If I go over 2GB (which I did this month for the first time) and they threaten to throttle my bandwidth. Meanwhile my wife rarely exceeds 250MB.
AT&T "Sorry, you data is NOT shared!"
WTF (Hello Sprint)
The US think of the EU as communism/socialism (either term will do because when its used by american politicians it's not based on the actual meaning).
Not only is the election system very different, so is the constitution. The whole president thing is a little odd. So much effort is spent to elect one but they dont have any real power. Well they can declare war... ironically maybe the biggest power but not much else.
As I explained elsewhere, advertising always uses the most pedantic definitions possible, stretching meaning to be misleading to customers, while still technically true, so that they're not hit by truth in advertising laws.
Yes, and a case in point that I noticed recently: One of the major insurance companies in the U.S., I don't remember which (shows how effective advertising is) advertised that the average person who switched to them saved $150. Then in a caveat at the end they admit that this is based on a survey of people who said they saved money by switching to this company. So in other words, they have completely thrown out anyone who switched and ended up paying more from the equation.
Another example is the one where 4 out of 5 dentists recommend some brand of gum. Well, in truth 99% of dentists recommend that you don't chew gum at all, but 4 out of 5 of the remaining 1% might recommend that brand over other brands.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As a long time AT&T customer, this does more than irritate. I down right pisses me off. The simple answer is that I am grandfathered in with the unlimited data plan.
Point 1 - AT&T advertised and sold this plan as UNLIMITED data
Point 2 - AT&T routinely advertises that they have the fastest 3G network
Under AT&T's current plan to throttle, AT&T only gets to pick ONE thing that they still offer (either fastest 3G or UNLIMITED), and then they are guilty of FALSE advertising on the other -- IT"S JUST THAT SIMPLE. Ultimately, we should ALL call them on it, even if it means long lines at the courthouse for each of our small claims.
Big point missing here is that unlimited plans are no longer offered to new customers. They exist solely as grandfathered plans. So this brings up the question, why offer grandfathering anyways? Can't they issue a sunset clause a year in advance and then gradually fade them away? I'd wager not that many of the unlimited customers would leave.
The letter would say, "You are currently on an unlimited plan. Your actual usage is $$$. Under our new plan starting next year, your new cost would be $$$." By far the largest fraction of their users would stay.
(Yes, I'm disgruntled that I can't get an ATT unlimited plan because I joined too late).
Ok, so if "unlimited" is now pretty much the same as 3GB (and/or AT&T gets more
money when you go over) -- can I now have tethering with my "unlimited" plan please?
AT&T -- what is your excuse for not allowing tethering for those of us on the "unlimited" plan NOW?
I think the issue at hand is focusing on the wrong thing. AT&T sells "unlimited data", not "unlimited bandwidth". So, yes, the speed of the highway doesn't change, but the average speed of delivery by car does. Hence, the theoretical (and likely actual) throughput is reduced artificially.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Woosh!
Well, unless they are stretching fibre to my front door, it won't make any difference. :(
Yes, and a case in point that I noticed recently: One of the major insurance companies in the U.S., I don't remember which (shows how effective advertising is) advertised that the average person who switched to them saved $150. Then in a caveat at the end they admit that this is based on a survey of people who said they saved money by switching to this company. So in other words, they have completely thrown out anyone who switched and ended up paying more from the equation.
People usually don't switch to a new company unless they're going to save money anyways. So the average savings of anyone who switches to them is of course going to be a savings. In fact, every single company can list an average savings of people who switch to their companies, because (nearly) everyone who switches is saving money.
Screw throwing out data, they don't even need to throw out data... the data are already amenable to the statistics that they want to show.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Nah, you nailed it. It's simply a lie. Unlimited *must* mean that they aren't limiting you, period. Sure, there's only so much data that you can push across a 3G/4G pipe, but that's not a thing they're DOING to you to limit your use. When they cut you off after a certain amount of use, that's undeniably a limit. When they throttle you after a certain amount of use, that's also undeniably a limit.
Sorry, AT&T, but if you don't want to support a service with no limits, don't sell one. If you do sell one, don't you dare tell me I'm using too much of it.
Some customers (me) like the idea of predictability. Ever hear about those people who stream a movie while sitting near the border, then get a $40,000 bill because they happened to connect to a tower on the wrong side and just ate 4GB at international rates? Yeah, I don't want to be them. I much prefer to overpay some for the certainty of never getting hammered by a monster bill.
One thing phone companies can do, and have a little but not enough, is notify and cut you off when you're going nuts on your bill. No one should ever incur a monster phone bill. We should always have the option of capping our own bills. Dear AT&T, if my phone bill ever hits $150, I want to hear from you. If it ever hits $200, I want everything that costs extra money blocked until we talk.
Today AT&T held a press conference at which it's spokesman said:
There's been much talk about our unlimited data plans. Mostly about what unlimited means. To clarify, we at AT&T use the Abridged Orwell Dictionary, which clearly defines "unlimited" as: "Restricted in size, amount, or extent; few, small, or short"
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
No, it is unlimited - you can purchase an unlimited number of $10 gigs after the 3GB non-cap.
I'm switching to Sprint as soon as I can afford the initial investment, and/or my AT&T contract expires. Though, my AT&T phone actually works in my apartment now, so it isn't as pressing of an issue...
I really don't like AT&T but what other service in the states offers GSM capabilities that work with the iphone. T-mobile uses gsm but at 1700MHz, iphone is 850/900/1800/1900 MHz.
The bandwidth is not capped though, it's THROTTLED. So you still get "unlimited" bandwidth.
The whole reason this came up is they throttle the connection too slow to be useful for anything.
If they picked a speed that allowed web browsing and email but didn't allow for Youtube or whatever, you'd have a point. But, that's not the case, and that's why people such as myself are angry about it. My plan is called 'unlimited' but if I hit their threshold I had better keep myself near a hotspot.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Uhm... They don't disclose this except in the fine print- which is a bit of a no-no in most jurisdictions. You can't advertise "unlimited" and then basically take it away in the fine print.
If they throttled you to to something better than EDGE (Of which AT&T and T-Mobile BOTH throttle you to dialup speeds at best...) it wouldn't be so bad. The way it is, though, it's basically lying. You really, really should QUIT spreading mis-information like not being able to attain it (like you did in an earlier post) or this rubbish, like in this post.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Just as apparently there's people that need some of the other aspects of this whole mess explained to them...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Thing is the P2P detection also affects SSL traffic. (I cannot do my backups during the night anymore due to that junk).
If I was buying now I would probably go for a non traffic managed bt infinity reseller.
"If the company who sells the product/service to me does not intentionally limit the use in any way, I'm fine for them to call it "unlimited", even if it comes with an asterisk explaining the limitations of the underlying system."
That's fine. However that's besides the point of what the person is arguing. Your isp is offering a service with their network. If they at least tell people what the Mbps of their network is, then what they're selling is unlimited access to that X Mbps service. If there is absolutely no overuse penalty, then it's certainly unlimited.
But that's not the kind of behavior the parent is complaining about.
Say AT&T does the right thing and decides to stop saying "unlimited". Would Verizon, T Mobile, or Sprint suddenly become honest too? Nope, they would release new commercials immediately and start pounding away at their "limited" offerings.
They need the lie of "unlimited" to get people in the doors, and if nobody else is telling the truth either why should they? In Capitalist America, two wrongs make right.
newsflash about Finland though, the one telco reluctant to sell unlimited 3g plans is planning on charging by type of use! yeah, teliasoneras guys are planning on charging you for skyping through bandwidth you buy.
same company some years ago made a comment through one of their execs that selling a customer a tap isn't good when you can sell them bottles(not 100% direct exact translation but that's the gist. that guy used to be in business of selling soda where they had stupidly tried the all-you-can-drink type of business when renting soda machines). at that time you could buy unlimited transfers from their two competitors OR 200mb from telia-sonera - same price! (they've since had to join the choir of selling unmetered.. though they'll, t&s, start to throttle at 20 gigs, it seems the norm for the other operators to just sell you capped speed at cheaper price if you want, so that you get 384kbit/s for x per month and 1mbit/s per y. actual transfer rates vary of course).
frankly, if telia-sonera had no competition we would be paying 30 euros for 100 megs. and the competition in finland is the sort where you can very simply move from network to network and keep your number.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Did anyone else notice that? How long till they have the cap down to 1GB if they keep knocking 5% off each month? No matter how much they reduce usage, there will still be a top 5% to complain about and throttle!
They tried that in Holland (where I'm originally from) last year, the telcos, charging extra if you wanted to use skype over 3G. Then the politicians said: oooh, look at that! No. That violates net neutrality that we're putting in place. So now you get to pay your ass off (soon) for packages.
Here's the secret to immortality:
To be completely and utterly pedantic, I feel the need to point out that it's not advertised at all. They don't still sell the "unlimited" package, it's a legacy package that people who were subscribers to another carrier were grandfathered in on when they took it over. It was advertised as "unlimited", and for a while it was "unlimited", but this is not a service they still sell.
And to be just as pedantic, the grandfathered-in customers WERE sold unlimited, as advertised. This is like an auto company taking out your radio and AC after you've already signed the contract. It is no different than Sony removing OtherOS. It's fraud. If you contract to sell something, that's what you sell, no substitutions allowed. You can't sell me a five year subscription to the New York Times and change it to Boy's World a year later, which is exactly what AT&T is doing.
Free Martian Whores!
This reason is why I dropped AT&T, as well as Verizon and switched to Sprint. (I was looking at T-mobile till they were in talks to merge and get the same crappy restrictions).
When I buy "unlimited" that means I want it without limits as to bandwidth, or amount without extra costs... Someone needs to explain to AT&T, and Verizon what "unlimited" actually means since they obviously need some education on this...
That is the one circumstance I agree with using the phrase unlimited, since they're offering everything they have. It's not so much the asterisk that I have a problem with, but the conditions tied to that asterisk. "Unlimited bandwidth* *3GB cap, further bandwidth will be neigh unusable" is not unlimited. It's a bold faced lie.
Generally, you cannot walk into a restaurant and just eat for as many days as you want, even when they advertise unlimited buffet.
There are bounds on various axes which affect the outcome of the function "All you can eat", but if you ask I am sure that they will be happy to tell you the bounds and you can either choose to partake or not. For instance, they will likely tell you that it is for one sitting, so you will not be able to leave the restaurant and come back. Additionally, they will tell you that when the restaurant closes, you must leave, so if it is 9:30 and the restaurant closes at 10, you probably shouldn't order the buffet. They will also tell you that you cannot share your plate with other people.
What they will not do (and what AT&T does) is come back when you are halfway through your first plate and tell you that the "All you can eat" is only for as much as you can stack on a single plate and you can't go back through the line. Oh, and you can only have two rolls. And if you get extra rolls, each one will cost about 1/3 of an entire all you can eat meal.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...when they limit the bandwidth. False advertising?
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
Every starbuck's I've ever been to has a short size, just not listed on the menu. It happens to be the ideal size for a cappuccino.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
The whole reason this came up is they throttle the connection too slow to be useful for anything.
If they picked a speed that allowed web browsing and email but didn't allow for Youtube or whatever, you'd have a point. But, that's not the case, and that's why people such as myself are angry about it. My plan is called 'unlimited' but if I hit their threshold I had better keep myself near a hotspot.
... you still have unlimited data, which is what they promised... the fact that they dropped your bandwidth to an "unusable" level is perhaps an upsetting way with how the service works, but was never a promise of the plan.
If you're upset, then vote with your wallet and get a new plan, or a new carrier.You're not going to get any sympathy when they stop performing some non-promised feature.
It's like, you're used to getting a happy ending with your massage, but suddenly they stopped giving you a happy ending. Well, they never promised the happy ending in the first place, so too bad.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Uhm... They don't disclose this except in the fine print- which is a bit of a no-no in most jurisdictions. You can't advertise "unlimited" and then basically take it away in the fine print.
If they throttled you to to something better than EDGE (Of which AT&T and T-Mobile BOTH throttle you to dialup speeds at best...) it wouldn't be so bad. The way it is, though, it's basically lying. You really, really should QUIT spreading mis-information like not being able to attain it (like you did in an earlier post) or this rubbish, like in this post.
I HAVE NEVER ARGUED THAT YOU CANNOT ATTAIN THE BANDWIDTH THROTTLING POINT.
Jesus fuck, people are so happy to straw man me because I'm defending the legal position of AT&T in this position. Look, I'm sorry that the bandwidth is being throttled, it's annoying, I get that, and I get that it's easy to hit the throttling.
HOWEVER, they NEVER PROMISED UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
While I agree with you that they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, the samples you cite all result in only small upticks in value for today, while being absolutely devastating in the long run as subscribers leave in droves. If they REALLY had the best interests of their investors at heart, they would be investing in infrastructure and funding research. Unfortunately, the investors won't allow this as the investors insist on quarter to quarter profits RIGHT NOW and to hell with triple digit earnings over a decade. To them a dollar now is more important than $1,000 ten years from now.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No one is abusing the network unless they are using more than the infinite allotment of data which was agreed to between AT&T and the contracting subscriber.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
ing you. ..uh ..rather thrice. 3GB is absolutely ridiculous.
Glad, I don't live in the US of A. 3GB cap... LOL. Today/tomorrow, I hit that limit twice
My (really unlimited) data plan costs me 20€ (or 25€, didn't check the last few months).
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
Didn't we try that already, at least for restrictions on paid political ads? The companies sued, claiming that such restrictions violated the First Amendment. I believe that it was called Citizens United, and the Supreme Court agreed with the First Amendment argument, paving the way for unlimited spending on political ads.
I imagine the same line of thinking works with cellphone ads: As long as it's not out-and-out fraud, it's my First Amendment right to mislead you into thinking your "unlimited data plan" allows access to unlimited data!
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
the fact that they dropped your bandwidth to an "unusable" level is perhaps an upsetting way with how the service works...
If you're upset, then vote with your wallet and get a new plan, or a new carrier.You're not going to get any sympathy when they stop performing some non-promised feature.
Look, I realize that in some weird way it's fashionable for the nerdy types to be contrarian, but the fact is they're acting against the good will of their customers. By being vocal about it, I'm not only firing back at AT&T for how shitty they're treating us, but I'm also educating you about how they interpret the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. You yourself said I should act on it, and that's exactly what I'm doing.
Quit posing for an Insightful score and look around, you're one of the people whose interests are being looked out for.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
People usually don't switch to a new company unless they're going to save money anyways.
That's probably true. The only other reason is for better coverage. I'm not sure what the breakdown is. But they also say they only surveyed people who "reported a savings". Chances are, you are not going to report a savings unless it was a significant one, so that probably also skews the statistics.
Another problem is that insurance companies give you teaser rates and then up it the next year hoping you will be too lazy to switch. Just like you have to keep switching jobs to make more money, you also have to keep switching insurance companies to keep getting the good rate.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No, when they advertise unlimited bandwidth
I've never seen such an advertisement, so your entire post is a moot point.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Ever hear about those people who stream a movie while sitting near the border, then get a $40,000 bill because they happened to connect to a tower on the wrong side and just ate 4GB at international rates?
Generally, no, you don't. You don't hear those stories because its turned off by default with AT&T. The only way you get a big roaming charge is that you call AT&T and specifically tell them to enable international roaming on your account, THEN you can roam on those towers. If you bothered to call AT&T to enable International roaming, and then you sit in Laredo using a cell tower on the other side of the river then you really can't blame it on anyone but yourself, you know?
AT&T also does account alerts, but they charge you for the privilege of doing so which is complete BS in my opinion.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No, but it does say you can't use the network in a way that prevents others being able to use it.
That's the thing, isn't it? We have to accept AT&T's word that we are affecting other users. If throttling came on at peak times when the network is actually experiencing load, I could buy it.
There is not now nor has there ever been a promise, advertisement, or guarantee of 100% speed 100% of the time to 100% of the users.
Nobody is saying they expect that. They expect not to be gouged under pretense. If there is no congestion at the moment, I should have full speed, regardless of how much I have already downloaded this month.
I got that here in Sweden. Costs me around 10 dollars...
"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
The best option is, if it is available where you are, switch to a provider that doesn't cap either data or bandwidth.
If not, remember, the Lilly Tomlin character still works for AT&T in spirit! - They are the old Bell System, and they don't care.
AT&T was broken up, then a regional Bell, Southwestern Bell ate its 'mother' and assumed its identity, AT&T, and is now re-eating its sibling RBOCs. SWBell was always the most 'aggressive' of the RBOCs, and still is even under the name AT&T.
SWBell has always been a good service provider, but only at an excessively premium price, IMHO.
Are you getting the same bandwidth and capabilities now that you were when you signed up for the "unlimited" plan? When I signed up for mine, the only connection I could get here locally was the edge network. I've seen 3g and 4g become available. AT&T didn't increase my cost when they increased the capacity, so why should I complain that they are wanting me to switch to a tiered plan? They COULD have said "Ok, everyone with an unlimited plan can keep it, but you have to stay on the network you were on when you signed up. If you want to go to the newer technology, you have to sign a different contract and pay a different rate."
No, what I'm talking about is a regulatory change from FCC that would apply to broadcasters, which is a completely different matter from FEC regulations that apply to candidates and supporters. It would not target any specific group. Spending limits would not be affected, they just would spend on radio or tv.