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AT&T To Match Google Fiber In Kansas City, Charge More If You Want Privacy
An anonymous reader writes: When Google Fiber started bringing gigabit internet to cities around the U.S., we wondered how the incumbent ISPs would respond. Now we know: AT&T has announced they will match Google Fiber's gigabit offerings in Kansas City. Of course, there are some caveats. First, AT&T's rollout may stop as it fights the Obama administration over net neutrality. Not that it would be a nationwide rollout anyway: "AT&T does not plan to offer the ultra-fast Internet lines to every home in the market. Rather, he said the company would calculate where demand is strongest and the investment in stringing new cables promised a decent return."
There are also some interesting pricing concerns. The company plans to charge $70/month for gigabit service, but that's a subsidized price. Subsidized by what, you ask? Your privacy. AT&T says if you want to opt out of letting them track your browsing history, you'll have to pay $29 more per month. They say your information is used to serve targeted advertising, and includes any links you follow and search terms you enter.
There are also some interesting pricing concerns. The company plans to charge $70/month for gigabit service, but that's a subsidized price. Subsidized by what, you ask? Your privacy. AT&T says if you want to opt out of letting them track your browsing history, you'll have to pay $29 more per month. They say your information is used to serve targeted advertising, and includes any links you follow and search terms you enter.
"AT&T may collect and use web browsing information for other purposes, as described in our Privacy Policy, even if you do not participate in the Internet Preferences program."
So, there's the $100/month 'Yup, definitely spying on you' tier where "your Internet traffic is routed to AT&T's Internet Preferences web browsing and analytics platform"(good luck finding out exactly what that entails; but it's probably bad); or the $70/month 'Ominous and vague "other purposes"' tier.
How much evil do they manage into their 'browsing and analytics platform' to be $30 worse than their baseline level of spying?
I wonder about the thought process behind this.
Our competitor launched an offering that blows everything out of the water that we offer. Let's provide a product to compete! But here's the catch: Let's make it suck! That'll show 'em.
Are consumers just that dumb or is AT&T just that arrogant?
Well my ISP here in Overland Park, KS bumped me from 30/5 to 100/5 for free; huh, they could have done that years ago. Looking forward to Google Fiber this year.
then does that mean they actively stop (or try to stop) your use of vpns and encryption?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
How are they planning on delivering that? Through injecting ads in your traffic, email spam or letterbox spam? They don't have an ad network like Google.
With the trend of more and more https traffic, how do they intend on sniffing that?
I feel AT&T really missed the Evil sweet spot with that tepid announcement. Terms like "Mercifully GRANT you WORTHLESS PLEBEIANS a fair and subsidized tariff on Our Internet" were right there for the taking. "Once we conquer the Dusky, Anti-Capitalist Muslim Usurper" - come on, AT&T! It's like you've killed your last white, long-haired cat in a fit of pique and now you really just don't know how to be EVIL. Let alone Evil. Let alone 'evil'.
Companies like Apple and Google consciously build up good will balances - and spend them here and there. Apple's issue is that their customers feel there is a ton of good will in the account - but non-Apple people don't get it at all. With Google, their fiber initiative is a good will bank bonanza (for people who are lucky enough to be in remote, non-ocean-bordering geographically experimental locations). On the whole, I'm not sure where they fall on the Good Will vs. Evil balance.
But AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner are plainly evil, short-sighted Lovecraftian horrors who would consume the world were they not so transparently stupid in their evil. They should seriously fire the entire top 5% of their management structure across the board and have the board outsource their entire strategy and management function to random graduate MBA's from North Korea, Belarus and Eritrea. You'd get a much more focused and higher-quality Evil for pennies on the dollar. PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR, BOARD MEMBERS.
TL;DR: assholes
How... neutral.
Unfortunatly in my part of town, AT&T has really jumped the gun on Google (see map): http://overlandpark.maps.arcgi... They are rolling along with fiber installation way ahead of Google.
the "more privacy" option is still as private as google.
the less privacy option is dubious at best and copyright infringing at worst (they're going to ad inserting and search term saving.. in other words.. wtf, are they going to replaces googles ads when you do a google search?).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Advertising has gotten out of control. When I visit a website, the operating system may be collecting information and advertising to me, the website may be collecting information and advertising to me, the website's corporate partners may be collecting information and advertising to me, the browser developer may be collecting information and advertising to me, and my internet service provider or cellular phone provider may be collecting information and advertising to me. I'm sure I've left out several ways that different layers of companies are trying to cram advertising down my throat.
FUCKING ENOUGH WITH THE ADS ALREADY.
If I visit your website and consume your content for free, you may attempt to advertise to me. If I pay a subscription fee for your website, shut the ads off. If I use your app, browser, or operating system for free, you may attempt to advertise to me. If I purchase your app, browser, or operating system, shut the ads off. And for God's sake, if you aren't piping internet service into my home at zero cost to me, you have no right to collect my information and advertise to me.
We need a new law that says if a consumer is paying a company for a service, the company is not allowed to advertise to the consumer on that service. Period.
Apparently someone forgot to tell them that unlimited VPN service runs for about $10/month. For another $19 per month, you get the honest word of the company that's dicking around with you? Umm no thanks.
We need a new law that says if a consumer is paying a company for a service, the company is not allowed to advertise to the consumer on that service. Period.
In some markets, providing a service costs more than advertisers alone or subscribers alone are willing to pay. Thus in markets such as pay television, an arrangement has been reached where advertisers pay a portion and subscribers pay a portion. If you require either advertisement or subscription and never both, the provider will have to raise subscription rates in order to continue to pay its costs. This will cause the majority of subscribers to stop subscribing, leaving too few subscribers. Good luck sustaining a service like cable TV or Hulu Plus once you've made every channel as expensive as, say, HBO.
Can you imagine the outcry if AT&T offered a level of service where the spied on your phone calls and inserted targeted advertisements? No one can ever again argue that Title 2 isn't necessary. This is the one of the very reasons common carrier laws were written!
"AT&T does not plan to offer the ultra-fast Internet lines to every home in the market. Rather, he said the company would calculate where demand is strongest and the investment in stringing new cables promised a decent return."
More like, "the company would calculate where COMPETITION is strongest". I'm pretty sure Kansas City (or any of its neighborhoods) is not even in the top 10 markets for high speed Internet DEMAND.
Just one of the reasons why I have zero desire to pay for broadband from the incumbent providers even if they do offer gigabit fiber. I think the moment needs to be seized and open-access municipal fiber networks built before they monopolize that as well.
"Should we still do this, even if 0.5% of our customers might use a workaround?" Or is the answer so obvious that no one bothered to bring it up at all?
How will they send me ads ? I block everything, mostly because of malware served by ad....
Many if not most people I know probably don't care *that* much about their browsing data being collected (the "I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide" crowd). I think a good section of the population will just say "cheap? Sign me up!". AT&T probably stands to make much more from advertising than from the $30/month added fee, so they want to drive people to the advertising-based model to the greatest extent possible. The more expensive option is simply a disincentive for people -- they see a higher price and are forced to ask if their privacy is actually worth $30 a month extra, and many people will say no.
AT&T wins either way, unless the competing ISPs (I have to suppress a laugh when writing "competing ISPs" at all, much less using the plural form) can offer completely private service at a competitive price.
You accidentally your links, but if one of them was SureWest, go with them.
...we're assholes.
And by that, I mean we're the types to run a process in the background which randomly "clicks" on ads and otherwise generates browser "noise" during our downtime.
Sign me up for the 70 a month, suckers!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
if you wanted to opt out of being tracked, it would be cheaper to get an anonymizing VPN and run all your trackable traffic through that.
I've seen some VPNs as cheap as 5 USD a month.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You see what happened by allowing competition? They got two competing gigabit services. Uh, oh - unintended consequences.
Most good governments maintain and regulate the monopoly and reassure us that nobody needs or wants gigabit. Gigabit is too much for people - they could get hurt with that much data. Only people who are doing bad things need that much data.
And now one of them offers a bad deal. This will just create customer confusion - who can be expected to understand that spying on you is a bad thing? No typical consumer will be able to rationally weigh the pros and cons.
Hopefully the State steps in, returns Kansas City to a safe monopoly, and gets those reckless data rates back under control while imposing net neutrality rules to forbid unsafe traffic management practices (like the risky so-called 'settlement-free peering' scheme) and hopefully sets some allowable content rules.
Market forces are dangerous, and this just shows that, once again.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's easy to see where they'll improve their offering, since demand is strongest wherever there's competition, full stop.
How come Netflix can do it for 7.99 a month without ads?
Because publishers charge a higher royalty for recent series. I'm under the impression that apart from Netflix's own original series, there is a delay of months before a new series is made available on Netflix.
FUCKING ENOUGH WITH THE ADS ALREADY.
Slightly off-topic but this is exactly how I feel watching the Premium Hulu Plus that I pay a monthly subscription for :-( I'd pay a bit more even for ad free.
ATT is acting like a monopoly that needs to be broken up by the courts.
What is "Double Jeopardy!"?
I thought AT&T was already broken up three decades ago for monopoly abuse.
No, not full stop.
My parents live in a town that (due to some experiments by various utilities/ISPs) has *4* decent Internet access solutions. Much more competition than average, but demand is no higher than anywhere else, and less than many. Prices and performance aren't even that much better (since not surprisingly the way most "competing utilities" price is to unofficially agree not to undercut each other).
To have my packets routed around the beam splitters that they have provided the NSA with since at least 2006?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Only one comment I can think of: outrageous prices (still, and again) combined with outrageous terms.
Regards,
a European broadband user.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
At the evil ISP monopoly conspiracy meetings, I have to imagine that ATT will get as big a head slap as Verizon might have for suing the FCC into its Title II declaration. Now when companies say "our merger will be fine for those customers," two sets of gigabit providers in Kansas City will be the perfect counterexample.
I don't know which is more enticing, the $30/month landline phone plan or the 1TB virtual hard drive. Am I really willing to give up recording 3 extra TV channels if it means one of them can be HBO? With a 1 gigabit internet connection should I be concerned about filling my cloud drive in... 2 hours and 15 minutes?
It's not that more people should be technologically savvy enough to get a pre-paid mobile, set up a server, or delve into the not-so-underground world of pirated media. Those are cheap hacky solutions teenagers throw together because they're poor and because the spark of curiosity still invigorates them. We're adults, we've spent decades building up our purchasing habits and we'll never stop paying for phones that plug into the wall. $150/month is worth it (considering our adult-sized paychecks) to avoid having to tinker with another media center setup that won't synch with the tracker's RSS feed because the new scene release group insists on including an umlaut in the file names. The disappointment is that there is no mainstream option that comes anywhere close to competing with the hacks that teenagers set up in their free time.
You can YouTube and Spotify, Netflix and Prime, Hulu and Pander all that you want (though Google uses Vudu) and even with Skype and Hangouts both going on all the phones, tablets, and cloud connected laundry machines in your home, your online experience isn't going to be much different from any other 50-100 megabit internet connection. It's frustrating that we're reliant on the people selling digital phone service to dictate when the internet is ready to accommodate growth.
With a GB connection, what the hell? Add a decent VPN service to the router and let ATT whistle for your browsing habits.
So much bullshitting around whining about who can see what you browse to. Get a clue.
AT&T is proving that they and all other ISP's are scumbags that need heavy regulation to keep them from acting like complete assholes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And how much is snooping on all your activity actually worth? Is it $30 or less, or is it $70 or more? If the latter, and AT&T wants people to use their lines instead of google's, perhaps they should be offering it for free.
These idiots need to get deemed as common carriers who aren't entitled to track what we do in order to make money off targeted advertising.
That AT&T should be able to hold your privacy ransom is appalling, and definitely means they have far too much power in this equation.
In any sane country with sane privacy laws, this would be illegal ... but for some reason corporate entitlement seems to be inviolate.
It really is time to start bringing this to them ... if AT&T wants to sell our privacy, maybe the act of working for AT&T means you don't get any and the world starts releasing your personal information?
It's time corporations stopped calling all the shots. Or the rest of the world might have to start taking our own shots.
Of course, I bet even if you paid the monthly extortion fee to not see the ads, they'll still track you for the analytics. This is insane.
Assholes.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You're so cute!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
FUCK YOU.
Aren't most major search sites using SSL now? How would AT&T be able to track search terms if the traffic is encrypted?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
So I suppose product placement in movies should be forbidden as well? Don't give Republicans ammo to whine about over-regulation. Let's just break up companies that provide data delivery and ISP services, into those two components.
fuck AT&T all to hell
and your silly "competition" pablum. What we need is municipal utilities, which we would of course have if AT&T weren't at the vanguard of fighting against their existence.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
with the same obvious set of interests and the same payoffs for roughly the same people, the two-party system must never be questioned.
Seriously, you wannabe jocks are getting tiresome. He who struts shall be knocked flat on his face and humiliated until he cries. It works for everyone, if you can hold them in place long enough.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
the "more privacy" option is still as private as google.
LOOOOL. The only reason google enters into any business is if there is consumer information it can collect and do whatever it wants with it, not just advertising.
Yes, that's true. What's also true is that AT&T is asking to do even more than that unless you pay them $30 more per month.
I thought of something funny yesterday, that later began to bug me a bit.
:|
Imagine if your typical VPN company is really a subsidiary owned by the big players ( Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Google, The Government ).
So they scaremonger the more technically savvy population into getting VPN services to prevent data spying while the VPN services are, in reality, owned ( or have $$$$ agreements with ) by the very ones we're trying to avoid in the first place.
They get your $$ for their basic service.
They get your $$ again when you sign up for the VPN service.
They STILL get your data anyway.
I know that AT&T's mobile service is likely proxying my HTTP traffic already, agreements or not. ( My IP changes depending on if I'm using HTTP or HTTPS. )
So does Comcast. ( NMAP port 80 shows open even if I disconnect my equipment from the internet.* Sniffer confirms a 3-way handshake still taking place with something that isn't me answering to my assigned IP address with no local equipment connected or even plugged in. )
*Is what started my looking at this a bit closer since my ACL's block everything on the Wan side of things and was driving me nuts thinking I had borked my config somehow.
AT&T takes our money and builds infrastructure in customer rich locations like KCMO, DFW, etc. Even here in the county seat where I work all AT&T can offer is DSL, or at least they did at one time. Out of town? Nevermind, all you'll get is dial tone. AT&T has done ZERO infrastructure upgrades in our rural area within the past 30 years ago or so. It is really inexcusable, IMO. But then it is becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy as fewer customers are keeping their landline phone which has prompted AT&T to run FUD ads trying to scare people into buying a landline for "peace of mind". Despicable.
The local WISP thus has no competition and is now quite slow to update anything. 512 kbps is all they can muster out to where I live and during daylight hours it's generally much slower. I guess I should be glad I no longer rely on dialup any more.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."