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AT&T Brings Back Unlimited Mobile Data To Lure TV Subscribers (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Five years after AT&T discontinued its unlimited mobile data plan, the company is bringing it back with a catch: users must be subscribed to DirecTV or U-verse TV as well. The service will start at $100/month for a single subscriber. Two additional users can be added for $40/month each, and the fourth is free. There's also one more caveat: "Customers that exceed 22 gigabytes of data use in one month will have their speed throttled during peak network traffic periods." AT&T looks to do battle with T-Mobile, who has a similar four-person plan. This is one of the first major consequences of AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV last year for $48.5 billion. The company says it will soon roll out other plans to combine the services.
Then I don't need unlimited data to stream Netflix or pr0n.
Oh, I see what you did there.
AT&T Cannot possibly go out with a underdefined caveat such as "peak network traffic periods" for a bloody $100/mo contract.
>> catch: users must be subscribed to DirecTV or U-verse TV
I'd expect the other catch is "also, we can cancel or change the 'unlimited' bit at any time' - only suckers need apply.
You mean they had it before and took it away and now they expect that I'll think they won't do it again?
Look at the MVNOs to see if there is something better. Like Basic-Internet.com or yourkarma.com
Do your research before going with any MVNO though.
att 6 years ago: unlimited data for a low low monthly fee, browse all the tubes. browse too much and we cancel your service.
att 5 years ago: nevermind. we dont like this.
FCC: net neutrality. it doesnt matter what your provider likes, they cant throttle or cap or inject ads. common carriers are common carriers...
Comcast:cant hear you over the hold music.
Time Warner: fuck your shit.
fcc: guise...seriously...
T-Mobile: unlimited data forever for a low low price also if you use too much or too little or certain kinds of sites we will throttle you to oblivion
ATT:Ditto we have this too also ATT is best TT.
fcc: ok assholes come on...common...carrier.
comcast: have fun in our corporate cheerleader thunderdome this year AKA the supreme court.
Good people go to bed earlier.
22 GB/month is not even 0.067 Mbits/s
Have AT&T also bought the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
I'd like to see a Kickstarter program to raise a few billion dollars to lay down fiber for a common carrier Gigabit Internet.
Not anyone can do it - it'd have to be someone who actually did it for Google or some other ISP who had to deal with putting physical cable down.
People who don't run a server or a torrent client use near zero data while sleeping. Last-mile Internet connections are usually considered "burstable". So perhaps it can be thought of as 0.067 Mbps burstable to whatever rate while you're actively using the connection.
If I subscribed to DirecTV or U-verse TV will you push the Marshmallow OTA to my Nexus 6? It's only been 98 days so far!
The terms and conditions are thoroughly ridiculous.
I would LOVE uverse... But your refuse to build out the fiber to cover the city. Instead you stopped 5 years ago just outside of town and have done nothing at all since.
If you want more Uverse subscribers, freaking build it out so that people can actually have it as a choice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If everybody holds out (there's a word for that), we can get them to offer a real unlimited plan...Consumers have to do a little collusion of their own.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Yeah watching movies on a 5 inch screen sure is awesome.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
For a four person package the limit is 22 Gigs. That is 22/4=5.5 gigs per person per month if each looks at one movie per month. So nothing has changed but only how it is repackaged and marketed as [not] so great a deal!
If you have access to a sufficiently large display that takes HDMI input, then you probably have access to an Internet connection with a wired last mile in addition to your mobile Internet connection. An Internet connection with a wired last mile will more than likely be priced much lower per gigabyte.
Some people live outside the service area of cable and DSL but can get a mobile data signal. But I will acknowledge that this edge case might not be common enough to warrant investment.
How do you figure this? I can buy a "sufficiently large display that takes HDMI input" at any big box store or on Amazon, take in my car anywhere I want, including my cabin in the woods if I'm so inclined. I can't buy an "internet connection with a wired last mile" and put it where I want. Huge areas of the US are not covered by high speed internet providers, which is why the prevelance of satellite internet exists. It's also a big reason people like myself would love to have the ability to get a large block of bandwidth over my cellular carrier, which provides far better connectivity than the joke of a DSL provider I DO have access to. I'm at least fortunate enough to have DSL, even if it will barely stream a youtube clip.
Data caps on wired and unlimited wireless? I don't trust them.
http://www.att.com/esupport/internet/usage.jsp
It occurs to me that "unlimited" can read one of two different ways, depending on whether the "limited" in the term is either being used as a verb or adjective.
If they are using the adjective form, then they can call something that they throttle "unlimited" without any realy conflict.... there even though they may be throttling the data speed, there is no predefined limit on the amount of data that they can receive, and so "unlimited" applies, as an adjective.
However, it does *NOT* apply if the term "limited" is being used as a verb, because in fact, by actively throttling the data speeds they are actively *LIMITING* the amount of data that a person can receive while they are throttling. There may still be limits imposed by physical infrastructure of the connection or the ability of the company to actually meet a demand, but these limits are passive ones. When they throttle they are making an active choice to deliberately "limit" the amount of data that the person can receive, and that is the very opposite of "unlimited".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I can buy a "sufficiently large display that takes HDMI input" at any big box store or on Amazon, take in my car anywhere I want, including my cabin in the woods if I'm so inclined.
How did your cabin in the woods end up having electric power to run your monitor? Perhaps a similar chain of events leading to its having electric power could be adapted to providing it with Internet access.
... just keeps getting more expensive. In the grand scheme of things, that $5/mo price increase for my age-old unlimited data plan is not a big deal. The problem is that it reminds me just how far we can trust these companies. They expect us to hold up our end of the bargain (2 year contracts, phone leases, etc) but they don't do their part (SLAs, uptime, throughput that matches advertised speeds, etc).
remove nospam. to email!
If you have access to a sufficiently large display that takes HDMI input, then you probably have access to an Internet connection with a wired last mile in addition to your mobile Internet connection. An Internet connection with a wired last mile will more than likely be priced much lower per gigabyte.
You're a silly cunt who can't possibly fathom that there are use cases beyond yours, so you come here to post trite comments.
Fuck off you pathetic little shit.
Notice the "probably" in "you probably have access". This leaves the door open for people to explain such use cases, preferably without personal attacks using obscene language.
To a farmhouse that has electric power but the only Internet options are sat and cell, both harshly capped. It doesn't take a lot of All in the Family reruns to exhaust the typical monthly data allowance on sat or cell.
Oh, but you can. I have DSL at home - home is (I'm not there until spring) NW Maine and many miles from the nearest village (not even a big town - 1200 people counting the general area that is the village). I paid for better lines and a CO. A neighbor chipped a little in to pay for what goes past my house. Their one mile did, a little, lower the per-mile cost so it worked.
It's expensive, let's be honest, but you can probably do it. I used to have point-to-point radio and I had satellite before that. I'm also one of a few people on the CO and the village don't do a while lot. I'm just about 24 miles outside of Rangeley, Maine. They put one CO in at their expense, I paid for the new line in, from just outside of the village and one CO. They gave me a fair price - I'm given to believe. I don't own the CO but paid some of it and the installation fee.
This would have been around 2011 or so that I finally got it done. In the long run, it was cheaper than ISDN. It may sound crazy but I feel like I get good value for it. I get to have my house where it is and I get to have broadband rated at 12 Mbps and I usually average about 14 Mbps, I've got static IP addresses though I only pay residential rates. I have three disparate connections on their own individual lines. For some reason, they send me hardware (for all three connections) at least once a year. I've never actually used any of it. Some years I get two which means that I end up with six.
This may not apply to your cabin but it applies to my house. (A map might show you how far out I am.) Err... Hmm... I think I'll skip mentioning the price. I've actually mentioned it before but this was five years ago - the price's are probably different and the ISP might be less willing to provision the services. As the signal is being passed on a telephone line, Maine law lets me use any ISP that wants to serve me and that the line owners must provision those services, at a fair price, to that company.
It was rather pricey but not as bad as one might think. I'm retired so being where I like to be and having connectivity is awesome. I only pay for three residential lines and have plenty of bandwidth for my needs. (The three disparate lines are there for a reason, it's a long story.) I can't really put it into better words than to say, quite separate from the actual numerical price, the expense is/was worth it to me. They not maintain and own the lines and the CO. I just had to pay for the roll-out, so to speak.
Take that for what it's worth - which isn't a whole lot. I've no idea where your place is or anything like that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."