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AT&T Caps Are A Giant Con And An Attack On Cord-Cutters (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Following a report from DSLReports that ATT would be imposing usage caps on the company's U-Verse broadband customers, ATT has announced it would now be following Comcast's lead by "allowing" users to pay $30 more a month if they wanted to avoid usage caps entirely. However, ATT has taken it to a new level by "allowing" users to graciously avoid the $30 fee -- if they subscribe to DirecTV or U-Verse TV service. These data caps allow ISPs like ATT and Comcast to cash in on internet video and make cord-cutting less viable by making streaming more expensive. And now, ATT is using caps to force users to subscribe to traditional TV if they want their broadband connection to work like it used to.
Everyone hates them. Go in with tanks and disband the treasonous bastards.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everyone hates them. Go in with snowspeeders and trip the ten-storey bastards.
Sonic.net is doing this in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I live literally 50 feet outside the neighborhood they're running fiber to right now. I'm thinking of moving just to get out from under AT&T. I've never had to suffer through such a consumer-unfriendly ISP before. The only alternative where I live is Comcast so I'm screwed either way.
This is all definitely making me happy I'm on Verizon FIOS. It is expensive... but I get full bi-directional 75 Mbps that is rock solid and with zero caps. I've had it for almost 2 years now and I can't list even one complaint (ok, it is pricey... but you get what you pay for!)
They charged me an extra ~$100 one month and ~$50 another. Just charged my card and left me wondering wtf happened until I called them.
Never ever EVER give a company your credit card number for automated billing. NEVER EVER EVER give them your bank account information for automated billing.
You asked for this problem when you signed up.
Just logged into my ATT account and this is what it says:
Starting May 23, we are increasing the U–verse Internet data allowance for many customers. After a grace period, and as our agreement provides, there's a $10 charge for each 50GB of data you use over the allowance. Want unlimited data? You can:
Bundle your U-verse Internet service with DIRECTV or U-verse TV. This gives you an
unlimited Internet data allowance ($30 value) for no additional charge.
Purchase an unlimited allowance for your Internet service for $30. This option doesn’t
require a TV bundle.
FCC, you are supposed to protect and look out for the public good rather than be beholden to the corporations. I can't imagine a more appropriate use of your authority to ban this type of crap.
Seems pretty clear to me, you pay $30 and get unlimited internet. Seems pretty clear and non-donnish to me.
Paying for something you are not getting would be a con.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Several types of predators migrate alongside their prey. You go where the meat is.
If ATT could find a way to keep charging you for not using their wares, don't you think they would?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
So, do you live in a place where another company is free to run a sewer line to your house so you can subscribe to their service?
Or do you think maybe the final infrastructure which comes into peoples houses shouldn't be the property of a corporation?
It's time to stop pretending that infrastructure which we've paid for, and which has rights of way on public and private property should be treated as the exclusive property of some asshole corporation like AT&T.
That's just idiotically subsidizing AT&T to remain a monopoly, while saying if people don't want monopolies they can build their own infrastructure.
Like the water, sewer, and electricity coming into your home ... the network needs to be considered part of the municipal infrastructure.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Honestly, if you give a company -- especially a company like AT&T -- the ability to just take your money, you deserve it.
Send me a paper bill, in the mail, and I'll pay it. If you just make shit up, I'll call you and yell.
But if you demand the right to just take money from me? Fuck you, fuck off, no way in hell I'm signing up for that bit of stupidity.
Companies like AT&T are too greed and incompetent to be trusted with that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, I won't give AT&T my credit card number because I don't want them just reaching in and taking money whenever they feel like it. I certainly wouldn't give them my debit card money--then the money that they take is the money I'm using to, like, buy food and pay rent.
I use my bank's billpay thing to pay AT&T every month. I'm pretty sure I can set it up to be automated, but I just log in and check it each month to make sure nothing's changed, and then I push the button. Easy, and keeps AT&T from rummaging in my bank accounts.
Assume 50 Mbit/sec, symmetric bandwidth, dynamic IP address, no caps on upload/download?
What would it take to actually operate this network?
If you had 100,000 customers in a given metro area, what would you need for uplink capacity at the head end? My probably-has-an-error calculation at 5% average utilization is 250 Gbit/sec, 50 Gbit/sec at 1% (my 1 day average over 3 months is .55 Mbit).
What would 50 or 250 Gbit/sec of Internet uplink capacity cost if you had to go out and source it commercially?
I hate all these caps but I'm kind of curious what exactly it would cost to operate the kind of Internet connectivity everybody really wants.
They provide two levels of service, to get the better service you either pay more money or also purchase a separate service from them.
What part of this is the outrage? This is just how buying things works.
When some companies had caps on "unlimited" plan, that was obvious bullshit. (I hit the cap with Comcast a couple of times, they told me that bandwidth wasn't the aspect of the service that was unlimited)
What's all the whining about here, though?
sic transit gloria mundi
True story: I used to get DSL service in San Francisco from a CLEC, Earthlink, because I already hated AT&T back then.
One day, my service goes down. Modem lights blinking. I put in a repair request, and the service person tells me that she can verify there is indeed a problem with my line, and someone will take care of it. I go to work. I come home from work and there's a message on my voicemail telling me the problem has been successfully resolved. The lights on my modem are still blinking. Still no service.
I call back and say I still have no service. They say according to their systems, I do. I say I don't. They say the problem must be with my interior wiring. I say, how is there going to be a problem with the interior wiring when nothing has even moved? One day, service; the next day, none. It has to be Earthlink's problem, so could they please send someone out to take a look?
They said no. I said, what? "No. We will not roll a truck, sorry. But if you like, I could quote you a price on our satellite internet service."
It went back and forth like this over a couple more calls, them not budging, until finally I get someone at second-tier tech support. He goes, "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of alligator clips?" Flabbergasted, I said, "Um. You mean a length of phone cable with the ends stripped and a pair of alligator clips attached to the ends? Uh, yes. Yes, I do." He advised me that if I had a power outlet available, I could take my DSL modem out to the phone box on the side of the house and use the alligator clips to find my line. Depending on whether the modem loops up from the box or not, I'd know where the problem is.
So I did. I went out to the box, and sure enough, the modem looped up. And that's how I discovered where the problem was. Because the lines inside the box -- my nice little pair of wires with the Earthlink tag attached to them -- had been cut. Clearly snipped in half with wire cutters.
And that's when I remembered. A few days before my DSL went out, a new neighbor moved in upstairs. What do you do when you move into a new place? You order phone service. They had probably called AT&T to have a new line set up -- maybe even DSL -- and when the AT&T tech came out to the house, he saw my non-AT&T DSL line and he cut it, likely knowing Earthlink wouldn't do a damn thing about it and I'd be forced to switch back to AT&T. (Later, someone explained to me that AT&T's field techs are union and Earthlink's were not. I can't vouch for that but it's another theory.)
So that was my situation. Either I could go with AT&T, which I had already got fed up from dealing with for both home service and business networking. Or I could go with Earthlink, who were obviously competing in a totally hostile market and clearly didn't give a flying fuck about my business, so much so that when they told me they wouldn't repair my line, they helpfully added, "And because you've been a customer for nearly two years now, you won't have to pay any fees for early cancellation."
So I went with Comcast. Fuck DSL, fuck 'em all. And you know what? I know they suck and I've heard all the stories, but for the most part, Comcast hasn't given me any trouble ever since. It's been 10 years now, too.
Breakfast served all day!
Ahhhh now see. I can relate a similar experience but with Comcast instead of AT&T.
My neighbors house was purchased by a new family who wasted no time cutting the cable in half with a shovel while planting new trees in their back yard. They give Comcast a ring and they roll a tech out to fix it for them.
To " fix " it, the tech removed my cable line from it's connection on the pedestal and hooked up the neighbors instead. Leaving my entire home quite dead. Internet, Alarm System, Television, etc. Didn't even bother to check to see if the connection was an active customer or not, just disconnected it. :|
Called up Comcast and told them what happened. Told them my service was out BECAUSE one of their technicians disconnected my line. They told me it would be TWO MONTHS before they could send a tech out to fix it :|
As the pedestal resides in my back yard, my solution was far more efficient. I moved the neighbors connection to their original post on the pedestal and reconnected my service back up. Then filed a Complaint on the tech for being incompetent. ( Not that it would do anything, but whatever )
Seriously though, TWO MONTHS to get a tech back out for an outage your tech caused in the first place ? WTF.
Moral of this story: It isn't just AT&T that sucks. They all do in one form or another.