AT&T To Impose Caps, Overages

[woodscomp]

Screw it come May 1st I am going to use as much internet as I possibly can.  I want to see how far I can drive it up.

Come the third warning then I will call and speak with customer retention.  I am so torn by this because I really like the geekiness of the Uverse. I have had exceptional customer service (locally) and everything runs the way it's supposed to.  However I still think this cap business is a slippery slope.  Then you have the planted ATT employees that respond to this forum with stuff like "I am not worried, AT&T knows how I feel".  Give me a big fat hairy break. They could care less about how you feel or what your opinion is. They look at spreadsheets to see how people feel, the numbers do not lie.

[jmsherman8]

WEll this is going to end badly for them as a decision. you can bet that they will lose tons of subscribers over it., {Keep it Relevant: No legal discussion}

[Arch-Stanton]

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lanbrown wrote:

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AT&T is not a monopoly, they were then.  Big difference, something you clearly have overlooked.

The FCC has already weighed in on caps; the ISP can invoke caps.

Using your logic, Comcast needs to be split, so does Charter, Cox, TWC, WOW, Verizon and Qwest.

U-verse TV is exempt because it is a managed service.  U-verse voice is exempt because it it a managed service.

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Yes, using that logic, all of those companies need to be split.  Even if you offer a truly agnostic ISP that provides content that competes with your own, you still have a conflict of interest.  Conflicts of interest are bad for consumers if we're talking about industries with high barriers to entry on infrastructure costs, such as telco.

FCC is fighting all kinds of losing battles on net neutrality right now, but when enough people actually see how this will affect them, they're going to get a lot more traction.  Case in point is Canada, people are starting to get upset, and even the PM if finally taking notice.

[Glynne]

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lanbrown wrote:
[...]

1) AT&T is not a customer of you.

2) The FCC allows managed services.  U-verse TV does not go over the Internet, so you might want to think about your argument or the lack of one for that matter.

{Keep it Courteous}

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From that last comment I'd say you're a little late on the courteousness.

Anyway, here is my $0.02 worth of inflated ego (what often comes from forums, unfortunately).

1) Something smells about this cap deal.  As already stated many times, AT&T sells competing services and the caps now make the other services possibly more expensive.

2) Many of the AT&T cheerleaders (heaven knows why someone would cheer for AT&T unless they have a financial dog in the hunt) say all other ISPs have caps, why move?  Simple, the principle of the thing.  Also, it will cost AT&T to lose a customer.  And they will spend $100s attempting to get them back.

3) With all this talk of caps by many ISPs why have no router manufacturers made routers with useful usage stats on them?  Like by IP, port, protocol, etc.  Find out who in the house is sucking all the bits.  It's a great opportunity.  I know 3rd party firmware is available that makes this possible (DD-WRT, tomato) but the average user does not have easy access to this.  Add to that a small app to use on your desktop so you can read these stats off the router would be a bonus.  Hmmm, why does the 2Wire gateway not do this also?  Err, can’t have useful info for the customer, can we.  That might cause us a problem when our quarterly profit is low and we need a boost somewhere.  Hint hint.

4) AT&T, as some have also stated, in one way or another, has not been fair to its customers in the past.  What makes one think these caps will be, eeerrr, accurate?  This is also the company that thinks 40 year old copper is a good transmission medium.  Rather than fix the problem of the old copper we’all just roll trucks when a customer complains enough and pretend to fix stuff.  Keeps the union goons happy, I suppose.

The question for those out there.  Has AT&T become worse than Comcast?  That will be what I'll have to ask my uncle, who pays the AT&T bill.  So we can switch.  Thankfully, I wired the house in such a way where I don't ever have to be stuck with AT&T.  I could split our network off and get Comcast for myself, if needed.

5) Also, others have stated that no matter what, AT&T will do what they want to do.  The customer be {Keep it Appropriate} Perhaps true.  But we have to try.  You're hearing from someone who back in the BBS days had to take on the evil AT&T (SBC at the time) as they wanted to compete with BBSes by increasing their phone rates.  Without the PUCs approval.  So there is my disclaimer (which is more then you’all get from the AT&T cheerleaders).  I have never been a fan of the phone company and I think, to this day, they'd do all kinds of evil stuff if it made them a buck.

6) I've never been a fan of government regulations.  As bad a company can be, the government can usually make the situation worse.  Competition is the key but few here seem to understand that does not exist in many places.  And to make things worse, in the past the government has offered subsidies for telecoms to build out infrastructure and now the telecoms want to soak the tax payer more by over profiting from the tax payers investment.  Perhaps the telecoms should reimburse the government for all those tax breaks.  Like that'll happen!

My apologies for the long rants.

Glynne

[kshusker]

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texasguy37 wrote:

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woodscomp wrote:

1) AT&T is not a customer of you. 2) The FCC allows managed services. U-verse TV does not go over the Internet, so you might want to think about your argument or the lack of one for that matter. {Keep it Courteous}

Really, can you explain to me what your definition of IPTV is then?

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U-verse is not transmitted over the internet.  It is transmitted on AT&T's own internal network.  Think of it as something similar to an "intranet".  If you work for a company, chances are that your company has an intranet which is not the same as the internet.

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Yes, and no.

U-Verse TV streams use TCP/IP - That makes it IPTV. It doesn't travel over the public internet, bur rather comes from a private AT&T server that is inside the portion of the network AT&T owns. A good analogy would be if you worked for a big company, and your company had a server with videos on it. You could sit down at work and watch a video streamed from your company's internal server - it uses TCP/IP but it doesn't travel over the public portion of the internet to get to your PC - unlike, say a Youtube video which comes from the "public" internet.

While all this is technically interesting, it doesn't help AT&T's bogus case in favor of caps - a household watching a few HD streams via U-Verse for a few hours each night uses way more bandwidth then any user of the "internet" portion of U-Verse ever could - and even if the TV comes from a server internal to AT&T's vast network infrastructure, it still uses bandwidth where it counts, between AT&T's various servers. AT&T's public internet connection and various peering agreements give it plenty of overall bandwidth to the public internet. 

There's really only two possible explanations for the new caps: (1) AT&T is truly incompetent at planning, managing and running a complex large-scale TCP/IP network infrastructure or (2) AT&T wants to make some more money

My bet is on #2

[Glynne]

After thinking about this some more I’ve thought of another rant.  And this one has bonus points for a conspiracy theory.  (smile)

7) It is my opinion that in the past AT&T has been good at creating problems and then finding solutions that cost the customer.  I suspect the MBAs call this maximizing profit.  Remember when Caller ID first came out?  All the concerns about privacy?  Well, I think Caller ID was the $7/mn. Answer to all the sales calls you get.  And I’m sure AT&T sold those trunk lines for a deal to the telemarketers.  Then the answer to Caller ID issues was anonymous Caller ID call blocking, for a fee.  Etc.  You get the picture.  Cause an issue, create a solution, profit!  Awesome!

How does this fit with the bandwidth caps?  Simple, so you are concerned you might go over the limit?  We can sell you a bandwidth monitoring service for $x/mn.  Or perhaps a crappy 2Wire router with a monitoring feature built in.  How about bandwidth insurance?  You’d hate to have anything bad happen you your Internet, wouldn’t you?  Remember the inside wiring insurance AT&T sells?  Or hey, all of these in some form.  Cover every base for maximum profit!  Do I get a prize if I guess right and AT&T finds a way to do any of this?

Glynne

[peteyboy]

Here in central fl, uverse is fairly new and are just getting their feet wet.

With this imposed cap many will not look in uverse's way, as bright house has a good chunk of the community locked up.

If I see that this cap is going to interfere with my netflix/mlbtv watching and amazon mp3 dl's,I will take my $220+ monthly bill back to bright house.They keep sending me letters for all kinds of deals wanting my business back.

[lanbrown]

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kshusker wrote:

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texasguy37 wrote:

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woodscomp wrote:

1) AT&T is not a customer of you. 2) The FCC allows managed services. U-verse TV does not go over the Internet, so you might want to think about your argument or the lack of one for that matter. {Keep it Courteous}

Really, can you explain to me what your definition of IPTV is then?

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U-verse is not transmitted over the internet.  It is transmitted on AT&T's own internal network.  Think of it as something similar to an "intranet".  If you work for a company, chances are that your company has an intranet which is not the same as the internet.

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Yes, and no.

U-Verse TV streams use TCP/IP - That makes it IPTV. It doesn't travel over the public internet, bur rather comes from a private AT&T server that is inside the portion of the network AT&T owns. A good analogy would be if you worked for a big company, and your company had a server with videos on it. You could sit down at work and watch a video streamed from your company's internal server - it uses TCP/IP but it doesn't travel over the public portion of the internet to get to your PC - unlike, say a Youtube video which comes from the "public" internet.

While all this is technically interesting, it doesn't help AT&T's bogus case in favor of caps - a household watching a few HD streams via U-Verse for a few hours each night uses way more bandwidth then any user of the "internet" portion of U-Verse ever could - and even if the TV comes from a server internal to AT&T's vast network infrastructure, it still uses bandwidth where it counts, between AT&T's various servers. AT&T's public internet connection and various peering agreements give it plenty of overall bandwidth to the public internet.

There's really only two possible explanations for the new caps: (1) AT&T is truly incompetent at planning, managing and running a complex large-scale TCP/IP network infrastructure or (2) AT&T wants to make some more money

My bet is on #2

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The streams come from the local office.  The local channels come from the local office as well.  So, every channel only comes in once and they gets replicated out thanks to IGMP snooping.  It only goes where they need it to go.  So the amount of bandwidth on the core would be quite low.  One stream, many destinations.

Maybe we should try 3) The cost of upgrades is higher and higher.  100GigE card for the CRS core routers; $100,000 for the card and $100,000 for the optic.  10GigE is far cheaper, but you are limited to the number of ports in a group and the number of groups you can have.  100GigE also is very picky about fiber and has a problem running on older fiber; like over 5 years old or so.  Adding more and more bandwidth is getting quite expensive.  When you have people that feel that they have the right to use as much bandwidth as they want, it doesn't pay for those upgrades.

[kshusker]

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lanbrown wrote:

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Maybe we should try 3) The cost of upgrades is higher and higher.  100GigE card for the CRS core routers; $100,000 for the card and $100,000 for the optic.  10GigE is far cheaper, but you are limited to the number of ports in a group and the number of groups you can have.  100GigE also is very picky about fiber and has a problem running on older fiber; like over 5 years old or so.  Adding more and more bandwidth is getting quite expensive.  When you have people that feel that they have the right to use as much bandwidth as they want, it doesn't pay for those upgrades.

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I don't buy this. I have no doubt that the cost for network infrastructure is significant, but if AT&T is in such a pickle that they are desperately raising rates to cover the cost of that infrastructure, then they are absolutely terrible at planning and anticipating their patterns of growth and with network development/management.

Or perhaps U-Verse is growing 500% faster then AT&T ever imagined, and perhaps their engineers and planners never could imagine in their faintest dreams a world of Hulu, MLB On Demand, Amazon and Netflix, and AT&T desperately has to cut bandwidth use by customers in order to stay afloat.

Nah. They just want to make more money. Not a sin in capitalism, of course, but why lie to us (the customers) and degrade our service while keeping the prices the same. I bet the bandwidth caps would go down much easier if AT&T issued a "mea culpa" and lower internet rates across the board, say by $10 a month, even while keeping the caps, ostensibly to make those using more bandwidth pay for it.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

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lanbrown wrote:

The streams come from the local office.  The local channels come from the local office as well.  So, every channel only comes in once and they gets replicated out thanks to IGMP snooping.  It only goes where they need it to go.  So the amount of bandwidth on the core would be quite low.  One stream, many destinations.

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The technology that replicates streams is IP multicast.  IP Multicast, IGMP, and IGMP Snooping are 3 different things with 3 different purposes, but all are interrelated.

IP Multicast - a technology that allows one transmitting station to send it's packets to a group of multiple receivers.  The packets are replicated as required by routers.

IGMP - Internet Group Management Protocol, a communications protocol that allows end stations who wish to receive a multicast stream to inform their upstream routers that they wish to join (or leave) a multicast group.

IGMP Snooping - A technology used by layer 2 switches to ensure that multicast traffic is only sent to the ports that require it and not to other ports.

[lanbrown]

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SomeJoe7777 wrote:

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lanbrown wrote:

The streams come from the local office.  The local channels come from the local office as well.  So, every channel only comes in once and they gets replicated out thanks to IGMP snooping.  It only goes where they need it to go.  So the amount of bandwidth on the core would be quite low.  One stream, many destinations.

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The technology that replicates streams is IP multicast.  IP Multicast, IGMP, and IGMP Snooping are 3 different things with 3 different purposes, but all are interrelated.

IP Multicast - a technology that allows one transmitting station to send it's packets to a group of multiple receivers.  The packets are replicated as required by routers.

IGMP - Internet Group Management Protocol, a communications protocol that allows end stations who wish to receive a multicast stream to inform their upstream routers that they wish to join (or leave) a multicast group.

IGMP Snooping - A technology used by layer 2 switches to ensure that multicast traffic is only sent to the ports that require it and not to other ports.

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I fully understand MC.  AT&T uses mrouter to push all of the streams (national content) to the local VHO's.  So, from the core out to the VHO, it is 100% L2.  The DSLAM connects to the L2 switch and IGMP snooping is used there as well as the DSLAM.  L3 is only used within the VHO and after that, IGMP snooping is used very heavily.  Chances are, a DSLAM already has that stream and when the second or subsequent viewer(s) request it, the DSLAM is feeding them.

They also use PIM.

[jmsherman8]

More important isn't how the technology is used but how they are trying to utilize a bandwidth cap to squash competition from IPTV sources.

[U-LostMe]

This must be some kind of a joke. I canceled a certain dial-up service fifteen years ago for charging by the hour. You guys can't even tell me what I am using now, but want to impose a cap? Raj over in India sent me here: http://myusage.att.com Go there and get this: "The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes. To learn more about how to manage your usage, please visit www.att.com/internet-usage" I know how to manage my usage, but when I receive the notification, which Raj also confirmed would be going out, "We are sending notifications to customers later this week about updates to our Terms of Service. New terms will go into effect May 2, 2011.", I will be managing it through another service. Sure, U-Verse is pretty good, but not worth being threatened with additional fees. I could use a new mobile phone too, maybe it's time to stop all AT&T services. I did this once back in the mid-1990's due to poor service and poor billing choices, and I am not opposed to doing it again. It's easy as saying, "send me my final statement, I have no contract with you".

[lanbrown]

Should Comcast allow Netflix to be a channel?  Clearly Comcast has given their TV channels and their voice service priority as well.  Just because they don't use IPTV is irrelevant.

[Big-B]

So here is a funny one I wonder if anyone thought of.

AT&T is somewhat in partner with DirecTV. For example you can have U-verse and DTV on same bill and order DTV from AT&T ect..

How is this nice cap going to play for people with a contract with DTV/U-verse (yes uverse does offer contracts too.). The users are paying for TV service but will be limited on the feature or else may hit the cap... This can be an issue because many times a person has DTV when they get uverse and uverse says they got DTV to short of time ago so wont buy out the contract and user is stuck or uverse cant support the number of rooms in the house so will offer them DTV option instead.

This is just another way the cap will hurt people even paying for TV service still... AT&T can split the data from voip/iptv a part for internet as the two are really on different networks at the CO, but in DTV case the VOD features run from the actual internet. I.E. Even though you are nice and paying for TV service you get a big fat to bad, you are cap limited so be careful...

[jmsherman8]

I think the issue that everyone misses here is that ATT is clearly not the owner of the phone network that they maintain. They are paid to do network build out and upgrades via USF fees that they collect from every single subscriber and ILEC that they deal with. Those USF fee's account for billions, possibly even trillions of dollars now. This is not my decision it is the decision of a federal judge. (The one that split the bell companies from ATT in the first place). We have been funding this network as a people since it's inception through these fees. So for ATT to try to limit access to a network that I have more than helped to pay for and continue to pay for on a regular basis is well just offensive.

[EOC_Jason]

In response to what someone posted about Canada's caps a few pages back. Funny you should mention that. There's a great picture I saw a few weeks ago that went something like this...

A person in the US could buy a SSD hard drive (yes they are more expensive than traditional drives), copy information to that disk. Then it could be OVERNIGHTED to a person in Canada. That person in Canada could copy the information off and THROW AWAY THE DRIVE... The calculations came out to where doing that would still be CHEAPER than paying the ISP overage charges!!! How ridiculous is that?

As the previous posted menitoned about the USF fund and other fees... We (the taxpayers with phone and/or cable service) have been paying so many fees tacked onto our phone bill that the government imposed which was supposed to be used exclusively for broadband upgrades... The companies aren't even footing the entire bill for these upgrades, WE ARE!

People that say they don't have a choice, it's either AT&T or their Cable Company (presumably also has caps)... Do a little research, I'm willing to bet even in the smaller towns there are local ISPs which offer at bare minimum DSL service.... Here in Houston there are quite a few, and they are all advertising NO CAPS!

If it gets bad enough I guess I'll have to talk to all my neighbors on the street and we'll just trench fiber through out back yards and buy our bandwidth in bulk from a backbone provider...

[Wolf26pack]

Wow I've read all 41 pages of this thread starting about 2 days ago. Here is a quick run down of my setup.

Setup

• 1 DVR & 3 Extra STB's $21.00
• U-verse 200 TV Service $69.00
• AT&T Pro Internet $35.00
• Bundle Discount - $10.00
• Average Bill Paid to AT&T $123.00/m
• Average Bill paid to AT&T $1,476.00/y

Electronics

• 4 Television's
• 1 PC
• 1 IMAC
• 1 Laptop
• 1 Playstation 3
• 2 Wii's

Household & Usage

• Mom & Grandma - Almost 24 hour U-verse TV usage
• Brother & Sister in Law - U-verse TV, Youtube, Netflix, WoW, Basic Internet usage
• Nephew - U-verse TV, Youtube, Netflix, Basic Internet usage
• Me - U-verse TV, PS3 Demo Downloads, PSN Game Downloads, Netflix, Basic Internet usage

History

Now I have been a customer of U-verse since it came into my area about 4-5 years ago. There were many kinks with the service over the years but it they got them fixed, except for the recent Wireless Dropouts of the RG, causing me to have to downgrade my security from WPA2 to WPA to slow down the Wireless Dropouts, BTW Something really has to be done about that.

Now from that I wouldn't say were cord cutters just yet. Although it looked tempting, IMO the content we were interested in just isn't there, and there are too many stupid licensing issues. We tried Hulu+ and weren't interested in paying for the same thing we get on AT&T only in HD, and the current whole season of a show instead, of that and all the previous seasons. Netflix is kind of the opposite, a lot of old stuff and hardly anything new, a lot of it only available on DVD. We use it but I don't know how viable it is for us in the long term. All the licensing issues are a problem and although more and more content providers are going the online streaming route were not there just yet. Although it is picking up steam.

My Take on the Whole Situation

Over the years that we have been paying our bills and AT&T has been enjoying there profits, they have neglected to invest in their infurstructre, instead lining their pockets with cash and buying golden toliets (hopefully an exaggeration) until the last couple of years when they actually started to try to upgrade their infurstructure. Sadly too little too late . Things like Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, Vudu, Amazon VOD, Wii, PS & XBL Game & Movie Download Services, PSN & XBL Online game services have been building up and now AT&T is caught in a pickle. Since they already spent the money that they should have been invested back in their buisness, but instead spent it on various luxurys rather than on there infurstructure they have to raise prices and pass it onto the consumer.

At least that's there excuse right? Should we have to pay for their mistake? No

And yet they claim it's only 2% of their customers who do this and 98% are either below average or average. So like so many have said we all get punished. I too smell the stench of Anti Competitiveness in their lie. It is to keep all those services from being used because they are a heck of a lot cheaper than the $69/m we get charged for U-verse TV. In fact at this moment I'm studying Government and just finished the study of monopolys or in this case a Oligopoly exists (Probably in most markets) the definition of an oligopoly is...

"A situation in which a particular market is controlled by a small group of firms. An oligopoly is much like a monopoly, in which only one company exerts control over most of a market. In an oligopoly, there are at least two firms controlling the market."

Currently in my area the only 2 TV Providers are AT&T & TWC. We left TWC 4 years ago because of their crappy service and because they said they couldn't support 4 TV's at the same time even in SD since we have never had HD. Over the years I've talked to different AT&T techs and all have confirmed to me oligopoly's are taking place. among the cable providers. It's always a combination of two providers per market just so their is the bare minimum of competition among them. (Yeah Right! ) Wether that's

• AT&T & TWC
• AT&T & Charter
• AT&T & Verizon
• Verizon & TWC
• Charter & Verzion
• Cox & Charter
• Etc...
  

Suggestions

As much as I think Government Regulation can get really messy, in fact one of the recent questions I had in my Government class was "Should their be more Government regulation in buisness or should buisness regulate itself?" I feel it is needed here. Until buisness's can show some maturity by putting the customer before their bottom line then & only then, will it not need to be regulated. Now they are a buisness and it's about making a profit & so they have Head over heels over the years. They aren't in debt by any means!

We need to contact our Legislatures & Congressmen and have something done about this. At the same time we need to contact the CEO's of Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, Walmart (As they own Vudu), Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo & let them know how it's going to affect their bottom line. Remember they have lobbyists as well & $$$ talks. We need to make our voices heard. Ohh and don't forget AT&T's CEO he definintly needs to hear about this!!

What Am I Going to Do?

Exactly what I said to do above...

• Attempting to contact all the above CEO's and letting them know how it will affect their bottom line as well as AT&T's CEO.
  
• I will be contacting my Legislature & my Congressman.
  
• I will be checking out their AT&T Bandwith meter when it becomes available
• I will be shopping around for other services
• If it comes down to it and they continue on their path I will switch services and Cancel my U-verse TV & Internet Services and switch to a Non-capped Internet provider.

I hope it doesn't come down to this as I do like the U-verse services but if push comes to shove, than I am going to show them how I feel with my wallet and walk away because all they seem to care about is their bottom line and taking my money away is the only way to hurt their bottom line.

[jmsherman8]

Wolfpack,

   well said.

[Wolf26pack]

Thanks jmsherman8,

It is important that people not only get involved their Legislatures & Congressmen but also the other companies that are going to be affected by the Telecommunications companies decisions. They have the power & access needed to win this fight.

[ummann]

i'll cancel may 2 if they truth impose them so thats another $230 a month they lose. 2% effect 98% that seems fair to kill the everyone with caps. just another way to make money. it doesn't say they will drop price on internet anywhere but we were all told that there won't be caps for this price. and now today att annouces there buying t-mobile for 39 billion. monoply? i hope they fire everyone who came up with cap idea once they notice they lost tons of customers. hopefully fios starts up on deploying in more areas now. easy picking between them and att now. even comcrap will be better.

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

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ummann wrote:

i'll cancel may 2 if they truth impose them so thats another $230 a month they lose. 2% effect 98% that seems fair to kill the everyone with caps. just another way to make money. it doesn't say they will drop price on internet anywhere but we were all told that there won't be caps for this price. and now today att annouces there buying t-mobile for 39 billion. monoply? i hope they fire everyone who came up with cap idea once they notice they lost tons of customers. hopefully fios starts up on deploying in more areas now. easy picking between them and att now. even comcrap will be better.

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Comcast has had a 250 GB internet bandwidth cap in place since 2008.

[jmsherman8]

Actually they haven't they talked about it for about a year or two before they actually implemented it. Once they did I left and came to Uverse. The very next month. The problem is that when Uverse goes up in price(IE promo period expires) it will be $60.00 per month. A comcast business class cable modem connection with no promos and basic cable free is $60.00 per month, and comcast business class is totally unfiltered and uncapped. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out how that is going to end texasguy.

[ddbklb]

I am sure I have gone over 250gb a few times.  But I am not sure what my normal usage per month is.  I have a router behind the gateway with the 2nd router in the dmz of the gateway.  I run tomato firmware on my router and as of the 12th of march I am now monitoring my traphic both inbound and outbound.  This router behind the gateway handles all internet traphic except IPTV of course.  So I will know if AT&T tries to pull a fast one with usage.

More to the point though we were considering pulling the plug on TV service, but I am sure we can't do that now. 

[U-LostMe]

{Keep it Relevant} Comcast does it, so AT&T is now using the exact same GB per month limit?  {Keep it Relevant}

[lanbrown]

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U-LostMe wrote:
{Keep it Relevant} Comcast does it, so AT&T is now using the exact same GB per month limit?  {Keep it Relevant}

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Based on what, the same cap?  Ever think the data resulted in similar numbers and both were rounded up?  Guess what, Earthlink has a cap; 250GB.  It is for the customers that use the Comcast network though.  Mediacom has a 250GB cap as well; they are not associated with Comcast.  Mediacom uses DSL technology.

[kdroop]

Yall have to know this thread is being seen as cathartic for their consumers vent  and moan they see that as good.This is for 2012 revenue my guess they have this listed as an add on for q3 and q4.It will be the upside surprise in a quarterly guidance 3 weeks after initial guidance is given for q4 of this year.It will be showing as profit and a reason not to blow capex for the network in 2012.So this will be a bottom and top line generator.Then the sharehoilders will demand a 200 gb cap cause it makes em money.

I have no problem with any of this.Just the govt they get to take advantage of in this process.You have to know this is now like anything else drugs water food once it is no longer a luxury but a necessity you will pay substantially more for it whether or not it is warranted.

Granted not alot of money at first but soon as they get alot of people violated cha ching.Me I am goin business or elsewhere but my options are few.

[dhascall ACE - Professor]

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texasguy37 wrote:

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jmsherman8 wrote:

I am just putting this out here now for ATT moderators to take back to there superiors. The reason that I left comcast to come to ATT in the first place was the bandwidth cap that comcast put into play last year. Now IF ATT moves forward with this bandwidth cap, I WILL be dropping my uverse services entirely. If however, someone gets some common sense between now and May I will keep them. Look I stream Netflix to my home. We have 5 kids during the height of summer and I have no time to be playing games with ATT bandwidth caps. Either you remove them or its a done deal.

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I'm curious.  You dropped Comcast because of bandwidth caps, and you are likely to drop U-verse because of bandwidth caps.  Where will you go next?

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To a service with higher caps and/or better rates.  There was an example many pages back, regarding Australia.  The Aussie telco's apparently started with 250 GB caps.  Of course they said the same things "only 2% of the users," and "it's due to net congestion" and so on.  Then other providers entered the marketplace with 1 TB caps at the same rate.  So then the telco's realized that the revenue that they thought that they were going to bring in, hand over fist never materialized - so they had to quyadruple their caps also to 1 TB.  Folks aren't stupid.  Folks aren't complacent, either.  As long as competitors are not "lobbied out" of the market, there will be new altermnatives.

BTW - Comcast does not cap the net in all communities...............

[jmsherman8]

texasguy,

   It could be Cavalier / Paetec while it is still available because they will grandfather the connection ad infinitum or I may end up going back to comcast business class which has approximately the same speeds as Uverse for $60.00 per month with No bandwidth caps. I will not go with business class Uverse because it is priced at around $100.00 per month to open. now if you want to lower the cost of business class uverse...great. It doesn't matter to me, but I cannot afford to play this game, as I am a independent agent for telecom services for businesses in my area, so I have to have unlimited.

[theroot]

Will this cap apply to uverse business class? I wonder if this is something i could switch too for internet only.. The only other provider in my area that doesn't cap is TWC - and their service quality is well below acceptable.