Today in 2014 -- An Open Letter to AT&T

Today in 2014, the world around us is rapidly changing and people are becoming more interconnected. The internet has become the foundation for the lives of many of the younger generation, much like myself. At 25 years old, I run two websites, do freelance journalism, stream video games professional, and much of my time is spent on the computer. I often times have YouTube videos or Twitch.TV streams running on my second monitor while I work.

People are consuming far more data than ever before, and it seems that AT&T is stuck in the proverbial "stoneages" when it comes to the services they often provide to their customers, particularly their internet. Some people use the internet simply to check their emails and do occasional web-surfing, downloading photos, etc. This is why you have lower teared packages.

Since coming to AT&T in February of this year, I've found myself scratching my head at some of the things the company provides it's customers. The people on this board who work for AT&T seem genuine and willing to help, but a majority of the problems people seem to have with your service seems to stem from the service itself, not problems on their end.

One of the major problems that I see people complaining about, including myself, is the speeds offered. Max Plus is the highest tier offered in my area, and Comcast is the only other ISP. I came to AT&T after a billing fiasco that left me with a nearly $1000 charge because one month when money was behind, I decided to let my service go with full intentions of having it turned back on the following month. They charged me for not "returning their equipment."

As a professional game streamer, Twitch.tv makes up a reasonable amount of my income. However, because I only have 800Kbps upstream, I am no longer able to stream at a reasonable quality. I also often times find myself frustrated with my lack of speed when uploading videos to Vimeo and YouTube, as well as sending video assets to my editor over Skype or torrent.

800Kbps up on a $50+ a month package is preposturious when many people get multiple times my upload speed on their cellphone's 4G LTE connection at the same price, sometimes less.

Anything under 3Mbps in today's world is almost unacceptable to most of us young people who use the internet for needs outside of just normal, everyday web-surfing.

The other problem is the 250GB usage cap... I really don't understand this. In a world where media is being consumed faster than ever, this seems a bit ridiculous. On my PlayStation 4, many of the games I download are 30-40GBs. Some of the games on services like Steam are 10GB or more. YouTube videos, Twitch.tv, Netflix, Hulu+, Crunchyroll, Vudu, Vimeo, Pandora Radio, Spotify... All of these services are extremely common and part of every-day life for many users like myself.

When I'm not on my computer, I'm usually working or just relaxing and playing games on my tablet, and watching something from Netflix on the TV. Sometimes a Blu-ray.

We've living in a new era. Data consumtion is becoming increasingly demanding of a higher quality service. The internet in North American is completely monopolized, and even though I understand that I am part of a small percentage that you call "high traffic users," I do so because much of my job and income revolves around having the best possible internet I can have. Unfortunately, my options are limited, but to those of us who are wanting to support AT&T, it would be nice to see them try to support us.

I understand that there is a newer "Power" internet package that's being rolled out, but it's not available in my area.

I don't know much about how AT&T's inferstructure works, but it cannot be impossible for them to offer higher rates to those of us who need it. I would be perfectly okay with 20Mbps down, 6 up, which is what I had through Comcast for a similar price to what I'm paying now.

It's just very disheartening to see that one of my main sources of income is unusable to me right now because I'm unable to acquire the neccesary speed, which is readily available at just about every other service provider.

AT&T is truly behind on the times.