OK, where's my $10 a month refund for every 50 GB I go under the limit?
I'm not saying this is right, I'm just pointing out that this is far from the worst case scenario.
In theory...
This moves the argument up the chain a little bit. Why did AT&T implement fiber-to-the-node after they were given billions upon billions of tax breaks and subsidies? Verizon implemented fiber-to-the-premisis in some markets at least.
150GB/month works out to .47MBit/sec sustained throughput. If AT&T had to advertise that rate instead of 6Mbit for DSL lines, they'd think twice about caps.
UVerse is even worse--~1Mbit/sec instead of 24.
The typical user has no need for sustained output unless they are torrenting things, being used as a supernode for skype, ect.
I do like the idea though.
I don't think it's unreasonable to look at something that is true 3% of the time and call it an unfair claim.
We don't use bittorrent, we don't download music illegally, but we will most definitely be dropping AT&T for a different service, as soon as we find one that won't cap our usage (since Comcast is the only cable provider available in our area).
This is crap.
Then I acidentally left the live.twit.tv stream on for about 12 hours. I haven't checked, but I expect to either have to heavily conserve bandwidth until my next bill, or get a friendly letter from my ISP. Offsite backups like carbonite or mozy are totally out of the question obviously. I had planned on downloading MS Server 2011, but I'll have to put that off until the next billing cycle too. I also rent and buy movies and TV shows off of itunes, but I have to balance that and my netflix watching so I don't go over.
Everything I do is 100% legal, yet without vigilance I could easily blow through my cap within two weeks. The phone company offers a slightly higher cap (you can get up to 250GB) but it's much slower. Welcome to life in Canada...
They are going to go kicking and screaming into the age of being a dumb pipe.
This is about revenue protection for their U-Verse TV business. They want to control the share of wallet and they'll use the tools they have available to do that. They don't want to become "just a pipe" where you go Internet only and then pay your TV content dollars to Hulu, etc...
It won't get any better until the cities/localities remove exclusive territory rights for companies that provide phone and cable.
They also sat on DSL for over a decade until the telecom act of '96 allowed others to roll-out DSL. They finally started to market it themselves when they were forced.
I recently moved to Seattle and had no choice but to sign up with Comcast. I wanted to have streaming video of NHK Japan coverage open while I'm doing things around the house. I'm to worried about eating into my monthly limit to do so.
Depending on the area, the limit may not even be enforced. I've pretty drastically gone over the cap every month since it was implemented and have yet to receive a warning, and I've heard the same thing from other users. Of course, YMMV.
I don't use any illegal means to acquire content and am already flirting with the cap regularly. The "bandwidth hogs" of today are the "regular users" of tomorrow. Imagine telling somebody from 10 years ago "the average internet user will be using 10 GB of bandwidth a month." Their mind would be blown.
Now I'm wondering if they'll continue being reasonable with a clear commitment to a specific speed, or - at the very least - a decent and reliable average.
If so, they'll be in a position to run marketing campaigns where they start assaulting those godawful "up to" claims by demonstrating what their competitors actually average.
Alternately, this really is about offering less for more. I suspect we'll know one way or the other within six months.
AT&T: $10/50 GB = 20 cents/GB
Amazon S3/EC2: 10 cents/GB
It's not like we're being gouged here...
I'd be less ticked off if the rate above cap were more similar to the rate below cap, and if the cap allowed saturating your link more than 9% of the time, which is what this cap does for DSL users with a typical 6.5 Mbps download speed.
To buy a connection that can actually be used 24/7 with the new price structure would cost well over $200/month. That's not cool.
There's no such thing as a truly unlimited service. I prefer that they be upfront about the limits.
Since Comcast put the 250 GB cap in place, I've had a hard time breaking 100GB, and I do several things that chew through bandwidth, like hi-def Netflix and a lot of OS updates and downloads. (Been shopping around for a Linux distro the last couple of weekends, for instance.) I have a hard time complaining.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Either the top 2% pay a noticeable premium, or everybody pays a less noticeable premium. AT&T is not a charity, it's not a public utility, and it's not a monopoly.
They are now effectively paying the exact same amount for a reduced level of (potential) service. Unless you're willing to speculate that this will eventually lower costs for the 98% (doubt it, are Comcast's users better off?), there is no gain for any end user in this scenario.
I anticipate many technically disinclined people receiving very large bills as a result of running an open wireless network.
