I have had AT&T DSL for about 12 years now. I’ve upgraded once, from a standard (all that they offered) plan to a top-level plan that promised us 10 mbps down and 6 mbps up. Two years ago I dropped our landline and kept the DSL. We have had minimal problems with our DSL here, while neighbors have ongoing problems with Charter. The problems are primarily due to the fact that we have no overhead lines and everything is underground; Charter doesn’t know how to maintain underground lines, whereas AT&T has been using underground lines for decades.
At any rate, I’m a long-time and satisfied customer of AT&T DSL. The limits being proposed go into effect May 2nd, and are capped at 150 gb per month. I have a house full of computers and people who surf them, so of course I’m concerned about any kind of cap being imposed. I also know that I have no idea how much we use every month, as I have no tool to tell me that information. I called AT&T to ask a few questions.
My first question was, since I have a higher-level plan, will my cap be higher? From a logical perspective, it would make sense that different levels of service would come with different levels of caps. The guy across the street with the low-end plan could probably never download 150 gb in a month, out of the sheer lack of speed. Someone like me could certainly hit that cap at some point, as I have a higher-speed connection and more users on my line. The answer from AT&T? The caps are the same regardless of your level of service. AT&T currently offers four tiers of DSL service. There’s a $15 plan, a $20 plan, a $30 plan (the one we have) and a $40 plan. So other than a slight increase in speed, upgrading my plan will not give me any advantages. Good to know, AT&T.
My second question was, how will I know if I’m using too much? The charge for going over is another $10 for each 50 gb over, so the price isn’t horrifying, but still, I’d like to know if I’m going to get hit with a big bill. AT&T is going to institute some tools on their website that will allow us to periodically check our usage, and they will also inform us if we are getting close to our limit. This doesn’t tell me how much we’ve used in the past, but at least it’s a way for me to tell what we use in the future.
I’m opposed to any caps, of course, because it opens a door I’d rather not have opened. Once a cap is in place, it is not going to be difficult to tighten that cap, throttling back the service we are paying for. How long before they reduce the cap, or attach the caps to different service levels, thereby increasing prices for everyone? As usual, AT&T is claiming that only 2% of their DSL subscribers ever reach that 150 gb limit. I guess I’ll be finding out if I’m one of them.
Hodge, businesses also pay a higher price for their DSL. Mine is residential and the new caps are going in on the residential customers, not the business customers.
BUSINESS USES VOLUMES MORE THAN DSL USERS, FOR REPORTS CONFERENCE,ETC., REGARDLESS OF WHAT SOFTWARE. THIS IS ESTABLISHMENT LOOKING TO INCREASE MORE CASH FROM A KNOWN CASH COW. BUSINESS IS THE DATA HOGS, ATT INCLUDED.
I’m on the AT&T U-Verse service, which is supposed to get a cap of 250GB per month, which sounds generous on the surface. However this is the month I’m cutting the cord and getting rid of the “cable” portion of my service.
The irony is that for U-Verse, AT&T is using Microsoft’s Media Room technology, which uses the same incoming data connection to deliver the “cable” as IPTV, using approximately 8Mbps of the service segregated using some type of QoS. (Example – a 24Mbps total capacity connection to the home, 8Mbps dedicated to television delivery as IPTV using standard IP protocols, which leaves 16Mbps available to sell to the customer, which AT&T will knock down to their 12Mbps tier and sell to the consumer.)
Getting my content over Roku, PC and Xbox360, I think I’ll be safe at 250GB per month, but we all know this is a blatant attempt to block out customers from using Netflix, Amazon and other services that compete with their own TV offerings.
Of course they hide behind the smokescreen of doing it to protect the network from the “data hogs”. All at a time when their costs for broadband delivery is at an all time low and still falling.
They want to generate a false scarcity to justify higher prices even as their per-bit delivery costs decline.