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AT&T Begins a Trial To Cap, Meter Internet Usage
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:15 PM
from the unlimited-is-just-a-word dept.
from the unlimited-is-just-a-word dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of Comcast's decision to implement a 250-GB monthly cap, and Time Warner Cable's exploration of caps and overage fees, DSL Reports notes that AT&T is launching a metered billing trial of their own in Reno, Nevada. According to a filing with the FCC (PDF), AT&T's existing tiers, which range from 768 kbps to 6 Mbps, would see caps ranging from 20 GB to 150 GB per month. Users who exceed those caps would pay an additional $1 per gigabyte, per month."
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[+]
Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps 591 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a leaked internal memo, Time Warner Cable is testing out tiered bandwidth caps in their Beaumont, TX division as a way to fairly balance the needs of heavy users against the limited amount of shared bandwidth cable can provide. The plan is to offer various service tiers with bandwidth fees for overuse, as well as a bandwidth meter customers can use to help them stay within their allotment. If it works out, they will consider a nation-wide rollout. Interestingly, the memo also claims that 5% of subscribers use over 50% of the total network bandwidth."
[+]
Comcast To Cap Data Transfers At 250 GB In October 939 comments
JagsLive writes with this story from PC Magazine: "Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1. 'This is the same system we have in place today,' Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. 'The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.' The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is "an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. ... As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage,' Comcast said Thursday. 'If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use,' according to the AUP."
Submission: AT&T To Cap, Meter Internet Usage by Anonymous Coward
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Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The best part is they will probably raise their rates, since all that extra monitoring to bring you quality service costs money don'tchyaknow :-\
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
speaker wire (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaker wire is the reason "unlimited" will never exist in pure form. The same people who purchase $8,000 speaker wires are quite convinced that even if they were capped at 1TB/hour for their holographic porn, it would still be a curly hair shy of the real thing.
I'd have no problem with capped download if the cap decayed at a sensible exponential rate, the same way that gmail's free storage ticks ever upward. If the cap doubled every two years (corresponding to a 40% annual cost reduction in the cost of carrying traffic, which I'm certain the optical portions of the backbone achieve), then ten years from now, the current monthly cap would have evolved into the daily cap. At that rate, you're already watching a three hour HD movie every day of your life, or multibooting every Linux distro that every existed at the same time onto your 256 core processor.
Depending on the cost of your speaker wire, this might or might not suffice.
Parent
Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not shape?
Because $1 per Gb is a lot less than it costs in Australia, which depending on the plan/carrier, still charges up to $10,000 per additional Gb...
Shaping/Policing is just a way of making people upgrade their accounts without the original infraction costing them the earth. It's a lot fairer, but it still leaves you unable to do a lot with your connection one it cuts in.
Actually, in the long run, just about all content will be accessible by net, but some will require serious bandwidth. Having caps works with the net as it is today, but it stifles innovation because it also limits what is commercially viable on the Internet and people adjust their usage to meet costs and available bandwidth levels and the carriers find it helps manage their bandwidth requirements, so they stop adding new capacity and find other ways to make their existing infrastructure go further.
Youtube? Myspace? Never would have happened in Australia. We're still working on models that were in place when modems were the dominant technology.
And a typical cap is around 5gb over here - Far less than the 250 Gb mentioned... Not enough to watch online movies even casually. 20Gb is considered a "Big" plan over here and pretty much no one can afford 250Gb for non professional (commercial) use.
Because the caps are so small, there is no business driver to keep upgrading infrastructure...
It's the same old story that we've seen forever. If a resource is essentially free and limitless, you can only make it commercially viable by restricting it's supply by some means. Music, Water, Electricity, Freedom, you name it. The less it's available, the more it costs you. Information is no different.
The reason they don't create new dams or build new ecologically friendly power stations isn't because they can't - it's because it's more commercially viable to retain limited availability of these resources.
GrpA
p.s. Most ISPs in Australia that "Shape" don't actually Shape - they Police - ie, drop packets that exceed the burst rate of the connection. That causes a much lower throughput than shaping does.
Parent
Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What "Australia" are you living in?
5gig would be an entry level account, not a "typical" one. 20 gig would be a low end one.
I have a 50 gig plan [tpg.com.au] from TPG. I haven't paid more for internet for as long as I can remember and year after year my bandwidth cap has increased in a way that has been more than sufficient for increased usage.
Of course, but it's largely a factor of our geography. Data doesn't magically get from A to B and when you are as far away from pretty much everything (including the other side of the same country) the economics are inevitably different to places that are more centrally located and/or have high population densities of their own.
It isn't (entirely) a lack of imagination or drive to find a better alternative to "models that were in place when modems were the dominant technology." It's a reflection of physical reality.
I think that is fundamentally incorrect. The tiered cap approach means that demand increases justify infrastructure purchases with extra income.
Parent
Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, but it's largely a factor of our geography. Data doesn't magically get from A to B and when you are as far away from pretty much everything (including the other side of the same country) the economics are inevitably different to places that are more centrally located and/or have high population densities of their own.
That's bullshit. The population density of Australia's capital cities is way higher than that of America. People point at Australia's low population density and say "that's why we have slow internets!", but they fail to notice that most of our country is desert, and most of our population is clustered in a few cities (more than half of our population lives in just 4 cities).
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Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Informative)
That's correct, although it's written as 1c per Kilobyte in the contract.
People would freak out if they saw "0.5 Gb Included, $10,000 per Gb" in the contract, so it's written as "500Mb included, 1c per kb thereafter"
Yes, there are actually plans like that in Australia...
GrpA
Parent
Re:Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not consumer fraud, it's misleading, but it's not fraud.
No, it's fraud. Unlimited, meaning no limit is applied. A cap is a limit. They would be directly claiming something that is not true in order to inflate the perceived value of a product or service.
Markets require a strict enforcement of truth in order to function effectively. Had ISPs been jumped on for their lies earlier in the game, nobody would dare to implement caps now.
Parent
$1 per GB? (Score:4, Informative)
And driving away customers to a better paying deal is not a good thing in any market, much less a harsh modern market in the post-speculator market of today.
Idiots. They should be making sure they are making a reasonable profit without shoving off your potential customers.
Software updates (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Software updates (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually updates give MSFT a very big boost. The plans here in North AR are 25Gb-$35(DSL) or 36Gb-$45(cable),but in both cases they don't count Windows updates or anything coming from the Microsoft Kb sites,since they would rather you go get the updates. Of course since the cap my trying different distros is pretty much toast,and of course any updates you get from say Ubuntu or Red Hat count against your cap.
Mark my words,they are ALL going to end up with crappy 20-40Gb caps unless you pay through the nose. Then we'll see how quick sites like Youtube dry up without anyone able to watch the vids. BTW,whatever happened to all that money and tax breaks we gave the telecoms throughout the 90's to upgrade our infrastructure? And what about all those miles and miles of dark fiber that was left after the dotbomb bust of 2K? I have a feeling we are all about to get really screwed.
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Re:Software updates (Score:5, Insightful)
You *poor dears*. Really. I can manage to make it through every month on 40GB... But then Americans aren't typically known for exercising restraint, are they?
You wasteful slob! I managed to make it through most of my life in the 1970s and 80s on less than 40GB total! But then people from whatever country you are from aren't typically known for exercising restraint, are they?
But seriously, bandwidth isn't a finite resource like food or water or oil. There's no reason to restrict ourselves to the stone-age because a handful of media-corporations wish to control the flow of information while raking in boatloads of cash. Your attitude only helps them.
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Just don't put it in the fine print (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just don't put it in the fine print (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fine with schemes like this provided the ISP makes it perfectly clear and obvious when you sign up what your download limitations are and the costs of running over. This allows consumers to make an educated choice about which provider they want to use. Unfortunately, I see this being shoved in the fine print while still advertising "unlimited" internet access. I mean, we are dealing with telecom companies here. I know my bill is a surprise about every other month after all the "taxes and fees" are tacked on to the advertised base price...
That's all well and good in markets where customers actually have a choice. In the markets where the options are Cable Company A or dial-up, the heavy internet-usage customers lose out and end up paying the exorbitant price of $1 per gigabyte.
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Re:Just don't put it in the fine print (Score:4, Insightful)
Most customers have no idea what 50GB or 150GB monthly caps would mean. I definitely wouldn't expect my mom to be able to make an educated choice about usage caps.
Hell, I'm good with PCs and I don't know how much bandwidth I would need in a month. How many people would really know how much bandwidth they use when you consider flash advertisements, youtube, etc.?
Parent
The last time providers tried this... (Score:4, Informative)
Was in the age of Dial-Up. I remember that there were a few ISPs back in the mid '90s that charged $20/month for a limited amount of time online...somewhere between 30 to 50 hours per month. But when other ISPs offered unlimited time online for the same price (or $25 to $30 per month), it was a no-brainer.
Of course, this was also back when even a mid-size municipal city (80,000+ population) could have three or four local ISPs to choose from.
Now, if you live in a place like Minneapolis, your only choices are Comcast or Qwest. If both decide to switch to a capped bandwidth, you're screwed.
60gigs in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:60gigs in Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes,
Let's all compare the price of bandwidth technology and services to South Africa, which is clearly similar in terms of technology, development, architecture, services, service density, e-tailers, and so forth. Makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe in 10-15 years time when you've got used to unlimited broadband and cable and your ISPs start throttling your traffic, dropping packets, killing connections, imposing caps and raising prices someone from another developing nation can ask you to cry them a river.
Back to the US: It's ridiculous that the ISPs can't/won't upgrade their infrastructure to cope with rising demand for bandwidth and instead degrade service and (likely) increase prices. $1/GB is unreasonable. I hope the government investigates the cost to industry growth and development in terms of limiting the adoption of services like Netflix online and other high bandwidth services. Of course, some of these ISPs have a vested interested in making services like Netflix less likely to succeed, just as they had an interest in shutting down their usenet services completely unrelated to protecting children.
In the interest of protecting competition and consumer choice I'd like to see regulation preventing these kind of caps and/or charges in areas where two or fewer ISPs constitute a regional monopoly on internet services.
Parent
Lack of competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I'm supportive of published caps. We know hidden ones have existed for some time. It's far better if you know you're buying 20GB of bandwidth or 100GB and it's fair if those using 100GB aren't subsidised by those using 20.
Don't whine that you bought an unlimited connection for $30/month and you should get to use it without penalty. I do agree connections should never have been sold as unlimited (indeed this addresses that very point) but you're an idiot if you think current networks to the home in the US can deliver that sort of bandwidth at that sort of cost.
The problem in the US is the lack of competition. This should allow prices to be driven down. Our parents and grandparents should be able to buy uber cheap 2GB/month packages.
Look at the UK where almost everyone with a phone line can pick from dozens of DSL providers. Competition helps keep prices in check. More expensive providers offer better customer service etc.
But there's so little competition in the US market that there's serious potential for this to be almost all negative.
What makes even less sense is the varying of both bandwidth and capacity. If you're metering the connection, there's no reason at all that everyone shouldn't get the fastest connection available. That's also how it works in the UK.
What's the point of artificially slowing down data for those on the 20GB tariff who in fact are paying more per byte for the data?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are for published bandwidth caps that are substantially lower than the 'artificial' unknowns of yesterday? I know I've transfered more than 100GB a month...in fact I've transfered 455 GB this past month have have heard NOTHING from my ISP. (btw thats BYTES not bits, and which do you think the telco's will use?)
You also say not to whine about bandwidth caps for $30 a month. Well lets think about this. If you can find $4 per mb/sec connectivity from Cogent...so yea lets
They should do it right (Score:5, Insightful)
When your bandwidth cap is exceeded your ports are all shut except 80. Your web browser can only get AT&T's page. You have options to (a) pay for another XXX GB of transfer or (b) upgrade your plan.
It ain't all that hard to do this. Making people pay a dollar-per-gigabyte without giving them notice that they've exceeded their limit is clearly not informing the user.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
Cost effectiveness (Score:5, Interesting)
So now they will need to monitor the amount of bandwidth you use, set up a database to keep track of it, change their billing software so it can deal with variable billing, and verify that the customer actually paid the (variable) correct amount. All to collect a few bucks from a few customers.
There's a reason the phone companies go to unlimited calling plans. It means they save big bucks on the hardware and software needed to keep track of your usage. Those systems are not cheap and they eat into the computing power that could be used for routing calls. So instead they jack up your bill by the average amount you would spend, and let you go to town. They still get the money, but they don't have to maintain (as much of) a billing system.
AT&T will try this for a while, realize it's a losing proposition that annoys their customers, and go back to the way it was.
(This assumes rational behavior, of course. That is definitely not a given)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, but the software modifications are a one-time cost. And the additional metered usage is a revenue source.
They may size the caps so everyone exceeds it a little, thus a subtle price increase to pay for it.
It's not particularly expensive to have software automatically add fees.
Historically, the manual human work required in usage billing was costly.
Now the telcos have it down to an art: due to the advent of cell phones.
Nickel and diming customers for things like $0.10 a text message and $.20
Re:Cost effectiveness (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Upside: Incentive for botnet cleanout. (Score:5, Interesting)
One upside to a unilateral application of bandwidth billing by the ISPs: The implications for Botnets and other malware.
- It provides a financial incentive to users to get their machines cleaned out and keep them that way.
- It provides an easily measurable cost of the traffic imposed by malware, which can then be used in prosecutions against those who deploy and use it.
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
Re:Upside: Incentive for botnet cleanout. (Score:5, Funny)
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
From extensive research on the behavior of modern ISP's, I can answer all of your questions with 100% certainty, including the one you didn't type out:
- Yes, Hell yes.
- You can't.
- They will.
- Of course.
- Lube will cost extra.
Parent
If you don't qualify for the faster packages there (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't qualify for the faster packages there should be no higher then the next level bill. as if you only qualify for 768k and you do 80GB of usage ($80) over instead of the $5- $20 more for the higher levels. They should make it line max with prices levels for how much download that you want. As well having roll over like there cell phone plan has.
I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if I could sue my town or state in so limiting my internet choices through government granted monopoly. Given that all of the major players (who get the government granted monopolies) all seem to be moving towards usage caps it would be nice if it was easier for competitors to enter the market. Particularly with download and upload speeds comparable to cable and without the lag of satellite services.
Is it time to go back to BBS's? (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies and all I got was this lousy duopoly.
New Entrants? (Score:5, Informative)
I noticed that here in Pittsburgh, we have a relatively new entrant into the DSL space (Cavtel) who are offering the maximum possible speeds(up to 8 Mb/s, depending on line quality) with no caps and no tiers and they advertise a price lower than Verizon's 3 Mb/s service. Basically, they set themselves up as a CLEC and have access to the last-mile copper and their own backbone (probably transit) links.
I wonder if the caps will make it profitable for more of this type of activity to take place? Could we see some alternative DSL providers open up shop?
What are they getting payed for? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean seriously, you pay your ISP to constantly upgrade their equipment. It doesn't cost much to run it so much of the money should go to upgrades. If they don't manage to be able to do that, they should go out of business.
I mean it's not like you have to dig up the road and lay new fibers. You can use wavelength multiplexing to get more and more data onto those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing [wikipedia.org]
If nothing is done, the US will fall even further behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet access.
Furthermore, there is a lot you can do against this by yourself. Of course you probably cannot change your ISP in most regions as they often have local monopolies, but what you can do is to build your own networks. There's software around like OLSRd which you can install onto computers or routers. It implements a meshed routing protocoll. Essentially you turn your wireless network cards into ad-hoc mode. Assign IP-Addresses and start OLDRd. This programm (availiable for preety much all OSes, even Windows) negotiates routes with all the other nodes it can reach. This way you can easily build up large networks which configure themselves automatically. If a node fails, and there is still another way, the network will find it.
This way you can build an additional network, free of any greedy big ISPs. You can use it wherever you want for whatever you want.
http://www.olsr.org/ [olsr.org]
Adjusted Cap based on Connection...... (Score:5, Insightful)
wow. just wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Funny)
Next month: Slashdot meters trolls posts. Only one per day, or you get charged $4/troll.
Parent
Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Funny)
...or charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
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Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Funny)
charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
I'm a female troll, you insensitive clod!
Parent
Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting? Let logged-in users check the checkbox and post 'anonymously', but keep ramifications for people's actions. It would solve this BS troll problem once and for all, since persistent trollers could eventually end up with such negative karma that they couldn't post for a month.
Everyone wins.
Parent
Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Funny)
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time.
And I thought you were just saving bytes to avoid the cap.
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Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
True. But they won't meter all traffic the same way. Movies on "ATT Movies" won't count against the tier. They will partner with lets say Amazon for unmetered music downloads. In all practicality,, this is the end of net-neutrality.
Parent
Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
So why don't we get together and start municipal fiber projects in our respective towns? I mean, municipalities can get cheap bonds to build out the infrastructure, and than let companies sell internet access over the fiber (similar to how Speakeasy/Covad can sell ILEC DSL lines). Are we not tired of this bullshit yet?
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Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you against net-neutrality. The whole point of non-neutrality is to force sites like hulu and itunes to pay Comcast and ATT. This is what the caps will end up producing as they continue to slide the caps downward.
Parent
Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:4, Insightful)
Giving stuff for free to kill the competition is classic form of anti-competitive behaviour. It is not to the customer's benefit, any more than putting cheese into a mousetrap is to the mouse's benefit.
"Net neutrality" means that the network does not prioritize traffic based on its source or destination. And AT&T doesn't need to outright block itunes.com; it is quite simple to make it slightly slower or have traffic to and from it count against some limit traffic to AT&T's own competing site doesn't count against to give AT&T's site an unfair advantage.
It is also doable without anti-competitive behaviour: simply have multiple possible connection speeds available, so grandma can pick the slowest.
The issue here is not about charging per megabyte transferred; it's about charging per megabyte transferred from some IP addresses and not others.
Parent
Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to do with net neutrality as long as you meter all traffic the same way.
The next step is clearly going to be "free" downloads from paying partners.
Unless there is a radical change in direction, I give it no more than 2 years before we see the first such offering.
$1/gigabyte is just too prohibitive in a market where netflix and others are offering pseudo-HDTV movie downloads to anyone with a game console, the time is coming.
Parent
Re:Cappings effect on net neutrality... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you think they are going to meter their partners (aka : people who pay them money), you should share what you're smoking. Barring regulation forcing them to meter everything, this is a direct path to the end of net neutrality.
Parent
Re:So how much data is that (Score:5, Informative)
At 1Mbyte per sec, its 250000 seconds worth, or about 30 days worth.
Nice try, but you're off by, oh, an order or two of magnitude...
At 1Mbyte/sec, you're looking at less than 3 days until you hit the 250GB cap.
At the same rate, it would be less than 6 hours until the 20GB cap would be hit (although presumably plans with that much bandwidth would have higher caps.)
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