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AT&T Begins a Trial To Cap, Meter Internet Usage
Posted by
kdawson
on Monday November 03, @10:15PM
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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Firehose:AT&T To Cap, Meter Internet Usage by Anonymous Coward
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Do They Still Advertise them as "Unlimited"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 :-\
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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)
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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)?
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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.
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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?
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Re:Jews did 9/11. (Score:5, Funny)
Next month: Slashdot meters trolls posts. Only one per day, or you get charged $4/troll.
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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.
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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!
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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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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: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.
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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: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.
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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.
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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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