http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/


If you're currently subscribed to AT&T for your landline internet service, or even wireless service, it's time to start looking for alternatives. The best way to combat these greedy companies is by taking your business elsewhere.

150GB caps, and $10 per every 50GB over?
I'm not seeing the problem here.

Bandwidth caps are not necessarily at odds with net neutrality. It's the same as going over your minutes on a phone.

Net neutrality just requires all websites be treated equally and no website be given special placement or privileges.

Caps are common all over the world, and this isn't even the first cap to be put in place in the USA, or even the first one by a major ISP: Comcast caps at 250GiB/month


That said, anything that convinces people to cancel their subscription to AT&T is something I'm always for

150 gb? And $10 for every 50 above that? I cannot even imagine myself going over that and I play MMOs and download a lot. That's 5 GB a day. According to that article it's 2% of the customers that will be affected and they are using up 20% of the bandwidth.

Sounds reasonable to me.

I sometimes download large Linux .iso files and some days I download alot of Microsoft stuff from my school's MSDNAA program and those get huge as they are DVDs. I also install any game on Steam I buy which newer stuff is large as well. I don't know how close I would get to 150GB but any cap in my book is bad. Unfortunately there is no real alternative in our area save for Comcast and that's even worse of an idea to go with them.

In an age where damn near everything is going digital distribution, it certainly is going to be a problem for the average customer in the near future.

That could be part of the whole idea that way the unsuspecting users will go over the cap and bring in extra revenue for the ISP.

I have AT&T (standard DSL, not U-Verse). It's the only option for high speed internet around here aside from Charter, which is worse. FFFFFUUUUU---

The worst thing, for me, is that at present there's no way to see your current monthly usage. You have to wait until the caps go into effect so you can see how [censored] you are.

This is just an excuse to wring more money out of the higher-end users while simultaneously forcing their client base to self-limit to avoid upgrading their infrastructure. Which needs it, and badly. "High speed" internet around here is often anything but (and I'm in a suburban/urban area, with an area population of ~100K or more), and it cuts out whenever there's a bad rainstorm.



Indeed. To anyone saying "not my problem"...do you buy games through Steam? Direct2Drive? Gamersgate? Especially new releases? While PC gaming especially is switching over to a digital distribution model, the actual size of games is increasing thanks to shiny new graphics and so on.

Out of curiosity and a way to channel my rage, I took a look at the hardrive space requirements of every game on Steam's top sellers' list. Space requirements and the amount of data you actually have to download are surprisingly close (ex., The Witcher takes up 15GB of HD space, and is a 16GB download). Here they are, in order of their current sale rank (omitting the Total War Collection, since it would be redundant):

Total War: Shogun 2 - 20GB
Homefront - 10GB
Dragon Age II - 7GB
Napoleon: Total War: Imperial Edition - 21GB
Portal 2 - estimated 7.6GB
Rift - 15GB; is an MMO, so will use additional bandwidth beyond the initial download
Crysis 2 - estimated 9GB
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II: Retribution - 8.5GB
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - 8GB
Call of Duty: Black Ops - requires a 16GB download
Magicka - 2GB

Total GB: 124.1

Now granted, it's the rare gamer who's going to buy and download every single one of those games in a single month, but: 16GB here, 8GB there, and pretty soon you're talking real bandwidth usage. And don't forget that a number of the games on that list have multiplayer components, which means additional bandwidth use if you make use of them.

That also doesn't take into account multiplayer games beyond MMOs--you think a game of L4D or CoD doesn't use up some bandwidth? It does. I'd also hazard a guess that most of us live in multi-person households, with a majority of the people in the house being 'net users. So, say you're downloading Crysis 2, another member of the house is streaming an HD movie off of Netflix, and so on. You'd be surprised how fast data usage adds up.

I really wish Netflix, Steam, et al would at least try to step in and do something about this. It's their profits bandwidth caps are cutting into.

AHHH F****
*calls cox

I have Suddenlink cable insternet.So far, as far as I know, they have never mentioned a bandwidth cap in the future.

150 GB cap and only 10 dollars for every 50gb over that? Psh, consider yourselves lucky.

I have a 60gb monthly cap (and it gets ridiculously priced to go any higher than that), and it costs 2 dollars PER GIGABYTE after that.

So yeah, while you guys got lucky with having unlimited for so long, we in Canada have been strung out to dry for many years now.

All thanks to the 'wonderful' CRTC, may the Others take them.

This is nothing. Try coming to Canada where they want to cap you at 25 gb. So what is the problem here exactly? :whistling:

me personally?
i dont like big businesses to make you pay for something that should be free
i also hate governments that do that
heck that paying for websites thing i heard about sounds horrible

Yes I agree. What do you mean about paying for websites thing?

What is wrong with caps? Ok, they are annoying and a better implementation in my opinion but a data transfer isn't free. As long as the cap is reasonable (And 150Gb is).

i cant remember the name of it, it was comcast that started it i believe

There are plenty of programs that can do just that. For the most accuracy, though, you need to do it on the router level so it'll only count WAN activity, otherwise you will also count LAN activity (tomato and DD-WRT both have great built-in tools for this).

What part of the Internet infrastructure screams "free" to you? Last I checked it costs money to maintain it and run their DNS servers. People that use more bandwidth demand higher QoS from their ISP, which means they got to spend more money to improve their infrastructure while also maintaining the same level of service to everyone else. The concept is the same as in most other services: You use more resources, therefore you should pay more of the costs to maintain and improve them.

Likewise with websites. It costs money to host that content, so if someone puts up a website for-profit and feel the only way to break even is to charge, then that is their choice (this is different from net neutrality)

The one thing that needs to be free about the Internet is free exchange of information, which means, not that it doesn't cost you, but that it isn't censored or some people aren't allowed to have their input. Bandwidth caps do not keep you from having your say or sharing your information.

Edit: dope, I totally meant to post these two posts as one :banghead:


Comcast did indeed break net neutrality, but that is not the same as a pay-for website, nor are they charging the end user, but Level 3 Communications.

It's still a violation of net neutrality, but it isn't "paying for websites", which is a viable model for web hosting when it is the choice of the host.

Yup...I went out and found one, although it's not monitoring at the router level, just at computer level. So the accuracy will be off, but I'm probably the heaviest bandwidth user in my household (since I'm the only one who plays MMOs and uses Steam), so it'll be interesting to see how much (approximate) bandwidth I use on an average day by myself.

Exactly what I'm thinking. 250gb might seem nice and lofty now, but look at how much more memory things require now compared to 10 years ago. AT&T makes no guarantee that they will provide increased bandwidth allowances in line with real world requirements for the future. 250gb could easily turn (symbolically) into the incredibly restrictive "60gb" caps (or what have you) that others have to deal with.

I can understand their reasoning for implementing caps, but I still don't trust profit seeking entities to have the best interest of their customers in mind.

150GB is pretty reasonable. To breach that cap you need to download over 5GB a day. Hell, with my bandwidth I don't even think it's possible for me to hit that limit.

Dumb, Dumb, and more Dumb. :brokencomputer: :brokencomputer:

This.

But rather than say "People shouldn't complain" or "people should be pissed!", I'll just say the smart thing and say that if you disagree with this, then vote with your wallet. It isn't a question of should or shouldn't AT&T do this, but a question of what the customer wants and how they will get it.

Normally I would agree but in many, probably most areas you get one and only one choice in cable providers. When you have a monopoly you can get away with pretty much anything.

Only Canadia and Australia don't have any unlimited internet services, from what I understand.