AT&T Begins Warning High-Volume Data Users of Upcoming Throttling

[iMouse]

Carriers playing games...

These carriers are all playing the bandwidth cap game, whether it be additional overages or throttling. I would be willing to bet a whole lot of money that the reason why this is happening is to improve profits in the future. For example...

Today, the average family with a couple of computers and other Internet-connected devices such as iPods and game consoles eats about 18GB of data a month. Now, what was that number 5 years ago? It was about 3GB. 5 years before that? Under 1GB.

My point is that I don't see these carriers upping their caps because of advancements in Internet-based devices and services. More users will be hitting their caps more often, taking on additional charges or radically changing their use of the Internet and subscription to Internet-based services.

In a world that is moving from local storage to cloud storage and physical media to digital media, data caps and throttling are the last things that need to happen. If you ask me, companies like Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, OnLive need to get involved and start using their weight to keep these ISPs in line.

 

[westy310]

So is everyone who has posted in this thread missing the point? I think you're the one missing the point. Nobody is arguing about the validity of unlimited data plans, especially since they're no longer even offered. The argument is about whether ATT is violating contracts with this data throttling.

Only those who purchased in very late 2009 or early 2010, opted for a two-year contract, and are among the heaviest 5% of users could possibly claim "FALSE ADVERTISING!" I have a little sympathy for them, but doubt more than 5% of the complainers here fit that description. I'm guessing 95% of the complainers are garden-variety data hogs, on month-to-month contracts who have no right to complain and are simply whining that they can't game the system anymore. I stand by my previous post: The real issue is that unlimited data is a thing of the past, and the sooner you get over it, the better.

 

[Treq]

How do you specifically know my (or anyones) usage for iCloud? If I upload all my photos, music, and video to iCloud, then access them regularly, upload data back and forth to it, there is no question that the usage will increase. 10-15 megs??!? So you suggesting that one would only listen to 2-3 songs in a given month? I can guarantee that the average iCloud user would use more than that.

The point is, more and more is being made available over 3G as a way to incorporate more usage out of our phones. It will become increasingly easier to hit these AT&T set caps.

If I could chime in... I've been using iCloud this month(developer program) as well as music match in a very limited way. 12+hrs per day I'm on wifi at work(except those days 1-2 per week at I'm on location). I have wifi at home. I have gone from aprox 250 mb per month to aprox 1.6 gb with 5 days left. Could easily see me going over 2gb with the weekend at hand. All this while using the phone lightly. All this is to say, I can see a lot more usage in the future as I use photo stream and other services more. I'm glad I have unlimited.

 

[BiggAW]

They should have just phased out unlimited. It's time has passed. I like that AT&T took a consumer friendly approach and reduced the price of the data plan by $5/mo when they put caps on, as opposed to Verizon's anti-consumer stance of keeping the price the same, but giving the customer less. Ultimately, I much prefer AT&T's method, as it saves money effectively without limitations on usage.

 

[srxtr]

These carriers are all playing the bandwidth cap game, whether it be additional overages or throttling. I would be willing to bet a whole lot of money that the reason why this is happening is to improve profits in the future. For example...

Today, the average family with a couple of computers and other Internet-connected devices such as iPods and game consoles eats about 18GB of data a month. Now, what was that number 5 years ago? It was about 3GB. 5 years before that? Under 1GB.

My point is that I don't see these carriers upping their caps because of advancements in Internet-based devices and services. More users will be hitting their caps more often, taking on additional charges or radically changing their use of the Internet and subscription to Internet-based services.

In a world that is moving from local storage to cloud storage and physical media to digital media, data caps and throttling are the last things that need to happen. If you ask me, companies like Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, OnLive need to get involved and start using their weight to keep these ISPs in line.

I think you said it best

 

[Jfondren3]

Only those who purchased in very late 2009 or early 2010, opted for a two-year contract, and are among the heaviest 5% of users could possibly claim "FALSE ADVERTISING!" I have a little sympathy for them, but doubt more than 5% of the complainers here fit that description. I'm guessing 95% of the complainers are garden-variety data hogs, on month-to-month contracts who have no right to complain and are simply whining that they can't game the system anymore. I stand by my previous post: The real issue is that unlimited data is a thing of the past, and the sooner you get over it, the better.

I'm curious then, if AT&T was to bring back the unlimited data plan for $30, would you keep your 2GB plan for $25? Luckily my contract isn't up until January so I still have a few months to see what happens and decide if I am going else where with my money.

 

[BiggAW]

These carriers are all playing the bandwidth cap game, whether it be additional overages or throttling. I would be willing to bet a whole lot of money that the reason why this is happening is to improve profits in the future. For example...

Today, the average family with a couple of computers and other Internet-connected devices such as iPods and game consoles eats about 18GB of data a month. Now, what was that number 5 years ago? It was about 3GB. 5 years before that? Under 1GB.

My point is that I don't see these carriers upping their caps because of advancements in Internet-based devices and services. More users will be hitting their caps more often, taking on additional charges or radically changing their use of the Internet and subscription to Internet-based services.

In a world that is moving from local storage to cloud storage and physical media to digital media, data caps and throttling are the last things that need to happen. If you ask me, companies like Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, OnLive need to get involved and start using their weight to keep these ISPs in line.

That's absolutely the wrong approach. The smartphone has a limited amount of data it can consume, even though there is so much that you can do with it, most of that is email and text based. Even Pandora doesn't use very much bandwidth. With more and more users coming online, we can't have people blatantly wasting bandwidth on smartphones.

The whole streaming cloud model is great, but you have to do some local caching on mobile devices, not only because of data caps, but because of coverage issues, as well as battery life, which is massively impacted by large data use. The Spotify model makes sense, where most stuff if pre-downloaded, but the cloud element of it is there if you want something that's not stored locally. Pandora is very bandwidth-efficient in the first place.

Home usage will eventually plateau, at some point you can only consume so much 1080p video.

 

[srxtr]

If I could chime in... I've been using iCloud this month(developer program) as well as music match in a very limited way. 12+hrs per day I'm on wifi at work(except those days 1-2 per week at I'm on location). I have wifi at home. I have gone from aprox 250 mb per month to aprox 1.6 gb with 5 days left. Could easily see me going over 2gb with the weekend at hand. All this while using the phone lightly. All this is to say, I can see a lot more usage in the future as I use photo stream and other services more. I'm glad I have unlimited.

This post made me check my data usage, since I'm also on the developer program and I use iCloud also.

My situation is pretty much same as yours: I have wifi both at home and work, and the distance from home to work is less than 1 mile. I might use my iPhone casually when I'm outside, but I spend a lot of time working from either home or at work.

I usually use around 100MB per month, but I just checked my usage and I'm already at 111MB with just 11 days into the billing cycle... So that's around 300MB in a month.

So I guess iCloud tripled my data usage?

 

[something3153]

I'm curious then, if AT&T was to bring back the unlimited data plan for $30, would you keep your 2GB plan for $25? Luckily my contract isn't up until January so I still have a few months to see what happens and decide if I am going else where with my money.

I'm not him, but I said much the same thing, and I absolutely would stay on the plan I have... which is the $15/250mb plan. I'm covered by wifi except when driving, swimming, biking, or running, and I'm not using data then. When I switched, the AT&T lady showed me my data usage, and it was mostly single digit megabytes. Nevermind that your hypothetical will never ever happen.

 

[Treq]

This post made me check my data usage, since I'm also on the developer program and I use iCloud also.

My situation is pretty much same as yours: I have wifi both at home and work, and the distance from home to work is less than 1 mile. I might use my iPhone casually when I'm outside, but I spend a lot of time working from either home or at work.

I usually use around 100MB per month, but I just checked my usage and I'm already at 111MB with just 11 days into the billing cycle... So that's around 300MB in a month.

So I guess iCloud tripled my data usage?

Yeah, mine is about 8x normal. Can't imagine if I get a job that doesn't have wifi. Very possible in my business.

Edit: also if I were to actually start really using the new features like photo stream. I think I only took about 6-7 pictures this month.

 

[srxtr]

With AT&T throttling data speed and getting rid of their tiered text plans, it feels like they're anticipating iCloud and iMessage, and setting up to make sure iOS 5 fails.

 

[Zepaw]

This can start a vicious cycle because as those top 5% lower their use it will keep pushing down to a new throttling cap.

 

[TheReverendZ]

Just curious, what are your circumstances where you don't have wifi to do some of this?

I don't currently have home internet. The cheapest home internet is another $15 per month for a maximum 1.5mbps and a 150GB cap. It's not exactly going to break the bank, but in tough economic times, why have redundant services? Since I do all of my inter-webbing on my phone and I use about 10GB, why pay for a service that wants to give me ten times more data than I actually use?

And to be clear. There are many who think that 10GB is too much. I don't do anything out of the ordinary, I just do the ordinary more often. Hence the subscription to an "Unlimited Plan". I do believe there is a reasonable level at which to start throttling, but I view my usage as normal and under said level. I've read others who claim to consistently hit 30, 50, even 100GB. I think you can call abuse on the 100GB, but since I'm not doing anything unsanctioned, I don't think I should be penalized.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

This post made me check my data usage, since I'm also on the developer program and I use iCloud also.

My situation is pretty much same as yours: I have wifi both at home and work, and the distance from home to work is less than 1 mile. I might use my iPhone casually when I'm outside, but I spend a lot of time working from either home or at work.

I usually use around 100MB per month, but I just checked my usage and I'm already at 111MB with just 11 days into the billing cycle... So that's around 300MB in a month.

So I guess iCloud tripled my data usage?

If this is both true the Apple has majorly screwed the pooch on iCloud. It should not suck up anywhere near that much data (not counting music screaming) It needs some massive overhaul in how the data is synced and what needs to be sync. Most of it should be only on an as needed bases where the user request it from a list. Other wise it is a massive waste of bandwidth and battery life.

 

[azilko]

This post made me check my data usage, since I'm also on the developer program and I use iCloud also.

My situation is pretty much same as yours: I have wifi both at home and work, and the distance from home to work is less than 1 mile. I might use my iPhone casually when I'm outside, but I spend a lot of time working from either home or at work.

I usually use around 100MB per month, but I just checked my usage and I'm already at 111MB with just 11 days into the billing cycle... So that's around 300MB in a month.

So I guess iCloud tripled my data usage?

I am glad to see legitimate data. Fact is, is that more and more services are coming like this, including Google's Google+ app that will auto upload your photos/videos to their servers. Quite honestly, I have filled my phone more than once w/ too many photo's, video, music, etc. Having the option to upload them to the cloud, and access what I want when its needed is perfect for me, and I am sure for many others, otherwise there wouldn't be a market for it, and Apple/Google/everyone else soon, would not be developing for it. As more and more is designed for working in a cloud based environment, the need for data transfer will only grow. I however am very skeptical that AT&T will choose keep up with demand at a reasonable price point. It would be too easy for them to exploit this situation, thus increasing their profits per client to what I would consider unreasonable. Hopefully, healthy competition will keep them in check now that other carriers are finally getting the iPhone.

 

[accessoriesguy]

Seems reasonable to me, as much as I dislike AT&T. Every other ISP has fair use policies to prevent the select few from affecting everyone else.

Yeah I hear that the same accounts for high usage of the regular home internet. That very few, somewhere in 10% or less use up like over 90% of all of the resources. Limiting just the top 5% to a reasonable amount so everyone could potentially get a much better service seems right. Especially since there are no more unlimited plans...from ATT anyway.

 

[marksman]

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I use 20-30GB a month. It's called streaming video podcasts over the iTunes store. It's also called an hour and a half commute each way via public transportation.

Thank you. The majority of people that post here have some serious perception issues & are getting bent over by their providers. It's not hard at all to use 20gb per month if you're on the go a lot and out of wifi range during that time. The cell providers need to catch up with the times.

Or you just need to pay for the bandwidth you use. There is a non throttling plan for this who require a large amount of data and don't want to be throttled.

 

[something3153]

I don't currently have home internet. The cheapest home internet is another $15 per month for a maximum 1.5mbps and a 150GB cap. It's not exactly going to break the bank, but in tough economic times, why have redundant services? Since I do all of my inter-webbing on my phone and I use about 10GB, why pay for a service that wants to give me ten times more data than I actually use?

And to be clear. There are many who think that 10GB is too much. I don't do anything out of the ordinary, I just do the ordinary more often. Hence the subscription to an "Unlimited Plan". I do believe there is a reasonable level at which to start throttling, but I view my usage as normal and under said level. I've read others who claim to consistently hit 30, 50, even 100GB. I think you can call abuse on the 100GB, but since I'm not doing anything unsanctioned, I don't think I should be penalized.

It doesn't have to be unsanctioned though. You yourself said you do the ordinary "more often". You subscribe to an "unlimited" plan they offered when mobile data usage was a completely different beast, but they're nice enough to let you keep it... for now. They are under no obligation to continue to do so, and it is very likely that, in the future, if you want to do the ordinary "more often" you're going to need to bring "more dollars", and suddenly that home cable internet + wifi router looks like a great deal.

 

[marksman]

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Then sign up for the $25 a month for 2 gigs plan with $10 for each additional gig. It will never be throttled and you will always know exactly what you will pay for how much bandwidth you use. Really a simple solution for all of you who are so disconcerted about it. It will take all the worrying out of it for you.

Really? After acknowledging that is those on the grandfathered unlimited plans, you expect people using 10+ gigs a month to be okay with paying $105-125 a month when they have been promised that they could continue to use it for $50?

You work for AT&T, don't you?

You feel like you are special and should pay 30 for 100 worth of services?

Do you see why att would not care much about you as a customer especially with limited resources for their network being an issue.

 

[iMouse]

That's absolutely the wrong approach. The smartphone has a limited amount of data it can consume, even though there is so much that you can do with it, most of that is email and text based. Even Pandora doesn't use very much bandwidth. With more and more users coming online, we can't have people blatantly wasting bandwidth on smartphones.

The whole streaming cloud model is great, but you have to do some local caching on mobile devices, not only because of data caps, but because of coverage issues, as well as battery life, which is massively impacted by large data use. The Spotify model makes sense, where most stuff if pre-downloaded, but the cloud element of it is there if you want something that's not stored locally. Pandora is very bandwidth-efficient in the first place.

Home usage will eventually plateau, at some point you can only consume so much 1080p video.

It is exactly the right approach. Let me explain... I bought my first Macintosh Quadra 605 in 1993 with what was considered a large hard drive (160 MB). Today, I'm lucky to barely fit just iTunes + Quicktime on this very same drive. Why is this? Cause we are writing in higher-level languages with a lot more multimedia content embedded in the package.

Last time I checked, I can't get iTunes from Apple via CD/DVD. I couldn't even get Lion on physical media when it initially released. I have to get it from somewhere.

Guess I'll have to use the Internet.

As a responsible member of the Internet, I'm expected to keep my system and all software packages patched. Where will I download those patches (some released daily/weekly)?

Guess I'll have to use the Internet.

If you want to talk smartphones instead, we can do that too. iOS 5 will have over-the-air updates. If these updates are anywhere near what they currently are, you're talking roughly 250MB per update! Add in apps from the App Store (that are getting increasingly larger), e-mail attachments, web browsing, Internet multimedia services, and a whole other large reason to own a smartphone and 2GB looks pretty lame.

Do you even understand what "text-based" means? Files nowadays may still contain text, but they are far from being standard ASCII text a few Kb in size. Have you looked at the size of a Word document lately? Some large ones can be a couple of megs. How about PDFs with embedded images? Last one I downloaded for a work function was 4MB.

You can talk all day about how bandwidth-friendly Pandora is, but that is far from the truth. When AT&T started rolling out 2GB plans and starting to phase out unlimited, I took the time to look at my usage and determine if I could save $10 a month on two phones. My usage, rather moderate, tallied up to just under 1.5GB a month. My wife, who couldn't tell you how to use anything other than Safari, Mail and Pandora on her phone, managed to rack up 4GB in one month!

If you think home usage will plateau, you are insane. It will grow exponentially for years to come. You wanna talk about 1080p video when Intel is busy prepping chipsets for 4k-capable displays. Apple and Microsoft are hard at work adding higher-definition icons, wallpapers, etc to their software packages. What does this mean? Larger software package, larger updates, more bandwidth usage.

Bottom line is that Internet services are exploding and these carriers are too busy filling the pockets of their top brass instead of putting that cash into their infrastructures. Large infrastructure replacement/upgrades are extremely expensive (not to mention the employees to make it all happen), but they are too interested in paying a CEO 8 and 9 figure salaries with golden parachutes for when they screw up.

 

[Treq]

Here is what I see happening;
Apple opens up iCloud making everyone use much more data. Average users start using 5GB per month. The top users start using 20-30GB per month. The top 5% is now much higher. The network gets a lot worse.

 

[lamewing]

Waste of time.

I don't know why everyone is arguing over the semantics of the word "unlimited".

1. AT&T (and others) advertised an Unlimited Data Plan.
2. You signed the contract.
3. The Unlimited Data Plan contract states that AT&T can change things at any time.
4. The best you can hope for is complaining they broke the contract allowing you to cancel you contract with no early termination fee.

That is ALL there is to it. Give up the complaints. It won't make a difference. Go to another carrier if this bothers you.

Now go outside and enjoy the bright yellow ball in the sky.

If you want to keep your data usage at a safe level...Don't go and use more than 2 -3 GB of data. I cannot believe people are using up to 10 - 15 GB a month. Get home internet or go to a Starbucks. Stop acting like self-entitled jerks and screwing everybody else over.

 

[marksman]

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Really? They were promised some specific average data rate? (I promise you, they weren't. They were not promised an open pipe.)

How can people not understand that throttled is limited. That's the very definition of it - they are limiting your data rate. Limited is not unlimited.

You also might not get access in Alaska wilderness or a mine shaft means it is not unlimited.

In this case unlimited has always ONLY referred to overall usage and nothing else.

 

[Treq]

I don't know why everyone is arguing over the semantics of the word "unlimited".

1. AT&T (and others) advertised an Unlimited Data Plan.
2. You signed the contract.
3. The Unlimited Data Plan contract states that AT&T can change things at any time.
4. The best you can hope for is complaining they broke the contract allowing you to cancel you contract with no early termination fee.

That is ALL there is to it. Give up the complaints. It won't make a difference. Go to another carrier if this bothers you.

Now go outside and enjoy the bright yellow ball in the sky.

If you want to keep your data usage at a safe level...Don't go and use more than 2 -3 GB of data. I cannot believe people are using up to 10 - 15 GB a month. Get home internet or go to a Starbucks. Stop acting like self-entitled jerks and screwing everybody else over.

Don't call people self entitled jerks just because they use data services more than you. I'm a light user and have very nearly used 2gb this month all while being on wifi around half my waking hours. 2GB is too small a cap. I didn't even stream videos. AT&T should have raised that cap to 5gb this year. Next year it should go to 7-10gb ect... Moore's law and all.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_4 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8K2 Safari/6533.18.5)

'Japanese blog Macotakara reports (via MacPost) that a China Unicom executive apparently confirmed during a presentation at this week's Macworld Asia that the "iPhone 5" set to be announced next week will indeed support HSPA+ "4G" technology, offering a maximum theoretical data speed of 21 Mbps.'
- per 'Macrumors'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1236215/


So what if you have a theoretical maximum speed of 21 Mbps?

If with AT&T, you may be checking emails real fast, but will not use that speed to any effect in downloading many movies. For instance, say you wanted to take advantage of iTunes to download the HD version of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides;' good thing it is released in October, because at 4.51 GB if you had downloaded two films of similar length in September, aside from any other data use, you might have already run afoul of AT&T in being in their 'top 5%.'

Many may ignore this in thinking, 'well, I'm not in the top 5% of anything,' but that would be a big mistake. Because by limiting the top AT&T is effectively saying no one can use much more than 10 GB in a month, not at any reasonable speed that is.

Apple, Netflix, and every other media provider should be screaming bloody murder, and their customers most of all. Technology in electronics is advancing in leaps and bounds, with increasingly large file sizes, and all the more offered every day at the touch of a button. Assuming you have any bandwidth. But one would think AT&T and the rest of their ilk had not yet advanced beyond the horse and buggy, or envisioned the automobile.

It doesn't make much sense to have a 'wired' nation when rocket science advances daily with Apple et al, but a near impenetrable gulf between them and their customers, and right in the middle a Berlin wall of sorts guarded by AT&T and their cadre of 'visionaries.'

If you want to pay for the bandwidth you use you can use as much as you want