AT&T Revamps Throttling Policy, Only Slows Unlimited Users above 3GB/Month
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Hmm....interestingly enough, this only seems to affect residential plans.
Of course most business plans do not mention that tethering is even against the rules, so AT&T may have little recourse with them.
As for is this would be something that would allow you to leave without paying the ETF, I would say yes, as it does increase your costs. Either by decreasing your productivity (many people that are on residential plans still use the phones for business purposes) or by requiring you to find some additional method to access faster data, which can cost money as well.
In addition, this is a material change to the contract, after all unlimited means without restrictions, this is a restriction.
Now if there offered a new plan that was called something like 3GB High Speed Data plan with no overage costs, then that would be truthful and I would have no problems with that, but if it is called unlimited, it should be unlimited, end of story.
As far as grandfathering the plan in, in many states (if not all), they are legally required to do so.
Of course most business plans do not mention that tethering is even against the rules, so AT&T may have little recourse with them.
As for is this would be something that would allow you to leave without paying the ETF, I would say yes, as it does increase your costs. Either by decreasing your productivity (many people that are on residential plans still use the phones for business purposes) or by requiring you to find some additional method to access faster data, which can cost money as well.
In addition, this is a material change to the contract, after all unlimited means without restrictions, this is a restriction.
Now if there offered a new plan that was called something like 3GB High Speed Data plan with no overage costs, then that would be truthful and I would have no problems with that, but if it is called unlimited, it should be unlimited, end of story.
As far as grandfathering the plan in, in many states (if not all), they are legally required to do so.
The guy who sued and won, Matt Spaccarelli (http://www.taporc.com), was using way more than 3GB per month because he streams Netflix with his cellular connection and plugs his iPhone into a projector to watch the movies. Why don't you people just get a fast cable internet plan for movies at home?? You're bogging down the network for the rest of us who just want to watch short YouTube clips.
claygreenberg
macrumors member
Why is the market important here? You gave a way to quantify damages. So couldn't the user run the same argument? Take the record of all my data usage prior to throttling, and compare that with the record showing how much data I used since throttling. Based on the difference, you can use AT&T's own capped data rates to then quantify the amount of damages. Heavy users could claim quite a bit of damages!
Yes, I suppose so.
Just goes to show even they don't know what they mean by unlimited in their own contracts.
DerekRod
macrumors 6502a
Has that been done before someone suing to have the phone unlocked?
Why must you watch short clips? Why don't you just use your data for emails. If you did that the network would be even less congested. Dam hogs!!!
Look, he paid for the data, and so he figured he might as well use it. You should complain to AT&T if their services sucks. What people do with the data they paid for is none of your business.
LordJohnWhorfin
macrumors regular
You should use WiFi whenever possible...
I can't believe that douchebag actually said that. If I wanted to use WiFi, I wouldn't be paying a fortune for a wireless contract.
For years wireless plans in Europe were priced in a similar fashion to what we have here, but the recent arrival of a new low cost carrier (Free) has revolutionized pricing (a few years back they did the same for internet, land lines and television). Their main plan offers unlimited calling to 40 countries (including the US and Canada), unlimited texting, and unlimited data (throttling after 3GB). The cost? 30 euro/month (about $45). Amazingly enough, the competitors, who all claimed they could not lower their prices, practically matched this plan within weeks.
With AT&T or any US carrier, such a plan would be over $100 and would not cover international calling. We are getting ripped off.
I can't believe that douchebag actually said that. If I wanted to use WiFi, I wouldn't be paying a fortune for a wireless contract.
For years wireless plans in Europe were priced in a similar fashion to what we have here, but the recent arrival of a new low cost carrier (Free) has revolutionized pricing (a few years back they did the same for internet, land lines and television). Their main plan offers unlimited calling to 40 countries (including the US and Canada), unlimited texting, and unlimited data (throttling after 3GB). The cost? 30 euro/month (about $45). Amazingly enough, the competitors, who all claimed they could not lower their prices, practically matched this plan within weeks.
With AT&T or any US carrier, such a plan would be over $100 and would not cover international calling. We are getting ripped off.
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It is my understanding that the thing that adversely impacts network performance is not data consumption per user. Rather, it is the number of users on the network at a time that is what slows AT&T's networks down at peak hours.
In other words, heavy data users have a negligible impact on network performance. I suspect that all of the IT guys working for AT&T have made the execs aware of this fact. So why this policy? I suspect AT&T doesn't want you to watch Netflix on your iOS device and wants you to subscribe to their U-Verse product instead. The TV industry is still failing to innovate and just wants to protect its market and profits through punishing policies din the name of protecting cellular networks.
It is my understanding that the thing that adversely impacts network performance is not data consumption per user. Rather, it is the number of users on the network at a time that is what slows AT&T's networks down at peak hours.
In other words, heavy data users have a negligible impact on network performance. I suspect that all of the IT guys working for AT&T have made the execs aware of this fact. So why this policy? I suspect AT&T doesn't want you to watch Netflix on your iOS device and wants you to subscribe to their U-Verse product instead. The TV industry is still failing to innovate and just wants to protect its market and profits through punishing policies din the name of protecting cellular networks.
aristobrat
macrumors G5
IMO, AT&T was banking on merging with T-Mobile in order to get the extra spectrum required in some markets to be able to handle the data growth. Spectrum is finite. They can build as many towers as they want, but if there's no available spectrum, those towards can't broadcast. As for people saying "AT&T has billions of dollars in unused spectrum", this is true. However, it's not spectrum in a frequency that any of the current 3G phones being sold can use, so it's pointless in that regards.
While they could have done what you suggested, I honestly believe (based on the billions of dollars that they said they've give T-Mobile if the merger fell through) that they thought the T-Mobile merger was going to be a done deal.
Obviously, that merger didn't happen. That was three months ago. Why AT&T continues to offer the unlimited grandfathered data plan since December 2011 (when they knew the merger was off) doesn't make sense, but I think it's hard to make the point that for the last four years, they were purposefully bait 'n switching.
Apple Expert
macrumors 65816
Grounds for canceling early and waiving ETF since they are changing terms?
TallManNY
macrumors 601
3 gigs of 3G cell data seems like a whole heck of a lot of usage to me. Maybe this is because I'm in the City and the 3G isn't very fast here (so the experience of streaming video isn't great) and I'm mainly within WiFi range. Don't you people have wifi at home? What about at work? In my neighborhood all the coffee shops, most of the bars and a few of the restaurants have wifi. There aren't too many places inside where I might sit down for an extended period of time, and not have wifi access. I still use 3G, but usually only 1 GB a month. And I use my iPad every day.
The entitled outrage here is mind-blowing. I see nothing wrong with throttling above 3GB/month. Everyone else shouldn't have to pay because of the extreme usage of a few. It's still unlimited. God know what you people use all that data for on your phones. Have some common sense and look at he big picture.
It IS still a carrot to keep you from switching because no other provider offers unlimited plans for new customers, not even AT&T for new customers! You have the privilege of not worrying about overage charges for the same $30 price that new customers pay for 3GB/mo plus overage charges! An arbitrary number of 2GB or less depending on the needs of the network that month was the most unfair part. Now at least you get what other new customers get for $30/mo PLUS YOU DON'T HAVE ANY OVERAGE CHARGES! And if you want to use more data than 3GB you can pay for the $50 5GB plan. And at $10/1GB overage fees that sounds pretty reasonable for a cellphone company. http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp
And what speed is that?
I sure wasn't able to find it stated on the website.
They did characterize it, vaguely, as "sufficient for email and surfing the web".
It would be nice to know just what speed that is, though.
Again, the whole thing doesn't make much sense from a network-congestion standpoint. Throttling should occur during peak periods to protect the integrity of the network. It certainly would be fair to slow-down the biggest users more than modest users, and to throttle high-bandwidth applications more than low-bandwidth ones.
The rest of the time, it shouldn't matter. If it's the dead of night, why limit anybody?
Exactly. AT&T overbooks their networks and then blames the users. Nice! Real nice.
grahamwright1
Cancelled
I agree their behavior sucks, but 'unlimited' refers to the volume of data you can receive in a billing period, not the throughput they provide at any given time to deliver that data.
TallManNY
macrumors 601
Really, there is no way the current technology could handle Americans shifting their TV watching to cell phone data transmission spectrum. It just wouldn't even be close to feasible. So I don't really have much sympathy for folks who think they have some sort of right to do this, even if AT&T was stupid enough to offer "unlimited service" contracts.
If the network can't handle more users, stop adding them. And AT&T should have known the government would strike that merger down. If they banked on that long term they are idiots.
aristobrat
macrumors G5
I don't think so (although I agree that it should be). The contract states you can cancel without an ETF if they change the rates or stop providing service where you live.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-ph...sName=Wireless+Customer+Agreement&print=true#
I am with rest of the unlimited users that disagree. The main reason why I stayed with AT&T this long is because of keeping my unlimited plan. Unless they change their policy to not throttle unlimited users I will be jumping ship when the LTE iPhone comes out. This company clearly does not value it's long term customer's business.
This makes the 'unlimited' vs 3GB plan trade off as follows:
Unlimited = no overage charges if you use more than 3GB, your speed just slows down some, but you are not allowed to tether
3GB = tethering is allowed & included, but you may run into overage charges
Most of the places require you to manually sign in to use it. If I am streaming pandora, or listening to my music in the iTunes cloud, I don't want to interrupt it to connect to a Wifi spot, to have to restart the music again when I leave it. I rather just use my allocated 3G data. And just listening to music alone, other than emails and the like, runs up the 3GB limit in no time. Do you know how big iTunes albums typically are? Couple hundred mbs at least.