Customers are paying for all of it. Why do you think they have upped the 2-year contract upgrade fee by $5 and now made Next have a $15 fee?
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AT&T Urges FCC to Drop $100 Million Fine, Says Data Throttling Doesn't Harm Customers
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The only reason I keep my Unlimited Plan is because I don't want to lose it. That doesn't mean I'm happy with it, but if I complain to AT&T they may take it away.
I just hope the FCC puts them in their place and teaches them not to be sneaky and try to take advantage of their clients.
When it works, it works good, but in more than one ocassion when I really needed to use it, it has been totaly worthless.
Imagine being in rush hour traffic trying to get to certain location and the Maps app wouldn't work because it couldn't get data fast enough (my T-Mobile phone saved me in those situations).
I just hope the FCC puts them in their place and teaches them not to be sneaky and try to take advantage of their clients.
When it works, it works good, but in more than one ocassion when I really needed to use it, it has been totaly worthless.
Imagine being in rush hour traffic trying to get to certain location and the Maps app wouldn't work because it couldn't get data fast enough (my T-Mobile phone saved me in those situations).
I sure as heck hope that they do get fined and that they do have to pay. What they are doing to customers is very unfair. In fact I was one of those iPad customers that was promised Unlimited Data No Contract on the very first 3G enabled iPad which that slowly got taken away. I was also an adopter of the first iPhone on AT&T and a few versions after.
My 2 cents here is that I have been with every single carrier including Verizon and even T-Mobile and Sprint and a ton of MVNO prepaid.
From what I have seen is I have only seen 1 carrier which I am with now actually make improvements on their network and that is T-Mobile. I recently went back to AT&T just to see if anything was better and nope same old problems. What I do NOT understand here is that if AT&T has so much money instead of throttling customers why don't they actually improve their network. Yes T-Mobile does have some data throttling well they call it something else if you go over 28GB however I have used a total of 42GB this month and I only felt this throttle in a few places and it's not all the time. When you really sit here and think about it all its kinda pathetic. AT&T gets rejected from buying T-Mobile so T-Mobile gets all this money what do they do with it? Improve their network. Where as AT&T sits here with all this money and does not do a darn thing. When I tested AT&T a few months ago still had the same dropped calls, still the same slow data speeds. Where as on T-Mobile I actually see improvements I have seen as much as 100 down on speed tests over LTE. Improved call quality more service in rural places. Where as AT&T and the rest I just don't see this improvement.
Come on AT&T take all that damn money you have and improve your network you sure as heck can afford it.
My 2 cents here is that I have been with every single carrier including Verizon and even T-Mobile and Sprint and a ton of MVNO prepaid.
From what I have seen is I have only seen 1 carrier which I am with now actually make improvements on their network and that is T-Mobile. I recently went back to AT&T just to see if anything was better and nope same old problems. What I do NOT understand here is that if AT&T has so much money instead of throttling customers why don't they actually improve their network. Yes T-Mobile does have some data throttling well they call it something else if you go over 28GB however I have used a total of 42GB this month and I only felt this throttle in a few places and it's not all the time. When you really sit here and think about it all its kinda pathetic. AT&T gets rejected from buying T-Mobile so T-Mobile gets all this money what do they do with it? Improve their network. Where as AT&T sits here with all this money and does not do a darn thing. When I tested AT&T a few months ago still had the same dropped calls, still the same slow data speeds. Where as on T-Mobile I actually see improvements I have seen as much as 100 down on speed tests over LTE. Improved call quality more service in rural places. Where as AT&T and the rest I just don't see this improvement.
Come on AT&T take all that damn money you have and improve your network you sure as heck can afford it.
Maybe they should spend some money on a bigger hose? Instead of their next private jet?
I would agree with you if they throttled everyone.... since everyone is a paying customer paying for the plan AT&T offered and gladly took their money for.... but since they don't throttle someone with a fixed rate of data, ATT can suck it and pay the bloody fine.
Yep. I'm still wondering why the WiFi texting and calling hasn't been released yet.
Once the feature rolls out, I'll be deeply relieved since my apartment barely gets reception.
It absolutely was not an absurd statement. I spent most of the last 3 years on the road touring with musicians and music festivals. When I can't send an email, I cannot report sales, requests for more inventory, and discuss issues on the road. My speed was throttled down to a few kbps, rendering just about any internet connected application on my phone useless. Emailing with an attachment was near impossible.
I've been with AT&T since Cingular days, but for some reason the reception in my house has gotten worse and worse over the years (hint - my house hasn't moved) even though their coverage map shows it as max LTE. It's bad enough now there are only a few spots indoors that DON'T say "No Service". My last 2 year contract with them is up in October. If they don't drastically improve reception in my area, or enable wifi calling, I'll probably be switching to VZW (Sprint and T-Mo coverage blows at my house and most places I travel to).
An artificial bandwidth limit does limit how much data one can download in a month. A month has roughly about 700 hours or 42,000 minutes. If the throttle is set to 1MB per minute, then one cannot download more than 5GB + 42GB per month. That is not unlimited.
It doesn't harm me - true, but it bothers me a lot. How often nowdays somebody or something (in this case corporations) make decisions for us. "For your safety" , "Consumers want", "It is for people(your) best", "Doesn't bother consumers".
You cannot go there! - Why?! - For your safety!- Why for my safety?! - It is not safe! .... and this is it.
Companies generalize us as we think same way, eat the same GMO foods, taking sh#t at the same time.
8 pages on the forum and most of us don't want to be throttled, but according to Att we want it. We want to pay more and get less.
Guys! You want to be throttled, you want to pay for DirectTV, t-mo deals and Mexican provider with roaming fee.
Ralph de la Vega: Florida Atlantic University and Northern Illinois University
John Legere: Umass, MIT, Harvard
I don't compare, I live in Massachusetts and I'm making my choice now.
You cannot go there! - Why?! - For your safety!- Why for my safety?! - It is not safe! .... and this is it.
Companies generalize us as we think same way, eat the same GMO foods, taking sh#t at the same time.
8 pages on the forum and most of us don't want to be throttled, but according to Att we want it. We want to pay more and get less.
Guys! You want to be throttled, you want to pay for DirectTV, t-mo deals and Mexican provider with roaming fee.
Ralph de la Vega: Florida Atlantic University and Northern Illinois University
John Legere: Umass, MIT, Harvard
I don't compare, I live in Massachusetts and I'm making my choice now.
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There's a difference between an overloaded tower, and what they're doing to people like me. My unthrottled business phone will get beautiful LTE speeds here at times when my phone is throttled. Both are iPhone 6's, both on AT&T, presumably connected to the same tower.
Last weekend I went to Catalina Island for the day. It was super crowded with people. I have the grandfathered Unlimited Plan and my data was nearly unusable. The people that I was with had the newer plans and they had no problem connecting. No one harmed?
You should pay the government $20 more every month, for no reason, it wouldn't hurt you.
No ?
The initial issue was that they (ATT) deviated from the contracts that early adopters signed. The users (I was one) would pay penalties to get out of the contract, so I was left with fulfilling my part of the agreement even though they (ATT) did not. For that, they should be fined in a BIG way (it's the only thing that gets a corporation's attention, as their response illustrates).
You are correct. If you don't like it, than switch. Which is what I did once the contract was up. I and a lot of others went to T-Mobile. I am happy I did, perhaps they are too. T-mobile may not have the best network coverage, but at least they try and improve their interaction with their customers. Oh, and we pay less now too.
I would say that yes, throttling does harm consumers. We pay $xx for unlimited data at the highest possible speeds. They then decide later on that we should get throttled to slower speeds after a certain data cap, that is not what we signed up for, so it now takes me longer than anticipated to download anything. And time is quite literally money, so they are costing me money when I am throttled to a slower speed.
Great point Pacalis! Simply using the correct term illustrates the contradictory nature of AT&T's argument that no harm exists when they “limit” and “unlimited” plan. The argument is definitely crappy. I think it’s just their obligatory attack on the sufficiency of the claim even if by a long-shot argument.
As for the deterrence, you would think the litigation costs, alone, would encourage companies to behave fairly toward consumers. Unless they have completely incompetent in-house counsel, this really goes to show how much AT&T had to have benefitted from this if they are willing to risk the cost of litigation and possibly a judgment/settlement.
Still, even if all this were not enough to deter these corporations (because they’ll just spread their loss through future sales) I still think it is necessary to call these companies out on their behavior. Everyday, we enjoy consumer protections that exist ONLY BECAUSE we, as consumers, have continued to demand it. Corporations by no means gratuitously conceded to being bound by business practices that restrict their profit. For all the reasons you listed, many of these cases benefit society as a whole.
With limited wifi out and about, I try to do data intensive tasks like downloading stuff and watching videos at home on wifi (uverse), but since I like to stream internet radio, I still hit 5 gb with about 10 days left in my billing cycle. Once I hit the 5gb, my iphone is close to unusable. Slowing down data speeds here and there due to congestion is one thing, but throttling speeds at a cap everywhere-all-the-time to a draconian trickle is meant to make the experience so miserable that customers will abandon unlimited for a more expensive plan. AT&T reminds me of a kid who says that he didn't mislead you because he had his fingers crossed. I'm sure that AT&T legally covered their behinds in the contract, but doing stuff like this, even though it may be legal, creates badwill and distrust with customers. I hate talking with AT&T reps whether it's for cellular or Uverse service because I feel like I have to cover every possible situation/scenario/contingency so that they don't hose me in some way, but of course, they still do. After I find that they didn't honor what they told me in some way, I call back and get the wonderful, "I'm sorry that you were given incorrect information, but there is nothing that we can do."
From Seinfeld:
Agent: Sir, if you had read the rental agreement--
Jerry: Did you see the size of that document? It's like the Declaration of
Independence, who's gonna read that?
From Seinfeld:
Agent: Sir, if you had read the rental agreement--
Jerry: Did you see the size of that document? It's like the Declaration of
Independence, who's gonna read that?
I realize we probably will not agree on this but they never guaranteed a specific speed, just hat they would not not cutoff your data stream or charge you for more beyond a threshold.Ig you apply a "reasonable person" standard to this I think they would conclude that unlimited odes not mean "we will always give you data at the highest speed possible" but "we won't charge you for how much data you use beyond the initial price..."
As I said early, I think ATT is just better off ending all the unlimited plans and going with tiered pricing data. That way, they get rid of the whole "unlimited" argument. They could even add in no caps on data access at lower speeds once you hit your cap or let you buy more high speed data if you want or need to. The whole grandfathering thing was good to keep customers but I wonder how many customers are grandfathered and how many would actually leave if they ended their unlimited plans. My guess is ATT wouldn't even notice the impact.
