AT&T Working on System to Allow App Devs to Pay for Customers' Data Usage

[Mad-B-One]

How naive do they think we are?

Who ever pays AT&T, the customer will pick up the tab at the end. There will be NO service not charging you one way or the other for paying for your traffic. Complete nonsense.

Just an example where this could lead:

App store purchases now have to provide for the traffic. Good bye free Apps! Every App will "only" charge $0.99 for the traffic you create - "But the App itself is free!"

I can already read see this: "Due to the traffic we have to pay for, your movie download will cost $1 extra now because you want to watch it on a mobile device."

 

[chrono1081]

This is a terrible idea. I honestly can't see anyone taking part in this. "Sure buy my app that doesn't pay a ton to begin with unless I get lucky but here, I'll also pay for your data to download it".

Um...na...

 

[3282868]

AT&T is a joke and needs to be put into check. They're appealing the small claims ruling for their data throttling "program" as the only avenue consumers have is to sue AT&T in small claims court as contractual "agreements" prohibit consumers from further larger suits.

Instead of using the billions from iPhone users and the like to build out their over sold infrastructure, they give large multi-million dollar bonuses to their exec's while "punishing" those for using their data accounts. Even AFTER I switched to a tiered plan from my unlimited since 2007, they still have a data watch on my account. I had to enter "captcha's" into google/yahoo search in Safari. I've only used 141 MB of my 3 GB for my month which ends on the 12th. I've never once gone over 2.9 GB on my unlimited plan. I spent an hour with a corp store in S.F. yesterday and the guy had never seen what was happening to my account and spent another hour with them on the phone and couldn't get them to remove it. Now this b.s.

Verzion here I come. At least they're upfront about screwing you. AT&T needs to get spanked big time.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

This could possibly be amazing. (Emphasis on the 'could.') It wouldn't' make sense for 95% of apps, but for a choice few this could be game-changing.

Imagine Netflix making a deal with AT&T so that I pay Netflix $2 extra per month and now all my Netflix watching doesn't affect my limit.

If they can work out numbers like that, it'd be worth it.

If they can't, well, no one will sign up for it. So there's no downside for me...either it's a good move for devs or its not. If it's not we'll never see it.

Well, think of this: Why would AT&T want you to pay $2 more to Netflix, when they could take an additional $25.00 for going over your 2GB Plan Limit?
They are not here to loose money this way. What you propose is certainly great, but not something that we would see coming from AT&T.

 

[shartypants]

Its a smart move by AT&T to get more revenue. It will be interesting if any app devs agree to do it.

 

[Daveoc64]

So how is AT&T's network supposed to know which app uses the data ?

It would be very easy to do this.

Some carriers have free/discounted web pages or Apps already (some let you access a mobile page where you can check your balance for free etc.)

 

[S.B.G]

Its certainly an interesting idea and I have to give credit for the brainstorming of it. However, I don't know that many, if any, developers would be willing to participate in this program.

 

[Roessnakhan]

I wouldn't mind paying Netflix a little bit more if it meant not breaking my data cap.

 

[decksnap]

This. Or maybe even no extra cost up to some limit (~2 3G movies per month?)



I don't see it. It's shifting the costs, not giving them preferred access or better QoS.

EDIT: Though I do see a potential end-run here. It's for video distribution over wireless instead of cable.

B

well if they could get to the point where they are throttling apps that are on your normal plan and not throttling the ones that are being paid to AT&T by the app dev, it seems like that's what it would amount to. Squeeze down the plan size, throttle when you go over, but don't throttle when you use a 'preferred' app.

 

[Small White Car]

Who ever pays AT&T, the customer will pick up the tab at the end. There will be NO service not charging you one way or the other for paying for your traffic. Complete nonsense.

This is a good thing. See below.

Well, think of this: Why would AT&T want you to pay $2 more to Netflix, when they could take an additional $25.00 for going over your 2GB Plan Limit?
They are not here to loose money this way. What you propose is certainly great, but not something that we would see coming from AT&T.

Do you think you can buy RAM or keyboard keys for what Apple pays? Do you think you can buy tires for what Ford pays?

Businesses get the best prices by negotiating, buying in bulk, and by not putting up with BS marketing arguments like the public does. They know what stuff really costs and they bring that information to the negotiating table.

So, YES, I believe Netflix can negotiate something like "an additional 3 GB for $2." And YES, I certainly believe they'll pass that cost on to me. And no, AT&T won't be making a bad deal any more than Samsung "makes a bad deal" by selling RAM to Apple cheaper than they sell it to the public. That's how business works and it's not putting Samsung into the red.

And this is awesome because I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting AT&T to give ME that price. But they just might give it to Netflix.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Its a smart move by AT&T to get more revenue. It will be interesting if any app devs agree to do it.

True. Imagine you are a developer who sells an app for $.99 and your app requires you to pay about $.10 per user per month to AT&T for data usage. This means that at the 7th month your app profit started to become a loss.
You'll be forced to raise the price of your Apps, and to make periodical new versions as a paid upgrade or charge a subscription fee for the use of your app. Who will loose? Both the user and the developer.

----------

This is a good thing. See below.



Do you think you can buy RAM or keyboard keys for what Apple pays? Do you think you can buy tires for what Ford pays?

Businesses get the best prices by negotiating, buying in bulk, and by not putting up with BS marketing arguments like the public does. They know what stuff really costs and they bring that information to the negotiating table.

So, YES, I believe Netflix can negotiate something like "an additional 3 GB for $2." And YES, I certainly believe they'll pass that cost on to me.

But that's awesome, because I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting AT&T to give ME that price. But they just might give it to Netflix.

OK.. I see you didn't get the point at all. You are just looking at it from one NARROW angle.
THINK OF THIS: Why would AT&T take $2.00 from Netflix instead of taking $25.00 from you???

 

[Yujenisis]

This seems like a good idea, but I fear AT&T (and Verizon, Sprint) take good ideas that seemingly benefit the consumer and twist it into a way to make even more money off the back's of consumers and developers.

You need only look to countries where more competition (and regulation) have driven down costs of smart phone ownership to mere fractions of what we pay in the US.

 

[APlotdevice]

Its a smart move by AT&T to get more revenue. It will be interesting if any app devs agree to do it.

The cable companies will be all too glad to. It'll encourage costomers to use their streaming services. Not stray to other services like Netflix or Amazon.

 

[Yvan256]

Facetime?

Will Apple pay AT&T and others so that they (the carriers) will finally allow people to use Facetime over 3G/LTE/etc?

I understand the fact that wireless bandwidth is limited (i.e. you can only transfer a limited amount of data every second via the given frequency bands) but with the prices that some carriers charge, you'd think data was carried on the back of gold flakes floating in the wind.

 

[balamw]

well if they could get to the point where they are throttling apps that are on your normal plan and not throttling the ones that are being paid to AT&T by the app dev, it seems like that's what it would amount to. Squeeze down the plan size, throttle when you go over, but don't throttle when you use a 'preferred' app.

Point taken. Although I have a grandfathered unlimited plan, I don't use enough 3G data to have ever encountered throttling myself.

B

 

[Small White Car]

THINK OF THIS: Why would AT&T take $2.00 from Netflix instead of taking $25.00 from you???

Why do farmers sell milk to ice cream makers for less than they could sell it to you?

Why would someone sell ketchup to restaurants when they can mark it up even higher in the grocery store? Or what of my RAM and tire examples?

You're arguing that bulk pricing to sub-markets can't work, but there are examples of it all around. What makes bandwidth different from all these other examples?

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Will Apple pay AT&T and others so that they (the carriers) will finally allow people to use Facetime over 3G/LTE/etc?

I understand the fact that wireless bandwidth is limited (i.e. you can only transfer a limited amount of data every second) but given the prices that some carriers charge, you'd think data was carried on the back of gold flakes floating in the wind.

Oh yeah... I can see Apple paying for FaceTime data use. LOL... in your dreams, AT&T!

----------

Why do farmers sell milk to ice cream makers for less than they could sell it to you?

Why would someone sell ketchup to restaurants when they can mark it up even higher in the grocery store? Or what of my RAM and tire examples?

You're arguing that bulk pricing to sub-markets can't work, but there are examples of it all around. What makes bandwidth different from all these other examples?

Because Farmers don't have the infrastructure to deliver the milk to you and deal with you. They need to use the middle-man for that.


AT&T already has an infrastructure to deal with the enduser, therefore, it has a way to bill you. So, why would they get rid of that in order to start making less money?

 

[Mad-B-One]

This is a good thing. See below.



Do you think you can buy RAM or keyboard keys for what Apple pays? Do you think you can buy tires for what Ford pays?

Businesses get the best prices by negotiating, buying in bulk, and by not putting up with BS marketing arguments like the public does. They know what stuff really costs and they bring that information to the negotiating table.

So, YES, I believe Netflix can negotiate something like "an additional 3 GB for $2." And YES, I certainly believe they'll pass that cost on to me. And no, AT&T won't be making a bad deal any more than Samsung "makes a bad deal" by selling RAM to Apple cheaper than they sell it to the public. That's how business works and it's not putting Samsung into the red.

And this is awesome because I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting AT&T to give ME that price. But they just might give it to Netflix.

Yea, and if I buy a tire from the Ford dealer, he charges me the same as the retail guy around the corner. Same will happen here. Just because they can justify that e.g. Netflix has to pay for us (BTW: Lookup neutral web agreements - the hosts of these services are already contracted to be "neutral" on traffic) and we will have to pay extra across the board - if we use 3G/4G or not. It will simply be a double tapping of us - the consumer. Sure, for Netflix it would make sense. They only pay for the actual traffic created. If you paid either the extra service to have mobile devices working with Netflix, they only have to pay when you actually use it. If you use your home WiFi or a Starbucks hotspot, they will laughingly cash in on you. Same with AppStore or other services where I can already see that someone will tell us that they cannot differentiate between actual traffic cost created events and no cost created events so they charge us for the service used - no matter what.

 

[JAT]

This could possibly be amazing. (Emphasis on the 'could.') It wouldn't' make sense for 95% of apps, but for a choice few this could be game-changing.

Imagine Netflix making a deal with AT&T so that I pay Netflix $2 extra per month and now all my Netflix watching doesn't affect my limit.

If they can work out numbers like that, it'd be worth it.

If they can't, well, no one will sign up for it. So there's no downside for me...either it's a good move for devs or its not. If it's not we'll never see it.

I disagree. Most of my Netflix watching, or other video, is at home. Where there is a tentative, soft 250GB cap. That would just cost me more for no benefit.

 

[HelveticaRoman]

How about AT&T pays the developers and content providers for creating the reason to use their data networks at all!

 

[cferra]

And there goes net neutrality

This is exactly what (virgin mobile) got into trouble for - giving preferential treatment to apps that are willing to pay for the pipe.

Chris

 

[Daveoc64]

Will Apple pay AT&T and others so that they (the carriers) will finally allow people to use Facetime over 3G/LTE/etc?

If Apple released an update that tweaked the minor setting that restricts FaceTime to Wi-Fi, what do you think carriers could do about it?

It's Apple's choice to restrict it to Wi-Fi - just like they restrict 20MB+ downloads in the App Store/iTunes to Wi-Fi.

 

[karsten]

this is a slippery slope that no one wants to see the result of. 'preferred apps' is not where the open internet should be heading. at&t needs to quit crying and serve me the data i pay them for.

 

[JAT]

I disagree. Most of my Netflix watching, or other video, is at home. Where there is a tentative, soft 250GB cap. That would just cost me more for no benefit.

I should add: I doubt Netflix, Pandora, etc. would offer 2 versions. If they did, then fine, everybody gets what they need.

But this would be a major paradigm shift. I'd expect a mess (at least at first) that shoots consumers, not any of these companies. I guess that's my point.

 

[Small White Car]

Because Farmers don't have the infrastructure to deliver the milk to you and deal with you. They need to use the middle-man for that.

Yeah, they have grocery stores. That doesn't hurt the point here. They can sell it to me there and get $X from the grocery store. They can also take it to the ice cream factory and get $1/2 X.

Do you know why that is? Why would that farmer do that? It's the same thing that's going on here, and neither AT&T nor the farmer loses money by doing it.

What this shows is that both of them have excess goods. The farmer CAN'T sell me any more because there's more than enough milk in the store already. I can't drink any more. Likewise, as many have said here, AT&T has more bandwidth than they need. So what to do with it? Well, clearly, selling it to ANYONE at ANY price is better than letting it go to waste.

So that's what they're trying to do. They give better prices to the bulk buyers just so they can get money for what's left over. It'll go to waste otherwise. People won't buy more milk than they can drink and AT&T apparently can't get people to sign up fast enough to use up all their bandwidth.

"But wait," you say. "Doesn't that mean AT&T is charging more than they should? Shouldn't they be giving us 6 GB for $30 then?" Well, that's a nice theory, but now you're thinking like a good ol' socialist like Hugo Chavez down in Venezuela. They like to do things like set price based on production cost.

It's a legitimate viewpoint! You're free to hold it!

But here in the U.S. both Wall Street and the U.S. government tends to favor the 'invisible hand' theory of Adam Smith. That means we base cost on demand. It's just how things are done here. And that invisible hand is telling us that 3 GB for $30 is appropriate.

So AT&T charges that and then they end up with extra bandwidth. They can either let it sit there doing nothing or they can try to sell it to Netflix. That's their motivation...to earn money off of something that's currently doing nothing for them. That's a big win for them if they can pull it off.

You're arguing that the U.S. should be run more like Venezuela and that AT&T should be taking that extra bandwidth and just dividing it up amongst everyone. That's a defensible viewpoint, but very, very unlikely to ever happen anytime in the near future in this country.