AT&T wants you to read more

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I've been very lucky with my broadband ISP. I live in a rural unincorporated area, and the nearest "town" where my ISP's office is located is only slightly less rural and has a population of less than 1,000. When I first got cable internet 8 years ago the top offered speed was 3 mb/s. Later, they changed that to 5 mb/s for the same price, then to 8 mb/s. Then they started offering higher priced speeds of 16 mb/s and 25 mb/s. I went up to 25 mb/s for a year or two, but then decided to drop back down to 8 mb/s to save money-- and a few days after I dropped back to 8 mb/s, they did another free upgrade so that that tier now gets 12 mb/s-- the top speed offered is now 60 mb/s. I've never had my transfer speed drop below the rated capacity I was paying for-- when I paid for 25 mb/s, I always had 25 mb/s. A while back, the provider (Charter) claimed that they were going to implement a bandwidth cap of 100 GB a month, but I don't think they have ever enforced it.

I live in a rural area, and my max speed is 4Mb/s. I don't have a lot of choice of provider. The phone cable is owned by the Dutch Telecom (same system as what Harry described). But, unlike in Britain, about 90% of the homes here could take cable. I decided not to, I like having my tv from one provider and my internet from a second, so that when one drops, I still have the other...

There are sounds right now, that the rural areas really need to upgrade from copper to glass. The main lines all are already glass, but the last parts are still copper.

And 12km north of me, there's an internet backbone... (one of the glassfiber cables that connects the US to Europe hits land there...)


And we still only have 4Mb/s (but no data cap!)

[MV64]

I use ATT Uverse, and I'm pretty sure using Netflix regularly (every day) would go way over the cap limit. For instance, I use Netflix all the time for watching entire series runs. In many cases that's well over 100-150 episodes, on top of any movies anyone in my family may watch. I hate how everything technological is now becoming limited so they can charge more money. YOu can't get anything these days without a data plan, or various restrictions that tell you how to use your product.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

I don't get it, maybe that's me not being an American... If you can't replace your TV with streaming over the Internet because you will be capped before the end of the month, then just don't do it... If you really need your TVs running 24/7, keep the TV connection (you don't need cable) for that and use whatever service for additional movies, shows etc

The idea is to try and save money, but it doesn't always work out that way. The major providers in the US provide internet, television, and phone. If you subscribe to at least two of those services, you get a lower rate on each one. But if you have the idea that you want to get rid of television and just go with internet, think again.

For starters, the rate for a single service is substantially higher than the rate for a bundled service. Now add in the costs for outside services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc and you're now approaching or exceeding what you paid with television. On top of that, you'll be streaming far more content than you did before; with the very real possibility of hitting a cap.

Providers have this all figured out and set their rates and caps accordingly. They don't want you leaving the fold; and if you do, they'll see to it that you pay for it.

[MerLock]

I think AT&T's networks are overloaded and that's why they are resorting to this. I've had their DSL for numerous years now and never had any problems till about a year ago. My internet runs fine during non peak hours but during peak hours it slows to a crawl. I can't even stream video and barely able to browse the web. It always happens from ~6:00pm to ~11:30pm.

Since it runs fine all other times I think I'm safe to assume it's nothing on my end (phone line, modem, router, PC) and it's their network.

I wish they spent the money in upgrading their network!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MerLock

I think AT&T's networks are overloaded and that's why they are resorting to this. I've had their DSL for numerous years now and never had any problems till about a year ago. My internet runs fine during non peak hours but during peak hours it slows to a crawl. I can't even stream video and barely able to browse the web. It always happens from ~6:00pm to ~11:30pm.

Since it runs fine all other times I think I'm safe to assume it's nothing on my end (phone line, modem, router, PC) and it's their network.

I wish they spent the money in upgrading their network!

Yep - that's a classic symptom of network congestion. With me, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, it occurs during "working hours" since the area I live in is more business than residential.

Capping should hopefully ease the situation. Fewer people streaming video in peak hours should mean less network congestion.

[MerLock]

I live in a residential area so my internet slows down when everyone gets home. I thought I wouldn't have these issues since I have dsl instead of cable. I heard that you're sharing your bandwidth with your neighbors with cable but not dsl. However, I believe two things happened when I noticed the slow down.

1) They introduced U-Verse in my area (I believe U-verse runs on optics while dsl runs on copper. Not much of a network guy but I'm assuming it's possible at some point the data comes together and causes a bottleneck)
2) I believe Comcast cable internet instated caps around the time of the slowdown- driving people to ATT since at the time it isn't caped.

I think even though I'm not sharing my bandwidth like cable users there must be a bottleneck somewhere else, perhaps at the station. Not too much of a network guy, but it doesn't seem that far fetch that all the dsl connections have to meet up at certain points causing a choke.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yep - that's a classic symptom of network congestion. With me, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, it occurs during "working hours" since the area I live in is more business than residential.

Capping should hopefully ease the situation. Fewer people streaming video in peak hours should mean less network congestion.

I agree that fewer people streaming video should lower traffic - but that's unfair as well. Most people are home around the same hours. These people are now unable to use their free hours for entertainment. If people who pay premium for these types of streaming content are not able to use it (or incur additional fees) they will start getting rid of it. This means that companies like Hulu and Netflix will slowly get forced out of business by their competition. Which is bad for our wallets.

[The Terminator]

I think they mean BREED more.....Larger cell phone bills.

[MerLock]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

I agree that fewer people streaming video should lower traffic - but that's unfair as well. Most people are home around the same hours. These people are now unable to use their free hours for entertainment. If people who pay premium for these types of streaming content are not able to use it (or incur additional fees) they will start getting rid of it. This means that companies like Hulu and Netflix will slowly get forced out of business by their competition. Which is bad for our wallets.

If a small amount of folks who use a lot of bandwidth causes others to have unsatisfactory internet speeds is sort of unfair too. I

still blame AT&T though. Don't sell what you can't deliver. Kind of like over booking a flight.

I also guess that's why all those companies with unlimited data plans for cell phones also now have to impose limits. Hook people in, get them addicted and then slowly start charging them more for it.

[elcreative]

You heard wrong... adsl/dsl share... somewhere in your dsl details there should be a mention of something called a contention factor... inexpensive is usually around 50, more expensive gives 20 and you can probably get better by paying more. Contention factor of 20 = up to max of 20 users sharing at local exchange... may differ in the ex-colonies as far as actual numbers go but that is the principle...

Originally Posted by MerLock

I live in a residential area so my internet slows down when everyone gets home. I thought I wouldn't have these issues since I have dsl instead of cable. I heard that you're sharing your bandwidth with your neighbors with cable but not dsl. However, I believe two things happened when I noticed the slow down.

1) They introduced U-Verse in my area (I believe U-verse runs on optics while dsl runs on copper. Not much of a network guy but I'm assuming it's possible at some point the data comes together and causes a bottleneck)
2) I believe Comcast cable internet instated caps around the time of the slowdown- driving people to ATT since at the time it isn't caped.

I think even though I'm not sharing my bandwidth like cable users there must be a bottleneck somewhere else, perhaps at the station. Not too much of a network guy, but it doesn't seem that far fetch that all the dsl connections have to meet up at certain points causing a choke.