AT&T wants you to read more

[CWatkinsNash]

At least they are going to allow an "adjustment period", so to speak. The first couple of times you go over, you get scolded. The third time, you pay $10 for an additional 50GB. They are also going to send notices when the user hits 60%, 75% and 90%. They have a site set up for monitoring usage. Usage is updated weekly until a certain amount is reached (70%, I think), then it is updated daily (but with a delay of a few days in both cases).

I don't like it, but it could be worse.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

The issue mainly has to do with streaming video over the internet (like watching Netflix or Hulu or whatever), and causing congestion on their networks. Of course, if you do the exact same thing using the ISP's own video streaming application (that they want you to pay for), there's no problem with congestion. Hmmmm.....

Net neutrality

[Keroberos]

The problem is the usage limits may seem reasonable now, but over time to maintain profit increases they will start lowering those limits the same way the cellular data providers have been. Add that to the fact that more people will be using video streaming services as their main TV source and soon will want those streams to be in HD you could quickly hit those caps with a few TV shows/movies a week.

So in my opinion if they want us to accept metered internet they need to submit to price regulation like every other metered utility (yeah like we'll ever see that happen).

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

The issue mainly has to do with streaming video over the internet (like watching Netflix or Hulu or whatever), and causing congestion on their networks.

The issue mainly has to do with overselling a product, then not being able to provide it to the customer, then changing the rules in the middle of the game. The high-bandwidth user of today is the average user of the near future and the low-bandwidth user of the more distant future. 5 years from now, people will laugh at 150 GB caps as much as people today laugh at 5 kilobyte per second telephone modems.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

The issue mainly has to do with streaming video over the internet (like watching Netflix or Hulu or whatever), and causing congestion on their networks. Of course, if you do the exact same thing using the ISP's own video streaming application (that they want you to pay for), there's no problem with congestion. Hmmmm.....

It depends how it's done. With ADSL, for example, the contention occurs in the "pipe" between the telephone exchange and the ISP, hence if video streaming is done by equipment in the local telephone exchange there is indeed no congestion on the network. That's exactly what British Telecom are doing here in the UK.

[Keroberos]

In the US the problem is with the ISPs who haven't been spending their record profits from the last 10 years on needed last mile infrastructure upgrades, so even though we have plenty of backbone bandwidth if a large amount of their subscribers start streaming media the local networks would choke. So, it isn't so much overselling as it is under upgrading to meet demand that many people saw coming.

[bZkindle]

In Canada the telco's have been pushing for a metered internet with a cap of 30 gigs and 2 dollars a gig thereafter. They've been temporarily stopped due to public outcry.
I'd be happy if this duopoly was busted up. Bell and Rogers are holding people hostage.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Keroberos

In the US the problem is with the ISPs who haven't been spending their record profits from the last 10 years on needed last mile infrastructure upgrades, so even though we have plenty of backbone bandwidth if a large amount of their subscribers start streaming media the local networks would choke. So, it isn't so much overselling as it is under upgrading to meet demand that many people saw coming.

And Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc aren't in a hurry to upgrade if it will mean more people canceling TV cable service for Netflix $7.99 streaming.

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by Fbone

And Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc aren't in a hurry to upgrade if it will mean more people canceling TV cable service for Netflix $7.99 streaming.

All the more reason an ISP should also not be providing Telco or TV services. It's the very definition of duplicity. Before I sold my place my ISP was a company based out of the LA area that offered all DSL service totally uncapped and for far less than the same service on Verizon, AT&T or other major provider. I had service with them for over a decade and never did they drop the ball. And they are a company which now services millions of home in the US.

But what I did learn when there was a service issue with the Verizon provided lines was that Verizon had so oversold DSL service here in our small town in CA that I would likely not even be approved for the level service I was on which was the fastest DSL we can have in my town at just 7.1Mbps/768kbps.

The worst part is one of the primary backbones for CA, which services the coastal part of the state, runs right through the center of town. In fact Verizon touted it would enable them to offer us FIOS as if we were in a big city as part of compensation for the nearly year long disruption of traffic in the city due to them tearing up the main streets in town as well as two of the three roads in/out of town burying the cable. Sadly Verizon never intended on providing that service...EVER. At the same time they have done NOTHING to build the service here. I knwo because the tech who came to help me ferret out the issue I was having is an old softball & bowling buddy who has been a TelCo tech for many decades. But he told me of the internal stuff. Worse yet was my line actually tested out at 12Mbps/12Mbps symmetric. He showed me the line test results right as he took them.

The issue is NOT over bandwidth or system capacity, it is all about the ancillary services these companies sell. They can't compete with the Netflix, Hulu's, iTunes and Amazon's of the world in terms of content so they are now looking to extort people who have dared come to use the service we all pay for for their own benefit. It's all about this ever spiraling out of control need to accelerate growth year-over-year rather than live with mere profits. So the actual consumer gets hosed.

I don't and won't afford cable of any sort as the content is not worth anything to me. I choose instead to go the streaming route. I am sure many others are doing the same. so rather than improving service by offering higher speeds and being able to charge more for those higher tiers, these Telco's are squeezing from the middle.

This is all no different than 3g/4g providers who tout these high speed mobile broadband rate yet having a 5GB cap. You can blow though that cap in the course of an hour of an HD movie. I hate to use the term but it's a bait-n-switch at it's slickest and slimiest.

[RockdaMan]

I found the Wired article (and I like Wired) a bit vague on the details.

This is a very good article on the change.

A takeaway:

The company will notify users when they hit 65 percent, 90 percent, and 100 percent of their monthly caps, and will also provide historical usage reports and a monthly usage tracking tool. (AT&T says that an average DSL user on its network currently transfers 18GB each month.)

Even customers who exceed the cap won't pay right away; only after going over the cap in three separate months will fees be assessed.

I asked the company if a U-Verse subscriber's IPTV traffic would count toward the cap and was told that it would not. Accessing Internet video from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. would count, however.

[JSWolf]

The problem with a bandwidth meter is is measures the bandwith used from a given Ethernet port and if you also have an internal network, the results could be incorrect as internal data gets counted as well.

Comcast has a 250GB per month limit and yet they advertise being able to watch all kinds of thinks on demand from their website. I believe this counts against the limit even though it is data from Comcast. This is totally unfair. They don't tell you this. But they will quite happily tell you you've gone over even if say most of that is using Comcast's video on demand streaming.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Fbone

And Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc aren't in a hurry to upgrade if it will mean more people canceling TV cable service for Netflix $7.99 streaming.

I don't think (at the moment) that Fios has a limit. Problem is, I cannot get Fios.

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with a bandwidth meter is is measures the bandwith used from a given Ethernet port and if you also have an internal network, the results could be incorrect as internal data gets counted as well.

Comcast has a 250GB per month limit and yet they advertise being able to watch all kinds of thinks on demand from their website. I believe this counts against the limit even though it is data from Comcast. This is totally unfair. They don't tell you this. But they will quite happily tell you you've gone over even if say most of that is using Comcast's video on demand streaming.

Right and that is the totally duplicitous nature of the current situation. You have the service provider also acting as a competing content provider. Well what better way to "compete" than to count the bandwidth used by the competition as a penalty against the customer. I believe most the ISP's which also have a streaming or on-demand type service do not count that against any caps. Well, I believe Comcrap works that way.

But the behavior seems so contrary to what DSL was historically advertised as which is a no-limit broadband service. It was always advertised as such in years gone by. That was exactly how it gained a foothold against cable which has almost always been faster but was also shared bandwidth. DSL promoted itself as non-shared guaranteed bandwidth with no limits on use other than no servers, unless you ISP allowed one and, of course eyes were kept on the Napster type users.

It suddenly is no longer that way. It is little wonder I am at the point where I just want as far away from tech as possible. Very burnt out on these moving targets where it is always a game of them vs. me/us. And we/me/you never win that game, ever.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't think (at the moment) that Fios has a limit. Problem is, I cannot get Fios.

Nobody really has FIOS outside of a handful of cities. It's like the mythical 4G as well as WiMAX. It makes pretty impressive ads and that is about it. The people who are lucky enough to have it are like pigs in, well you know, but the rest of us can't get squat. In fact wasn't there some problem with FIOS in the past year? I don't remember if they were tripling the price or something along those lines. But the move was to actually push the consumer to a lower package at a higher price. I don't remember if it was Verizon or AT&T but it was one of the major FIOS providers.

Ironically our local small town library has a 25Mbps level services but we in town can't get anything faster than 7Mbps from Verizon and few are allowed to buy that service. As my experience above showed we have plenty of bandwidth on the copper we have and could easily get near FIOS level speed of around 12Mbps but because there is not enough capacity built into the system here it will be over a decade before this town gets a reasonable service level. Kinda funny but for all I know I might be long dead before then. And that is why I've pretty much stopped the tech treadmill, there are better uses of my heartbeats. You know like making pointless comments on an online forum.

[Fbone]

On the other hand, for those who don't or can't stream, why should they pay more so that the others who do can continue to do even more so?

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by Fbone

On the other hand, for those who don't or can't stream, why should they pay more so that the others who do can continue to do even more so?

In such a case the obvious answer is they can mange just fine with 768Mbps/256kbps service which means they won't be paying the same price. You don't buy a Ferrari to drive 55 nor do they need 7Mbps/768kbps to manage email and browse the web. If they do need faster speed it is because of the ad-dump as well as script-pollution forced on people by commercial websites these days not because of users. I am willing to bet a significant portion of system bandwidth is totally wasted on pages downloading 5MB+ pages full of ads and script to track user actions. Same goes for people who do not understand how to format photos to upload on the web. FYI, setting the image to 1 DPI (yes ONE DPI) is enough and will show just fine but you will significantly decrease the file size. The image scales w/o needing a high DPI. The only reason a higher DPI is needed would be for proofing on a high end system or for printing.