5 ms·

AT&T Throttling Unlimited Plans after 2GB Data Use

124 points by mediamaker 15y ago

mrhyperpenguin 15y ago
Can anyone think of any rational behind this? Why would they want to switch people to tiered data plans when there is no effective difference to them?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Why? > …You may also consider switching to a tiered data plan if speed is more important to you [...] Customers on tiered plans can pay for more data if they need it, and will not see reduced speeds. (from the blog post) That's why. AT&T has shown that nearly every move they make is for the sole purpose of squeezing out all the money they can from their users.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    They are a company and as such is in the business of making money. Of course they want to squeeze every last bit out. In this case the problem is that they offered an unlimited plan and then did stick with their offer.
    - montecarl 15y ago
      The problem is that they can get away with it. That is the cell phone market has very little competition.
      - jcnnghm 15y ago
        There really needs to be a movement to address the collusion in the telecommunication industry. I priced out a business cell plan (with > 5 lines), and there was not even a single penny price difference between ATT and Verizon, and both refused to negotiate at all. No matter what options changed, the prices matched to the cent. Strong regulation needs to be introduced, the major players need to be broken up again, or their infrastructure needs to be nationalized. Working, efficient, non-crippled and inexpensive communications infrastructure is too economically important to leave it in the hands of these bozos. It is unconscionable that wireless communication, which is fast becoming a necessity, amounts to a $100/month/person tax on the citizens of this country, payable to the corrupt interests of two or three companies. The government has laws to prevent this, they should be enforced.
        TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
        It's unconscionable that _you_ pay 100$/person for cell service. I pay for my and my SO's cell service. The combined bill is 55$/mo. That includes unlimited calls, unlimited txts, and for the time being 20k/s data bandwidth. Note that I did not pay extra for the data. And yes, I'm within the US, using a division of T-Mo.
    - jcnnghm 15y ago
      They didn't stick with the offer. I've been paying for unlimited data for years without throttling. They are changing the deal. They should be forced to give everyone that has been paying for unlimited substantial refunds for the last several years, where usage has been low. They are trying to force everyone away from unlimited data now that it is obvious that wireless data demand is going to increase at least an order of magnitude in the next decade.
    - potater 15y ago
      While I certainly can't fault an organization for attempting to maximize revenue, I think there comes a point when they seem to be focusing solely on short term numbers to the extent that it may actually harm them in the longterm should customers decide they've had enough and start taking their business elsewhere. Of course, customer switching is less likely for service providers where there are real barriers in place that effectively prevent users from actively doing so (e.g., coverage issues, other networks with similar policies, etc) It's the whole "yeah, we're taking advantage of you, but it's not like you have any other real options here, so sit back and like it." thing that just makes me sad.
- ghshephard 15y ago
  Tiered plans have overage charges, unlimited plans don't.
TYPE_FASTER 15y ago
And there goes my last remaining reason not to switch back to Verizon.
creativityland 15y ago
Yep, I can confirm about this.
bryanh 15y ago
Anyone have any experience in the process of switching an AT&T iPhone to Verizon? Worth it? Any gotchas?
- johngalt 15y ago
  Won't work. Different network and different hardware.
  - scotje 15y ago
    Unless you have a 4S.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - uxp 15y ago
      Even though the 4S is supposedly a GSM/CDMA combined phone, its still locked to individual carriers, unless you happened to buy the unlocked version at nearly $800 USD. http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u-s-carriers-fool-you-into-thinking-your-iphone-4s-is-unlocked/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u...
  - seanp2k2 15y ago
    The 4S has CDMA and GSM radios built in. You could just unlock it and move it over if you can find the right CSR to add your IMEI to Verizon.
    - modeless 15y ago
      You can't "just" unlock it. Unlocking is risky: it voids your warranty, makes the process of updating your OS difficult or impossible, and has a very real chance of bricking your phone.
      - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
rorrr 15y ago
Find people like you. Class action lawsuit.
- rilindo 15y ago
  That would be very difficult to do: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011-04-27-supreme-court-class-actions_n.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011-04-27-...
- quellhorst 15y ago
  I also have a grandfathered at&t unlimited plan and would be willing to join a class action lawsuit.
rmc 15y ago
Part of the shock the OP had is their suprise at 2.1GB putting them in the top 5%. That seems believable to me. I worked in a residential ISP and once ran the numbers on about how much data people use. Something like 90% of people didn't go above 5GB or so. And this was on residential DSL, not on mobile internet. Of course in theory this is going to reduce the average usage of AT&T users, since someone is always on the top 5% (by definition 1 in 20 customers will be affected). It also seems a little unfair to have a rule that you can't know in advance.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  5 GB makes the 250 GB Comcast cap look overly generous, when I can tell you from experience that 250 GB with two people using the Internet on a daily basis is too little. New games come in at 10 GB or more when you are downloading them from places like Steam, add in two people downloading new games and you can easily see 100's of GB's going to just gaming. If I rebuild my Windows desktop and have Steam re-download all of the games I tend to keep locally I myself use about 150 GB of transfer. On top of that comes watching TV Shows (on Hulu/NetFlix) and movies (iTunes/NetFlix/Hulu) and various other downloads. The latest Mac OS X update weighed in at a hefty 1.38 GB, split across 4 devices. Granted, I am a technology person, I am a programmer, I spend more time behind a computer than doing almost anything else (including sleep). My usage pattern is going to be vastly different compared to grandma and grandpa that check their email. The thing is though that I want higher quality content delivered to me instantly, Hulu's 480 is nice and all, but I would love to have it in 720p or 1080p for my large TV. All of this uses up bandwidth/transfer. As for mobile data, I don't tend to do a lot of streaming of music and the like, so far I haven't had any issues with going over the allotted 2 GB from AT&T, that and when I do want to stream I am near Wifi.
  - jff 15y ago
    Yet as another anecdote, even when watching Netflix streaming basically every night, and downloading the occasional Steam game, I have never once passed my 250 GB Comcast limit. Much as I dislike these kind of caps, it is pretty damn hard to go over 250 GB. That's, what, 200 hours of reasonably high-quality streaming video? 300+ Linux ISOs (the only reason you run bittorrent, right?)? Sadly, I don't think "unlimited" internet is a sustainable model, because generally speaking every bit you send costs the provider money, and the rise of things like Youtube mean that people actually use more bandwidth. However, 250 GB plus a reasonable per-GB charge after that should be reasonable for a very larger percentage of users.
ghshephard 15y ago
I tried to finish - but the author was either being dense or argumentative. I think AT&T has made their position pretty clear - Unlimited doesn't have overage charges, but you get rate limited when you hit the top 5% of usage (currently 2 Gigabytes). AT&T also offers 2 Gigabyte and 3 Gigabyte plans, with overage charges. Happily, AT&T has been prevented from taking over T-Mobile, so we still have at least four providers for wireless data in most major markets - let's hope it stays that way.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  While oligopoly still > than monopoly or duopoly, it's still < free market. You think the wireless ISP biz is a free market? Try to start one. Try to get cities and tower owners to give you permission to put your gear up. Who will you get fibre interlinks from for those towers? Who will issue permits to dig trenches to lay fibre all over the cities? Wireless ISPs ("wireless telcos" but I consider them ISPs because ALL their calls, SMS, MMS, and data is now digital) know the game and make no mistake, it is this way on purpose. They have done everything they can to ensure an anti-competitive market. EDIT: I'm sure someone will mention that you could just resell service as many regional WISPs do. Again though, WISPs know the score here, and they price reseller service so that it basically matches what they're offering direct to consumers. At my old company, we'd resell SBC-ATT-Yahoo-Cingulair-Bell-BellSouth-Ameritech-Edge Wireless-Cellular One-Centennial-Wayport DSL (yes, those are all just known as "ATT" today) and the cheapest we could offer 1.5mbit DSL service was $25/month.
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    I've never suggested it's a free market. I'm just saying there are four vendors who you can chose from based on your feelings about price and quality. I'm just happy it's not three.
- josho 15y ago
  The use of limiting the top 5% is quite disingenuous. As over time the limit will shift down to a lower amount as customers become annoyed and move to other plans. Clearly 2gb is not an excessive amount of data either as ATT sells larger tiered plans. So, this is clearly a breach of the spirit of the contract. A claim with the small claims court and/or FCC seems to be in order.
lancewiggs 15y ago
While the main thrust of the story is concerning, what really makes me feel ill are the scripted responses. The service agents are just picking responses from a list and hitting send. They appear to have no ability to apply thought to the process, and no authority to delegate up. I'm sure the staff are smart and frustrated, and I'm reasonably sure that they are constrained by their systems and processes. But how good would it be if the very first agent was able to actually address the question. My suggested answer would be "yes, this does seem very low, but that's what we are told - 95% of people use less than 2gb per month. It seems a little ridiculous. I can switch you to the 3gb plan of you like - it's cheaper as well (my guess). " No matter what the response it's time to stop this cruel and unusual punishment of both CS staff and customers.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  All that sounds great and I agree with you 100%...however, since they're a public company, their first priority is to maximize profits, and that is exactly what they're doing here. Since USA citizens are so lazy that they let telco lobbyist groups write the laws and don't riot over them when they're passed by bought politicians, we have to deal with idiotic support as described above. This is also the reason that the sales drones at Best Buy just read the product packaging when you ask them a question about it. Unskilled labor is cheap, and these days, almost all level 1 support is unskilled (think across industries, not just IT; IT still has some great lvl1 support if you look hard enough.)
  - JonWood 15y ago
    Is causing your customers to think you're ripping them of, and making them look elsewhere for service actually maximising profit though? Given the cost of acquiring a customer they should be bending over backwards to keep existing customers.
    - ilmare 15y ago
      Yes, since they know customers have nowhere else to go.
  - 15y ago
joelhaasnoot 15y ago
Unfortunately, this is "standard industry practice" for most mobile providers...
evolve2k 15y ago
I would suggest that 'Unlimited' has a very clear meaning to the reasonable person and that they are now breaching their contract as it was initially advertised to the public. Assuming it was initially advertised as 'Unlimited' with relation to speed and data. Of note; Lets say you were in Australia you could take this case straight to the ACCC or the Communications Ombudsman and from experience I would be fairly confident of you getting what you want.
- Zakharov 15y ago
  Are you sure? Most companies here offer "unlimited" home Internet plans that are still capped.
lpolovets 15y ago
One particularly nasty thing about automatically throttling the top 5% is that it is completely divorced from costs and level of usage. Over time, if heavy users try using less data, that will just depress the amount of usage required to be the in top 5% -- but 5% of customers will still be affected by throttling. On a side note, I wonder how the cost of supplying customer service to address the complaints of the top 5% compares to the cost of just letting people consume as much data as they like. I would guess even a few minutes of a CS rep's time is more valuable than letting someone download an extra gig of data per month.
- click170 15y ago
  That is why I made as much noise as possible about the (IMO) abusive throttling practices of my previous ISP. Don't take this cr*p lying down, call them and tell them youre unhappy, ask them to disable it on your connection (they won't) and when they refuse, demand to speak to the supervisor. Rinse and repeat. Make it cost more to throttle than it does not to.
- abs314159 15y ago
  It's more underhanded than nasty but you're absolutely right that this didn't mean what they portray and most people thought. Regardless of whether a given user moderated his data usage voluntarily, because he was throttled, or switched plans, the vast majority of the top 5% likely leaves the pool every month. This means that six months after the change was introduced roughly one quarter subscribers will be removed. Why would AT&T do this? To avoid the negative publicity associated with eliminating a plan so many people valued while maximizing profitability. This was quite cleverly executed: Offer cheaper limited plans to save customers money, which has the effect of offering new customers a more competitive price while existing customers will happily pay the higher price as insurance against potential overage fees. Then, by removing the highest data users, they could maximize revenue from them while continuing to collect the higher fees from the lower data users. Then once unlimited becomes a less attractive offer than the $25 plan, eliminate it to avoid revenue leakage. The strategy might not be optimal but its superior to the simpler alternatives in the short run. Of course, the reason is works is that the majority of customers are sufficiently credulous to purchase an implicit insurance contract that AT&T never had to honor. Their actions are legally defensible since the customers did receive the uncertainty reduction in the present period but most of them likely knew they wouldn't go over and paid only for the option of maintaining that protection in a future period. That said, communication that is intentionally ambiguous so as to benefit from misunderstanding should constitute an unfair trade practice. Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the actual thought process behind these decisions.
furyofantares 15y ago
They didn't throttle mine, they simply changed my plan to the 4GB plan and told me after the fact. They did this to my wife's account as well. And if I change it to the 2GB plan and then tether using an unofficial tethering app, they automatically change my plan back to the 4GB tethering plan.
executive 15y ago
facepalm.jpg
rexf 15y ago
AT&T is vile garbage. I'm grandfathered into their unlimited plan, but throughout NYC, at work, and at home, my reception is spotty at best. As discussed in this thread, their customer service is non-existant. With an unlimited data plan at worse than dial-up speeds, the data service is useless. I'm planning on switching to Verizon when my iPhone 4 AT&T contract is up, but I'm not holding my breath for any better customer service from Verizon. There really is no cell phone company in the US that I want to give my money to.
- CrazedGeek 15y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, why are T-Mo/Sprint/US Cellular/etc not options for you?
alexqgb 15y ago
As recently as 18 months ago, I routinely got solid customer service from AT&T. While the wireless service itself was really sketchy in NY and SF, any account problems were handled with competence and care. Given the incredible blowback they'd received from their poor iPhone support, I always felt compelled to tell the people I ended up talking to that they were doing great jobs, and that in spite of what was said in the press about them not having their act together, I found them to be on their game, and that I really appreciated the effort they were making. Then something changed. Intelligence and responsiveness went off a cliff. On the occasions I did have to call I ended up so deeply infuriated that I'd find myself becoming angry BEFORE having to call again - even months later. It almost seemed that they'd adopted a posture of calculated incompetence, specifically designed discourage people from calling them. Within a year (and after a series of truly appalling encounters) I'd gone from publicly defending them to hating them with an intensity bordering on incandescent. Were their service any less vital to my life in general, perhaps I'd feel more sanguine. But given the central importance of wireless connectivity, a "service" relationship costing north of $100 per month and delivering nothing by dropped calls and furious anger quickly made it to the top of of my dump-judiciously list.
mikeash 15y ago
I wish ISPs would just give up on the whole "Unlimited" concept. Clearly it's not practical for them to offer truly unlimited service, so let's just cut the bullshit and go to usage-based billing. Unfortunately, the tech community hates usage-based billing about as much as they hate throttling. Baffles me as to why. I think we need to make it illegal to advertise "unlimited" without it actually being unlimited. I would have thought that existing truth-in-advertising laws would cover this, but apparently they don't. Make it illegal to promise what you never intend to deliver and this whole problem goes away. If unlimited is practical to offer, then it will be offered. If unlimited is not practical, then ISPs will no longer be allowed to pretend that it is, and will be encouraged to make the limitations of their offers obvious up-front instead of using shady nonsense like this.
- thurn 15y ago
  I think people object less to general bandwidth caps than to traffic discrimination. For example, Shaw Cable was accused of throttling Skype traffic but not their competing VOIP product.
- ugh 15y ago
  I prefer a mobile data plan that’s throttled after a certain bandwidth use to paying overage fees. What I don’t like is marketing that as “unlimited”. (I think all carriers in Germany only have plans like that. Some market them as unlimited, some don’t.) For example: I pay 13.50€ per month for 1.5GB of data (for my iPad). After those 1.5GB my speed is throttled, I do not ever have to pay more, though. I like that. I want it to be like that. The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t yet buy additional bandwidth at full speed from my carrier. (One carrier recently started doing that. 5€ for every additional GB. But it’s not automatic, you have to manually initiate that. I would prefer that massively to overage fees.)
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  As I see it there are three reasons the tech community hates usage-based billing. - First, any time a company tries usage-based data billing, they charge absolutely criminal rates. If you paid attention to usage-based cell service over the years, you'd know what I speak of. - Second, in an "unlimited" model, some users use more, some use less. In general the tech community will be the ones using more- so they benefit at the marginal expense of other users. They pay comparatively less by volume for their usage. - Third, in my opinion there's at least a tiny bit of entitlement going around in the online community as a whole. Nobody wants to pay for anything. You know, because "information wants to be free!" and all.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
So all the unlimited users need to use over 4gb to raise that "top 5%" number significantly.
ouchiboy 15y ago
Ouch. They wouldn't like the 3.9 TB of my last 16 month...
- tzs 15y ago
  That's almost 250 GB a month. How do you use that much on a mobile device? That's more than most people use on their regular Internet connection.
  - ouchiboy 15y ago
    Tethering. cough. You can do that with many non-thethering plans on some jailbroken devices to save money or get around no-tethering allowed companies. I'm not going to lie and say that more than 10% of that traffic accounts to youtube videos and torrented linux distributions...
epikur 15y ago
I used precisely 5 gigs last month and received no notifications. I guess that means I'm in a higher capacity area?
yabai 15y ago
I received the dreaded text from AT&T at around 2GB of use. I have an unlimited plan, and believe that it should be "unlimited" without any throttling. I am upset about this situation, but feel a bit helpless. I applaud the comments and the post. Perhaps enough outrage will spark a revolution.
warfangle 15y ago
My virgin mobile (35 per month) unlimited data plan will start getting throttled in march - after 2.5gb. I'm so glad I left ATT behind. Sure it's a little slower, and I can't get an iphone or the latest or greatest android phone. But it's one of the best values out there, and I didn't need to sign a freaking lock in contract.
- damptrousers 15y ago
  So it starts throttling at a half gig later? And you have to deal with crappy phones? Great deal you got there.
  - warfangle 15y ago
    At a third of the price. Price-to-value ratio is much better. And while the LG Optimus Slider has a smallish screen, it still runs android 2.3. And with a slide-out keyboard, SSH sessions are a lot easier. It's "good enough."

124 points by mediamaker 15y ago

Can anyone think of any rational behind this? Why would they want to switch people to tiered data plans when there is no effective difference to them?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ineedtosleep 15y ago
Why? > …You may also consider switching to a tiered data plan if speed is more important to you [...] Customers on tiered plans can pay for more data if they need it, and will not see reduced speeds. (from the blog post) That's why. AT&T has shown that nearly every move they make is for the sole purpose of squeezing out all the money they can from their users.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  They are a company and as such is in the business of making money. Of course they want to squeeze every last bit out. In this case the problem is that they offered an unlimited plan and then did stick with their offer.
  - montecarl 15y ago
    The problem is that they can get away with it. That is the cell phone market has very little competition.
    - jcnnghm 15y ago
      There really needs to be a movement to address the collusion in the telecommunication industry. I priced out a business cell plan (with > 5 lines), and there was not even a single penny price difference between ATT and Verizon, and both refused to negotiate at all. No matter what options changed, the prices matched to the cent. Strong regulation needs to be introduced, the major players need to be broken up again, or their infrastructure needs to be nationalized. Working, efficient, non-crippled and inexpensive communications infrastructure is too economically important to leave it in the hands of these bozos. It is unconscionable that wireless communication, which is fast becoming a necessity, amounts to a $100/month/person tax on the citizens of this country, payable to the corrupt interests of two or three companies. The government has laws to prevent this, they should be enforced.
      - TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
        It's unconscionable that _you_ pay 100$/person for cell service. I pay for my and my SO's cell service. The combined bill is 55$/mo. That includes unlimited calls, unlimited txts, and for the time being 20k/s data bandwidth. Note that I did not pay extra for the data. And yes, I'm within the US, using a division of T-Mo.
  - jcnnghm 15y ago
    They didn't stick with the offer. I've been paying for unlimited data for years without throttling. They are changing the deal. They should be forced to give everyone that has been paying for unlimited substantial refunds for the last several years, where usage has been low. They are trying to force everyone away from unlimited data now that it is obvious that wireless data demand is going to increase at least an order of magnitude in the next decade.
  - potater 15y ago
    While I certainly can't fault an organization for attempting to maximize revenue, I think there comes a point when they seem to be focusing solely on short term numbers to the extent that it may actually harm them in the longterm should customers decide they've had enough and start taking their business elsewhere. Of course, customer switching is less likely for service providers where there are real barriers in place that effectively prevent users from actively doing so (e.g., coverage issues, other networks with similar policies, etc) It's the whole "yeah, we're taking advantage of you, but it's not like you have any other real options here, so sit back and like it." thing that just makes me sad.
ghshephard 15y ago
Tiered plans have overage charges, unlimited plans don't.

TYPE_FASTER 15y ago

And there goes my last remaining reason not to switch back to Verizon.

creativityland 15y ago

Yep, I can confirm about this.

bryanh 15y ago

Anyone have any experience in the process of switching an AT&T iPhone to Verizon? Worth it? Any gotchas?

johngalt 15y ago
Won't work. Different network and different hardware.
- scotje 15y ago
  Unless you have a 4S.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - uxp 15y ago
    Even though the 4S is supposedly a GSM/CDMA combined phone, its still locked to individual carriers, unless you happened to buy the unlocked version at nearly $800 USD. http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u-s-carriers-fool-you-into-thinking-your-iphone-4s-is-unlocked/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcwebertobias/2011/12/22/how-u...
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  The 4S has CDMA and GSM radios built in. You could just unlock it and move it over if you can find the right CSR to add your IMEI to Verizon.
  - modeless 15y ago
    You can't "just" unlock it. Unlocking is risky: it voids your warranty, makes the process of updating your OS difficult or impossible, and has a very real chance of bricking your phone.
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago

rorrr 15y ago

Find people like you. Class action lawsuit.

rilindo 15y ago
That would be very difficult to do: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011-04-27-supreme-court-class-actions_n.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011-04-27-...
quellhorst 15y ago
I also have a grandfathered at&t unlimited plan and would be willing to join a class action lawsuit.

rmc 15y ago

Part of the shock the OP had is their suprise at 2.1GB putting them in the top 5%. That seems believable to me. I worked in a residential ISP and once ran the numbers on about how much data people use. Something like 90% of people didn't go above 5GB or so. And this was on residential DSL, not on mobile internet. Of course in theory this is going to reduce the average usage of AT&T users, since someone is always on the top 5% (by definition 1 in 20 customers will be affected). It also seems a little unfair to have a rule that you can't know in advance.

X-Istence 15y ago
5 GB makes the 250 GB Comcast cap look overly generous, when I can tell you from experience that 250 GB with two people using the Internet on a daily basis is too little. New games come in at 10 GB or more when you are downloading them from places like Steam, add in two people downloading new games and you can easily see 100's of GB's going to just gaming. If I rebuild my Windows desktop and have Steam re-download all of the games I tend to keep locally I myself use about 150 GB of transfer. On top of that comes watching TV Shows (on Hulu/NetFlix) and movies (iTunes/NetFlix/Hulu) and various other downloads. The latest Mac OS X update weighed in at a hefty 1.38 GB, split across 4 devices. Granted, I am a technology person, I am a programmer, I spend more time behind a computer than doing almost anything else (including sleep). My usage pattern is going to be vastly different compared to grandma and grandpa that check their email. The thing is though that I want higher quality content delivered to me instantly, Hulu's 480 is nice and all, but I would love to have it in 720p or 1080p for my large TV. All of this uses up bandwidth/transfer. As for mobile data, I don't tend to do a lot of streaming of music and the like, so far I haven't had any issues with going over the allotted 2 GB from AT&T, that and when I do want to stream I am near Wifi.
- jff 15y ago
  Yet as another anecdote, even when watching Netflix streaming basically every night, and downloading the occasional Steam game, I have never once passed my 250 GB Comcast limit. Much as I dislike these kind of caps, it is pretty damn hard to go over 250 GB. That's, what, 200 hours of reasonably high-quality streaming video? 300+ Linux ISOs (the only reason you run bittorrent, right?)? Sadly, I don't think "unlimited" internet is a sustainable model, because generally speaking every bit you send costs the provider money, and the rise of things like Youtube mean that people actually use more bandwidth. However, 250 GB plus a reasonable per-GB charge after that should be reasonable for a very larger percentage of users.

ghshephard 15y ago

I tried to finish - but the author was either being dense or argumentative. I think AT&T has made their position pretty clear - Unlimited doesn't have overage charges, but you get rate limited when you hit the top 5% of usage (currently 2 Gigabytes). AT&T also offers 2 Gigabyte and 3 Gigabyte plans, with overage charges. Happily, AT&T has been prevented from taking over T-Mobile, so we still have at least four providers for wireless data in most major markets - let's hope it stays that way.

seanp2k2 15y ago
While oligopoly still > than monopoly or duopoly, it's still < free market. You think the wireless ISP biz is a free market? Try to start one. Try to get cities and tower owners to give you permission to put your gear up. Who will you get fibre interlinks from for those towers? Who will issue permits to dig trenches to lay fibre all over the cities? Wireless ISPs ("wireless telcos" but I consider them ISPs because ALL their calls, SMS, MMS, and data is now digital) know the game and make no mistake, it is this way on purpose. They have done everything they can to ensure an anti-competitive market. EDIT: I'm sure someone will mention that you could just resell service as many regional WISPs do. Again though, WISPs know the score here, and they price reseller service so that it basically matches what they're offering direct to consumers. At my old company, we'd resell SBC-ATT-Yahoo-Cingulair-Bell-BellSouth-Ameritech-Edge Wireless-Cellular One-Centennial-Wayport DSL (yes, those are all just known as "ATT" today) and the cheapest we could offer 1.5mbit DSL service was $25/month.
- ghshephard 15y ago
  I've never suggested it's a free market. I'm just saying there are four vendors who you can chose from based on your feelings about price and quality. I'm just happy it's not three.
josho 15y ago
The use of limiting the top 5% is quite disingenuous. As over time the limit will shift down to a lower amount as customers become annoyed and move to other plans. Clearly 2gb is not an excessive amount of data either as ATT sells larger tiered plans. So, this is clearly a breach of the spirit of the contract. A claim with the small claims court and/or FCC seems to be in order.

lancewiggs 15y ago

While the main thrust of the story is concerning, what really makes me feel ill are the scripted responses. The service agents are just picking responses from a list and hitting send. They appear to have no ability to apply thought to the process, and no authority to delegate up. I'm sure the staff are smart and frustrated, and I'm reasonably sure that they are constrained by their systems and processes. But how good would it be if the very first agent was able to actually address the question. My suggested answer would be "yes, this does seem very low, but that's what we are told - 95% of people use less than 2gb per month. It seems a little ridiculous. I can switch you to the 3gb plan of you like - it's cheaper as well (my guess). " No matter what the response it's time to stop this cruel and unusual punishment of both CS staff and customers.

seanp2k2 15y ago
All that sounds great and I agree with you 100%...however, since they're a public company, their first priority is to maximize profits, and that is exactly what they're doing here. Since USA citizens are so lazy that they let telco lobbyist groups write the laws and don't riot over them when they're passed by bought politicians, we have to deal with idiotic support as described above. This is also the reason that the sales drones at Best Buy just read the product packaging when you ask them a question about it. Unskilled labor is cheap, and these days, almost all level 1 support is unskilled (think across industries, not just IT; IT still has some great lvl1 support if you look hard enough.)
- JonWood 15y ago
  Is causing your customers to think you're ripping them of, and making them look elsewhere for service actually maximising profit though? Given the cost of acquiring a customer they should be bending over backwards to keep existing customers.
  - ilmare 15y ago
    Yes, since they know customers have nowhere else to go.
- 15y ago

joelhaasnoot 15y ago

Unfortunately, this is "standard industry practice" for most mobile providers...

evolve2k 15y ago

I would suggest that 'Unlimited' has a very clear meaning to the reasonable person and that they are now breaching their contract as it was initially advertised to the public. Assuming it was initially advertised as 'Unlimited' with relation to speed and data. Of note; Lets say you were in Australia you could take this case straight to the ACCC or the Communications Ombudsman and from experience I would be fairly confident of you getting what you want.

Zakharov 15y ago
Are you sure? Most companies here offer "unlimited" home Internet plans that are still capped.

lpolovets 15y ago

One particularly nasty thing about automatically throttling the top 5% is that it is completely divorced from costs and level of usage. Over time, if heavy users try using less data, that will just depress the amount of usage required to be the in top 5% -- but 5% of customers will still be affected by throttling. On a side note, I wonder how the cost of supplying customer service to address the complaints of the top 5% compares to the cost of just letting people consume as much data as they like. I would guess even a few minutes of a CS rep's time is more valuable than letting someone download an extra gig of data per month.

click170 15y ago
That is why I made as much noise as possible about the (IMO) abusive throttling practices of my previous ISP. Don't take this cr*p lying down, call them and tell them youre unhappy, ask them to disable it on your connection (they won't) and when they refuse, demand to speak to the supervisor. Rinse and repeat. Make it cost more to throttle than it does not to.
abs314159 15y ago
It's more underhanded than nasty but you're absolutely right that this didn't mean what they portray and most people thought. Regardless of whether a given user moderated his data usage voluntarily, because he was throttled, or switched plans, the vast majority of the top 5% likely leaves the pool every month. This means that six months after the change was introduced roughly one quarter subscribers will be removed. Why would AT&T do this? To avoid the negative publicity associated with eliminating a plan so many people valued while maximizing profitability. This was quite cleverly executed: Offer cheaper limited plans to save customers money, which has the effect of offering new customers a more competitive price while existing customers will happily pay the higher price as insurance against potential overage fees. Then, by removing the highest data users, they could maximize revenue from them while continuing to collect the higher fees from the lower data users. Then once unlimited becomes a less attractive offer than the $25 plan, eliminate it to avoid revenue leakage. The strategy might not be optimal but its superior to the simpler alternatives in the short run. Of course, the reason is works is that the majority of customers are sufficiently credulous to purchase an implicit insurance contract that AT&T never had to honor. Their actions are legally defensible since the customers did receive the uncertainty reduction in the present period but most of them likely knew they wouldn't go over and paid only for the option of maintaining that protection in a future period. That said, communication that is intentionally ambiguous so as to benefit from misunderstanding should constitute an unfair trade practice. Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the actual thought process behind these decisions.

furyofantares 15y ago

They didn't throttle mine, they simply changed my plan to the 4GB plan and told me after the fact. They did this to my wife's account as well. And if I change it to the 2GB plan and then tether using an unofficial tethering app, they automatically change my plan back to the 4GB tethering plan.

executive 15y ago

facepalm.jpg

rexf 15y ago

AT&T is vile garbage. I'm grandfathered into their unlimited plan, but throughout NYC, at work, and at home, my reception is spotty at best. As discussed in this thread, their customer service is non-existant. With an unlimited data plan at worse than dial-up speeds, the data service is useless. I'm planning on switching to Verizon when my iPhone 4 AT&T contract is up, but I'm not holding my breath for any better customer service from Verizon. There really is no cell phone company in the US that I want to give my money to.

CrazedGeek 15y ago
If you don't mind me asking, why are T-Mo/Sprint/US Cellular/etc not options for you?

alexqgb 15y ago

As recently as 18 months ago, I routinely got solid customer service from AT&T. While the wireless service itself was really sketchy in NY and SF, any account problems were handled with competence and care. Given the incredible blowback they'd received from their poor iPhone support, I always felt compelled to tell the people I ended up talking to that they were doing great jobs, and that in spite of what was said in the press about them not having their act together, I found them to be on their game, and that I really appreciated the effort they were making. Then something changed. Intelligence and responsiveness went off a cliff. On the occasions I did have to call I ended up so deeply infuriated that I'd find myself becoming angry BEFORE having to call again - even months later. It almost seemed that they'd adopted a posture of calculated incompetence, specifically designed discourage people from calling them. Within a year (and after a series of truly appalling encounters) I'd gone from publicly defending them to hating them with an intensity bordering on incandescent. Were their service any less vital to my life in general, perhaps I'd feel more sanguine. But given the central importance of wireless connectivity, a "service" relationship costing north of $100 per month and delivering nothing by dropped calls and furious anger quickly made it to the top of of my dump-judiciously list.

mikeash 15y ago

I wish ISPs would just give up on the whole "Unlimited" concept. Clearly it's not practical for them to offer truly unlimited service, so let's just cut the bullshit and go to usage-based billing. Unfortunately, the tech community hates usage-based billing about as much as they hate throttling. Baffles me as to why. I think we need to make it illegal to advertise "unlimited" without it actually being unlimited. I would have thought that existing truth-in-advertising laws would cover this, but apparently they don't. Make it illegal to promise what you never intend to deliver and this whole problem goes away. If unlimited is practical to offer, then it will be offered. If unlimited is not practical, then ISPs will no longer be allowed to pretend that it is, and will be encouraged to make the limitations of their offers obvious up-front instead of using shady nonsense like this.

thurn 15y ago
I think people object less to general bandwidth caps than to traffic discrimination. For example, Shaw Cable was accused of throttling Skype traffic but not their competing VOIP product.
ugh 15y ago
I prefer a mobile data plan that’s throttled after a certain bandwidth use to paying overage fees. What I don’t like is marketing that as “unlimited”. (I think all carriers in Germany only have plans like that. Some market them as unlimited, some don’t.) For example: I pay 13.50€ per month for 1.5GB of data (for my iPad). After those 1.5GB my speed is throttled, I do not ever have to pay more, though. I like that. I want it to be like that. The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t yet buy additional bandwidth at full speed from my carrier. (One carrier recently started doing that. 5€ for every additional GB. But it’s not automatic, you have to manually initiate that. I would prefer that massively to overage fees.)
sliverstorm 15y ago
As I see it there are three reasons the tech community hates usage-based billing. - First, any time a company tries usage-based data billing, they charge absolutely criminal rates. If you paid attention to usage-based cell service over the years, you'd know what I speak of. - Second, in an "unlimited" model, some users use more, some use less. In general the tech community will be the ones using more- so they benefit at the marginal expense of other users. They pay comparatively less by volume for their usage. - Third, in my opinion there's at least a tiny bit of entitlement going around in the online community as a whole. Nobody wants to pay for anything. You know, because "information wants to be free!" and all.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

So all the unlimited users need to use over 4gb to raise that "top 5%" number significantly.

ouchiboy 15y ago

Ouch. They wouldn't like the 3.9 TB of my last 16 month...

tzs 15y ago
That's almost 250 GB a month. How do you use that much on a mobile device? That's more than most people use on their regular Internet connection.
- ouchiboy 15y ago
  Tethering. cough. You can do that with many non-thethering plans on some jailbroken devices to save money or get around no-tethering allowed companies. I'm not going to lie and say that more than 10% of that traffic accounts to youtube videos and torrented linux distributions...

epikur 15y ago

I used precisely 5 gigs last month and received no notifications. I guess that means I'm in a higher capacity area?

yabai 15y ago

I received the dreaded text from AT&T at around 2GB of use. I have an unlimited plan, and believe that it should be "unlimited" without any throttling. I am upset about this situation, but feel a bit helpless. I applaud the comments and the post. Perhaps enough outrage will spark a revolution.

warfangle 15y ago

My virgin mobile (35 per month) unlimited data plan will start getting throttled in march - after 2.5gb. I'm so glad I left ATT behind. Sure it's a little slower, and I can't get an iphone or the latest or greatest android phone. But it's one of the best values out there, and I didn't need to sign a freaking lock in contract.

damptrousers 15y ago
So it starts throttling at a half gig later? And you have to deal with crappy phones? Great deal you got there.
- warfangle 15y ago
  At a third of the price. Price-to-value ratio is much better. And while the LG Optimus Slider has a smallish screen, it still runs android 2.3. And with a slide-out keyboard, SSH sessions are a lot easier. It's "good enough."