AT&T Sends Throttling Warning To Heavy Data Users
AT&T Sends Throttling Warning To Heavy Data Users
Posted 10/03/2011 at 11:04am
| by Brad Chacos
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Hey, remember how AT&T was the first telco to do away with unlimited data? Now, the best Ma Bell customers can do is plop down $25 for a 2GB plan, then another $10 for each additional GB of overage. It can get pricey for power users, but not for much longer; AT&T plans placing the muzzle on the top 5 percent of bandwidth hogs by throttling their connection sometime soon. The company began sending out text messages warning as much to its heaviest users today.
According to Wired, the SMS reads as follows: “Your data use this month places you in the top 5% of users. Use Wi-Fi to help avoid reduced speeds. Visit att.com/dataplans or call 8663447584.” There’s no information about when any throttling would actually take effect. While the suggestion to tap into Wi-Fi networks is probably a good idea for someone who is downloading enough data to be in the top 5 percent of users – and paying $10 a gig for the privilege – several users have already said they don’t like the idea of being throttled for data they are paying for. What’s your take on the situation, Maximum PC readers?
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Meat_Juice
October 04, 2011 at 10:47am
$25 for 2gb + $10/gb thereafter? Are you shitting me? That's nothing short of criminal. The USA is supposed to be a first class industrialized country. How can you even think of competing with prices like that. That's a shadey business practice if I've ever heard of one. Bell and all the others should have the shit regulated out of them. It's clear they're in the business of gouging and not serving consumers in turn for a reasonable profit. Feel sorry for you guys. All your corporations seem to have you by the balls.
TechLarry
October 04, 2011 at 7:41am
I don't know who is killing who. Netflix killing Telco's, or Telco's killing NetFlix.
All I know is consumers are stuck in the middle.
Bandwidth shortages are a fallacy anyway, at least at the top tiers. If they don't have the bandwidth, inexpensively, then they are just plain doing it wrong.
angelusrukia
October 04, 2011 at 2:18am
Not only is this an attempt to get more money from their customers, but its also designed to put a dent in video streaming services such as Netflix because satellite and cable are losing customers. These companies will either have to adapt to service its customers or be destroyed... resistance is futile!
Sentinel137
October 03, 2011 at 5:48pm
In this day and age, More and More people and items that reliy on broad band data caps are senceless, Its just an other tool for them to suck more dollars from us,,
This is going to turn out one of 3 ways,
One way is you cant afford the plan and will have to drop back to the old style of call and texting if they have they still sell the phones that do this, in which I last check are getting fewer by the year, And soon all one can get is a Data plan phone if you like it or not,,
Two, Get a per pay phone and pay as you can afford it,
Three, Yeah they do away with the ban caps and pay a nice anual price and every body is happy, They make money by the amount of customers on a globle scale,,
Number three would be to easy, and these companys really dont like happy people, they would have to lay off a buch of customer service people,
aaronj2906
October 03, 2011 at 4:38pm
In the class-action lawsuit of Hart v. Comcast, Comcast lost. Is this thing that AT&T doing of similar ilk?
jesse_n_sf
October 03, 2011 at 1:44pm
All this hype about video calling will also break the data caps. If they want data caps then the minimum will have to be 100GB.
titan8813
October 03, 2011 at 11:36am
In other news, AT&T still ranks among the worst for customer satisfaction among wireless carriers. Okay I don't know if that's true or not.
Tyger
October 03, 2011 at 11:07am
Typical at&t, want you to pay for a service, but they don't want you to actually use it.
Carlidan
October 03, 2011 at 6:43pm
second that motion!
P.S. Ha Ha AT&T switched service to Time Warner for my internet. So NO data capping me. :)
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