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AT&T Wireless Says it Will Ban P2P Users
Posted 08/03/08 at 12:58:50 AM | by Paul Lilly
Shawn Fanning, the former Northeastern University student who created Napster and popularized peer-to-peer sharing, could never have imagined all the fuss the technology would create nearly a decade later. Comcast earlier this year drew ire over throttling Bittorrent traffic, and now AT&T is taking a hard lined stance against its wireless customers engaging in P2P activities.
FCC Republican Robert McDowell asked AT&T about its policy regarding P2P traffic over its wireless network, and in a letter, Robert Quinn, AT&T senior VP for regulatory affairs, said in no uncertain terms that its customers are strictly forbidden from usng P2P services.
"AT&T's terms of service for mobile wireless broadband customers prohibit all uses that may cause extreme network capacity issues, and explicitly identify P2P file sharing applications as such a use," Quinn wrote.
Unlike Comcast, who drew criticism both for throttling internet traffic and for initially denying it was doing so, Quinn also wrote in his letter that AT&T does not use network management tools to block the use of P2P applications, and that its customers are warned in writing that they could have their service terminated if caught violating the policy.
Do you agree with what AT&T is doing?
Image Credit: AT&T
Comments Print Email Come on you...
Submitted by TheDuck on Sun, 2008-08-03 11:50
Come on! You people are with AT&T, just get away from them! P2P can be useful at times... You know you want to...
AT&T should not prevent its users from using P2P, what if someone needs an alternative to Mesh and Online Storage or Email. Come on AT&T, get out of the digital stone age.
Stop whining and get
Submitted by sanravel on Sun, 2008-08-03 07:58
Stop whining and get yourself a T1 connection. If you are using that much bandwidth you get what you deserve,
when they cut you off. You can pay for the connection with all the money you are saving by stealing movies and music over P2P.
Why is there always a "stop your whining & pay $$$..." post?
Submitted by Wildebeast on Sun, 2008-08-03 12:48
Do you live with your parents, billing some giant litigous corporation hundreds of thousands a year, or more than one of those???
When the news says "gase prices hit a new record high," are you sitting there saying "quit your whining and start walking/bicycling/canoeing everywhere you go..."????
I thought comments were for a certain amount of discussion.
I can understand if you get tired of similar views. Yours seems pretty poorly thought through, to be making the "stop whining" comment.
Btw, I am still 56k, and already being throttled. Now why would I pay them 80% more for dsl? ---So I can cross my fingers they won't feel the need to throttle that too? Would they tell me, if they made that decision (they didn't with 56k, it's erratic)??
wow.... Mostly everybody
Submitted by AndyYankee17 on Sun, 2008-08-03 08:35
wow....
Mostly everybody who has broadband has a connection faster than T1. T1 is just over 1.5 mbps. but yeah, I guess we all should downgrade our internet connections and pay $600/month for it.
I understand ATT's point, there isn't a whole lot of bandwidth, but I do have to say if they want you to limit your bandwidth then they should meter your connection.
By the way, I, like a lot of people here, have used bittorrent for years without downloading anything illegal.
http://legaltorrents.com/
a lot of open source projects
Linux distrobutions
Azureus Vuze
Bittorrent.com
Submitted by sanravel on Mon, 2008-08-04 20:07
I have a T1 line for my business so I can do as I please with it. An ISP isn't telling me how much data I can transfer and I don't have to worry about down time. Speed doesn't really matter with day to day business transactions or file transfers between offices even when they are large. The security and reliability I have with my provider make it worth the price, my business is always open.
I don't like theives. The majority of P2P users are downloading illegally. A few thousand people downloading Linux distros are not the folks that AT&T and the others are complaining about. It's the users that download movies, music, and pirated software. Check the torrent sites and see what's available and what the most popular downloads are.
I download Ubuntu everytime there is a new version and I can do it without P2P.
Its Their Service
Submitted by zeringue on Sun, 2008-08-03 05:30
At least ATT was upfront and honest about it. I am sure the wireless network being used now barely has enough bandwidth for the little bit of data being transferred now. The communications companies simply make their living off of the fact that most of us will never fully utilize the bandwidth and when we do we are labeled and throttled.
Submitted by thafrogggg on Sat, 2008-08-02 23:55
Even though I do not agree with their policy, I have to give them credit. They came right out and said exactly what their stance is. I live in a very rural area and I really only have three choices for net access, four if you count dial-up, satellite (hughes net), cable (charter), and wireless broadband (Verizon wireless).
I looked closely at each and noted that 1. hughes net is rather expensive and has had some bad reviews concerning overall speed. 2. Verizon states in their policy that excessive bandwidth usage can result in an account termination. 3. Charter offered several speed/pricing plans giving me more choices and ability to keep in a budget.
I chose the service provider that best fit my needs, in this case, charter and I advise anyone else to do the same. If ATT wireless does not meet your file sharing needs, go with a provider that does. Just make sure to thoroughly read the contract conditions. Most providers have them online or will email them to you.
I think its bullshit, if i
Submitted by frdbrlw on Sat, 2008-08-02 23:19
I think its bullshit, if i am paying for there service why should they decide what i can use it for.
i couldn't agree more
Submitted by nerdzilla1130 on Sun, 2008-08-03 17:34
i use at&t for the simple reason that it is the cheapest broad band, dsl lite, i can find.
this is gonna have some lawsuites on its hands. yay bloddy death match!!!!!
Submitted by Wildebeast on Sun, 2008-08-03 01:24
It also automatically cuts down individual customer's usage, so their network service seems faster and better, over all.
This concept is kind of a personal issue for me. They really do prefer to have us pay for bandwidth we won't use 75-90% of the time...
Must be nice work, if you can find it. How would you like to get paid for 40 hours a week --and if you actually have to work more than 38, you get to charge penalties or blacklist your employer??
It is a shame really, because the way it falls out basically assumes P2P is only used to violate copyright laws... To me, that's a bit like saying having an mp3 encoder program is not allowed. They can't allow themselves to be liable for customers' abuses, though ---they certainly don't want to pay someone to police them.
Maybe distributed computing is next. It's consuming bandwidth --it's sharing data... oh my!
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