
AT&T Throttling Unlimited Plans after 2GB Data Use - mediamaker
http://www.johncozen.com/2012/02/att-throttling-unlimited-plans-after-2gb-data/
======
lpolovets
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
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.

------
mikeash
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.

~~~
sliverstorm
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.

~~~
mikeash
AT&T's overage rates are pretty reasonable. They charge $10/GB, which is about
what you pay for the initial monthly data plan anyway. Of course, there's
probably leftover sentiment from times when overages were much less
reasonable, and there are still plenty of such places remaining.

The second two I agree with, but they're sad reasons.

~~~
sliverstorm
Rates _have_ gotten better, I agree.

------
alexqgb
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.

------
rmc
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
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
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.

~~~
X-Istence
I don't run bittorrent at all (nobody on the home network does), mainly has to
do with my current employment. Between my room mate and I we do 200 GB on
average, we've had one warning sent out for getting to 245 GB.

Here is our yearly usage chart: <http://i.imgur.com/wZbU1.jpg> (since the
router/gateway was last rebooted). Do note that there is NO illegal
downloading at all. NetFlix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, Steam, Dropbox, WoW and
many others.

------
evolve2k
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
Are you sure? Most companies here offer "unlimited" home Internet plans that
are still capped.

------
lancewiggs
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
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
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
Yes, since they know customers have nowhere else to go.

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

------
ghshephard
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
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
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.

------
warfangle
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
So it starts throttling at a half gig later? And you have to deal with crappy
phones? Great deal you got there.

~~~
warfangle
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."

------
furyofantares
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.

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

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

~~~
johngalt
Won't work. Different network and different hardware.

~~~
seanp2k2
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
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
Unlocking does not void your warrantee. I've had many unlocked iPhones
replaced under warrantee. That said, if you brick it while unlocking (and the
4S tools are _very_ new), you won't be covered.

~~~
modeless
Perhaps your local Apple Store doesn't check for unlocks before warranty
replacement, but unauthorized unlocking absolutely voids your warranty in
principle and Apple would be well within their rights to refuse service. If
you don't believe me here's the relevant section of the warranty (written by
Apple in _bold_ ):

"This warranty does not apply: [...] to an Apple Product that has been
modified to alter functionality or capability without the written permission
of Apple".

------
yabai
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.

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

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

~~~
tzs
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
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...

------
mrhyperpenguin
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?

~~~
ineedtosleep
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
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
The problem is that they can get away with it. That is the cell phone market
has very little competition.

~~~
jcnnghm
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
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.

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

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

------
creativityland
Yep, I can confirm about this.

------
rorrr
Find people like you. Class action lawsuit.

~~~
quellhorst
I also have a grandfathered at&t unlimited plan and would be willing to join a
class action lawsuit.

------
executive
facepalm.jpg

