AT&T joins the herd, looks to trial bandwidth capping in Reno, NV
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 5th 2008 9:15AM
posted Nov 5th 2008 9:15AM
posted Nov 5th 2008 9:15AM
The percentage of electronics at the end of their lives which were recycled.
The EPA found that the percentage remained consistent from 1999-2005. Even as recycling rates went up, the amount of electronics reaching end of life outpaced the increase, leaving the figure static. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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wow.... those are horrible. makes comcast's 250 gig limit look good.
If they bring it to me, im out, right away.
This is getting ridiculous.
In an age, where Europe is looking into solutions to open up bandwidth, American broadband carriers are just exploiting the freedom they have.
bandwidth caps are nothing short of big telco and cable protecting their turf.
with more and more HD content coming over the web, 20 gb is not very much at all. sadly this is about protecting the old order and not letting new content sources fill the void.
it is fine for video to come via the web, just not too much.
if you have a slingbox, watch netflix online or buy videos via itunes or stream over the web.... there is countless ways this effects people.
the bandwidth is about nothing but preventing people from getting too much content around the telco/cable co. or sharing it too much.
where were these people when the music business was getting destroyed... no where. why? they didn't make a penny on music sales. but when video content like tv is getting distrib on web.... hell all of a sudden bandwidth caps come into play.
there needs to be a better prevention tool to illegal filesharing. this effects a great many people who dont do anything illegal as well.
this is nothing more than a bs bait and switch opportunity for these distributors and a naked power play to raise rates.
This sucks. I have ATT and if they do this BS I will go back to cable high speed or drop their phone service and up my DSL.
How to Lose My Business, written by AT&T.
Seriously, this would be alright if they were dropping their 768kbps service to $9.95. If they want to charge full price for these limits I hope they lose an uncomfortably large number of subscribers.
--Written by a Road Runner Turbo user with no caps, 20mbps down, 1mbps up, for $40/mo. No cable TV, no land line phone, just the internet.
I live in Quebec, Canada and we have been capped for years. Videotron High Speed(7mbits) cable cost $40/month with a 12 months contract and the limit is 20/10gb dl/ul and each extra GB is about $7, but Videotron can only charge you up to $50 extra. You can get the Extreme(10mbits) connection for $65/month with 12 months contract and the limit is at 100gb dl/ul combined and each extra gb is a bit more expensive and the extra is also higher. They also have 30/50mbits connection capped at....20gb dl/ul ouch!
I don't know how much the comcast or AT&T monthly cost is but am sure we have a lot more to complain abotu here than you do :(
wait till hd becomes full time on the net,there gonna have to do away with the limit or there gonna lose alot of people...dear i say dial up may be the only option for some which sucks even more
This blows the big one! If they bring that to Houston, I believe they will lose lots of business as Fios is picking up pace in this huge city!
Yeah, with such low limits, it would be really easy to go over your limit. I think most people would be surprised to see how much traffic they generate with just general surfing. Not to mention going to abc.com to catch that episode of lost that you missed, etc.
Since U-Verse TV is IPTV, how can AT&T distinguish the amount of downloading that is for TV and how much is you actually downloading material off the 'net?
TV and internet are transmitted over different frequencies. TV has no effect on internet usage.
One assumes that you don't have to worry about this limit on Uverse?
"topping out at 150GB for the 10Mbps level of service"
That is a U-Verse only tier.
Geez... way to be backwards in innovation. Looks like cable still has muscle to compete sadly.
I'm glad I live in a FIOS supported area...
http://newteevee.com/2008/09/23/verizon-were-not-capping-bandwidth/
With a 768 kilobits/sec download you download 768 kilobits every second. That comes out to .32959 GB / hr. So that means that in less than 61 hours you can hit your 20 GB cap. So you can only use the speed you are advertised less than 3 days out of the month.
With the 10 megabit/sec service you can download 4.39453123 GB in 1 hour. With the 150 GB cap, that means you could use it up in just under 35 hours. This means you can use your advertised speed for less than 2 days.
This are of course assuming you get the advertised download speed. Most likely you don't get the advertised speed, so maybe AT&T takes this into account which is still crap.
Check out this article on AT&T's capping limits:
http://www.raidz.net/blog/att-new-capping-limits-unfair-customers