AT&T Follows Comcast, Will Charge $30 More to Avoid Usage Caps

Back in May of 2011 we were the first to exclusively report that AT&T would be imposing usage caps on the company's DSL and U-Verse users. Users were told DSL users would see a cap of 150 GB a month and U-Verse users would see a cap of 250 GB a month -- with all users paying $10 for every additional 50 GB of data they use. But as it turns out only DSL users found themselves actually capped, AT&T telling us that due to "the greater capacity of the U-verse architecture" U-verse caps wouldn't be enforced.

Today, AT&T announced it's bumping these usage allowances, but only for U-Verse. DSL caps will apparently remain at 150 GB. The company's also following Comcast's lead in charging users $30 a month if they want to avoid the caps entirely.

In a blog post, AT&T's Bob Bickerstaff stated that starting on May 23, the U-verse usage cap will be bumped from the uniform 250 GB per month, to different caps based on your service tier. AT&T says customers on U-Verse tiers with speeds of 768 Kbps – 6 Mbps will now face a 300 GB cap; customers on U-Verse tiers of speeds of 12 Mbps – 75Mbps will see a 600 GB cap; and customers on speeds of 100 Mbps – 1 Gbps will see a cap of 1 terabyte.

Users who exceed these caps in any given month will automatically have to pay for 50 GB of additional data for $10 each. Users who want to avoid the cap will now need to pay $30 a month more moving forward. That is unless you're also a DirecTV or AT&T U-Verse TV customer, in which case AT&T is waiving the $30 fee.

That last bit is a fairly transparent ploy to address a spike in cord cutting t AT&T -- by forcing customers into signing up for television services they may not actually want if they want to avoid usage restrictions. Whether using arbitrary caps to force users to sign up for TV technically violates net neutrality (either the FCC's rules or the concept in general) is something that's likely to be hotly debated.

It's also curious that just as AT&T indicates it's backing away from U-Verse TV (which should technically free up more bandwidth on the AT&T network), it's implementing caps on a network it originally stated didn't need caps thanks to "greater capacity." That's because as with Comcast, caps really aren't about capacity or financial necessity, they're about protecting traditional TV revenue from Internet video. At the end of the day, AT&T's just charging $30 a month (or more) for the same service, while trying to frame it as a net positive for consumers.

"We want to continue providing a great experience for our Internet customers so we’re giving U-verse Internet customers more choices," says AT&T of the changes.