AT&T Begins Capping Broadband Users Today Just a reminder to AT&T customers: the company's usage caps on U-Verse broadband connections take effect today. When AT&T originally announced broadband caps on fixed-line connections back in 2011, it capped DSL customers at 150 GB per month and U-Verse customers at 250 GB per month. But while the DSL customer cap was enforced (by and large because AT&T wants these users to migrate to wireless anyway), AT&T didn't enforce caps for its U-Verse customers.

Until now, anyway. Back in March AT&T announced it would begin enforcing usage caps on all connections starting May 23 (aka today). As of today, U-Verse customers face different caps depending on their speed tier. AT&T says customers on U-Verse tiers with speeds between 768 Kbps and 6 Mbps will now face a 300 GB cap; customers on U-Verse tiers of speeds between 12 Mbps and 75Mbps will see a 600 GB cap; and customers on speeds between 100 Mbps and 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. Following a tactic pioneered by Comcast, AT&T's also now charging customers $30 a month extra if they want to avoid usage caps entirely. 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's a fairly obvious effort by AT&T to try and stop cord cutters from defecting to streaming video options. AT&T is planning a massive streaming video service launch later this year, and it should be interesting to see whether these services are exempt from AT&T's caps (aka "zero rating"). We've noted repeatedly how fixed-line usage caps have nothing to do with congestion, fiscal necessity or "fairness," and everything to do with protecting legacy TV revenue from the rise of Internet video. As the justifications for imposing such caps have increasingly been debunked, ISPs like AT&T have simply stopped providing any substantive justifications whatsoever. "We want to continue providing a great experience for our Internet customers so we’re giving U-verse Internet customers more choices," is as close as AT&T gets in offering a justification for this latest move. Impacted customers can find more detail on the changes in Impacted customers can find more detail on the changes in this AT&T blog post , or commiserate with fellow customers in our AT&T U-Verse or AT&T DSL forums







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Most recommended from 61 comments



TIGERON

join:2008-03-11

Boston, MA Motorola MG7550

1 edit 32 recommendations TIGERON Member Screw the customer



On May 23rd 2016, AT&T has decided that it is not enough that the company is raking $20 billion a year in profits, so they decided to implement usage based billing on all of their services including their sub-par last mile DSL that is inferior to the next generation internet demands.



Karl Bode of www.dslreports.com, Steve Blum of www.tellusventure.com and Phillip Dampier of www.stopthecap.com have documented and reported time and time again that AT&T (and Verizon) wants OUT entirely of the fixed wireline business.



It is fact that has been well documented and reported and the way that these companies have been lobbying for that to happen is having model bills authored by these companies have written to our legislatures across the country using a secret group called the American Legislative Exchange Council also known as ALEC.



Also, AT&T just recently has successfully lobbied to stop municipal broadband in the state of Tennessee EVEN if their service is lousy, sub-par, and very expensive. As a FORMER AT&T customer of 7 years my last mile DSL went from $25.00 a month to $84.00 on the last two bills before I told them to go to hell. Did I also mention that AT&T also has implemented usage-based billing with a cap of 150 gigabytes per month on that sub-par connection which never reached 6 megs by the way, with a charge of $10 for every 50 gigs a subscriber goes over.



AT&T billed me even when I shut off my modem. Their website is so badly designed, difficult to navigate and the so called usage meter was inaccessible 95% of the time.



And during the 7 years I was a customer I would call up and ask when AT&T is going to bring U-verse to my area and each time they told me they have no plans to expand that service.



Just curious : how many will take before those supporters of ISPs ripping off people finally spill over when you cannot justify this form of extortion over wireline?



How much longer are we going to continue tolerating this bullshit from ISPs



1. Metered broadband,

2. data caps,

3. high prices for very low unreliable speeds,

4. dropped connections,

5. forced modem rentals,

6. no option to use alternative hardware,

7. proprietary hardware,

8. monopolies,

9. duopolies,

10. the banning of municipal broadband,

11. protectionist laws designed to keep competition out such as google fiber,

12. the taking of taxpayers funds to supposedly help underserved areas,

13. CEOs salaries in the millions versus badly neglected networks



Am I missing anything else?



How much of this bullshit do we need to continue to put up with before we finally as a collective say we have had enough of?



Id like a refund on the lousy service I received.



AT&T, Comcast and other scumbag ISPs have figured out why spend any money to provide broadband everywhere when it is much cheaper and cost effective to bribe local officials to write protectionist laws and stop any others from bringing better services to unserved or underserved communities, and they do it under the false argument of states rights using ALEC.



Take a look at this :



»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 590.html



This second article details that the phone companies have manipulated the accounting of lines-in-service to only include a small subset, specifically, basic POTS, plain old telephone service lines, while leaving out that the majority are business broadband and data lines, known as special access. Special access are also the wires used to connect the WiFi hot spots and cell sites as almost all wireless selfies or videos end up on one of these wires.



In fact, in 2015, the FCC found that special access services was a $40 billion marketbut listed zero access lines. :



»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 592.html

»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 370.html



These three articles show how Verizon wants to shut off these lines that are very critical to communications infrastructure not just voice, but actually data, alarm systems, banking, ATMS, POS systems ect using the excuse that no one uses them as landlines anymore.



AT&T has been announcing to the press about fiber deployments, YET Notice that nowhere in any article mentions locations or who ACTUALLY has fiber. Uh-huh. I have a bridge to sell you too.



»



Heres a question for Randall Stephenson :



Hows that $65 billion Direct TV acquisition working out for you?

Or that data caps scheme you decided to impose on your customers to create value?

Or how about that bill you sponsored in Sacramento California where you want your company to walk away from last mile wireline and force people on your sub par wireless expensive capped service that is inferior and cannot deliver streaming services forget 4K?

And by the way, where is that gigapower you constantly tell the media about but not many people have?



The California PUC may not allow AT&T to shut off the legacy copper, but AT&T could come back and say we will sell it

and look at the potential buyers : CenturyLink, Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstream

and then there are the smaller ones : Sonic, DSL Extreme, Toast and maybe Earthlink



OR AT&T could spin off its entire wireline into a separate company altogether (from AT&T wireless) and sell it by chunks or as a whole. Plenty of scenarios of how this could play out.



An AT&T CWA employee told me that AT&T is fed up dealing with last mile wireline customers. He is made it very clear to me that they do NOT want the last mile wireline anymore and by 2020 all of it will be sold off. So IT IS happening. Im hoping it is Frontier or Windstream.



CenturyLink is still dealing with issues associated with the acquisitions of Embark and Qwest. Fairpoint is in talks of a possible sale or buyout OR they could grow with more acquisitions.



»www.wsj.com/articles/fro ··· 23431602



Look at Connecticut for example. It is well known that AT&T (as well as Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobil) still serves that state with cellular wireless service despite AT&Ts sale of their entire wireline operations to Frontier. Former Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter has publicly stated that she and Randall Stephenson negotiated that deal years ago before finally closing at the end of 2014. So the possibility of another deal like this is not far fetched. Remember, Frontier wants these networks because they know that wireless is not a substitute for wireline.



Wilderotter and now the current Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy have also said that AT&T and Verizon are their biggest customers. The MA Bell giants pay Frontier (and other fixed telecom/broadband providers) to use their network as middle mile and backhaul to deliver services.



Stephenson may not have a choice as public officials may force him to sell off the unwanted wireline as a condition of his desire to want a full wireless network at least here in California. The man is many things but one he is not is stupid. Stephenson knows that these copper assets are still worth a lot of money. It would not make financial sense for AT&T to simply shut off the unwanted copper and still hold onto the properties while paying taxes for them. That also does not reflect well on any companys balance sheet. Either you convert the assets to utilize for something else or transfer them to another company that will make use of them. In these two scenarios either way you come out making a profit. That makes sense

even from a business standpoint.



Wait for AT&T to have a big expense from a merger or buying a huge amount of spectrum and they will use Frontier like a purchase eraser on a credit card so that they can hide the effect that this has on earnings. Wall Street Analysts fall for it every time, or maybe they think that everyone who lives in an underserved area should move to San Francisco. Frontier wins from this too because they can momentarily look like they arent bleeding customers to death by buying a fresh crop of them.



How ironic as theres another spectrum auction coming up. This is NO coincidence.



Wireless is not and will never be a substitute for wireline. With the rise of more IOT devices and streaming video that are following the footsteps of Netflix not to mention 4K and eventually 8K, there is simply no way that wireless can handle those demands.



»



We need fixed wireline, Period.



So if you dont want the copper fixed wireline networks anymore, hand the assets over to someone else who does. Make money no matter what.On May 23rd 2016, AT&T has decided that it is not enough that the company is raking $20 billion a year in profits, so they decided to implement usage based billing on all of their services including their sub-par last mile DSL that is inferior to the next generation internet demands.Karl Bode of www.dslreports.com, Steve Blum of www.tellusventure.com and Phillip Dampier of www.stopthecap.com have documented and reported time and time again that AT&T (and Verizon) wants OUT entirely of the fixed wireline business.It is fact that has been well documented and reported and the way that these companies have been lobbying for that to happen is having model bills authored by these companies have written to our legislatures across the country using a secret group called the American Legislative Exchange Council also known as ALEC.Also, AT&T just recently has successfully lobbied to stop municipal broadband in the state of Tennessee EVEN if their service is lousy, sub-par, and very expensive. As a FORMER AT&T customer of 7 years my last mile DSL went from $25.00 a month to $84.00 on the last two bills before I told them to go to hell. Did I also mention that AT&T also has implemented usage-based billing with a cap of 150 gigabytes per month on that sub-par connection which never reached 6 megs by the way, with a charge of $10 for every 50 gigs a subscriber goes over.AT&T billed me even when I shut off my modem. Their website is so badly designed, difficult to navigate and the so called usage meter was inaccessible 95% of the time.And during the 7 years I was a customer I would call up and ask when AT&T is going to bring U-verse to my area and each time they told me they have no plans to expand that service.Just curious : how many will take before those supporters of ISPs ripping off people finally spill over when you cannot justify this form of extortion over wireline?How much longer are we going to continue tolerating this bullshit from ISPs1. Metered broadband,2. data caps,3. high prices for very low unreliable speeds,4. dropped connections,5. forced modem rentals,6. no option to use alternative hardware,7. proprietary hardware,8. monopolies,9. duopolies,10. the banning of municipal broadband,11. protectionist laws designed to keep competition out such as google fiber,12. the taking of taxpayers funds to supposedly help underserved areas,13. CEOs salaries in the millions versus badly neglected networksAm I missing anything else?How much of this bullshit do we need to continue to put up with before we finally as a collective say we have had enough of?Id like a refund on the lousy service I received.AT&T, Comcast and other scumbag ISPs have figured out why spend any money to provide broadband everywhere when it is much cheaper and cost effective to bribe local officials to write protectionist laws and stop any others from bringing better services to unserved or underserved communities, and they do it under the false argument of states rights using ALEC.Take a look at this :»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 590.htmlThis second article details that the phone companies have manipulated the accounting of lines-in-service to only include a small subset, specifically, basic POTS, plain old telephone service lines, while leaving out that the majority are business broadband and data lines, known as special access. Special access are also the wires used to connect the WiFi hot spots and cell sites as almost all wireless selfies or videos end up on one of these wires.In fact, in 2015, the FCC found that special access services was a $40 billion marketbut listed zero access lines. :»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 592.html»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 370.htmlThese three articles show how Verizon wants to shut off these lines that are very critical to communications infrastructure not just voice, but actually data, alarm systems, banking, ATMS, POS systems ect using the excuse that no one uses them as landlines anymore.AT&T has been announcing to the press about fiber deployments, YET Notice that nowhere in any article mentions locations or who ACTUALLY has fiber. Uh-huh. I have a bridge to sell you too. /.../C ··· ould-Let ...Heres a question for Randall Stephenson :Hows that $65 billion Direct TV acquisition working out for you?Or that data caps scheme you decided to impose on your customers to create value?Or how about that bill you sponsored in Sacramento California where you want your company to walk away from last mile wireline and force people on your sub par wireless expensive capped service that is inferior and cannot deliver streaming services forget 4K?And by the way, where is that gigapower you constantly tell the media about but not many people have?The California PUC may not allow AT&T to shut off the legacy copper, but AT&T could come back and say we will sell itand look at the potential buyers : CenturyLink, Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstreamand then there are the smaller ones : Sonic, DSL Extreme, Toast and maybe EarthlinkOR AT&T could spin off its entire wireline into a separate company altogether (from AT&T wireless) and sell it by chunks or as a whole. Plenty of scenarios of how this could play out.An AT&T CWA employee told me that AT&T is fed up dealing with last mile wireline customers. He is made it very clear to me that they do NOT want the last mile wireline anymore and by 2020 all of it will be sold off. So IT IS happening. Im hoping it is Frontier or Windstream.CenturyLink is still dealing with issues associated with the acquisitions of Embark and Qwest. Fairpoint is in talks of a possible sale or buyout OR they could grow with more acquisitions.»www.wsj.com/articles/fro ··· 23431602Look at Connecticut for example. It is well known that AT&T (as well as Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobil) still serves that state with cellular wireless service despite AT&Ts sale of their entire wireline operations to Frontier. Former Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter has publicly stated that she and Randall Stephenson negotiated that deal years ago before finally closing at the end of 2014. So the possibility of another deal like this is not far fetched. Remember, Frontier wants these networks because they know that wireless is not a substitute for wireline.Wilderotter and now the current Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy have also said that AT&T and Verizon are their biggest customers. The MA Bell giants pay Frontier (and other fixed telecom/broadband providers) to use their network as middle mile and backhaul to deliver services.Stephenson may not have a choice as public officials may force him to sell off the unwanted wireline as a condition of his desire to want a full wireless network at least here in California. The man is many things but one he is not is stupid. Stephenson knows that these copper assets are still worth a lot of money. It would not make financial sense for AT&T to simply shut off the unwanted copper and still hold onto the properties while paying taxes for them. That also does not reflect well on any companys balance sheet. Either you convert the assets to utilize for something else or transfer them to another company that will make use of them. In these two scenarios either way you come out making a profit. That makes senseeven from a business standpoint.Wait for AT&T to have a big expense from a merger or buying a huge amount of spectrum and they will use Frontier like a purchase eraser on a credit card so that they can hide the effect that this has on earnings. Wall Street Analysts fall for it every time, or maybe they think that everyone who lives in an underserved area should move to San Francisco. Frontier wins from this too because they can momentarily look like they arent bleeding customers to death by buying a fresh crop of them.How ironic as theres another spectrum auction coming up. This is NO coincidence.Wireless is not and will never be a substitute for wireline. With the rise of more IOT devices and streaming video that are following the footsteps of Netflix not to mention 4K and eventually 8K, there is simply no way that wireless can handle those demands. /.../A ··· Attempts ...We need fixed wireline, Period.So if you dont want the copper fixed wireline networks anymore, hand the assets over to someone else who does.

davidc502

join:2002-03-06

Mount Juliet, TN 23 recommendations davidc502 Member Lets get this right 1. Customers already pay a PREMIUM for Internet access. The US has some of the highest broadband costs in the world.

2. Companies, like Netflix, pay to peer with ATT, Comcast etc.

3. Customers pay another PREMIUM if they want to avoid caps all together OR curtail habits to keep under the cap.

5. ATT already injects ads into many browsers for extra revenue.

6. The above are things we know about, so what about the revenues we don't know about?



With all this money and profits, are customers getting the best throughput and reliability in the world? Plain and simple; they are not.



Due to most people dealing with a monopoly or duopoly, they don't have much of a choice, but for those who do have a choice, they need to stand up and be heard.

Alan Gordon5

join:2006-07-24

Dawson, GA 15 recommendations Alan Gordon5 Member I Still Think It's Stupid... ... that they're offering different caps for different speed tiers.



Sure, there might be some users that have access to Gigapower that only wants 6Mbps, but what if you have 6Mbps service because that's ALL YOU CAN GET? It's like AT&T is penalizing their subscribers for having crappy service... tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY 14 recommendations tmc8080 Member there ought to be a LAW.. this is WHY telcos need regulation if a monopoly/duopoly and competitors! if left to their own greedy devices.. they race right to the caps & overages to pad their bottom line every time!

then they try to spin it like they are doing YOU a favor by ripping you off!



in other news, while gasoline prices climb SEASONALLY higher-- as if the demand and cost ever fluctuates THAT much all it means is by what MARGIN the company reaps in profits by.. never to any of these companies in big corporate america sell a product at a break even or LOSS, god forbid.. that's not the greedy american way

Gilitar

join:2012-02-01

Mobile, AL 13 recommendations Gilitar Member Screwing DSL customers AT&T has been screwing DSL customers for years. They have been increasing the price every year while instituting a 150 GB cap! Waiting for the telco shill known as Corporate to dislike this comment.....

Simba7

I Void Warranties

join:2003-03-24

Fromberg, MT 18.2 1.6

12 recommendations Simba7 Member We now own DirecTV.. ..now you have no choice! We will stab you (in the pocketbook) if you even think of cutting the cord!



Oh, and all those Netflix users, I guess you will be subscribing to our over-priced DirecTV packages or pay more if you go over our cap! Either way, we will be paid what we think we should be paid! manhole0

join:2000-09-12

Modesto, CA 4 recommendations manhole0 Member Resellers I posted this in the forum too, but this article seems appropriate for a re-post. The resellers of Uverse such as Sonic and DSLExtreme don't impose any caps and can make a profit. So it's obvious that AT&T and Comcast are doing this purely to discourage cord cutting (further evident by the lack of caps when you subscribe to DirecTV or pay the $30 cord-free tax).



Has anyone tried Toast.net? They are a Uverse reseller with the best non-promotional pricing I've seen out there (no taxes, equipment rental fees, or other below the line fees - just a one time $50 install fee). I'm really tempted to switch to them when my Comcast contract is up, but I've yet to find any reviews on their service. etaadmin

join:2002-01-17

united state 4 recommendations etaadmin Member If available switch to Charter/TWC 7 YEARS!



The plus is that you'll get faster speeds than at&t and you will have symmetrical 10Gbps »



What are you waiting for? You will be caps free forThe plus is that you'll get faster speeds than at&t and you will have symmetrical 10Gbps » www.lightreading.com/cab ··· /723555? at some point in the futureWhat are you waiting for? slackrl

join:2015-04-02

So Cal 3 recommendations slackrl Member AKA at&t .......aka Enron....The Smartest Guys In The Room!



slackrl

woody7

Premium Member

join:2000-10-13

Torrance, CA 3 recommendations woody7 Premium Member hmmmmmmmmmm i Have 45/5 Uverse it says 750 GB cap per month I have it in writing, am I screwed??