Well, I've had my iPhone for 28 months now and in that time I have consumed 1.7GB of data sent and received. I don't know though if App/iTunes purchases count towards that though...
I wouldn't mind a tiered price where I could get 1GB a month for $10 that were the case.
I am not one of the 3% people; I am not even an AT&T customer, but I just find this ridiculous.
AT&T advertises the iPhone plan with the words "unlimited data" but in reality there is a cap (I don't understand how this is possible in this lawsuit country). And now AT&T are trying to make other people hate the 3% people, who use what they are paying for.
"Oh, don't blame me or my network. Yes, I am advertising unlimited data but they are the ones who actually use unlimited data."
I really don't understand people here who try to rationalize what AT&T is doing and saying. Yes, they might not expect such a success with the iPhone. But at the same time they are also getting a big big unexpected revenue. We are going to see the 4th iPhone in about half a year and you are telling me it is acceptable that they are still trying to bring their network's performance up to par?
If your all-you-can-eat restaurant doesn't have enough food for all customers, don't blame the ones who eat the most; blame yourself because either you are incompetent or too greedy.
No one could have predicted the astounding success of the iPhone or the impact on AT&T's network.
<sarcasm>
Yes. Nobody could have predicted that. It was a total surprise.
Nobody said the iPhone would be the ultimate phone. It never got the moniker "Jesus Phone".
Pundits weren't yapping about the iPhone's internet features for months prior to the iPhone launch.
There weren't thousands of articles on hundreds of sites and newspapers about how the iPhone might make AT&T's network collapse.
Nobody in the world thought that giving a bunch of geeks phones with a decent web browser & lots of other shiny internet-based features would cause them to *GASP* TRANSFER DATA!
</sarcasm>
I personally wasn't surprised when AT&T started crying about data usage, however my contract stipulates "unlimited" data usage. I expect AT&T to live up to that.
Note that my contract says nothing about the quality of that connection - it's a best-effort service on a good day. I fully expect my transfer speeds to be slow because of all the other bandwidth hogs on AT&T's wireless network, but I do expect to be able to use the connection, and transfer as much data of whatever type I desire across it.
If AT&T changes conditions to your contract you are free to leave with no ETF
The more bandwith you use, the more you pay. This is fair to consumers who use little (they are practically robbing people who use less than 1GB a month) and to those abusing the system eating 5-10GBs in a day.
AT&T service took a huge hit when the iphone came to 3G. When you have people abusing the service, its only natural there are going to be limits placed or tiers made.
This is the MOST telling part of the greed of coroporations:
For those service providers with data caps, these are usually set around 50 Gbyte and go up to 150 Gbyte a month. This is therefore a good indication of the level of bandwidth at which you start being considered a "hog". But wait: 50 Gbyte a month is? 150 kbps average (0,15 Mbps), 150 Gbyte a month is 450 kbps on average. If you have a 10 Mbps link, that's only 1,5 % or 4,5 % of its maximum advertised speed!
And that would be "hogging"?
This is the same thing Comcast was trying to do with the NFL Network.....they claimed that since granny jones in MO. does not watch football, why should she incur the 2.50 charge added to her cable for the NFL Network.....HOWEVER.....if you asked MOST cable subscribers if they watch al 280+ channels they would say no! But if you said, hey do you want a la cart cable (possibly only having to pay for three of four channels) Most would say YES and comcast would lost Millions......
Same thing here, sure, some people use A LOT .....but on the flip side, some people use HARDLY ANY......so the money is accounted for either way. The Mega-user is cancelled out by the Mini-user. If you want to cry that you don't use that much and are still being charged....your an idiot for buying it in the first place! ATT no matter how much they claim, does not want a la cart data plans.....they would lose more from the mini-user than they would gain from the mega-users.
i've lately found myself wanting to waste a few hours and go into an at&t store in search of a new phone and plan for my family of two adults and four college-bound kids. get one or two of the sales guys to show me all their phones and explain all their features and explain all their data plans.
then tell them i have an unlimited amount of cash and get them to sign me up for the all you-can-eat family plans. they'd probably love to have a new customer who'd be paying several hundred bucks a month.
then when it comes time to commit i just throw a twenty on the counter and tell them that's my unlimited amount of money. 20 bucks a month. i can't imagine that when they heard me say unlimited they would actually believe it. they say it and it ain't true.
maybe we can have a national day of fuck-you-at&t. one or two people per store to do this scenario; to waste their time and get them to realize what a pain in the ass they are to their customers.
That's because you don't understand that no carrier literally offer "unlimited" data, they all have soft caps in the fine print of the contract. The soft cap is a contractual safeguard that helps the carrier take action if too many people hog bandwidth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ALUOp
AT&T advertises the iPhone plan with the words "unlimited data" but in reality there is a cap (I don't understand how this is possible in this lawsuit country). And now AT&T are trying to make other people hate the 3% people, who use what they are paying for.
AT&T doesn't have to change the contract, there already is a 5GB soft cap in the contract. The soft cap allows AT&T to discourage people who frequently exceed the 5GB cap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifail
Why do people keep repeating the same things?
If AT&T changes conditions to your contract you are free to leave with no ETF
AT&T service took a huge hit when the iphone came to 3G. When you have people abusing the service, its only natural there are going to be limits placed or tiers made.
AT&T advertises an unlimited service. UNlimited. WITHOUT limitation.
Transferring a terabyte of data in a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transferring an exabyte of data a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transfering a kilobyte of data a month would not be abusing this service.
iFail, please read the above article BEFORE you start carrying the flags of the mega-corporations who claim to be on your side.
They knew (att) what they were getting into with offering unlimited services.....they lured in consumers with a deal, and now they are pissed because they can't discriminate pricing on those same consumers. Would they have had the 3,000,000 new subscribers if they did not offer unlimited service? Maybe....or maybe not. I can only speak for myself in that I would not have done the deal. I have unlimited texting too....I would be one of the ones you claim are getting ripped off since I only text about 150 times a month.....but I never want to have to keep track of it and possibly go over, so I pay more a month to not have to worry about it. if they did not offer $30 for unlimited (or charged more for unlimited) I would have stuck with my non-internet phone. But I did not want to worry about "going over".
I think 30 for unlimited is more than fair.....now....if you want to add tiers below 30 then fine, but when my HOME internet costs 40 a month, how can you tell me 50 a month for mobile is fair?
AT&T has reported its 3G data usage has gone up 5000% year over year. I don't think your mini and max examples holds true in this situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzmsngr
Same thing here, sure, some people use A LOT .....but on the flip side, some people use HARDLY ANY......so the money is accounted for either way. The Mega-user is cancelled out by the Mini-user. If you want to cry that you don't use that much and are still being charged....your an idiot for buying it in the first place! ATT no matter how much they claim, does not want a la cart data plans.....they would lose more from the mini-user than they would gain from the mega-users.
They can continue to offer unlimited internet access but once you exceed a VERY HIGH threshold your connection is slowed down for the rest of the month.
This will not affect 97% of users.
If it does affect you, then good! You are using too much of MY bandwidth.
I can tell you, having worked as an systems engineer for a high profile MCSE contracting for and during Comcast's HSI rollout and afterward, the hog is a myth.
The closest you get (if significant bandwidth 'hogging' is to even be observed) to a hog is like a *herd* of feral hogs, thousands strong. And one of the herd may be a hog one month and not the next. Some a chronic hogs, but they are still drops in the bucket. Go after one of them is like trying to swat a bee in a swarm chasing you (sorry for mixed metaphors).
The reality is that blaming the end user is a cheap shot, an easy target for providers who haven't scaled their service in proportion to their user base. And it's ironic, because their high speeds and constant access were the selling points, the opiates that got people addicted to the web in the first place. And now that people are addicted, they want to pretend it's not their fault for selling HSI 'high speed, always on, unlimited usage' and having people actually taking them up on that.
If there are local problems, it is the industry's shortcoming. Period. Comcast has more money than they know what to do with, for example. There is no reason they can't scale up burdened areas. The backbones aren't the bottleneck.
Of course they knew what they were doing when they started - the phone companies have been complaining for years now that they have bought more bandwidth than people were using and it was costing them big time. They were desperate to encourage people to use bandwidth (and pay for it) - hence all the music services etc.
The the iPhone comes along and makes consuming data into a good experience and now they're running scared because they don't have enough bandwidth. Somehow I feel they shouldn't be allowed to have this both ways.
Anyway the solution is obvious - charge people $5 per 500 MB per month with a maximum of $30. This incentivizes people to use less bandwidth (and encourages many people to get a new iPhone probably) but doesn't change the terms on any established users. They could probably get away with a $50 cap for new contracts without upsetting many.
This article is a theory devoid of any real information to apply that theory. That article has no real information about AT&T's current situation. They have no proof if the lesser 3G user off set the heavy users.
I can tell you this past summer in the middle of the day in Manhattan, AT&T 3G was useless. It was because every other person is using an iPhone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzmsngr
tenobell ....
you should read this article too when talking about "bandwitdth hogs"
If your all-you-can-eat restaurant doesn't have enough food for all customers, don't blame the ones who eat the most; blame yourself because either you are incompetent or too greedy.
Or just stop being an all-you-can-eat restaurant when the regular customers aren't happy with the resulting quality due to a wrong mixed calculation and look for alternative offers.
Hm, I missed the exclusive contract thing in the US.
Perhaps the end of exclusivity could be a chance for AT&T...
Comments
I wouldn't mind a tiered price where I could get 1GB a month for $10 that were the case.
AT&T advertises the iPhone plan with the words "unlimited data" but in reality there is a cap (I don't understand how this is possible in this lawsuit country). And now AT&T are trying to make other people hate the 3% people, who use what they are paying for.
"Oh, don't blame me or my network. Yes, I am advertising unlimited data but they are the ones who actually use unlimited data."
I really don't understand people here who try to rationalize what AT&T is doing and saying. Yes, they might not expect such a success with the iPhone. But at the same time they are also getting a big big unexpected revenue. We are going to see the 4th iPhone in about half a year and you are telling me it is acceptable that they are still trying to bring their network's performance up to par?
If your all-you-can-eat restaurant doesn't have enough food for all customers, don't blame the ones who eat the most; blame yourself because either you are incompetent or too greedy.
No one could have predicted the astounding success of the iPhone or the impact on AT&T's network.
<sarcasm>
Yes. Nobody could have predicted that. It was a total surprise.
Nobody said the iPhone would be the ultimate phone. It never got the moniker "Jesus Phone".
Pundits weren't yapping about the iPhone's internet features for months prior to the iPhone launch.
There weren't thousands of articles on hundreds of sites and newspapers about how the iPhone might make AT&T's network collapse.
Nobody in the world thought that giving a bunch of geeks phones with a decent web browser & lots of other shiny internet-based features would cause them to *GASP* TRANSFER DATA!
</sarcasm>
I personally wasn't surprised when AT&T started crying about data usage, however my contract stipulates "unlimited" data usage. I expect AT&T to live up to that.
Note that my contract says nothing about the quality of that connection - it's a best-effort service on a good day. I fully expect my transfer speeds to be slow because of all the other bandwidth hogs on AT&T's wireless network, but I do expect to be able to use the connection, and transfer as much data of whatever type I desire across it.
I'm just sayin'...
If AT&T changes conditions to your contract you are free to leave with no ETF
The more bandwith you use, the more you pay. This is fair to consumers who use little (they are practically robbing people who use less than 1GB a month) and to those abusing the system eating 5-10GBs in a day.
AT&T service took a huge hit when the iphone came to 3G. When you have people abusing the service, its only natural there are going to be limits placed or tiers made.
http://gizmodo.com/5419179/is-the-bandwidth-hog-a-myth
This is the MOST telling part of the greed of coroporations:
For those service providers with data caps, these are usually set around 50 Gbyte and go up to 150 Gbyte a month. This is therefore a good indication of the level of bandwidth at which you start being considered a "hog". But wait: 50 Gbyte a month is? 150 kbps average (0,15 Mbps), 150 Gbyte a month is 450 kbps on average. If you have a 10 Mbps link, that's only 1,5 % or 4,5 % of its maximum advertised speed!
And that would be "hogging"?
This is the same thing Comcast was trying to do with the NFL Network.....they claimed that since granny jones in MO. does not watch football, why should she incur the 2.50 charge added to her cable for the NFL Network.....HOWEVER.....if you asked MOST cable subscribers if they watch al 280+ channels they would say no! But if you said, hey do you want a la cart cable (possibly only having to pay for three of four channels) Most would say YES and comcast would lost Millions......
Same thing here, sure, some people use A LOT .....but on the flip side, some people use HARDLY ANY......so the money is accounted for either way. The Mega-user is cancelled out by the Mini-user. If you want to cry that you don't use that much and are still being charged....your an idiot for buying it in the first place! ATT no matter how much they claim, does not want a la cart data plans.....they would lose more from the mini-user than they would gain from the mega-users.
then tell them i have an unlimited amount of cash and get them to sign me up for the all you-can-eat family plans. they'd probably love to have a new customer who'd be paying several hundred bucks a month.
then when it comes time to commit i just throw a twenty on the counter and tell them that's my unlimited amount of money. 20 bucks a month. i can't imagine that when they heard me say unlimited they would actually believe it. they say it and it ain't true.
maybe we can have a national day of fuck-you-at&t. one or two people per store to do this scenario; to waste their time and get them to realize what a pain in the ass they are to their customers.
I am paying AT&T for an UNLIMITED data plan. AS ADVERTISED.
I bought an iPhone to surf the web, stream music and videos and use maps and GPS, AS ADVERTISED.
What did they think I would do with it? Just talk on the phone?
Wake up AT&T in is nearly 2010! Hello Verizon!
You are not the problem.
It is the 3% of users who are using 100X times as much data as you are.
I'm also sure the contract doesn't allow tethering and that is probably what the 3% are doing.
AT&T advertises the iPhone plan with the words "unlimited data" but in reality there is a cap (I don't understand how this is possible in this lawsuit country). And now AT&T are trying to make other people hate the 3% people, who use what they are paying for.
Why do people keep repeating the same things?
If AT&T changes conditions to your contract you are free to leave with no ETF
AT&T service took a huge hit when the iphone came to 3G. When you have people abusing the service, its only natural there are going to be limits placed or tiers made.
AT&T advertises an unlimited service. UNlimited. WITHOUT limitation.
Transferring a terabyte of data in a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transferring an exabyte of data a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transfering a kilobyte of data a month would not be abusing this service.
They knew (att) what they were getting into with offering unlimited services.....they lured in consumers with a deal, and now they are pissed because they can't discriminate pricing on those same consumers. Would they have had the 3,000,000 new subscribers if they did not offer unlimited service? Maybe....or maybe not. I can only speak for myself in that I would not have done the deal. I have unlimited texting too....I would be one of the ones you claim are getting ripped off since I only text about 150 times a month.....but I never want to have to keep track of it and possibly go over, so I pay more a month to not have to worry about it. if they did not offer $30 for unlimited (or charged more for unlimited) I would have stuck with my non-internet phone. But I did not want to worry about "going over".
I think 30 for unlimited is more than fair.....now....if you want to add tiers below 30 then fine, but when my HOME internet costs 40 a month, how can you tell me 50 a month for mobile is fair?
Same thing here, sure, some people use A LOT .....but on the flip side, some people use HARDLY ANY......so the money is accounted for either way. The Mega-user is cancelled out by the Mini-user. If you want to cry that you don't use that much and are still being charged....your an idiot for buying it in the first place! ATT no matter how much they claim, does not want a la cart data plans.....they would lose more from the mini-user than they would gain from the mega-users.
They can continue to offer unlimited internet access but once you exceed a VERY HIGH threshold your connection is slowed down for the rest of the month.
This will not affect 97% of users.
If it does affect you, then good! You are using too much of MY bandwidth.
W
AT&T advertises an unlimited service. UNlimited. WITHOUT limitation.
Transferring a terabyte of data in a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transferring an exabyte of data a month would not be "abusing" this service.
Transfering a kilobyte of data a month would not be abusing this service.
you should read this article too when talking about "bandwitdth hogs"
http://gizmodo.com/5419179/is-the-bandwidth-hog-a-myth
this is a comment from the gizmodo article....all should read
http://gizmodo.com/5419179/is-the-bandwidth-hog-a-myth
Thangka
12/05/09
I can tell you, having worked as an systems engineer for a high profile MCSE contracting for and during Comcast's HSI rollout and afterward, the hog is a myth.
The closest you get (if significant bandwidth 'hogging' is to even be observed) to a hog is like a *herd* of feral hogs, thousands strong. And one of the herd may be a hog one month and not the next. Some a chronic hogs, but they are still drops in the bucket. Go after one of them is like trying to swat a bee in a swarm chasing you (sorry for mixed metaphors).
The reality is that blaming the end user is a cheap shot, an easy target for providers who haven't scaled their service in proportion to their user base. And it's ironic, because their high speeds and constant access were the selling points, the opiates that got people addicted to the web in the first place. And now that people are addicted, they want to pretend it's not their fault for selling HSI 'high speed, always on, unlimited usage' and having people actually taking them up on that.
If there are local problems, it is the industry's shortcoming. Period. Comcast has more money than they know what to do with, for example. There is no reason they can't scale up burdened areas. The backbones aren't the bottleneck.
The the iPhone comes along and makes consuming data into a good experience and now they're running scared because they don't have enough bandwidth. Somehow I feel they shouldn't be allowed to have this both ways.
Anyway the solution is obvious - charge people $5 per 500 MB per month with a maximum of $30. This incentivizes people to use less bandwidth (and encourages many people to get a new iPhone probably) but doesn't change the terms on any established users. They could probably get away with a $50 cap for new contracts without upsetting many.
I can tell you this past summer in the middle of the day in Manhattan, AT&T 3G was useless. It was because every other person is using an iPhone.
tenobell ....
you should read this article too when talking about "bandwitdth hogs"
http://gizmodo.com/5419179/is-the-bandwidth-hog-a-myth
If your all-you-can-eat restaurant doesn't have enough food for all customers, don't blame the ones who eat the most; blame yourself because either you are incompetent or too greedy.
Or just stop being an all-you-can-eat restaurant when the regular customers aren't happy with the resulting quality due to a wrong mixed calculation and look for alternative offers.
Hm, I missed the exclusive contract thing in the US.
Perhaps the end of exclusivity could be a chance for AT&T...