AT&T Says... "No unlimited downloads for you!"

[nntpjunkie]

In bold and likely foolish move AT&T is now capping the poor fellas on DSL at 150GB/month and the U-Verse users at 250GB...

Story here.. (http://www.newsdemon.com/blog/att-begins-capping-usenet-customers/)

[Skiz]

Damn, and I was considering switching from Time Warner to U-Verse. Scrap that.

[heiska]

Welcome back to the 90's :)

[Hypatia]

probably copyright mafia "sponsored" it =)
everything to make it hard to download large ammounts if data.. someone should issue a court order to check all their accounts both open and the ones on Bahamas lol

[Tokeman]

You know its funny, at first i was mad about the comcast cap. Now I have found out I actually download MORE then I used to. Heres how it plays out. Twords the end of the month, I check my bandwidth usage. Before the cap, i would have gotten a few more movies or a few shows, nothing big. Now I look, and see I have 100GB of bandwidth left, so I go and grab as much crap as I can that I may want in the future. I'm always right near the cap, where usually I would be well below it.

Way to encourage pirating guys :)

[zot]

Considering that ATT once used to offer unlimited Usenet service ... and (like every other ISP) then took it away without cutting the price.

Too bad they don't have 'rollover gigs' :)

I think I could live on 150/250 GB/month. The really punishing caps are on wireless broadband, usually only 5GB/month, which is about the amount I used to downloaded on 56K dialup.

[mjmacky]

It's like a buffet, where you're constrained to eat as much as you can within the confines of the restaurant while you are there. At home, we could have much more food but wouldn't pig out the same way as at a buffet. I'm sure that if I checked my usage I'd be under potential cap values, but if my ISP suddenly decided to start capping, I'd make it peak every month, even if I had to resort to uploading the contents of my recycling bin to ddl sites!

[Tokeman]

Yea, I'm pretty much within 10gb of the cap every month now.
I'm sure I had the odd month here or there before the cap where I went way over, but I always seem to have anywhere between 50 and 150gb left within 10 days of the end of the month these days. I just go grab a crap load of HD movies...

[MarionM]

In contrast here in south america -- telefonica advertises high P2p download speeds..

[sandman_1]

I had AT&T Uverse 24/3 Internet. When I heard about the caps coming May 2, I was pissed off. The logic they use to justify it is twisted and flawed. They claim that %2 of their subscribers are using %20 of the total bandwidth. To supposedly fix this problem, they decided to punish the other 98% instead of dealing with those supposed mysterious %2'ers, which their TOS already could of dealt with. It is all bullshit. They are trying to monetize data because they see online streaming of video catching on like wild fire, Netflix accounts for 20% of Internet traffic during prime time http://www.observer.com/2010/media/wowza-netflix-accounts-20-all-internet-traffic-during-primetime.

Anyway I am with Time Warner now. Got their Wideband service, 30/5 Internet, for $10/month cheaper than AT&T and with no caps, yet.

[mfalaura]

You can't bypass the restriction with a VPN ???

[sandman_1]

AFAIK, they do it at the DSLAM, the data monitoring. Data is data so I don't see how VPN would change that.

[mjmacky]

You can't bypass the restriction with a VPN ???

That's not how VPN works, the outside world doesn't know it's you connecting, but your ISP is still transmitting the data between you and the internet.

[zot]

A VPN will only defeat specific protocol-throttling, not whole-line throttling.

[nntpjunkie]

When you use a VPN you are still transmitting data from your ISP to your computer and your ISP can monitor and control the amount of data that they allow you to transfer each month (they don't know what the data is though) - they can set a cap at X number of gigabytes and once you hit that you are dead in the water and will have to pay more for more bandwidth - I think AT&T is charging $10 for each additional 25 gig block

[mjmacky]

I think AT&T is charging $10 for each additional 25 gig block

So AT&T's in the business of selling block account now huh?

[sandman_1]

I think AT&T is charging $10 for each additional 25 gig block

So AT&T's in the business of selling block account now huh?

Looks like it. And I think it is $10/50GB after you hit your cap, DSL 150GB and Uverse 250GB.

[Tokeman]

At least they offer for you to pay, with comcast, you just get a warning then cut off :P

[littleflower]

poor american network, before I exceeded usage of 250G/M, I don't even know there exists limitation