This doesn't really make sense to me because it seems that over time it will reduce the threshold for the entire network. Here is what I'm thinking: suppose that for the first month the top 5% uses 50gb of data per month. Well once the throttling kicks in they will not be able to reach the 50gb per month that they usually hit, and instead they only hit 40gb.<p>Next month the top 5% of usage rates is 40gb per month, and so the threshold kicks in sooner. If this repeated over the course of months then the threshold would get lower and lower, until it began to infringe on normal usage. I'm willing to assume that AT&T is doing this intelligently, and that the top 5% is a static measurement, but the way it is described makes it sound like a sliding scale that will lower the threshold more and more over time.<p>And that doesn't even touch the issue of always throttling connections for 5% of their customers...
My problem with this is that they've advertised "UNLIMITED" data and convinced a lot of people to join their network because of it, and now they are saying that's not actually true.<p>I know they have footnotes in the contract, but isn't it some kind of false advertising? It's not "unlimited", it's more like "a lot", and they get to decide what a lot means.<p>If you're not going to really give people unlimited data, and you're going to get upset about it when people actually try using it as if it was unlimited, then how about you stop advertising it as such?
On the surface it seems like a fair and balanced approach to the problem. I wish there was an actual number set, rather than the top 5% of each month's users which means that they're promising to always throttle speeds of 5% of their customers. Perhaps they're hoping this will cause a race among the customers who use the most data to reduce their data usage every month?<p>I also find great humor in the throw-away line concerning the necessity of the acquisition of T-Mobile at the end.
A couple of changes would make this into an actually reasonable policy that I wouldn't mind other ISPs adopting: 1. Define a usage threshold instead of always throttling 1/20th of your customers, and 2. Allow customers to pay a reasonable fee to boost their speeds back up after they hit the throttling.
<i>One new measure is a step that may reduce the data throughput speed experienced by a very small minority of smartphone customers who are on unlimited plans – those whose extraordinary level of data usage puts them in the top 5 percent of our heaviest data users in a billing period.</i><p>If 1 out of 20 people qualifies, then it's by no means "extraordinary". "Extraordinary" should be something like 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000. If 3 people on your block fit the bill, then that's just called "ordinary".
Stop pretending that you're not a dumb pipe and bill by usage. The sooner information is treated like the basic utility it is, like fuel, water or electricity, the better off we'll all be. It's painful to watch every last data provider dance around the subject like this. You're not fooling anybody. All right, you're fooling a lot of people, but not me, and not anybody else for very long.
As this is in effect a change of the Terms of Service, I wonder if they will let you get out of your 2 year contract if you were on the unlimited plan WITHOUT a early termination fee.<p>I know that any change to the ToS that involves pricing/coverage is eligible for a termination of contract with no fees, but would this be covered too?<p>Thoughts?
The problem for a potential competitor to AT&T that could offer a 'REALLY unlimited' contract is that the people who would switch would be all the really high bandwidth consumers. All the 'juicy' decently paying, (in reality) low bandwidth people don't feel oppressed by AT&T. So the competitor would just be setting themselves up for providing a better service, for the worst ($/Mb) customers.
Let's hope that everyone or at least a majority start using up more and more bandwidth so that the threshold for the top 5% is a very high amount ~30gb. At that point, we can bring the future of high usage to the present so that AT&T and these other telco's can create policies that are future-proof rather than vague, temporary measures. We should make it clear that these high-bandwidth activities are here and the telco's are the bottleneck blocking these new services from going mainstream.
I had every intention of getting an iPhone 5 when it launched and renewing my contract with AT&T at the same time. Now I'm going to run the contract out and then go elsewhere.
IF you want to look at it this way, if they average users speed was 3mb/s , then over the course of 1 month they could download 7593.75GB, which isnt truely unlimited. And if they decide to leave AT&T, who would they go to? T-mobile throttles, Verizon does not offer unlimited, and Sprint has some deffinatley has some issues with users being able to connect at all.