According to a report from DSLReports with official confirmation from AT&T rep Seth Bloom, AT&T customers under DSL and U-Verse will be subject to bandwidth caps beginning on May 2nd, with notices going out to customers this week on the 18th. DSL customers will be placed under a 150GB cap, while U-verse customers will be placed under a 250GB cap. A $10 penalty will apply for every 50GB overage, though the overage penalty will only apply if the caps are exceeded three times across the life of the account. AT&T will also send out notices as customers reach 65, 90 and 100% of the data allotment.
AT&T to Cap DSL and U-Verse Beginning May 2nd
Humberto Saabedra
Humberto Saabedra is the Editor-in-Chief of AnimeNews.biz, PhoneNews.com and an occasional columnist for Ani.me. He can also be found musing on things at @AnimeNewsdotbiz
im not too find of this new limit! perhaps I’ll switch to time warner as a result!
I have no idea how much I use at home. How could I know?
this sux..if i could switch to FIOS i would just for the hell of it. this most likely will not impact me at all but it is just the principal of it all. find the flagrant abusers and crank on them and leave the rest of us alone.
This tactic by AT&T really has me disturbed. I hope only that no other carrier follow this strategy
I am thankful I don’t live in an AT&T area. But, this is just crazy. Maybe they should be spending their money on building their network instead of being greedy. Now, they’ll probably lose a lot of customers over this. I know we will most likely be changing at work.
Jeff,
The easiest way to measure bandwidth is to have an internet router that does it for you. If you can install DD-WRT on your router, the open source firmware does provide a bandwidth monitor.
Also, it is not clear if this affects business customers. Comcast for example does not cap business-class Internet accounts, and in fact encourages heavy bandwidth users to switch as a means to avoid getting banned.
It would not be surprising to hear AT&T engage in a similar anti-consumer tactic; force the most savvy Internet users to pay the same rates that entire businesses pay for their Internet access.
After thinking about it. I have decide that on May 2, I will cancel my account with AT&T uverse. I believe what they are doing is wrong and canceling my account is how I am going to take a stand. I encourage many of us to make the same stand. If this policy holds true come May 2, I am done with them.
I will also be canceling. I do online gaming and that is why I pay for home dsl and not just use tethering from my phone. This is outsrageous. This should be illegal. I really hope that cox doesn’t do this also as I will be switching to them. This is getting too crazy now. At&t is crap and we are getting hit by their refusal to maintain their own network. As soon as I get any type of letter from them I am canceling unless I never get even close to the 150gb usage.
What is the difference in monthly rates between consumer and business class service?
We all know that AT&T has the power to do whatever they want and since they decided to cap DSL and U-Verse, we can’t do anything to protest the change other than jumping ship and going to another company. What if other companies start following what AT&T did and start capping as well? We all know that the real reason why companies do this is for the money.
I’m glad I canceled few months ago, I’m literally blocks from downtown Charlotte and U-Verse isn’t even available and I couldn’t live with DSL anymore. My family does a lot of Netflix, VUDU, and YouTube and on one computer of constant HD YouTube viewing is almost 80GB a month, yet alone the hours of Netflix and VUDO on the flat screen and bluray. If Time Warner started something similar, I’m out of luck!
We can only hope no other provider take these drastic measures. AT&T lack luster performance of improving their network. Their cellular network is crappy and now I’m imagining they are alluding that their landline network is also going down the drain. AT&T claims that this is only affect a small 2% of their customer base. This may be true depending on how you manipulate your numbers unfortunately I know that my usage is high end maybe more then 250G or slightly less, either case I don’t want to have anything else to do with AT&T. They’re always three sides to a story your side their side and the true. The way they are framing this is that they are doing it to protect their network and users but they claim only 2% of the users are going above the 250 gig, am I missing something here.
We will be canceling as well. I won’t wait until they up it, but I will tell them that is why.
To bad they can’t earn the money. Bigger bills, smaller portions, sooner or later some company will come in and only allow you to watch Fox news or MSNBC news….probably whichever one you hate the most.
Ray, I decided with you. This is really bugging the hell out of me. Instead of waiting for May 2. I am going to call and cancel my subscription first thing tomorrow.
at&t….. the death of unlimited.
Comcast also imposes a cap. While it is higher then 150GB (Comcast is 250GB) they will actually terminate your service after exceeding 250GB twice within a 6 month time frame.
http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?seoid=Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-Excessive-Use#exceeding
I just called and canceled my AT&T u-verse account. I was put on hold for a minute and the representative came back and told me that AT&T u-verse customers are exempt from the cap. I mentioned that there is a cap of 250 and she replied that yes there is a cat but u-verse customers will not be penalized for the overages. I told her to still go ahead and cancel my account. Has anyone else heard of this or been told this by a representative.
It is not likely CSRs have been fully trained on the new protocol. While U-Verse may hold off on enforcing the cap on their end, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Now that I has severed my ties with AT&T u-verse. I need your help. Most of you have the power of Twitter with lots of followers. Could you spread the word that if you plan on canceling your AT&T u-verse account make sure you tell them the reason for the cancellation is because of the limitations cap. To gather hope we can stop this madness.
U-verse sends me this letter threatening to cut off my internet if I don’t call them. So I call them. They say they need to run a credit check and need my date of birth in order to continue internet service. It’s for my own good, they say. Plus, they say if I don’t give my date of birth, they cut off the internet. I told ’em to suck it and called the cable company.