After AT&T nearly bungled its first major Terms of Service issue earlier this month, the company is set to go against recent FCC rulings once again with with the newest revision of the Terms of Service, updated within the last few days with this vague language:
“data sessions may be conducted only for the following purposes…(vii) software or other devices that maintain continuous active Internet connections when a computer’s connection would otherwise be idle or any “keep alive” functions, unless they adhere to AT&T’s data retry requirements, which may be changed from time to time. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers, web broadcasting…is prohibited.”
Taken at face value, the language can be interpreted to mean that SlingBox usage is once again prohibited as well as any sort of streaming from YouTube, video uploads or other video portals, which flies in the face of its first retraction earlier this month, and is not the harmless clarification that other, less informed sites have been proclaiming.
By wording the clause in such vague terms AT&T can decide at will what is considered appropriate from an application standpoint and has even decided to ban the forthcoming Hulu and Slingbox app with the above clause.
Because of this material change to the TOS, anyone that disagrees with it can use it as an ETF-Out with no issue, as evidenced by MechaWorks staff.
Correction: PhoneNews.com has been unsuccessful in getting AT&T to recognize this as an ETF Out. However, based on AT&T’s own interpretation of their material change policy, this is a material change to many customers. We encourage you to help by calling customer service and requesting cancellation (if this does affect you), as you do deserve your ETF be waived because of this.
A simple rule by the FCC or FTC could be that such material changes in contracts allow customers to be ETF free if they signed up under different terms. Also, customers should have to show their agreement with the new terms through a signature. Right now, the contracts are too much weighted in favor of the carriers.
Our iPhone product was to deliver secure training videos to a subscriber to our service. We couldn’t use you-tube as these are a paid service. Currently we deliver them on Sprint Smartphones.
So I called AT&T based on your report on April 3rd that showed that they were not going to allow streaming unless it was you-tube. As a reminder, that change was rescinded the next day.
At first they charged me the ETF. After talking with a supervisor she refunded it because she couldn’t gaurantee that we would not be putting our customers at risk of cancelation due to this new ruling.
I’m still confused about this but don’t have the time to discover if they will or will not allow it. We’ll just stick with Sprint as they have been very, very good to us lately.
So how to I get out ETF free. I want to go back to Sprint!!!!
Let me clarify. We didn’t just “get out” without a legitmate reason. After explaining my concerns, about putting our customers in jepardy, to the customer service manager she removed the ETF charge from my bill.
Good luck.
After all this some of you still love AT&T? Even the fanboys have to wake up.
Jeff, AT&T already has such a rule in place. The problem here is that customer service has not been informed of this change. They aren’t aware that a material change to the TOS has been made.
That is what we believe is the reason they are not waiving the ETF. We’re working on it, but we encourage you to call customer service (and escalate to a supervisor if you are shot down). The more people that do, the more the call centers have to deal with this, and the more likely they’ll be trained on the change.
NO LUCK AT ALL! ALL THEY DO IS REDIRECT YOU TO A MAILING ADDRESS WHERE YOU CAN DISPUTE YOUR ISSUE. AND THAT WAS GIVEN TO ME BY A SUPERVISOR. ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY LUCK???? I REALLY DONT WANT TO PAY ETF FOR ATT AWFUL SERVICES!
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