AT&T Starts Throttling Heavy Wireless Data Users 158
tekgoblin writes "AT&T has started tossing out warnings for users that fall into the top 5% of data users on their wireless network. AT&T announced this change back in July and is now starting to actually enforce it."
Perfect Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Trickle down (Score:5, Insightful)
But the top 5% hoarding all of the resources is the most effective way to run a limited economy! They know the best use of those packets and can distribute them better than all those poor saps that use lower QoS queues. This unnatural regulation is going to strangle the health of the overall network and everyone is going to suffer SEVERELY! And it's all the current administration's fault!
Re:Saw This Coming. (Score:2, Insightful)
It must be the Governments fault for all its oversight and "rules"... those bastards! o.O
Re:It makes some kind of sense (Score:5, Insightful)
This. This is why we can't have nice things.
Re:I think the top 5 percent are selfish (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey. Those 5% of the users are trying to use what they bought. They paid fair and square for what was advertised as "unlimited plan". If provider is unable to hold his end of the bargain then there should be consequences for false advertising. The only one you are subsidizing is your wireless provider, not those 5% of the users that actually tried to use the service.
Imagine someone rented you a room and said that you can use it anytime you want. And then you suddenly find out that it is rented to several other people are renting that same room and the witty landlord just decided to use the fact that all of you are at home at different times to sell rent it to all of you simultaneously. Who should you sue/roughen up, the other clients, that are "spending too much time in the room" or the landlord?
Re:Saw This Coming. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have any problem with them doing this, unless, they call it unlimited. They should have to clearly state how much you can download before they throttle you. Anything else is false advertising.
Re:Saw This Coming. (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this the tea party's fault? They didn't even exist until a few years ago and this kind of behavior has existed on and off since the old "Standard Oil" days. It's nothing new except for the type of technology it's being practiced on. You act like greedy robber barons and lying corrupt politicians are something new. Every single time something goes off the rails people start screaming "tea party" over and over when it's nothing to do with them. The tea party really isn't even a party. It's main focus, such as one exists, is taxation as in "taxed enough already." I sympathize with them on this issue. I'm sure that there are some loons in the tea party group who feel that corporations should have more power to fuck us over but I'd bet they're in the minority there. Give it a rest already.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. At AT&T you're not a customer. That implies that they value and respect you. You are actually a consumer. That implies you are there to be exploited and controlled.
Re:Saw This Coming. (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole thing regarding your description seems rather disingenuous. I am sure that you must realize that the primary tenant of the Tea Party is that the Federal Government is too large, and by shrinking it your taxes will be reduced. Well huzzah another large part of that shrinkage will include elimination of much regulation of large corporations.
Re:It makes some kind of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
We can't have nice things because a person buying a plan advertised as unlimited, and with no special clauses about caps etc, is actually using it as advertised?
Re:Saw This Coming. (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole thing regarding your description seems rather disingenuous. I am sure that you must realize that the primary tenant of the Tea Party is that the Federal Government is too large, and by shrinking it your taxes will be reduced. Well huzzah another large part of that shrinkage will include elimination of much regulation of large corporations.
I'm good with that. Compared to expanding government. I will take ultimate freedom over being locked into having the government own everything, run business, tell me when i'm too sick to bother treating, etc. Yes, insurance companies TRY to do it too, but you can sue, and you can even use the government for that.
Removing garbage like welfare for life, bullshit bailouts and free money for failing, well that would be a good government shrink. The EPA? too much power. Unions..... WAY too much. We even lock up drug dealers for longer than rapists, because the government propagates the lies about drugs ruining the world.
Let me ask this:
How do we compete with China, if our work environments are wide open for safety, pollution, discrimination, and numerous other lawsuits frivolously filed, and subject to union threats of shutdown if assembly line workers don't make the same as well educated IT workers?
How can we continue to give away billions for aid to other countries, while we spiral out of control into debt?
Why are we giving away money to support research into pointless endeavors like electric cars? Solar? While we are not balancing the budget? Extending unemployment so far out that between that and welfare people can live most of their life in government CONDO housing, and still have a big screen TV.
Why is it that minorities MUST make up about 46% of any federally backed loans, regardless of ability to pay, if a bank wants to qualify for federal backing?
Do we really need a government to be so large that it perpetuates funding for bad ideas like treating races of people as "different"?
Do we need government to prevent businesses from failing, yet keep unions in force, therefore keeping labor costs ridiculously out of scale?
This same big government is not raising capital gains. Obama had 2 full years to do anything he felt was important. He crammed his garbage money pit health care through on a "budget" vote, instead of increasing cap gains, as a priority.
The TEA party isn't a 100% answer. It is much farther down the road than the two parties that run things as one mind.
Re:I think the top 5 percent are selfish (Score:5, Insightful)
A contract by its very nature is a set of terms by which two parties agree to exchange things of value. If one of those parties can change any provision of the contract at will, with no possibility for negotiation and no additional value provided in exchange for being able to change the contract terms, then it's not really a contract at all.
The problem here is that AT&T has all of the cards. It can force me to abide by the terms of the contract no matter how onerous, can prevent me from accessing the courts when I have a grievance, and then has the power to change that very same contract that you and I have to abide by no matter what, on a whim. If that seems fair to you, then you must be an AT&T shareholder.