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AT&T Communications Government Network United States

AT&T Offers Unlimited Plan Deal For First Responders, But It Can Be Throttled (theverge.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the read-the-fine-print dept.
AT&T is offering a new promotion for first responders and their families. Firefighters, paramedics, and police officers can opt for 25 percent off either of the unlimited plans AT&T announced back in June. But in the fine print, as The Verge points out, "AT&T admits it may throttle data speeds 'when the network is congested.'" The promotion comes soon after Verizon came under scrutiny for throttling firefighters' data as they fought wildfires in California. From the report: AT&T says that first responders looking for completely unlimited internet without data speed caps can use FirstNet, the network it recently began operating specifically for first responders. AT&T was contracted by the U.S. government to built out FirstNet, which offers features that specifically cater to first responders. The company says that it's actively promoting FirstNet, but at the same time, its promotion page doesn't make a mention of the superior plan at all. In an email, AT&T clarified that the promotional plans subject to throttling are for first responders' personal use and family plans. "We're offering first responders and their family members a discount on the consumer plans available today for their personal use," a spokesperson said. "These lines and devices are separate than the FirstNet lines purchased and issued by the first responder agencies, which do not have a data limit."

The deal allows first responders to choose between the AT&T Unlimited & More plan or the Unlimited & More Premium plan, which has more entertainment add-ons to choose from, including HBO, Showtime, and Amazon Music. With the ongoing promotion, a single line alone on Unlimited & More will cost $52.50 a month, while four lines on a plan would cost $30 a month per person. Unlimited & More Premium costs $60 a month for a single line, and $35.62 a month per person for four lines.
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AT&T Offers Unlimited Plan Deal For First Responders, But It Can Be Throttled More

AT&T Offers Unlimited Plan Deal For First Responders, But It Can Be Throttled

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  • Stop calling plans "Unlimited" (Score:4, Funny)

    by bob4u2c ( 73467 ) on Friday September 07, 2018 @05:45PM (#57272766)

    When did "Unlimited" start meaning we throttle speed or charge you more if you actually attempt to use what is promised?

    If you sell me a 15Mbit connection I should be able to saturate the line at 15Mbit 24/7 for the entire month with no slow down and no extra charges.

    Would you accept it if your "Unlimited" rental cars top speed was cut in half if you went more than 200 miles in a day? Or if after 300 miles you had to pay an extra millage charge.

    So stop calling it "Unlimited" and call it what it really is, "Extra charges will apply". The argument I usually hear is that the network can't handle that kind of traffic and they "have" to slow your network speed. If that is the case then sell what you can support; stop over selling or stop under providing!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      Obviously it is impossible, for a price that anyone other than a Saudi prince can afford, to provide mobile data at high speeds that is truly unlimited AND delivers full speed at all times. That's just the nature of the beast. In fact, it's effectively impossible to deliver the maximum mobile data rate everywhere due to signal strength issues even if bob4u2c is the ONLY user within 1000 miles.

      What they mean by "unlimited" is you don't pay more for more data. As long as they only throttle when needed to avoi

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by bob4u2c ( 73467 )

        Obviously it is impossible, for a price that anyone other than a Saudi prince can afford, to provide mobile data at high speeds that is truly unlimited AND delivers full speed at all times.

        Then stop advertising things you can't promise! Instead they should say this is our 22GB data plan, not our "unlimited" plan.

        What they mean by "unlimited" is you don't pay more for more data. As long as they only throttle when needed to avoid congestion and perhaps first to high usage users, this seems quite reasonable.

        But isn't that the point, once he reached a datacap he was slowed down. When he then called to complain they offered to upgrade the datacap for a fee? So was this really a case of congestion, or just a money grab?

        At this point, every person with at least two brain cells knows that 'unlimited' in mobile plans rarely means "full maximum bandwidth guaranteed 7x24 even if users actually use that bandwidth 7x24". People with only one or zero brain cells can just read the footnote that explains this.

        Exactly, everyone now expects their phone plan to be a bold face lie. When did the meaning of "unlimited" change? If I can't use that bandwidth, then you shouldn't be ab

        • Re:Stop calling plans "Unlimited" (Score:4, Interesting)

          by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Friday September 07, 2018 @07:32PM (#57273328)

          They are offering you unlimited data in the sense that you don't pay a different amount for data based on usage.

          What they don't guarantee you is bandwidth -- just as they don't guarantee bandwidth on any plan including a 1GB/month plan.

          Do you take unlimited to mean "Infinite" since that's what it means in the extreme? Even bandwidth of 100PB/sec 7/24 for a whole month doesn't give you that because 2.7e20 bytes << infinity bytes.

          I'm not a big fan of the term 'unlimited' either, but now that everyone understands what it probably means, it really doesn't matter much. Would you prefer "Unmetered Data"? Perhaps "Fixed Price Data".

          • Would you prefer "Unmetered Data"? Perhaps "Fixed Price Data".

            No, just call it by the amount of unthrottled data you get.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by uncqual ( 836337 )

              Okay, so then they just shut you off (i.e., throttle to 0mbs) after that threshold is reached since that's all they advertised.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        "Unlimited" means there is no arbitrary limit on the amount of data one can download, it says nothing about the speed of that data.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgeek ( 941867 )

      When did "Unlimited" start meaning we throttle speed or charge you more if you actually attempt to use what is promised?

      I'm honestly not sure. It could be: When the first chunks of spectrum were auctioned in the high 9-digit $ range. Possibly when people discovered an unlimited tethered LTE connection was a great substitute for home internet service. Or maybe it was always written into the first unlimited plans and not widely enforced until congestion started becoming an issue. I really don't remember, but I'm sure one or more of those are related.

    • When did "Unlimited" start meaning we throttle speed or charge you more if you actually attempt to use what is promised?

      Ajit Pai called, he said to shut up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      I'd actually be willing to cut them some slack on this one... they only appear to say they will throttle when the network is congested. As long as that's the only time they throttle, it doesn't matter how much or how fast you personally might use the system, the only thing that determines whether they will throttle is overall demand.

      Which is, by the way, not too dissimilar from what you'd get with no throttling at all, because the physical infrastructure can still only handle so much bandwidth at once

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      "Unlimited" means "without limit," which in this case means as many bytes of data, not the speed of the data bytes.

      So stop calling it "Unlimited" and call it what it really is, "Extra charges will apply".

      Throttling does not cause a consumer to incur any "extra charges" - you are simply making things up to justify your baseless anger. Is there a fee an "unlimited" subscriber can pay to remove the throttling? Not that I'm aware of.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        Throttling for congestion is simply QoS in terms the average person will understand. Not only is there nothing wrong with it, it is necessary for the smooth operation of the network. This is traffic management, pure and simply.

        The commercial network world buys bandwidth based off of Committed Information Rate (CIR), 95th Percentile, Burst Capacity, and Line Rate. Doing it any other way leads to a horrible under-utilization of the network and a waste of resources.

        You're average home user doesn't understand a

        • Throttling for congestion is simply QoS in terms the average person will understand. Not only is there nothing wrong with it, it is necessary for the smooth operation of the network. This is traffic management, pure and simply.

          The average person assumes QOS happens in near real time and is not based on historical usage.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      That's just where the market went. "Unlimited" means you don't get charged more for using too much data. You can use as much data as you want, but speed will suffer past a threshold. On many plans that threshold is between 18 and 22 GB. I recently visited a resort that included a free WiFi Hotspot device (on AT&T) and it had dozens of text messages on it that said, "You have used [redacted] data for this account, so your data may be throttled in congested areas." It wasn't useless, but it was somewh

  • How about the Fuck You We Own the Government Plan? The first 3GB per year are only $1200. Each gig after that is throttled down to 19.2k (2400 baud) and $50 per GB. BTW, fuck Ajit Pai

  • Honestly, throttling when the network is overloaded is perfectly fine to me. It's throttling 24/7 once you pass a threshold that is a problem to me.

    Whether they should have some sort of access priority (if it's even technically available) when a First Responder etc is a different issue. This would likely be something only important during large-scale emergencies when networks get overloaded, though may not be technically practical, could be looked into.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgeek ( 941867 )
      What you're talking about is the QCI value. This affects the device's access to resources at the enodeB scheduler. Typically ranging from 1-9 with 1 being the highest priority. Most carriers set the default value to 9 (or 8, if they want to reserve 9 for banishing data hogs to a lower priority). Government sanctioned plans (including FirstNet) for first responders typically are contracted to have a lower QCI (higher priority) for these subscribers.

  • Rather than selling an "Unlimited, except with usage caps, except for you, except when you use too much YouTube", etc, etc, lawyers ten levels deep, why don't they just have a plan where instead of "Up to X Gbps", you can get "At least X Mbps", where X is determined by what the units need to do their jobs?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgeek ( 941867 )
      You can't guarantee wireless speeds or bandwidth. Unlike "wired" internet (copper/fiber) there's far too many variables.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      why don't they just have a plan where instead of "Up to X Gbps", you can get "At least X Mbps", where X is determined by what the units need to do their jobs?

      FFS, read the first sentence of the summary again - it's a discount for first responders and their families - this has absolutely nothing to do with first responders and what they "need to do their job."

  • The problem we've seen with AT&T is that any members of our text groups that have AT&T lines can't reply to group text messages with more than 10 people. Their phones truncate the group to 10 - so now you have another group and have to figure out who didn't get the reply. Primitive guys - up your game. That's enough to prevent me from bringing your promotion to our fire department.

    https://forums.att.com/t5/Data... [att.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      That's enough to prevent me from bringing your promotion to our fire department.

      AT&T is offering first-responders and their families a discount - this has nothing to do with service for your local fire department.

  • Let me get this straight.

    It's for people who help during emergencies, and they need phone service and texts then.

    At precisely the time when the networks are stressed out from overuse (oversubscribed is what we used to call this) and equipment failures.

    From disasters. Like fires. And earthquakes. And floods.

    So it WILL be throttled DURING THE EMERGENCY.

    Making it ...

    useless

    • Alternatively, you could read aaaaalllllll the way to the second paragraph of the summary. Where it explains the throttled plans are a discounted personal plan for the first res ponders and their families, and the plans for the actual agencies are not throttled.

      You know, the ones that are actually used in an emergency.

      Not throttled.

      Making you

      Really fucking lazy.

    • Let me get this straight.

      It's for people who help during emergencies, and they need phone service and texts then.

      At precisely the time when the networks are stressed out from overuse (oversubscribed is what we used to call this) and equipment failures.

      From disasters. Like fires. And earthquakes. And floods.

      So it WILL be throttled DURING THE EMERGENCY.

      Making it ...

      useless

      The internet is not a reliable emergency communications medium. No matter how hard people want it to be. So yeah - you are right - Useless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      No. You well-reasoned argument overlooks the simple fact in the first sentence of the summary:

      AT&T is offering a new promotion for first responders and their families.

      Reading a little further, we find this passage:

      AT&T clarified that the promotional plans subject to throttling are for first responders' personal use and family plans. "We're offering first responders and their family members a discount on the consumer plans available today for their personal use," a spokesperson said. "These lines and devices are separate than the FirstNet lines purchased and issued by the first responder agencies, which do not have a data limit."

  • Subject says it all. Can't figure out why. I can grasp a moral reason for a non-neutral internet service - say for instance in the event of an emergency - firefighters / emergency personnel get prioritized traffic over us plebes. What I cannot grasp is a reason for throttling anyone based on a seemingly arbitrary corporate policy rule. I get that bandwidth might cost a little money, but these costs are 99.999999% of the time passed on to the consumer anyways, so what's the big fucking deal? I very seriously
    • It seems like scarcity is invented for the purposes of pushing an agenda.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      What is mentioned in the linked text is a set of "personal use and family plans" for " first responders and their family members".
      Thats very different to "emergency" protected networking all over the USA.
      ie "personal use and family plans" and the mentioned "secondary or retired responders" in some states.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      I very seriously doubt any major ISP has a 'lack of bandwidth' issue.

      Right, because every internet link in every ISPs data network has infinite capacity, there are no limits on bandwidth at all - none.

      Let me guess, you work in Network Capacity Planning for AT&T? Verizon?

  • There are also a host of other huge issues with FirstNet

    * They have a limited (meant minimum to meet requirements) number of mobile cell trucks to respond to disasters that take out cell service (ie. if an incident/disaster knocks out all the cell towers in the san francisco, they'll have enough to give basic level service [text, some analog calls, and emails], but if disaster strikes anywhere else in the region, they won't have enough trucks to support the greater San Francisco Bay Area).
    * Network is nowhe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      This isn't about first net, as noted in the summary:

      "We're offering first responders and their family members a discount on the consumer plans available today for their personal use," a spokesperson said. "These lines and devices are separate than the FirstNet lines purchased and issued by the first responder agencies, which do not have a data limit."

  • Perhaps some of AT&T's buildings will burn to the ground.

    • You literally have no idea what this article is about, do you? Did you even read the very first sentence of the summary? Lord knows you couldn't read all the way down to the second paragraph...

      This has nothing to do with anything involving firefighters doing their jobs, it's about a discount for their family's home broadband connection.

  • Newt (Score:2)

    by dohzer ( 867770 )

    How "neutral" of them.

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