[Marty Chinn]

Wondering if we could get a tally count here how many GAFers switched out of AT&T as a result from this.

I switched to U-Verse just days before they announced this. If it wasn't for the promo price for the year, I probably would drop. I probably will drop after a year and seeing how many times I hit the cap or come close to it. I'm in for the year, but funny enough one of the reasons I picked it over Comcast was because they didn't have a cap.

[dskillzhtown]

When I go to the myusage link, I get this: AT&T is not able to capture usage data on all of its customers. Customers whose usage is not available for viewing should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes. I can't seem to get to any meters. I assume that means I'm never close? Seems like I could be sometimes. I do a decent number of torrents and stream movies and such. Would like to know how close I'm getting. Also, fuck AT&T. Switching to Comcast (lol also a cap) later this year.

I called customer service, the rep had no idea what I was talking about. He put me on hold to get some info. He came back and said that the only people that can see a meter are the ones who have been flagged because they have come close or exceeded the current cap. If you can't see the meter, your average monthly use doesn't even come close. I do alot of streaming, netflix and use my iPad at home almost everyday. I rarely download files or anything like that though.

Something tells me that the truth is that they just haven't gotten "metering" working for everyone and this is just a made up excuse until they do.

[remnant]

I called customer service, the rep had no idea what I was talking about. He put me on hold to get some info. He came back and said that the only people that can see a meter are the ones who have been flagged because they have come close or exceeded the current cap. If you can't see the meter, your average monthly use doesn't even come close. I do alot of streaming, netflix and use my iPad at home almost everyday. I rarely download files or anything like that though. Something tells me that the truth is that they just haven't gotten "metering" working for everyone and this is just a made up excuse until they do.

Or maybe you just don't use as much data as you think.

[Puddles]

Time Warner may not have caps at the moment. They just trottle my internet down to 2Mbps or lower when I actually try to use the speed I am paying for. If I watch Netflix it gets throttled down too. It's getting fucking annoying.

This should be just as illegal as capping.

If ISPs are going to sell, and charge for, 6Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps or whatever, you should have the legal right to saturate that connection to your heart's content. If they don't have the infrastructure to handle that, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell the service until they do. Simple as that.

[Zoe]

I guess I'm in the clear for now?

The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes.

[Fallout-NL]

This should be just as illegal as capping. If ISPs are going to sell, and charge for, 6Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps or whatever, you should have the legal right to saturate that connection to your heart's content. If they don't have the infrastructure to handle that, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell the service until they do. Simple as that.

Agreed.


Too bad there's no way of boycotting this crap because you basically can't live without internet.

[ivedoneyourmom]

I guess I'm in the clear for now?

The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified* if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes**. *and charged **cause we will rape your wallet and there is nothing you can do about it

Fixed that for ya.

[dskillzhtown]

I guess I'm in the clear for now?

For now until they get metering working for everyone.

[Dragon]

Logged into my ATT Uverse account today, went to usage and got this message:

Note: Your internet plan provides you with unlimited usage. There are no usage details to display.

I'm doing the 18 mbps plan. So at least in Charlotte they haven't done this yet.

Edit: ugh, eff you AT&T for not getting your shit straight.

[Rafa=FedKilla]

Brah I think they might be rethinking caps for Uverse. I called them this week and they upped my speed and gave me a discount. Because if they go through the cap for Uverse customers, customers will cancel both internet and tv.

[GoldenEye 007]

This is going to be just like my iPhone where I check the AT&T app every other day to make sure I don't go near my 200MB data plan cap.

Doesn't that sound fun!

[Nekofrog]

I wonder how they'll actually handle people who exceed the cap regularly. I'm on Comcast, and according to my online usage meter, I have used (since Dec 10):

Dec: 380GB
Jan: 502GB
Feb: 340GB
March: 355GB
April: 450GB

I attribute the high January usage due to the fact that I had just finished building my media PC. Had to download my huge Steam library (I can see a format down the line exceeding my cap easily just for Steam...), started downloading BD rips of my blurays that don't come with a digital copy (seriously in this day and age, why don't they?), and various... other... uh... video... entertainment... uh... yeah...

Got rid of cable television a month or two ago, so the usage is climbing up again now that my wife uses Netflix + Hulu all goddamned day.

The funny thing is, even though I have never gone one month UNDER Comcast's 250GB cap, they have NEVER throttled me, NEVER sent me an email regarding my usage, NEVER turned off my service, no consequence at all. Maybe it's just a regional thing?

[H_Prestige]

Oh god is verizon going to start doing this crap with fios?

[Megadragon15]

I wonder how they'll actually handle people who exceed the cap regularly. I'm on Comcast, and according to my online usage meter, I have used (since Dec 10): Dec: 380GB Jan: 502GB Feb: 340GB March: 355GB April: 450GB I attribute the high January usage due to the fact that I had just finished building my media PC. Had to download my huge Steam library (I can see a format down the line exceeding my cap easily just for Steam...), started downloading BD rips of my blurays that don't come with a digital copy (seriously in this day and age, why don't they?), and various... other... uh... video... entertainment... uh... yeah... Got rid of cable television a month or two ago, so the usage is climbing up again now that my wife uses Netflix + Hulu all goddamned day. The funny thing is, even though I have never gone one month UNDER Comcast's 250GB cap, they have NEVER throttled me, NEVER sent me an email regarding my usage, NEVER turned off my service, no consequence at all. Maybe it's just a regional thing?

Do you live in a region where Comcast competes with Verizon Fios?

[brucewaynegretzky]

I wonder how they'll actually handle people who exceed the cap regularly. I'm on Comcast, and according to my online usage meter, I have used (since Dec 10): Dec: 380GB Jan: 502GB Feb: 340GB March: 355GB April: 450GB I attribute the high January usage due to the fact that I had just finished building my media PC. Had to download my huge Steam library (I can see a format down the line exceeding my cap easily just for Steam...), started downloading BD rips of my blurays that don't come with a digital copy (seriously in this day and age, why don't they?), and various... other... uh... video... entertainment... uh... yeah... Got rid of cable television a month or two ago, so the usage is climbing up again now that my wife uses Netflix + Hulu all goddamned day. The funny thing is, even though I have never gone one month UNDER Comcast's 250GB cap, they have NEVER throttled me, NEVER sent me an email regarding my usage, NEVER turned off my service, no consequence at all. Maybe it's just a regional thing?

So what does Comcast do if you go over the cap?

[Nekofrog]

Do you live in a region where Comcast competes with Verizon Fios?

Nope. If Fios was an option, I'd have gone straight to that. As soon as it IS an option, I WILL go straight to it.

I live in NorCal, you'd think these companies would throw us a friggin' bone.

[chaosblade]

Uverse isn't available here, and my only ISP options are ATT and Mediacom, and maybe some of those "super dialup" things.

Best ATT plan here is 6Mb/s, for $43 a month, which is a lot better than it was a year or so ago when we were paying almost that much for 1.5Mb/s. Now with a 150GB cap and with 8 people in my house using it regularly we are probably going to go over every month.

Mediacom says the only two options they have are a $70 12Mb and some 20Mb connection, probably $100 or so. They have a 250GB cap as well.

And since I live in an "ATT zone," Verizon has no plans of bringing Fios here. So yeah, I'm about ready to move.

[Makoto]

If you are using 250GB a month then you are probably doing things you shouldn't be doing.

Just wanted to say the above statement is on the same level of stupid as, "If you're against the Patriot Act, then you've probably got something to hide."

Edit: Now I'm actually getting worried about my digital download purchases.

[D-Pad]

Anybody else get this?



Followed by



whenever you try to reload the webpage? Happens to me constantly because my shitty 2Wire is always resetting itself and dropping the damn connection. It won't go away until you restart the browser, and is the most annoying bullshit I have ever put up with. I'm hoping it's a router thing and not AT&T so I can just switch routers.

[mr stroke]

has anyone seen the caps or meter go live yet? Mine still says "You have unlimited usage"

[Windu]

has anyone seen the caps or meter go live yet? Mine still says "You have unlimited usage"

i think its live for just the DSL users. Nothing for uverse customers though.

Here is what i get when i try to go to it.



http://www.att.com/esupport/internet...id=UZ9QKyIwmRr

[tenchir]

I switched over to Timer Warner a couple of weeks ago because of the caps. The speed is nice, but I can definitely tell when Road Runner is throttling me like during Netflix.

[SillyEskimo]

So what does Comcast do if you go over the cap?

They ban you, or so they say. It's outright. They do not have a plan where you pay per GB or anything like that. You just get dropped.

I got a call about 3 years ago from Comcast stating that I DLed 1.2TB in less than 30 days and was in the top 1% of all users in the US for the month. They said if anything like that happened again, I would be banned from Comcast for a year. About 2 years later, they defined their caps, but it's still very fuzzy about what happens when you hit 251 GB. Some people claim they've DLed 500 GB and nothing happened. /shrug I'd rather not take the chance so I stay around 245 GB per month, every month, no matter what.

Here's an interesting thing about Comcast's "Usage Meter". If you go to check your usage on the last day of the month at around 4pm EST, you will get no response. It times out or forwards you to another page entirely. Anything you DL while that is happening goes on the following month's allotted usage. It took me about 3 months to figure that out. Now I check the day before the last day of the month and DL up to 245 GB and leave 5 GB as a fudge factor. I've had several friends test this as well, but it only does that if you're over a certain amount of bandwidth. I would guess the cutoff for the error is around 200 GB or so. At least that's the way it seems to handled in my area. My test group consists of a whopping 3 people.

So, for instance, if it's the last day of the month and it's 5pm and I have 30 BG free and use it all before 9pm, the next day on the first of the month I will have 220 GB used for the previous month, and 30 GB used for the first day of the new month even though it was all used the night before. Once again, it took 3 months of this happening before I just switched to doing everything the day before the last day of the month and there has never been a problem.

I do not like bandwidth caps.

[Tokubetsu]

No other option here and yea it's up for me (DSL). Ugh, fuck. U-verse isn't even available in my area. Might go back to comcast, I don't know...

[polyh3dron]

I switched over to Timer Warner a couple of weeks ago because of the caps. The speed is nice, but I can definitely tell when Road Runner is throttling me like during Netflix.

Really? I get the X-High/HD stream from Netflix with Time Warner. Loving this shit.

[polyh3dron]

Wondering if we could get a tally count here how many GAFers switched out of AT&T as a result from this.

I did.

[Tokubetsu]

I'm legit looking at comcast right now. Fuck. U-verse isn't available in my area and if their cap is 250 at comcast, I might do it.

[rocksteady1983]

Today I start getting 50mb Cable internet from Cable One. They have a 50 gb cap and its .50 extra for ever GB you go over. My mother in law works for the company and they had a big meeting and I told her how much HD streaming uses and so she brought up how much netflix uses and what not and they were adamant about "no one ever hits 50gb, blah blah blah". So I get to use it for 90 days risk free (no overage charges), and she wants me to prove them wrong lol. No problem, me and the wife need to catch up on Prison Break.

[Branson]

So for the people who haven't switched, how did you guys do the first month? lol. I know Ive personally had to step back on my steam downloading, and have limited myself to 1-2 a month of game downloads if they are big.

[Ether_Snake]

They could easily deal with supposed abusive users easily without capping everyone. It's all bullshit.

[RBH]

I'm looking at possibly switching to AT&T U-Verse for their TV/Internet/Phone triple play combo, and I just wanted to get some impressions from current U-Verse owners here on GAF about the overall quality of U-Verse before potentially making the jump. I'm looking at getting the Elite internet package (6 mbps) and was wondering if that would be sufficient enough for Netflix streaming. I was also wondering about how the picture quality looks for their TV service (looking at getting the U200). Finally, with the 250GB bandwidth cap in place, I wanted to know how much of an effect it's had on some of the U-Verse users here on GAF.

I'm switching from Dish Network for my TV service since they're unable to provide certain international channels, and I figured that I could switch my internet and phone as well and get a better overall deal. I have zero desire to go with Comcast.


Thanks for anyone who can help.

[Rafa=FedKilla]

Make sure they give you brand new recievers. If they give you used or refurbished ones they will not take automatic updates and will cause you to lose recordings and freeze your picture.

[duracell017]

Make sure they give you brand new recievers. If they give you used or refurbished ones they will not take automatic updates and will cause you to lose recordings and freeze your picture.

If you already have u-verse and ask for new receivers, will they send new ones?

[JLG-]

Any other AT&T DSL users get a free upgrade to uverse?

I got a letter saying my DSL service was switching to uverse at no extra charge with modem included. I'm now getting 6 mbps for only 19.99 for the first year and my cap goes from 150 to 250. :D

It's actually cheaper than what i was paying for 3mbps.

I'm looking at getting the Elite internet package (6 mbps) and was wondering if that would be sufficient enough for Netflix streaming. Thanks for anyone who can help.

Yep. I have that same package and i get High/HD on netflix.

[Windu]

i think netflix requires something like 5mbps for hd content and there is no cap in place for the uverse bundle since they don't have a meter yet (something to do with not being able to differentiate between the tv stuff and the general internet stuff). The picture quality is fine i guess, its hd but you can tell its been compressed. But it looks fine imo. I have noticed more outages etc.. with uverse compared to what we had before (comcast). But the overall service seems far better.

edit: oh and the modem or whatever its called does not do wireless n so that might be a problem with netflix, of course you can always get a wireless n router and hook it up to it.

[rc213]

Any other AT&T DSL users get a free upgrade to uverse? I got a letter saying my DSL service was switching to uverse at no extra charge with modem included. I'm now getting 6 mbps for only 19.99 for the first year and my cap goes from 150 to 250. :D It's actually cheaper than what i was paying for 3mbps. Yep. I have that same package and i get High/HD on netflix.

Damn lucky bastard, Where are you located?

I been on AT&T for a long time, I've had the 6Mbps package at $35 a month since the beginning. U-Verse Internet only has become available in my location at the start of this month. Hope I get upgraded!

[claviertekky]

AT&T still not enforcing caps due to problems with its own bandwidth meters.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/A...ge-Caps-118009

In March of last year we were the first to exclusively report that AT&T would be imposing caps on DSL (150GB) and U-Verse (250GB) users, with consumer having to pay $10 for every 50GB over the cap they travel. Our leak caught AT&T a little by surprise, as the company wasn't quite ready to announce the plans yet. Our users quickly started reporting that the meters AT&T was using were completely inaccurate, with home routers showing drastically different consumption readouts than AT&T's official website monitoring tool. As of August, AT&T still hadn't figured out how to bill for overages. Last summer AT&T informed us that the company hadn't started billing users because they were "still providing time for customers to understand and learn about their usage." We're getting closer to a year since we broke our story about caps and AT&T still isn't enforcing them. Several users tell us their usage has yet to trigger a single warning from AT&T, and at least one user seems intent to push his usage into the terabytes each month and hasn't heard a peep from AT&T. Users aren't complaining, they just find it -- odd. You can be fairly certain that if a company like AT&T (breathlessly eager to please investors with new usage surcharges) was able to accurately bill users for usage they'd already be doing so. That they're not suggests the company still hasn't quite worked out the back end billing kinks in their systems. We've seen similar problems in Canada where companies like Cogeco have struggled to accurately measure usage. AT&T's at least holding off until their systems work, knowing how touchy this issue is to many U.S. consumers. AT&T users: have you received any warnings from AT&T? Does your area have a working website usage meter in place?

[CaptainZombie]

How is Uverse these days?

I had a salesman come to my house this evening and offered a sweet deal which would save me about $65 a month over Comcast. I'm having them install on Monday and the first 30 days is free of charge.

With the deal, I got 1 DVR and 2 receivers, the U200 HD package, 18mb internet, and unlimited phone for $137 total a month.

[NEOPARADIGM]

How is Uverse these days?

"You get what you pay for" comes to mind - just inexpensive enough to not be annoying while bringing nothing particularly special to the table. :shrug

Hope you enjoy.

[ChanHuk]

The bandwidth caps include both internet and IPTV?

[Phoenix]

They ban you, or so they say. It's outright. They do not have a plan where you pay per GB or anything like that. You just get dropped. I got a call about 3 years ago from Comcast stating that I DLed 1.2TB in less than 30 days and was in the top 1% of all users in the US for the month. They said if anything like that happened again, I would be banned from Comcast for a year. About 2 years later, they defined their caps, but it's still very fuzzy about what happens when you hit 251 GB. Some people claim they've DLed 500 GB and nothing happened. /shrug I'd rather not take the chance so I stay around 245 GB per month, every month, no matter what.

I have often wondered about that. While they talk about downloading a lot, they don't say much about uploading. Recently I setup CrashPlan on my machine and over the past month it has uploaded over 250GB, but I'm not sure there really is an issue unless you're downloading a whole lot.

[Phoenix]

Today I start getting 50mb Cable internet from Cable One. They have a 50 gb cap and its .50 extra for ever GB you go over. My mother in law works for the company and they had a big meeting and I told her how much HD streaming uses and so she brought up how much netflix uses and what not and they were adamant about "no one ever hits 50gb, blah blah blah". So I get to use it for 90 days risk free (no overage charges), and she wants me to prove them wrong lol. No problem, me and the wife need to catch up on Prison Break.

If its just one dude that goes over the 50GB cap it won't prove anything - they'll just say that YOU are a bandwidth hog and boot you from the system. Unless their overall metrics for all users on the system creeps above 50GB its not going to matter to them.

[DonasaurusRex]

...why are people still on dsl....?

[ChanHuk]

...why are people still on dsl....?

DSL is fine for most people who don't do much more than go on Facebook and share pictures. Ontop of that its cheap, $15 a month.

[fallagin]

Wow what a great birthday present!

[thirty]

The bandwidth caps include both internet and IPTV?

No. The tv portion isn't metered at all. It's completely separate. It would chew thru the caps within days if it were included.

[ChanHuk]

No. The tv portion isn't metered at all. It's completely separate. It would chew thru the caps within days if it were included.

They're still having issues with the meters aren't they? Probably because they're having difficulties separating internet/IPTV.

I'm stuck with TWC, it's not capped and I actually get pretty decent speeds for what I'm paying. Paying $30 a month for 10Mbps but actually average around 20Mbps and maxing out at 30Mbps. But god does their cable lineup suck, actually I think they've been slowly taking channels away. I'm gonna call in and threaten to cancel, hopefully I'll get them back.

[Marty Chinn]

God this thread scared me by popping up making me think they established the caps finally.

...why are people still on dsl....?

Because some people don't have a choice? Plus U-Verse is a form of DSL if I'm not mistaken and it's fast.

[thirty]

They're still having issues with the meters aren't they? Probably because they're having difficulties separating internet/IPTV. I'm stuck with TWC, it's not capped and I actually get pretty decent speeds for what I'm paying. Paying $30 a month for 10Mbps but actually average arounde 20Mbps and maxing out at 30Mbps. But god does their cable lineup suck, actually I think they've been slowly taking channels away. I'm gonna call in and threaten to cancel, hopefully I'll get them back.

No. That's not the issue. They know exactly what they send for tv. Almost like 2 different pipes but not. If that were the case they wouldn't also be having issues with the dsl meter.

[cajunator]

Meanwhile our utility system still churns out 100 mbps fiber internet with no cap :)

Fuck isp's.