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Why are there data caps on my U-Verse? (From a technical standpoint)
Nobeard
North Carolina: Failed StateRegistered User regular
North Carolina: Failed StateRegistered User regular
So I just found out from my wife we have been getting reamed on our AT&T bill for going over our home data usage. I know it's my own fault I did not notice this, but I want to know WHY this is being done. Not just the reason AT&T gives (I don't trust what they say), what is the technical reason they need to charge? Frankly, I think there is no reason at all for this besides AT&T just wants more money.
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If you want my answer as a Telecom professional as to why they can get away with it: it's because of franchising. AT&T doesn't actually have to directly compete against any company with similar speeds, because they "own" their franchised territory. If Fios is in your area, for example, you would have to move to take advantage of it (I did just that for myself). If you want to stay where you are, you're probably stuck with AT&T and they know it.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
There are technical limitations to bandwidth capacity but it's not in how many bits are delivered to your devices at any given time, but how many people are pulling how many bits simultaneously over the network (the "Netflix effect"). The total downloads metric is a lazy way to discriminate between heavy and light users. It may be possible that their systems currently cannot handle active bandwidth throttling, or legally they cannot for the line being subscribed. I think U-verse is a pretty new data network though.
If you're trying to get negotiating leverage then you should check out what your other options are. If they think you're really going to leave then you'll be sent to retention and they can cut you deals. But if AT&T is the only game in your area you're kinda boned.
There is a technical reason in the abstract to have data caps (network capacity is a finite thing, or else I wouldn't have a job), but the actual numbers in use today are somewhat lower than what network capacity would dictate. The general idea is dissuade the heaviest users from torrenting all day and make a little bit of money on the side (data overages are not a significant part of their landline revenue that I'm aware of).
I think they started the 250GB "cap" a couple of years ago after testing it in a few markets (to huge backlash), but it wasn't really enforced. It was kind of a "we'll let you know you're going over and hope you cut back". But even that was pretty rare. They started the 300/600 caps within the last few months, I believe, after warning us a few times it was coming. I'm glad they're raising it because we were within 50GB of the cap each month. 1TB is reasonable right now, but even that is going to be outgrown by technology in the next few years (4K, larger games, etc).
I wish Austin would stop being such a pain in the ass to build in so that Google could expand their fiber network, hopefully to Round Rock, because I will switch the day it's available. So tired of the telecom's shit. Just as an example, we signed up for U-verse TV (their top package), their highest internet, and phone when we moved into our house 3 years ago, and our 2 year contract was like $190 a month. After those 2 years were up, it shot up to $280 a month. I called to see if we could get a similar deal that we had, but the best they could offer was $30 off for 3 months. So we cancelled our TV and went full streaming, bringing our bill down to $99. For 18Mb/s service.
Network capacity is a thing, but that's only tangentially related to data caps, right? I'm pretty under the impression (as a pretty technologically literate non-expert) that there's basically no cost to delivering data vs not delivering data when the network is under little strain, right?
So my understanding is that network throttling of heavy consumers during peak hours would be a reasonable way to solve the problem, and data caps are pretty much just a way to get dollars that is sort of related if you squint real hard and pretend that the problem is the integral of the thing that's actually limited.
It's also a way to keep customers from using competing media delivery services as much (Netflix, etc), while also putting off building up their own infrastructure.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Been waiting for Google for years now. I like the 5 mbps lifetime option eventhough I'll need their bigger service.
I got on when they rolled out their gigapower product in our area (really good/capable installers, the gigapower guys were a separate group, had way better customer/tech support). Bandwidth is probably limited by the servers and not the connection. I've pulled 4 GB isos from MS in under 1 minute, though I wouldn't bank on that always being the case and I cannot complain about throttling my usenet access. $70 for internet and $30 for U-200 TV (plus free HBO). So $120ish after taxes and stuff. 1-yr contract, 3-yr price-lock. I'm finding I'm the only one who watches live tv, kids and wife are nearly pure streamers so I'm probably going to kill the TV. Realistically once the price-lock ends I'm probably going to be hit with a huge increase. I can play Time Warner off them, but I kinda hate Time Warner more than AT&T.
Yeah, at times of low load it doesn't matter at all. In theory they could do something like only count data usage at peak times against a cap (even something like 10a-10p) and get at most of what they want, which is what I would do if I were running a telco.
Actively throttling is a somewhat more complex technical solution - it is certainly possible (mobile operators do it all the time), but they would rather do it by creating a financial/psychological incentive for people to cut their own use.
ok i will add on to the non-cynical people here
even though there is an obvious revenue component to data caps, the simple fact is that cell phone networks are simply not designed for everyone, or even "a lot of people" to all be using their phone at the same time
if there were no data caps at all and everyone could just crank netflix on their iphone 24/7, then some or all of the national cellular network would collapse from overload
electricity grids function the exact same way, but you dont deal with "caps" because utilities function under different levels of consumer protection
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
This isn't all about cell phones however. There's data caps on land based networks as well. But the fundamental issues are the same.
Carriers want to milk the most money out of existing infrastructure that they can before they are forced to upgrade it. This also includes making competition for revenue streams more difficult (streaming music/video).
From my own experience, the vast majority of issues could be handled much better via traffic shaping and QoS methods as opposed to caps.
There's really no reason to cap a persons traffic to a set amount at all in this day and age unless they are obviously abusing the service in some way (like running a public site with massive amounts of traffic from a consumer connection).
Netflix has defaulted to HTTPS transport for almost a year now, too.