AT&T Kills The $30 Unlimited Data Plan

[sidewinder101]

Ok Iphone & Blackberry and Smartphone Users like myself time to get the word out on this one.

Comments please.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Kills-The-30-Unlimited-Data-Plan-108703


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic.../urnidgns002570F3005978D80025773700587657.DTL

 

[D-rock]

The limited plans always suck, but then again, there haven't been any real unlimited plans for a while now from any of major companies dealing in cellular telecommunications. They always had hidden caps, and I am surprised they have been allowed to lie and get away with calling them unlimited for all this time. AT&T looks like even more of a rip off compared to what you have to pay for it though. The last real unlimited data plan I can think of came from Alltel and I think that even ended about a year ago when Verizon bought them out.

 

[shayd]

I can't wait for a court to finally step in and challenge some of the prices these companies offer. Yet again a cell phone company wants to screw customers.

 

[julez]

Should of got sprint

 

[Hot Mega]

I can't wait for a court to finally step in and challenge some of the prices these companies offer.

A suit would have to be initiated by some consumer or group on some anti-trust grounds. Or if the g'ment had reason to believe there was some collusion on pricing they could investigate anti-trust/price fixing.

I imagine AT&T is discontinuing the plan for new subs and allowing those already signed up for the plan to continue on the plan. If not there would seem to be an obvious bait and switch case to be made.

I have Sprint and fortunately when I signed up I got unlimited data plans for all my devices but they have since limited new plans to 5Gb (3G subscribers but now offering unlimited for 4G)

Should of got sprint

I believe Sprint's current data plans are now limited to 5Gb for 3G and unlimited for 4G.

 

[hammerer]

Eventually you have to pay for everything.

 

[shayd]

A suit would have to be initiated by some consumer or group on some anti-trust grounds. Or if the g'ment had reason to believe there was some collusion on pricing they could investigate anti-trust/price fixing.

I imagine AT&T is discontinuing the plan for new subs and allowing those already signed up for the plan to continue on the plan. If not there would seem to be an obvious bait and switch case to be made.

I have Sprint and fortunately when I signed up I got unlimited data plans for all my devices but they have since limited new plans to 5Gb (3G subscribers but now offering unlimited for 4G)



I believe Sprint's current data plans are now limited to 5Gb for 3G and unlimited for 4G.

I'm well aware of what case would need to be made, and to be honest, it's been made before, however the issue here is that there is price fixing on the part of cell phone companies. The average customer pays $20 per month for text messaging plans, in order for the cell phone companies to provide a service that costs them $700 a month to operate. Before AT&T swallowed up Cingular, Cingular offered an early unlimited plan for $50 per month. Now, AT&T has increased that to the price point of their competitors. AT&T and T-Mobile share cell towers, as do Sprint and Verizon. There is absolutely no way prices for cell phone plans can be justified as what they are without some sort of price fixing. The companies literally announce the same new features within days of each other, for the same price, which is way too high.

 

[Hot Mega]

I'm well aware of what case would need to be made, and to be honest, it's been made before, however the issue here is that there is price fixing on the part of cell phone companies. The average customer pays $20 per month for text messaging plans, in order for the cell phone companies to provide a service that costs them $700 a month to operate. Before AT&T swallowed up Cingular, Cingular offered an early unlimited plan for $50 per month. Now, AT&T has increased that to the price point of their competitors. AT&T and T-Mobile share cell towers, as do Sprint and Verizon. There is absolutely no way prices for cell phone plans can be justified as what they are without some sort of price fixing. The companies literally announce the same new features within days of each other, for the same price, which is way too high.

Now for collusion to be proven someone just has to get them in a room together talking about pricing.

$700 a month? Where's the rest of it? The subscriber isn't merely paying for the utility costs to operate some cell site, transceiver station or switch. They're paying for what it costs to maintain and engineer the network as well....the employees and contractors making from $60-$180k or so a year.

It appears to me AT&T through this action is trying to drive customer usage down...not price gouge. And that only happens for one reason...their network congestion is exceeding their ability to engineer relief.

They are probably maxing out on frequency reuse to which there are a couple of options, get the FCC to license them addition spectrum or their equipment vendors engineer new equipment which drives down further "n=" numbers (amount of subscribers that can actively use one channel at a time, lower the number the more users).

 

[titsrock]

Gee, AT&T, price fixing...monopolistic practices.

This all sounds so familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_&_Telegraph

I'd like to see an actual Free Market here in the states for cell service. Those forced consumer contracts with steep exit penalties kinda smack of old-school monopoly. How did those things ever become legalized anyway? Oh, I know. Regulation is bad for the free market. I remember now...

 

[Hot Mega]

Gee, AT&T, price fixing...monopolistic practices.

This all sounds so familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_&_Telegraph

I'd like to see an actual Free Market here in the states for cell service. Those forced consumer contracts with steep exit penalties kinda smack of old-school monopoly. How did those things ever become legalized anyway? Oh, I know. Regulation is bad for the free market. I remember now...

Well, theoretically the early term. fees are like a deposit forfeiture for them swinging you such a "deal" on a phone or plan for a 1 or 2 year contract period and you not fulfilling your end of the deal.

Another theory is with respect to the wireless industry, it is allegedly a free market. But the FCC auctions for the bloc of frequencies in the proprietary bands are like auto auctions for the ultra exclusive, most expensive cars. Yeah, it's open to everyone but only the ultra wealthy or conglomerates of ultra wealthy end up able to bid amongst each other.

But once these groups pay billions of dollars just for the license (not to mention the billions more to build out the network) the FCC can't then allow someone else to infringe on their frequencies.

It was mentioned here that AT&T took over Cingular. It was a little more complicated than that...Cingular was already a subsidiary AT&T as they were originally Pacific Bell Mobile Services (an AT&T company) back in the '90s before they re-branded. Cingular initially bought out what was then AT&T Wireless and sold their old (Cingular's) infrastructure to T-Mobile. Then AT&T just eliminated the Cingular brand in favor of simply AT&T sans any wireless reference.

AT&T Wireless was formerly Cellular One in the early '90s when it was bought out by AT&T and branded AT&T Wireless. Point of it all for them was to stop spending billions and dollars putting in virtually the same technology in the same markets.

As far as this thread goes..I believe they are attempting to avoid congestion as apparently there is a new skype app for the iphone coming out. Meaning increased usage/congestion and the ability of customers to circumvent their billing under their unlimited data plans.

 

[D-rock]

Another theory is with respect to the wireless industry, it is allegedly a free market. But the FCC auctions for the bloc of frequencies in the proprietary bands are like auto auctions for the ultra exclusive, most expensive cars. Yeah, it's open to everyone but only the ultra wealthy or conglomerates of ultra wealthy end up able to bid amongst each other.

But once these groups pay billions of dollars just for the license (not to mention the billions more to build out the network) the FCC can't then allow someone else to infringe on their frequencies.

It would have been nice if the government didn't sell those frequencies off to corporations and keep a lot of them for public use, even if the government had to maintain regulation over them because there is only so much frequency. I would rather have them for public use like maybe better free communication, emergency services, or maybe even someday free over the air Internet for the public rather than letting telecommunication companies buy them to better line their pockets. That's pretty much the real reason all our television signal went to digital, to free up space or companies to use and make a profit for themselves, not because it was in all of our best interest. I would much rather have that and have long term benefits from it than to have the government make a few billion quick bucks so the telecommunication companies can cash out.

 

[316sherm]

Well, I'm glad that I'm already an AT&T user...this, will have no effect on me, or any other (already) AT&T user.
:hatsoff:

Current iPhone owners on the unlimited data plan for $30 a month and iPad owners on the unlimited data plan for $25 a month won't have to switch to one of the usage-based data plans, according to AT&T . But they can choose to switch to a cheaper plan if they don't use much data (and iPhone owners won't be penalized with a contract extension).

 

[Member2019]

There are frequencies for public-private use ...

Everyone is free to start a public network of their own using them, their own infrastructure, their own services, etc... There are many public frequencies they can use. The problem? Oh man, don't get me started.

So while everyone complains, bitches and moans about the practices of various vendors, they forget there is a lot to running a network. I'm not saying AT&T is the best, far from it -- in fact -- I don't use them for this reason. They fucked ne out of $2K years ago on a business plan where they violated their own terms of service (I just wrote it off). I have also had several, large US clients who dropped AT&T like the girl after prom night, and I reminded them of that fact several times as well when I got into "disputes" (back before I dropped them as well).

But there is not only choice out there among commercial entities and their networks, but even some public-private ventures too. However, to reach anyone and everyone, with guaranteed service and other, expected reliability, the public-private options are hardly feasible. The customer may always be right, but the customer can be dreaming when they are right as well.

So if you don't think so, then turn your dream of a "good network provider" into a reality by starting one. Given that AT&T, Sprint and Verizon must sell access at a fixed rate, there is no excuse why you can't. Otherwise companies like Boost and several others would not exist.

 

[sidewinder101]

The whole thing stemmed from the court ruling over internet neutrality Comcast vs the FCC.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/telecom/comcast-wins-suit-vs-fcc-rules-internet/

 

[shayd]

Now for collusion to be proven someone just has to get them in a room together talking about pricing.

$700 a month? Where's the rest of it? The subscriber isn't merely paying for the utility costs to operate some cell site, transceiver station or switch. They're paying for what it costs to maintain and engineer the network as well....the employees and contractors making from $60-$180k or so a year.

It appears to me AT&T through this action is trying to drive customer usage down...not price gouge. And that only happens for one reason...their network congestion is exceeding their ability to engineer relief.

They are probably maxing out on frequency reuse to which there are a couple of options, get the FCC to license them addition spectrum or their equipment vendors engineer new equipment which drives down further "n=" numbers (amount of subscribers that can actively use one channel at a time, lower the number the more users).

To physically power a network with an average load of data in the form of text messages costs $700 a month. When I worked for AT&T, I commissioned cell tower workers, most often for about $70k a year. The cost of employees was more than covered by other sources of income, (viz physical phone sales) anything on top of that was either marginally cut into by maintenance required, or essentially pocketed by the company.

To be honest, I agree with you in what AT&Ts purpose is. That said, it still doesn't account for why they (and I mean all major cell phone providers) have such high prices, yet make the same changes at the same times.

 

[Supafly]

I think we should not use any more intense wireless communication devices.

Because it is killing the bees, or rather preventing them to find their hive. Which could eventually wipe out a large part of our gardenind and farmind and consequentially, ourselves

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548692/Bees-killed-by-mobile-phone-signals.html

So do it old-school and surf your porn at home via cable

 

[Hot Mega]

To physically power a network with an average load of data in the form of text messages costs $700 a month. When I worked for AT&T, I commissioned cell tower workers, most often for about $70k a year. The cost of employees was more than covered by other sources of income, (viz physical phone sales) anything on top of that was either marginally cut into by maintenance required, or essentially pocketed by the company.

Phone sales are not really a revenue stream for carriers that's why they virtually give them away. The selling of features and phone plans overwhelmingly pays all the bills for cell phone carriers. I mean, they give you a phone to get you on a plan.

In terms of costs...What about the Engineers who design and optimize the RF network (determine where a tower will be located and how it will operate within the network of towers), the switch Engineers who design and optimized trunking, manage feature and billing systems? Also each one of those cell towers that isn't being feed off a microwave from another is connected back to the switch by at minimum 1 t1 circuit (at least $1k per month a piece)....all that costs. And those are just the people and things which generate the companies' revenue.

Those towers are co-located with other carriers for 3 reasons mainly; 1 it is already the best location RF engineering-wise, they are slam dunks to get through city planning since the site has already gone through the process once and it's much cheaper to just go in and lease a place already designed as a cell site than to build one from scratch.

 

[D-rock]

I could also add as far as data transmission goes that people who engineer, plan, build and maintain all of that must do the worst jobs within each of those companies, and that's saying something considering how crappy the rest what they do is run.

I have yet to see anything run smoothly data wise, especially outside of an area of relatively high population density. Not only do people pay too much for what they get, they usually don't even get the services that are implied to them. I have heard so much of what goes wrong with the entire system. At least with a normal cellular phone call you just get dropped. When you add in everything from ridiculously slow transmission rates (sometimes, actually make that often, despite a strong signal) from what you should have or even what you were promised, weak fluctuating signals, dropped transmissions during potentially critical downloads, shoddy sharing of towers and networks, small data caps, a ridiculous amount of downtime with the data or software components of the system sometimes where whole districts can go down, and retooling the hardware components because they don't plan ahead well or don't know what they are going to do it takes it to a whole new level.

Telecommunication companies also seem the most apathetic companies in the country when it comes to properly expanding service or even serving the people they already cover adequately, except when they want some government grant, subsidized infrastructure, deregulation, or good PR then they will lie and still not end up doing it. They are very good at making excuses. Where once the US lead the world there are a lot of countries that now perform much better than us. They are also good at lobbying, not only national government, but also local ones whenever their hold on power might be threatened.

After all that I have yet to even mention customer service, oh God the customer service they have. They must run schools somewhere on how to maintain the worst customer service possible. It’s some of the worst among any type of industry, and again that saying something.

 

[Hot Mega]

I could also add as far as data transmission goes that people who engineer, plan, build and maintain all of that must do the worst jobs within each of those companies, and that's saying something considering how crappy the rest what they do is run.

I have yet to see anything run smoothly data wise, especially outside of an area of relatively high population density. Not only do people pay too much for what they get, they usually don't even get the services that are implied to them. I have heard so much of what goes wrong with the entire system. At least with a normal cellular phone call you just get dropped. When you add in everything from ridiculously slow transmission rates (sometimes, actually make that often, despite a strong signal) from what you should have or even what you were promised, weak fluctuating signals, dropped transmissions during potentially critical downloads, shoddy sharing of towers and networks, small data caps, a ridiculous amount of downtime with the data or software components of the system sometimes where whole districts can go down, and retooling the hardware components because they don't plan ahead well or don't know what they are going to do it takes it to a whole new level.

Telecommunication companies also seem the most apathetic companies in the country when it comes to properly expanding service or even serving the people they already cover adequately, except when they want some government grant, subsidized infrastructure, deregulation, or good PR then they will lie and still not end up doing it. They are very good at making excuses. Where once the US lead the world there are a lot of countries that now perform much better than us. They are also good at lobbying, not only national government, but also local ones whenever their hold on power might be threatened.

After all that I have yet to even mention customer service, oh God the customer service they have. They must run schools somewhere on how to maintain the worst customer service possible. It’s some of the worst among any type of industry, and again that saying something.

Well, cell carriers are awarded a limited number of frequencies with their license that they must skillfully use and reuse over and over again throughout their network.

The challenge of course when you have to reuse frequencies in the same RF environment is to not interfere with yourself.

As they continue to add subscribers to this limited bloc of frequencies you can see where the problem begins. This is why the service isn't just engineered then that's it. There is constant design and RF optimization of it.

But frankly, when you pick up your phone to place a call today, in the overwhelming majority of cases I would think a person connects. Then you also have many other features the phone is delivering through packetized data at the same time.

As compared to service plans and grade of service of just 10 years ago...the average customer is getting far better service while the service prices have come down.

Someone mentioned something about pay as you go services (Boost, etc.) ...those services don't have networks. They buy service from the main carriers then resell it. Boost for example operates on Sprint's network.

 

[sidewinder101]

-=Great Information people thanks for all the posts did not know that about Boost Mobile Hot Mega=-