[ale] AT&T U-verse, throttled

[Paul Cartwright]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080915-att-will-temporarily-reduce-speeds-for-u-verse-customers.html

AT&T will "temporarily reduce" speeds for U-verse customers

By Matthew Lasar | Published: September 15, 2008 - 05:45AM CT

As AT&T disclosed at the Federal Communications Commission's summer
hearing on network management practices at Carnegie Mellon University,
it was rewriting its broadband service terms of service. The telco
submitted them to the FCC on Thursday, and it looks like speed
throttling is on the menu.

"In order to provide a consistently high-quality video service, AT&T
U-verse High Speed Internet throughput speeds may be temporarily reduced
when a customer is using other U-verse services in a manner that
requires high bandwidth," the new language will warn. "This could occur
more often with higher speed Internet access products. It may be
necessary, for some AT&T High Speed Internet users, for AT&T to set a
maximum downstream speed on a customer line to enhance the reliability
and consistency of performance."

The disclosure concedes that these changes "will prevent some customers
from obtaining the maximum downstream speed capability," but the overall
speed will not be reduced from the tier that the customer purchased,
promises AT&T. U-verse offers video, phone, and broadband services in a
single package, all delivered over a phone line and powered by a
fiber-to-the node system.

AT&T says these new conditions will go into effect starting October 18.

The company 's current terms of service for U-verse broadband mentions
that throughput speeds "may be limited at AT&T's sole discretion, and
such limitation will have no effect on whether the minimum speed is
met." The telco's present contract terms for DSL say that "AT&T reserves
the right to monitor or change your current plan speed at any time. No
minimum level of speed is guaranteed."

This new agreement language takes a stab at explaining under what
circumstances a customer's bit rate could be throttled, albeit a pretty
general stab, the sort of stab that might be aimed at the heart and land
instead on the big toe.

At least Comcast's new bandwidth cap policy sets a specific ceiling,
250GB, with a set of examples of how much data a customer would have to
move to run afoul of the policy—20,000 high-res photos, 40 million
e-mails, or 8,000 movie trailers.
Attack of the bloggers

Not surprisingly, blogging about this latest development has been quite
brisk over the last few days.  "Get ready to have your connection
squeezed to a trickle," warns Gizmodo.

Public Knowledge's Mehan Jayasuriya suggests that the point of this new
policy may be to get consumers to focus more on U-verse's TV services,
in which AT&T has invested heavily. "If your Internet connection is
slowed to a crawl, you're probably a lot more likely to put down the
mouse and pick up the remote, which means more potential money in the
bank for AT&T," he writes.

Ars contacted AT&T and was told by company spokesperson Brad Mays that
the firm has no intention of "squeezing" its U-verse customers. "It's
more a matter of the way data comes into and travels around a home,"
Mays said. "There are things (use of PCs, video, etc.) that can impact
the throughput speed a customer gets. We are not doing anything to
degrade the speed, it’s just a fact of the way data travels."

The telco will start sending out customer notices this week, AT&T says.
Customer e-mails will announce that AT&T has "added new language to the
service description to more clearly describe how we provide your high
speed Internet connection, and to explain what factors can affect the
performance of your high speed Internet service."

AT&T's Vice President James W. Cicconi promises in the FCC letter that
the company "will provide clear information about the capabilities of
our service and any meaningful limitations on the service." We'll see
whether the Commissioners, especially FCC Chair Kevin Martin, concur
with the broadband giant's new standard for clarity.


- --
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800
Registered Ubuntu User #12459
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkjOSyEACgkQwcoO8y6mgv0T0gCfUQKJv+Hp6i9iPOb9GJwW1HkV
vKMAniXDlI0bD3c6YdVscV1FTch+/Z5n
=rG/8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----