This is how it will work: only users who exceed the new usage cap three times -- across the life of your account, not per month -- will be forced to pay these new per byte overages. Overages will be $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit they travel.
AT&T claims their average DSL customer uses around 18GB a month, and these changes will only impact about 2% of all DSL customers -- who the company states consume "a disproportionate amount of bandwidth."
"Using a notification structure similar to our new wireless data plans, we'll proactively notify customers when they exceed 65%, 90% and 100% of the monthly usage allowance," AT&T tells us. The company also says they'll provide users with a number of different usage tools, including a usage monitor that tracks historical usage over time, and a number of different usage tools aimed at identifying bandwidth-hungry services.
AT&T claims their average DSL customer uses around 18GB a month, and these changes will only impact about 2% of all DSL customers -- who the company states consume "a disproportionate amount of bandwidth."
"Using a notification structure similar to our new wireless data plans, we'll proactively notify customers when they exceed 65%, 90% and 100% of the monthly usage allowance," AT&T tells us. The company also says they'll provide users with a number of different usage tools, including a usage monitor that tracks historical usage over time, and a number of different usage tools aimed at identifying bandwidth-hungry services.
Now I remember how I fought in the late 1980s for fixed price billing when COO at NYNEX Mobile now Verizon Wireless. Why, because the costs of billing, direct and indirect were so high. It caused churn and it had real costs as well. The other problem is that you must provide itemized billing, otherwise you will end up in court. But this is ATT, the same company whose former head Ed Whitacre said is was "his" network. The same Ed Whitacre that the current President made head of the government controlled GM! Why were we not surprised.
Now a quick calculation.
1. Remember that you have 30X24X60X60 sec per month. That is about 2.5 million seconds per month.
2. Thus if I were to just keep my email going continuously, with text messages only, I would use about 1,000 bits per text message. Say I get 400 per day, not unreasonable. That would be 400,000 bits per day and 12 M bits per month. That alone is only 5 bps!
3. Now look at video. Assume an H264 video, at 5 Mbps and say a 2 hour video. That is 600 Mbp. Say you do 10 per month. That is 6 Gb. Then divide by 2.5 Msec we get 2400 bps. That is bits not bytes which is 8 bits.
4. Now assume you watch your HDTV which is 5 Mbps for 6 hours per day. Then you have an average down rate of 1.25 Mbps. That is also 1.8 Gb per day and 54 Gb per month. But is is 6.75 GB as well. Big difference.
Thus we ask:
1. Is it bits or bytes? Many times they get this messed up.
2. What is a detailed bill to look like. Must we have the calling party?
3. What of bill resolution?
4. What is we have a paper bill now, will it remain as such? If so how many pages are expected. If there is an entry per download per IP address per packet then we must start cutting all the trees in North America.
5. What of bill resolution. When a customer complains who will handle this and at what cost?
6. This starts to sound like the old telephone company again, well after all it is ATT.
I spent years telling the management that fixed price unlimited usage was the way to go. So 2% got a free ride. The costs of doing all the other stuff, including the loss of customers was too high. Well remember this is ATT and Texas. They seem to think differently there.
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