It looks like many consumers who like to use what they pay for will now be watched like an Eagle as AT&T look to penalise those who don't use the net once a week to allow them excessive profits.
http://gigaom.com/2008/11/03/att-trials-tiered-broadband-in-nevada/Following in the footsteps of Time Warner Cable, Frontier Communications and several UK Internet service providers, AT&T unveiled a tiered broadband service in Reno, Nev., on Nov. 1. According to a Friday filing with the Federal Communication Commission, AT&T executives met with the legal adviser to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to discuss “usage-based pricing” as a form of network management.
AT&T says it will have tiers ranging from 20 GB per month to 150 GB per month with a $1 per-gigabyte overage fee for new customers. Later this year, existing AT&T High-Speed Internet customers in Reno will become a part of this trial if their monthly usage exceeds 150 GB in one month.
This plan sounds much more generous than those of Time Warner but we’re still against limiting broadband use. Especially when faced with the stark statement at the end of the filing, “Finally, in the event a new or existing customer does not want to participate in the trial, we will permit the customer to cancel their broadband Internet access service without an early termination penalty.” Wow, looks like it’s tiered broadband or no broadband
This is the usual dirty take-it-or-leave-it ISP activity we are familiar with, you,ll notice there is no talk of refunding consumers who use their service infrequently, what a surprise eh folks ?
We have seen many UK ISP's take this same unreasonable line and unless customers act fast and in concert to create plenty of negative publicity for companies proposing such measures many other ISP's will try the same trick, make some noise or lose out, the choice is yours.
