AT&T is now going to start charging its DSL and higher end service, Uverse customers more fees for going over a certain data limit. These limitations aren’t as strict as some of the Canadian restrictions that have already been imposed, but are still a cap to an unlimited Internet service that will begin on May 2, 2011.
DSL Customers will be limited to 150GB of data; we assume a combined download and upload, per month. After the third time a customer would go over the 150GB limit they would be charged $10 per extra 50GB over the initial 150GB. That means if you would consume 250GB of data you would be charged an extra $20 for that month. The same would apply to its higher end Uverse users, but with a 250GB limit per month.
AT&T claims only 2% of its users will be affected by this change and claim they’re “committed to providing a great experience for all of our Internet customers”. If you ask me, it’s a load bull. If you only take AT&T’s Uverse customer base of 2 million, you’re still looking at 40,000 customers that will be affected; and that’s only the smaller Internet service AT&T offers. Given all of these 40,000 customers go over the cap 3 times, that’s still an extra $400,000 per month in the pocket for AT&T to “help” keep a great experience for their customers. I was unable to find how much its DSL customer base is, but I can assure you it’s much more than the 2 million Uverse customers.
I’m glad that I’m not an AT&T customer, because I would be pretty angry about this change. If you’re an AT&T customer, I suggest you start looking for another Internet Service Provider.
