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Thursday December 10, 2009
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An AT&T executive said Wednesday that the carrier is planning to tighten data usage controls for heavy smartphone users, according to USA Today.
It's no secret that carrier networks are fragile beasts. Thanks to AT&T's excruciatingly slow 3G build-out and the wildly successful iPhone, it's probably the worst off of the four carriers in this regard. But even as AT&T struggles to catch up with network upgrades, head of consumer services Ralph de la Vega told investors in New York that it's planning "incentives" to get high-bandwidth users to cool it, the report said.
This probably has something to do with how data card subscribers (at $59.99 per month) have a 5GB cap, whereas right now smartphone users don't. De La Vega said that just three percent of smartphone users are eating up 40 percent of available capacity, and that most of it is thanks to high-bandwidth video streaming apps.
"We need to educate the customer ... We've got to get them to
understand what represents a megabyte of data," de la Vega said in the report. If that's the case, rather than blaming his customers, he should probably have a talk with Apple--which is currently featuring CNN's video-heavy mobile app as "Pick of the Week."
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December 10, 2009 10:35 AM
I love how "educate the consumer" translates directly into "charge the consumer more money." There will be no education, there will only be higher bills, and - if lucky - an informational pamphlet in the envelope with your next bill.
I'm a little jaded, but I'm continually depressed by carriers like AT&T which would rather change customer behavior and spend money on marketing than actually make substantial improvements to their network. Granted, they're capable of doing more than one thing at one time, so here's hoping they actually ARE making improvements and not just blowing smoke, but I'm not certain.
December 10, 2009 1:05 PM
So... how exactly are they gonna tweak the meaning of the word "unlimited?" Oh, OK "education." (provided that "education" now means "to completely and fundamentally alter the terms to which a contract was signed") The IPhone is the only reason AT&T has not sunk into obscurity with this amazing business model of treating its customers with abject contempt.
December 11, 2009 2:23 PM
This is really frustrating. The telcos are so out of touch with the needs and usage patterns of some of their consumers, and even their own hardware vendors! -- that they are crippling themselves. My company had 3 Verizon data cards with unlimited data plans for about $60 a month each. A year or so ago, Verizon did away with that and put a cap on. An unscrupulous Verizon rep forcibly moved all my data plans over to the new one without telling me, and I suddenly started getting overage charges. I managed to get Verizon to put ONE of the data cards back on the unlimited "legacy" plan, but lost the other two. I still have that legacy plan, but have to be careful each time I buy a new phone that the idiots at the store don't touch the plan.
As a result, I scrapped the other data cards entirely, and Verizon lost out on 1.5 years of $120/month.
Meanwhile, Verizon markets its VCast TV service and a host of other bandwidth-chewing services. And the rest of the tech world is marketing online television, streaming media, etc. In the age of Hulu, it may well become impossible to take advantage of this technology if the telcos put these ridiculous limits on bandwidth. They are already talking about a data limit on HOME internet, too. If that goes into place, thousands (tens of thousands?) of online companies like Hulu, Crackle or others will go out of business. The telcos will have forced us back into the 1950's, when the only way to communicate was by wired phone and usage of TV required rabbit ears. Someone has to stop this trend!
Maybe Google will become an internet service provider? With its' server resources, it could make a fortune and even sell its own Android phones.