Posted on 07/29/2011 6:07:18 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Yep, would you also remember when you got cheaper rates from electric companies for going all electric?
Those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end. {:-(
Up until about 4 years ago I had top quality service with ATT. Now it is a little above sucky.....”
I may be misreading how you are describing this but will kick in something. My first cell phone 10 years ago was a real sweet Nokia. After 3 or 4 years of service (with AT&T, probably not significant though) performance started going down, more dropped calls, no signal, etc. Called tech service and they would push a software update to the phone and poof, all was well again. What was going on is that as the cell systems were upgraded to new standards, the software drivers were updated to keep pace. Eventually though, the phone just didn't have the ability to upgrade and that was the trigger to retire the sweet Nokia. Think of this as if I was trying to use a 1982 IBM PC to run Windows 7 - Not going to work.
I use a 4 year old Motorola Razer now and a couple of times a year, I will proactively call up tech service to check about a driver upgrade. About half the time, there is one so get it pushed to the phone.
Back in the 80’s when AT&T owned it all the government broke them up. Now thirty years later with all new technology they are once again buying up the better parts of the industry.
Buy yourself some AT&T stock and you’ll be much happier with them.
We call them spawns of satan.
Not really, they advertise an UNLIMITED plan and encourage you to use the video and bell & whistles, then throttle you because you do.
Just suck it up and do away with the unlimited plans altogether, if they are a problem. AT&T sucks dead bunnies through a straw and I quit them years ago and swore NEVER to do business with them again.
Thanks for reminding me why again AT&T!
Why yes they do, but it doesn’t matter to AT&T and many freepers either.
Obama and Net Neutrality sticks again. Grey Eagle
Just wait. They'll one day swap the 95% for 90, then 80, then 75 and these freepers will be up in arms but too late.
Always ok as long as it's someone else's ox getting gored.
And everyone here is more than happy to allow them to start monetizing every bit coming thru THEIR internet. You people have no clue what is going to happen.
Yep, its OK to piss on someone else, but wait till their gord is cut.
Please keep AT&T’s hands off of T-Mobile.”
Unfortunately it isn’t going to happen. I complained to T-Mobile so just before the merger goes through guess I’ll go on the hunt for a new cell company. I absolutely refuse to use AT&T-have to for my business phone because I have no choice and thoroughly hate them.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I learned from the school of hard internet knocks what capped and throttled bandwidth is like...I’m one of millions of Americans who STILL don’t have wired broadband access. We suffered with Wildblue and a freaking 7.5Gb monthly cap. I dare any Comcast or other cable internet subscriber to live with that and two teenagers.
Comcast’s 250Gb cap is a “pipe dream” for me, but People truly have no idea what they’re in for. Walled gardens where you must have Comcast to watch ESPN. The ISP’s would just love to charge a premium for access to Facebook, Google, Twitter, Netflix. This is nothing more than a massive cash grab to make their books look good without unvesting in FIOS and infrastructure.
Folks, at the first whiff of a restrictive landline cap you’d better scream. And get everyone you know to scream. Those caps never go down and neither do the bills. Brace yourselves, and don’t say you weren’t warned.
Only problem with this rant is that it isn’t live streaming data and it only updates a few times a day at best - usually in off-peak hours. Many only update a once a day in the wee hours of the morning, and it’s a highly compressed data package.
In which case, yeah, that was dumb.
Although... come to think of it, it’s only a 720p feed at best, and it’s mostly H.264 or better compressed... Hm.
Anyone have solid numbers on what kind of bandwidth it’s chewing?
This is a fairly sane approach to dealing with bandwidth hogs. Personally, I’d prefer a scaling approach: the more bandwidth you use, the lower priority your packets get. At slack times, you can have full speed whereas during the busiest times, the people with more acute needs get preference.
I’ve talked to them about the surcharge and they say it’s not about the 4G (they say it’s a smartphone surcharge, not for 4G) and will not refund it. Granted that was at the local store, I have not complained to CS. We have gotten great service from them in the past but the speed just isn’t there. There is 4G in Charlotte and Atlanta but not here in Greenville, and so far the 3G here is crappy.
When I did phone billing 20 years ago, we had 3 then 6 then 9 billing cycles per month. One of the reasons was to spread out the large customers, and also to use those big printers and mail-machines all month long, not just for short bursts during the month. I would imagine that is how most do it.
Of course 'most' large users don't live in 'your' area, but some may. So the scenario you talked about could certainly be noticed locally.
All my phones on my plan are smart phones. However only 2 are 4G.
10 dollar smart phone fee? They are lying to you just like zero.
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