AT&T Immediately Establish Internet Fastlanes - To no-one's surprise
- Thread starter Gay Kenshiro
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2018
All internet traffic should move equally slowly.
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2015
Who would ever expect a company that aspires to imitate the original AT&T to act monopolistically?
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2018
They're already a local monopoly most places in terms of phone service. Antitrust law enforcement is a joke. Even when they do it it leads to stupid shit like the Baby Bells where they were broken up by region so none of them were actually in competition with each other.
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- Sep 26, 2014
As a utility company, AT&T in itself is a natural monopoly, so of course any breakup will fail and/or make shit worse.
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- Feb 1, 2018
I don't really see the issue with offering a premium service for a price, it's not like they're intentionally lowering the rates of other services or anything, they're just removing data usage for their personal services and anyone who wants to tag along with a little cash, just seems like a bunch of bellyaching to me.
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- Jul 25, 2017
AT&T couldn't even notify people properly and sent a text message to their customers 
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- Sep 19, 2016
Are they offering people the chance to get even faster speeds for tv? It's as if they want people to have the ability to have better internet for a set price!
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- Mar 15, 2016
Exactly. Imagine the horror of being able to choose to watch a video that doesn't use up any of the allocated data on your phone plan!
If they were blocking other video services or slowing them down to the point of unusability then maybe there would be an argument (but it would be an argument to switch services not regulate), but all that's happening here is the absolutely dreadful spectre of the consumer being given more choice.
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
Pretty clever to make your first hand-wringing ploy only affect businesses. From what I'm seeing this strictly benefits consumers, inasmuch as AT&T won't count the data if they use apps and sites that have paid the AT&T Best Buddies fee. This really only saves you any money if you have overages but it doesn't tangibly hurt consumers in any conceivable way. It hurts other businesses, sure, but I don't think that's going to garner public outrage. I guess good going so far, AT&T. Don't fuck up.
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- Joined
- Jan 31, 2018
They're a "natural monopoly" in that the initial cost of laying down a ton of infrastructure makes it hard to enter the market, but small businesses do still manage to do it these days, albeit the areas they cover are far smaller than something like AT&T. And once you've already resolved to break it up, why not give them overlapping coverage?
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- Nov 4, 2016
Ineedahero
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 8, 2016
Welcome to how the internet works in Australia. Honestly, this is a benefit for consumers, although not as much of one when they're the only game in town.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
If all companies have to pay a bribe to AT&T to compete in any meaningful way with these other companies, they're either going to cut services or make themselves subscription services. In the end you're going to get fucked one way or another. That or they'll just go out of business.
A
AF 802
Guest
kiwifarms.net
AT&T couldn't even notify people properly and sent a text message to their customers
Wasn't AT&T the phone provider to have 911 fail on them recently as well?
Anyways, makes me glad I'm on T-Mobile. They do this shit too, but they make up for it by giving unlimited data with MAYBE 50GB prioritization cap.
Autopsy
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2017
Let's play Incentives! Why should you support this policy?
AT&T Incentive: Guaranteed and stable payments make bottom lines look cleaner for shareholders and potential investors. Possible increase in mobile usage with much less pressure from clients to move to 100% unlimited plans. If the market gets really competitive, you might be able to eke out new deals and contracts with certain providers, or bolster subsidiaries on the cheap. It's a win.
Content Provider Incentive: Big content providers who stream bulk data can pay AT&T for a noticeable boost in traffic from users with limited plans. For example, Google almost certainly wants Youtube to be available anywhere, anytime, especially since mobile is much less prone to adblocking. Google Play is also a big one, free data means updating and downloading programs anywhere without fear of size or data waste. Not like you have to play if you don't want to, either it'll make you more money than it'll cost you or it wont. Might have been more hostile if smaller firms used a lot of data, but no one's going to go use turkeyfarms.net just because Null can't afford AT&T's prices. Netflix in particular has a great service opportunity here, shows on the commute. It's a win.
Client Incentive: You get free data without paying any extra. While this might happen anyway if they busted up monopolies and shook everything around, that's never going to happen, so at least you're getting something nice out of the fucked up system you're stuck with. Ever feel like you wanted to use XYZ product but you were afraid you'd waste your data? Now you can do it worry-free. It's a win.
Now that basic bitch """critical thinking""" thing is done and dealt with, how are you guys handling the end of the world as we know it? muh Net Neutrality got taken away, man.
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- Joined
- May 6, 2017
Oh, I agree. Any tax on a business is inevitably felt by consumers. How much consumers will feel it depends entirely on how AT&T structures the whole bribe system.
Netflix will probably just take a $50K bribe on the chin to keep up their image, but a $5M bribe per year may require Netflix to be the bad guys in the public eye and hike their rates. If AT&T has a brain I think they'll just bilk a few thousand off of every major company for free, but if they're extra greedy they'll take a percentage, or even better, allow a company to pay extra so its competitor has to make an even steeper bribe in turn. Shit would devolve into the wild west real quick, and the barrier to starting up in tech would skyrocket.
- Joined
- May 22, 2017
This has been done before back in the early days of data plans. T-mobile was known for offering streaming packages that would offer unlimited music streaming from partnered services. http://www.dancingastronaut.com/2014/06/endless-free-music-streaming-t-mobiles-new-update/
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- Mar 15, 2016
iiNet did it in Aus. If you went on gaming servers within Australia, they didn't count them against your data usage.
Lots of mobile phone companies also used to offer free use of facebook to prepaid users, no doubt paid for by facebook.
If you didn't like it you could always, y'know, not use the services they're trying to push.
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2017
Thanks Pajeet!
No surprise at all this happened.
For now.
The big companies will pony up because they want everyone using their sites and services.
I've heard of third world countries where you can get a phone cheap and it comes with access to Facebook. And for those people who rarely have access to computers or internet that's more powerful than two tin cans and a piece of string it's the best thing ever.
I don't see the developed world ending up like that. But we can still get screwed over in other ways.
No surprise at all this happened.
For now.
The big companies will pony up because they want everyone using their sites and services.
I've heard of third world countries where you can get a phone cheap and it comes with access to Facebook. And for those people who rarely have access to computers or internet that's more powerful than two tin cans and a piece of string it's the best thing ever.
I don't see the developed world ending up like that. But we can still get screwed over in other ways.