AT&T Tries Charging Users $7 Extra For ‘Turbo’ 5G
from the this-one-goes-to-11 dept
For years, big ISPs have made it abundantly clear that they dream of being able to abuse their gatekeeper power over telecom markets to tilt the playing field in their favor. Whether it was Verizon’s early attempts to force you to buy their GPS apps and mapping services, to AT&T’s later-year efforts with “sponsored data” (letting certain big companies buy a network advantage), their goals have never been subtle.
Unfortunately for them, consumer groups, activists, and regulators keep screwing up their plans with that whole “net neutrality” thing.
Last month, the FCC finally got around to restoring net neutrality rules, which prohibit ISPs from being too obviously obnoxious when it comes to anti-competitive behavior. The rules ban ISPs from blocking or throttling competitors, or from striking deals that could distort the competitive landscape (like say by giving Disney faster network performance and exemption from data caps, but not a nonprofit).
Since AT&T can’t engage in the kind of fully anti-competitive efforts they were hoping for, they’ve been relegated to trying to nickel-and-dime consumers in less spectacular ways. For example, last week the company announced they’d be offering the company’s 5G users “Turbo” speeds for an extra $7 a month.
The $7 surcharge, for each line on your account, “boosts all the high-speed and hotspot data on a user’s connection.” It does this by assigning “Quality of Service Class Identifiers,” which effectively gives some users network priority. The “boost” is only available on unlimited data plans, and even then AT&T will still throttle your connection down if you consume more than 75 GB of data.
Some business users who videoconference on the go might find some benefit from the guaranteed performance, but it’s unlikely many users (who already pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for wireless data) will be all that interested. Verizon tried charging users $10 extra a month just to connect at 5G speeds, but had to back off once it was clear that most users care more about affordability.
While AT&T’s initial offering doesn’t violate net neutrality, some consumer advocates say that the act of speeding up some customers could slow down others. And the pricing mostly just makes for a confusing user experience:
“Unlike speed tiers, or different data allowances, if a bunch of users effectively buy their way to the front of the line, that could end up degrading the experience for other users. Apart from that, it could just lead to a confusing billing experience, and users being upsold on a service they don’t need, and that may not end up being that useful.”
But generally there’s nothing wrong with giving people with extra disposable income an opportunity to set it on fire. We’ll have to see if AT&T, known for always pushing its luck when it comes to nickel-and-diming consumers in creative and obnoxious ways, expands or tweaks the offering in ways that could be viewed as anti-competitive.
Filed Under: 5g, broadband, fcc, high speed internet, mobile, net neutrality, turbo, wireless, wireless data
Companies: at&t
Comments on “AT&T Tries Charging Users $7 Extra For ‘Turbo’ 5G”
Upsell: it's the (new) American way
It’s not useful, but at long as AT&T gets their vig, that’s all that matters. Most of the sheeple aren’t going to notice a little thing like that.
I’m sure they’ve already though of a $5 plan for second tiers users where “the experience is not that bad and can be worse (if you don’t pay)”. Premium users would then need the $15 option to get the same speed as now.
Well, that’s already what AT&T is offering with their Starter/Extra/Premium plans.
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So basically…
$7 for hey these are really good speeds
$5 for “it could be worse”
$3 for “its worse”
and
$0 for “its the worst”
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I absolutely refuse to pay them extra just so my traffic doesn’t get tanked by QOS.
The automatic “next up” fee (that suspiciously looked like a lease fee) they tacked on after I explicitly declined it was annoying enough. Took me 3 billing cycles before they finally removed them.
That turbo crap, isn’t that what this here button on the front of my desktop is fer? I gots LOW, HI, and TURBO. I keeps it on TURBO cause its zooming!
I had to say that in an oldman redneck voice because I think many of you have no idea what I am talking about. I will just go and stand by my walker now.
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Run old screen savers on turbo .. hilarious.
Basically these are the same plans that they are rolling out on highways to deal with congestion. Build an express lane but charge to use it. Make the price high enough that those who are budget conscious will just sit in the slow lane.
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Except highways have an inherent and utterly unsolvable bandwidth problem while the internet does not.
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Depends; OTA Internet has a bandwidth problem. Terrestrial Internet only has a bandwidth inconvenience — that being, it costs money to lay more cable and buy more and faster switches and routers if they reach saturation on the current hardware.
Charging more to guarantee bandwidth and low TX/RX makes sense to me in both instances.
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“Charging more … makes sense to me”
Nice ad you got there
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Think of the Internet as a highway
“A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection.”
https://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/Highway.html
I’m not sure about the title of this piece. This is a clear case of “do or do not; there is no try.”
And AT&T definitely does.
It’s definitely a way to get around the net neutrality rules, and in my view, a much more above-board way.
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And let’s not forget the best way: actually following such rules until they’re repealed through a perceived lack of necessity.
Considering how much tax payer dollars have been thrown at AT&T, who repeatedly fails to deliver what’s promised, everyone on AT&T should get this for the next decade, BECAUSE WE ALREADY FUCKING PAID FOR IT.
I miss the free market and competition.
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The myth of free market in telecommunications.
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light reading:
Exposing the Big “Free Market” Myth with Author Naomi Oreskes
“I just learned that what Naomi and I encountered is the subject of a special field of research called agnotology,” Admati reported. “That research is focused on deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favor through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data and disinformation.”
https://casi.stanford.edu/news/exposing-big-free-market-myth-author-naomi-oreskes