4 ms·

AT&T to Put 5gb Data Usage Cap on iPhone

9 points by dkasper 17y ago

melvinram 17y ago
Related Post: When The World Gives You Lemons, Sell Lemonade http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=987138 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=987138
weaksauce 17y ago
Not to be too pedantic but gb != GB. The g is unambiguous(though wrong) but the b could be bit or byte depending on the capitalization. 1Gb networking is much slower than 1GB. (.125GB vs. 1Gb) It's one of my pet peeves so sorry about the digression.
- blasdel 17y ago
  As far as I know there are only two situations where b commonly refers to bits: individual raw DRAM / Flash chip packages, and network channel bandwidth. Otherwise it rather unambiguously refers to bytes. On the other hand the G is actually ambiguous -- is it 10^9 or 2^30?
patrickgzill 17y ago
Do they have the ability in the contract, to arbitrarily cap you? Assume I have an iPhone and for the last 6 months have been using 5.7GB per month; now I use it and get either capped or charged more... I would not be happy. And FWIW, 5GB/month of data transfer, were you to buy it at any major datacenter, is about 10-30 cents' worth of bandwidth.
- jrockway 17y ago
  I am pretty sure you are paying for the traffic from your phone to the cell tower, not the traffic from the cell tower to the Internet.
cmelbye 17y ago
I usually stand up for AT&T, but this is just idiotic. Their executives are morons that honestly need to be replaced. They need to quit spending money on marketing their crappy network and use that money to fix their crappy network.
- KWD 17y ago
  I'm still waiting to see an Apple response to this. It would seem to have an impact on buying video through iTunes.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    Exactly what I was thinking. Downloading just a few videos from iTunes over 3G would use up a quota very quickly.
gxs 17y ago
I hope users that are peeved enough realize that this constitutes AT&T breaking their contract. This in turn for the user means that they can cancel their AT&T account without paying an early cancellation fee or, in my experience, the carrier will allow you to remain on your plan without the limitation (i.e., leaving the original agreement in tact.) Note: the user has to approach AT&T the right way, and not give up when the rep says no the first few times. This has worked for me several times, usually after a txt msg rate hike.
stumm 17y ago
This title doesn't match what the article says at all. The article claims the cap is already in place: > Right now, the carrier has a monthly usage cap of 5 gigabytes on its data plans, the same as other carriers.
- timdorr 17y ago
  Those are data plans for laptops, not phones.
gkefalas 17y ago
If you've been following this story throughout the day, it's been pretty amusing to see each blogger or news site try to exaggerate what was said more and more. AT&T's CEO made an offhand comment (that may be a trial balloon, may not) that AT&T is going to try and educate consumers about their usage and, if that doesn't help, they'll consider a tiered pricing model. How does that become "AT&T to put a cap on iPhone usage"? Not to say that I wouldn't drop AT&T like a disease if they did...
pkulak 17y ago
Sorry, guys, but streaming your tv to your phone over a cellular network all month costs way more than 30 dollars and ATT would be retarded not to try to rein you in. Anyone who gets this enraged and self reightous over something so obvious really comes off as pompous and petty.

9 points by dkasper 17y ago

Related Post: When The World Gives You Lemons, Sell Lemonade http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=987138 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=987138

weaksauce 17y ago

Not to be too pedantic but gb != GB. The g is unambiguous(though wrong) but the b could be bit or byte depending on the capitalization. 1Gb networking is much slower than 1GB. (.125GB vs. 1Gb) It's one of my pet peeves so sorry about the digression.

blasdel 17y ago
As far as I know there are only two situations where b commonly refers to bits: individual raw DRAM / Flash chip packages, and network channel bandwidth. Otherwise it rather unambiguously refers to bytes. On the other hand the G is actually ambiguous -- is it 10^9 or 2^30?

patrickgzill 17y ago

Do they have the ability in the contract, to arbitrarily cap you? Assume I have an iPhone and for the last 6 months have been using 5.7GB per month; now I use it and get either capped or charged more... I would not be happy. And FWIW, 5GB/month of data transfer, were you to buy it at any major datacenter, is about 10-30 cents' worth of bandwidth.

jrockway 17y ago
I am pretty sure you are paying for the traffic from your phone to the cell tower, not the traffic from the cell tower to the Internet.

cmelbye 17y ago

I usually stand up for AT&T, but this is just idiotic. Their executives are morons that honestly need to be replaced. They need to quit spending money on marketing their crappy network and use that money to fix their crappy network.

KWD 17y ago
I'm still waiting to see an Apple response to this. It would seem to have an impact on buying video through iTunes.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Downloading just a few videos from iTunes over 3G would use up a quota very quickly.

gxs 17y ago

I hope users that are peeved enough realize that this constitutes AT&T breaking their contract. This in turn for the user means that they can cancel their AT&T account without paying an early cancellation fee or, in my experience, the carrier will allow you to remain on your plan without the limitation (i.e., leaving the original agreement in tact.) Note: the user has to approach AT&T the right way, and not give up when the rep says no the first few times. This has worked for me several times, usually after a txt msg rate hike.

stumm 17y ago

This title doesn't match what the article says at all. The article claims the cap is already in place: > Right now, the carrier has a monthly usage cap of 5 gigabytes on its data plans, the same as other carriers.

timdorr 17y ago
Those are data plans for laptops, not phones.

gkefalas 17y ago

If you've been following this story throughout the day, it's been pretty amusing to see each blogger or news site try to exaggerate what was said more and more. AT&T's CEO made an offhand comment (that may be a trial balloon, may not) that AT&T is going to try and educate consumers about their usage and, if that doesn't help, they'll consider a tiered pricing model. How does that become "AT&T to put a cap on iPhone usage"? Not to say that I wouldn't drop AT&T like a disease if they did...

pkulak 17y ago

Sorry, guys, but streaming your tv to your phone over a cellular network all month costs way more than 30 dollars and ATT would be retarded not to try to rein you in. Anyone who gets this enraged and self reightous over something so obvious really comes off as pompous and petty.