[ghshephard]

I tried to finish - but the author was either being dense or argumentative. I think AT&T has made their position pretty clear - Unlimited doesn't have overage charges, but you get rate limited when you hit the top 5% of usage (currently 2 Gigabytes). AT&T also offers 2 Gigabyte and 3 Gigabyte plans, with overage charges.

Happily, AT&T has been prevented from taking over T-Mobile, so we still have at least four providers for wireless data in most major markets - let's hope it stays that way.

[seanp2k2]

While oligopoly still > than monopoly or duopoly, it's still < free market.

You think the wireless ISP biz is a free market? Try to start one. Try to get cities and tower owners to give you permission to put your gear up. Who will you get fibre interlinks from for those towers? Who will issue permits to dig trenches to lay fibre all over the cities? Wireless ISPs ("wireless telcos" but I consider them ISPs because ALL their calls, SMS, MMS, and data is now digital) know the game and make no mistake, it is this way on purpose. They have done everything they can to ensure an anti-competitive market.

EDIT: I'm sure someone will mention that you could just resell service as many regional WISPs do. Again though, WISPs know the score here, and they price reseller service so that it basically matches what they're offering direct to consumers. At my old company, we'd resell SBC-ATT-Yahoo-Cingulair-Bell-BellSouth-Ameritech-Edge Wireless-Cellular One-Centennial-Wayport DSL (yes, those are all just known as "ATT" today) and the cheapest we could offer 1.5mbit DSL service was $25/month.

[ghshephard]

I've never suggested it's a free market. I'm just saying there are four vendors who you can chose from based on your feelings about price and quality. I'm just happy it's not three.

[josho]

The use of limiting the top 5% is quite disingenuous. As over time the limit will shift down to a lower amount as customers become annoyed and move to other plans. Clearly 2gb is not an excessive amount of data either as ATT sells larger tiered plans.

So, this is clearly a breach of the spirit of the contract. A claim with the small claims court and/or FCC seems to be in order.

[brianpan]

There's a 3 gig plan for $30 and he's being throttled at 2.1G. I think he makes a good point. Are 3 gig plan users also being throttled when they hit the "top 5%"?

[ghshephard]

3 Gig Plan users pay $10/Gigabyte of overage. I'm pretty sure AT&T has priced the overage such that they don't mind if you use more bandwidth.