AT&T's 5GB Wireless Broadband Mystery Cap – Heavy users can prepare to pay a fortune…

In: broadbandreports.com|Site Feeds|VoIP

18 Mar 2008

For years, Verizon Wireless was trying to have their cake and eat it too, by advertising their EVDO service as unlimited, but quietly imposing a 5GB monthly cap. That advertising charade ended courtesy of NY’s attorney general (no, not client-9) last fall. Back in January, AT&T insiders insisted that the company was preparing to apply a 5GB monthly cap of their own to their unlimited HSDPA service. The company’s terms of service already states as much:

The parties agree that AT&T has the right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred and/or deny, disconnect, modify and/or terminate Service if you use more than 5 gigabytes in a month. If you require more than 5 gigabytes per month, ask us about our DataConnect 5GB Overage plan.

That plan doesn’t appear anywhere on AT&T’s website. Gearlog called in to ask about the plan, and found that actually using AT&T’s wireless broadband network in any volume can be a very pricey proposition:

if you call in, you’ll find it’s $350/month for 5GB, plus $0.50 per megabyte (really, $.0005 per kb, but my megabyte formula is more readable.) Since you’re probably a heavy downloader, let’s think of that as $500 per gigabyte. Yes. They want to charge you $350 for exactly what you’re paying $60 for. Want 10GB instead of 5GB? That’ll cost you $2,850 for that month. Now, to be fair, an AT&T rep told me that they’ll probably give you a pass for a month or two if you accidentally go over 5GB. Then they’ll give you a call and try to convince you to move to the Punitively Expensive Plan.

AT&T’s website still advertises “unlimited” data for Blackberry and PDAs provided you don’t tether, but we’d be interested to see if any users have tested the boundaries with smart phone consumption alone.

Note that life as a bandwidth hog on Verizon’s network is no easier. Buried amidst all the fawning adoration of Verizon Wireless for their recently announced unlimited yammering plan was the fact that they implemented some very pricey data overage charges of their own.
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