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nhantenna's avatar
nhantenna
Apprentice
Jan 26, 2019

Changes coming to grandfathered AT&T Unlimited Plus

AT&T Unlimited Plus on Nighthawk hotspot was too good to be true.  AT&T realized this and removed the offering at the beginning of last year.  Now AT&T is taking the next steps.  AT&T has terminated grandfathered Unlimited Plus for Business accounts.  AT&T is adding new throttling restrictions on grandfathered Unlimited Plus for Consumer accounts.  The throttling is a 10Mbps cap on video streams regardless of "Stream Saver" being on or off.  Higher resolution video streams beyond HD are mainstream.  4K Amazon/Netflix/Youtube etc.  AT&T saw this higher resolution traffic on their network over the last year and added the throttle to unload the additional traffic.

 

I am a rural customer in an area where AT&T has phased out landlines and DSL.  While a cell phone handles voice just fine, we don't have any viable internet alternatives.  When AT&T starts randomly adding massive restrictions on how rural customers can use this kind of data, or that kind of data, after customers signed the AT&T contract, it is a setback for rural customers.  If AT&T terminates the grandfathered consumer plan, rural customers are in trouble.

 

Not a coincidence, the AT&T Fixed Wireless Plan which is aimed directly at rural customers is now 10Mbit download and 1Mbit upload with a 215GB monthly cap.  Break the cap and you pay up to $200 more per month.  The speeds are absurdly too low for modern families and pay per GB days are long gone.

 

We are in the 5G+ era....and AT&T's absolute limit, not another byte or the network will break, is 10Mbit.  

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1 Reply

  • JSchnee21's avatar
    JSchnee21
    Virtuoso
    Jan 28, 2019

    Interesting.  I've not noticed this (yet) and use Fast.com extensively for benchmarking as I find the results from SpeedTest to be too variable for my liking,

     

    If true, I would potentially be impacted in a different way.  My kids use my MR1100 in the car to stream video content.  Certainly they don't need (or could use) 4K on their iPads.  But, my concern is that if all video is capped at 10Mb/s then if you have two or three tablets all trying to stream simultaneously you could potentially get some buffering.

     

    10MB/s per stream would be okay with me.  But 10Mb/s per device would suck.

     

    I'm fortunate enough to have FIOS at my house and 4K as well.  While 4K is very nice, 4K streaming (Netflix 15Mb/s, and Amazon -- not sure what their stream is probably more like 20Mb/s as their compression codecs aren't as good as Netflix) is a poor way to do 4K.

     

    Subscribe to DVD.com (I do -- have since Netflix began) and get HD and 4K Blue Rays and a nice 4K Blue ray player (I have a Sony).  Even the BlueRay HD content looks WAY BETTER on my 4K screen than Netflix 4K.

     

    I realize, of course, that DVD.com is slow, even slower when you're in the sticks.

     

    But at least you'd have some sweet resolution and Dolby Atmos action.