AT&T Quietly Introduces $10/Month DSL

prostoalex writes "As part of the deal with the FCC to approve the AT&T/BellSouth merger, AT&T started selling, but not advertising, a $10-per-month DSL service in 22 states, AP has learned. 'The service provides download speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps, matching the speeds of the cheapest advertised AT&T plan, which costs $19.95 per month in the nine-state former BellSouth area and $14.99 in the 13 states covered by AT&T before the acquisition.'"

And what's to stop them from...

[bluemonq]

...oversubscribing on a small amount of bandwidth and end up clipping real-world performance down to ISDN or dial-up levels on a regular basis?

If it were free it would still be overpriced

[javakah]

Dealing with AT&T is just not worth it for cheap Internet Service. Even if it were free, I don't think I'd go for it. Besides, if it goes anything like my experience getting phone service from them, that $10 will really be $25 a month with all the extra fees and surcharges they are sure to add on.

That price is basically a lie.

[Kadin2048]

From TFA:

Local phone service and a one-year contract are required.

$10/mo my ass. You have to sign up for a POTS line with them, and I'm willing to bet that's going to be at least another $10, not counting all the taxes, fees, and bullshit they attach on to that. ("Cost recovery fee" my ass. Do they still have that one?) And if you already have AT&T for your POTS line, then you're screwed! You're not eligible for the price anyway.

So let's review. It forces people who don't have a line with AT&T, and presumably don't want one, to get one -- upping the price. And people who already have service with them, can't get it.

Nice work, FCC, nice work. This is a 'concession'? What did you have to give them? (Besides your bank account numbers, to deposit the cash.)

Advertising

[Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe]

The article mentioned that it was difficult to locate information about the service. Does anyone know if the FCC has the power to not only force them to offer the plan, but also to make it (reasonably) accessible? I'm not talking about posting it on every billboard, but hey, it looks like they're banking on people not knowing about this service.

Plenty fast for most people

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure 768k is underspeed for some purposes, but that's plenty fast for most people's day to day usage: web, email and a bit of youtube. 768k is a huge step up from dial up.

Re:Worthless

[jc42]

Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point, ...

Except that many people (more every week) live in areas where the only ISP is the phone company, and they block user-level VoIP (while using it internally themselves).

In such a situation, all the clues in the world won't get you what you want.

It's the old "If you don't like it, you can move."

What about?

[Anonymous Coward]

At&t also quietly forgets to mention that all of your traffic is being spied on and sold privately. Enjoy!

Re:Worthless

[Wilk4]

"Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point..."

Kind of arrogant aren't you? (oh, yeah, this is /. ;-)

Hate to tell you, but lots of people who have clues don't use VoIP and don't really want to, myself included. DSL for a regular phone line + net access works great, phones are cheap, and I have a working phone when the power goes out. (if you're close enough to the phone company office as I am anyway).

So why do you think VoIP is so freakin' mandatory for the clue-full?

Re:If it were free it would still be overpriced

[tknd]

I hate dealing with both the phone companies and the cable companies. I only have two options where I live: ATT or Timewarner. I think both companies are equally incompetent and the services are crap. For example ATT phone bills don't make much sense and have lots of additional charges. If there is a technical problem, they will charge you an arm and a leg. Meanwhile, Timewarner prices are too high and they will only offer lower rates as long as you purchase more services from them. Even then, the service you do get may have problems or have setup fees and miscellaneous tech charges associated with having some idiot tech come to your house just to flip a switch. (Side note: we all know that he's not really just flipping a switch, but rather intentionally making it so that only the cables connected to the TVs you asked are functional while the other cables are not!)

And because both companies know they're so close to having a monopoly over the services, they do not put any effort into making the service better. Instead they offer less service at cheaper prices and increase the top end service (which was really yesterday's normal service), call it "Pro" and charge an arm and leg for it. At the end of the day, no matter who's charging you, you're still paying a premium for poor service.

It's the new business strategy of America: don't hire engineers or researchers to improve your technology to have a superior product or service, instead just hire more marketers and business people to come up with new ways to sell the same crappy product.

Not a bad option

[nurb432]

If your using dialup currently and its doing the trick, this isnt a bad option. it mght be a few bucks cheaper and a lot better.

Sure, if you want to do gaming, or 'warez' it migt hurt, but how many average people really need more bandwidth then this? If its still around, I might even consider it when i drop my real broadband after the big squeeze starts across the industry and i cant use my line for what i want anyway. Why pay extra just to be throttled and filtered?

Re:If it were free it would still be overpriced

[Reaperducer]

I've been with AT&T DSL for about a month. There were lots of problems getting it installed (turns out the problem was that none of the four telephone lines to my apartment were physically hooked up, but only the last tech bothered to go into the building's phone closet to check). But now that it's on, it works well.

I have a plethora of high-speed internet choices where I live. I went with AT&T because it offered twice the speed of Speakeasy and the other resellers at half the cost AND NO CONTRACT. That was the big problem I had with most of the resellers.

Another option would have been Comcast, but the Comcast lady told me that cable internet doesn't work with Macs (which I know is a lie because I've had Roadrunner in the past). She said if I can't install Comcast's software on Windows XP I can't have internet.

In the end, I'm paying around $25/month for three megabits from AT&T that work fine so far. Comcast would have been six megabits, but for $75/month.

I have a lot of reasons to hate the beast that is Southwestern Bell/SBC/AT&T/Ameritech/MegaGiantConHugeCo [houstonarchitecture.info], but this time around I'm moderately pleased.

Re:cheap prices mean nothing...

[HikingStick]

What was that last article, US is now 24 in the list of nations for good broadband all over? Every year we keep dropping?

While I take no exception to most of your observations, I must ask if the ranking to which you refer is a fair comparison. Compared to most nations of the world (excluding Russia), we have a huge geographic dispersion of our population. Sure, we may have greater population densities on the coasts (where broadband has become ubiquitous), but you cannot make an apples-to-apples comparison of the United States to most other countries in such rankings. Most European nations are only as large as some American states (no offense intended to European /.ers), bringing to bear a greater population density which makes a broader deployment easier in many regards.

Re:And what's to stop them from...

[latras]

But at $10/month, if you can get even 128k, then that's a win. Since nowadays, dialup service is $9.95/mo. plus with not having to wait for the connection to establish, etc.

Re:cheap prices mean nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, here we go again with the geographic dispersion argument. Stop it already. Even in densely packed urban areas in the US we still can't get broadband as fast as they do in other developed nations. So your argument is crap. We deserve better after all the hundreds of dollars per capita we've thrown at the telecommunications companies through our tax dollars. Don't forget that.

Re:Worthless

[Lord Ender]

Well, Mr. Clueless, I'll tell you.

Do you have a cell phone? For the 2 hours per year your power is out, you can use that. If that's not enough for you, you can buy a UPS and put your modem, VoIP router, and phone on it. So, now that you have enough clue to realize that availability is a non-argument...

VoIP like Vonage has EVERY feature you can possibly imagine with a landline, plus some that just aren't available at all for landline proles.

I'm talking voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, advanced call forwarding, the ability to take your phone number (including area code) with you when you travel or move...
Oh, and did I mention simulcall? When someone calls my Vonage number, it rings my cell phone and my work phone at the same time. Sweet.

So, yeah, VoIP is better than landline in every conceivable way.