SubscribeGigaOM blows the lid off what will likely be an upcoming target of StoptheCap! — the ludicrous and unacceptably botched usage cap trial in Reno, Nevada by AT&T.
It seems that new customers to AT&T’s high speed Internet service aren’t being told their usage is being capped, until the mailman delivers an express letter to your home with the shocking news after you’ve already signed up for service!
Adding insult to injury, their tiers for traditional DSL max out with an 80GB allowance on their “Elite tier,” which only offers up to 6Mbps service. That might be “elite” in Kenya, but it shouldn’t be in a major American city. Each additional gigabyte comes at the traditional Pillage Price of $1/GB, which is nearly 1,000% above what it costs them to provide. And for the woman who brought all this to the attention of GigaOM, there is no competitor currently available for broadband.
The Super Whammo Extreme Maxalot tier of 150GB isn’t even available unless you have access to their U-verse fiber-alternative service. Also, incompetence seems to be the order of the day over at AT&T: GigaOM reported that customer service representatives denied there was a usage cap at all when the Lake Tahoe-area resident called to inquire.
AT&T’s letter explaining the limits is reproduced below the fold. Customers signing up for service at att.com will need to call the Psychic Hotline to discern that there is a cap in place on their service — not one word of it appears on their website as the screen captures GigaOM obtained illustrate.
Of course AT&T is also the home of the “unlimited” AT&T Wireless DataConnect plan that, in the fine print, changes your reality of what the word “unlimited” means to their own, which means “not more than 5GB.”
Sounds like bait and switch to us and the next step should be a contact with the Nevada Attorney General’s office, the Better Business Bureau, local and state officials, and the Congressional delegation for Nevada. If AT&T wants to treat Reno like a broadband backwater, they couldn’t do a better job of it by also forgetting to tell customers until after they already signed up.
