Courtesy 9 to 5 Mac

AT&T has begun sending out warnings to wireless customers deemed to be using too much of their “unlimited data plans” and are now subject to speed throttling that will reduce their wireless Internet experience to one more familiar for dial-up users.

Life in the slow lane is the price AT&T customers pay for being a member of the Top 5% Data User Club.  Running the numbers, that means using more than around 4GB of wireless usage per month.  One customer who managed to rack up 11GB in September, even before the new speed throttle plan took effect Oct. 1, has already found himself in the speed reduction doghouse with a warning message he received Sept. 29.

Although the customer did not reveal what he was doing to achieve 11GB of usage in one month, the two most common ways to run up usage are watching a lot of streamed video or using your phone to tether to other wireless devices, especially laptops.  Some wireless customers are attempting to use their unlimited data plans as a home broadband replacement, especially in rural areas where cable or DSL service is not available.  That’s an option AT&T doesn’t seem to want customers to consider.

In addition to eliminating unlimited use plans for new customers more than a year ago, the company has increasingly cracked down on existing customers grandfathered into unlimited use plans.  In addition to banning third party tethering apps, AT&T is now simply reducing speeds for heavy users to make high bandwidth applications like video and even some forms of streaming audio impossible when residing in the penalty box.

But don’t worry: you can still use your data plan to read e-mail or browse simple web pages.  The company also advises customers can use unlimited amounts of Wi-Fi, whether they provide it or not.

Suddenlink serves portions of these Texas communities

Stop the Cap! has learned Suddenlink will establish usage allowances nearly identical to AT&T for their broadband customers, with a $10 overlimit fee for each 50GB customers manage to exceed their limits.

Suddenlink officials have declined to comment on Stop the Cap!’s report published yesterday.

The usage caps, which will first be implemented on customers in Amarillo, Tex., are as follows:

• 150GB per month for customers subscribing to “lite” tiers of less than 10Mbps, similar to what AT&T limits its DSL customers;
• 250GB per month for 10, 15, or 20Mbps customers, similar to AT&T U-verse;
• 350GB per month for premium-priced 50 or 107Mbps service packages.

Suddenlink says they expect less than 1% of their customers to exceed the monthly limits.  If they do, they will receive warnings three times before the overlimit fee is imposed.

“It could have been worse, but there doesn’t seem to be any justification for these limits other than the fact their biggest competitor in Texas — AT&T — has them,” says Amarillo resident and Stop the Cap! reader Angel.

“It’s another example of what happens when you live in a country that allows broadband duopolies,” Angel says. “Just like with cell phones, as soon as AT&T does something, their competitors follow suit and the customers are stuck paying more and more for less and less service.”

Angel says the first time he is billed an overlimit fee of any kind, he’ll downgrade his broadband service.

“Why pay for premium priced speed tiers when usage caps make them not worth the extra money?”

Wall Street is pushing back against Justice Department efforts to unwind a merger proposal between AT&T and T-Mobile that will leave America with three national carriers.  Some investment firms even believe three carriers are still “too many” and want mergers and acquisitions to accelerate to allow two dominant national carriers to emerge.

“It’s pretty clear what the end game is in wireless,” said Julie Richardson, managing director at Providence Equity Partners Inc. “LTE, 4G — you have to have those services to compete. One of the most interesting things to watch in telecom will be these players coming together.”

Richardson shares the view among many on Wall Street that carriers forced to build costly 4G services like LTE need less competition and more cash-on-hand to pay for upgrades and to obtain needed spectrum.

Only AT&T and Verizon Communications have the resources to support a national 4G Long Term Evolution network, Richardson said. Sprint, the third-biggest U.S. wireless operator, is struggling to compete against larger rivals and has lost money for 15 consecutive quarters, Bloomberg News reports.

Among smaller players, Richardson believes the future is clear: mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships.  Sprint is moving increasingly closer to the nation’s cable companies, which have sought a cost-efficient way to deliver the ultimate “quad-play” service package that includes wireless, landline, cable-TV, and Internet service, all from the cable company.  But talk of constructing competing cell networks has gone largely nowhere, and cable companies that do offer some type of wireless service typically resell an existing service under their own brand.  Road Runner Mobile, from Time Warner Cable, for example, is really Clearwire under a different name.  Same for Comcast’s wireless Internet service.  Cox is pitching “unbelievably fair” wireless phone service that actually comes from Sprint.

But cable operators currently don’t seem to be interested in outright acquisitions of cell companies like Sprint, preferring to partner with them instead.

Clearwire, which needs financing and better wireless spectrum, may eventually find a friend in Dish Networks, the satellite TV company.  Dish controls wireless frequency spectrum it currently does not use, and has expressed an interest in expanding beyond a traditional satellite television provider.  An acquisition of Sprint or Clearwire could help them accomplish that.

AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and nine other giant corporations selling cigarettes, shoes, shipping services, and jet aircraft have formed a new group demanding major cuts in the corporate tax rate that would allow some of them to repatriate billions in cash reserves stuffed in overseas banks to dodge U.S. taxes.

RATE — the Reducing America’s Taxes Equitably Coalition, says cutting the corporate tax rate is key to increased spending of accumulated corporate dollars in the United States.

“In a global economy where capital is highly mobile, it is simply harder to compete from America,” the companies’ executives wrote in a letter. “A lower corporate tax rate will boost investment in the U.S., bringing more American jobs, innovation and growth.”

But many of these corporations already pay less taxes than you do as a percentage of income.  Take Verizon, which shovels substantial profits through its British wireless partner Vodafone through Luxembourg, at an effective tax rate of around 10%.

Forbes reports last year Verizon had sales of $108 billion.  It’s pretax income was $11.8 billion.  The company paid just $1.2 billion in income taxes thanks to its $42 billion wireless joint venture with Vodafone, which Forbes reports “draws off much of Verizon’s income.”  But that is hardly a bad thing for Verizon.  Its effective tax rate: 10.5%.  Most middle class Americans pay twice or more that rate.  Verizon itself was surprised it only paid that much, because it ended up getting a federal tax refund for an overpayment amounting to $705 million.

In 2010, AT&T got hit harder, but still managed to eke out a winning year for shareholders.  AT&T enjoyed sales of $123 billion.  Its pretax income: $19 billion.  The company ended up paying $6.2 billion in income taxes for an effective tax rate of 32.4%.  But their executives got the benefit of every tax loophole available for their personal tax returns, made possible by AT&T’s generous subsidy of up to $14,000 a year for each executive officer to hire the best tax accountants around.

American companies already pay the second lowest taxes in the developed world, once all of the loopholes and deductions in the corporate tax code are accounted for. American corporations are sitting on record amounts of cash, so its unclear why more cash (in the form of tax breaks) would lead to more hiring, unless it involves adding more Washington, D.C. lobbyists, of course.

Suburban St. Louis is getting some new jobs and a $20 million data center upgrade courtesy of AT&T, which has announced it has nearly completed hiring 64 additional U-verse technicians and will renovate and upgrade a data center in Bridgeton, Mo. to handle Internet traffic.

AT&T U-verse has captured nearly 100,000 customers in the greater St. Louis area, which is the primary reason the company needed additional technicians.

But St. Louis resident Charles McNed isn’t positive these jobs are as good as AT&T might lead people to believe.

“AT&T is probably adding jobs through a contractor,” McNed says. “Last year I worked for an AT&T contractor and the training was horrendous and the pay was awful.”

The Bridgeton data center, in a building currently leased by AT&T, will be upgraded once the company completes the outright purchase of the property.  AT&T expects to spend approximately $20 million on infrastructure upgrades.

The company held a ribbon cutting ceremony this morning to break ground on the building renovations, and to celebrate the forthcoming use of compressed natural gas-powered service vehicles.

Bridgeton, an economically challenged suburb northwest of St. Louis, is welcoming the new jobs and hopes workers will choose to live and spend their money in the community of 15,000.  Bridgeton has been losing population since at least 1980.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTVI St Louis ATT Announcing More Jobs In St Louis 9-27-11.mp4[/flv]

KTVI in St. Louis reports on AT&T’s expansion in northwestern St. Louis County, Mo.  (2 minutes)