Shockingly, AT&T has discovered that *gasp* people are abusing their unlimited pre-paid data service by tapping into it with their laptops. As a result, the plug is being pulled on the $US19.99/month option starting on November 12th. AT&T will also place a cap on the legitimate laptop DataConnect plan that works out to 5GB a month for $US60. Overages will be billed at $US0.00048 per kilobyte, which translates into a bank account-busting $US480 per gigabyte. However, rumours claim that AT&T will terminate service once a $US100 overage threshold has been reached. [PhoneNews via Engadget Mobile via MobileBurn]
What’s wrong with this headline spotted on Ars Technica today? “Australian ISPs offer US advice, smugness, on net neutrality”
If you guessed, “Australian broadband is in such an shithouse position that ISPs shouldn’t be giving advice to anyone ever”, you’d be right.
Of course as always, headlines only tell half the story. Reading the Ars article, you quickly learn that it is in response to this article from ZDNet AU, where the heads of local ISPs BigPond, iiNet and Internode were interviewed on what Net neutrality means for Australians. The answer? Not too much, because our systems are very different, at least for the moment. More »
If you examine the fine print on T-Mo’s G1 launch page, you will find an interesting bit of information with regard to 3G usage. Apparently, they will be soft-capping data to a slim 1GB a month max in each billing cycle. If you exceed the maximum, the powers that be will strike you down to an anorexic 50 kbps or less until the next cycle begins. Obviously, that is completely intolerable for a power user and apt to send them into a fit of rage. We will just have to wait and see if this policy is actually enforced. [T-Mobile]
