AT&T to Pay You Money Back For Your Slow DSL

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]Glorfindel[/nom]Seriously? People marked my comment as spam... I would have thought that explaining how to calculate what internet speed should be when downloading was pretty relevant and helpful.I've never seen a browser not label downloads in KB/s.I've seen several download accelerators that change you to Kb/s in order to make you think your net is faster though. Next you'll be telling me that 1000 kilobytes in a megabyte isn't clever marketing just because they usually label them that way.[/citation]
You are right, they do it cause kb numbers are much bigger then the actual KB number and people who don't know the difference will be impressed and go for the bigger number. It's the same reason a lot of prices have 99 cents at the end, cause $9.99 looks like a better deal then $10.00 (that one is just in reverse).

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I've moved around quite a bit. I have yet to see any service provider actually deliver their claimed data transmission rates. I'm beginning to think it is impossible.

 

[kitekrazy1963]

[citation][nom]cracklint[/nom]Now for Comcast![/citation]

We call it Concast.

 

[kitekrazy1963]

I paid for their 6meg service and eventually in the fall things went down to 3meg. The technician came out and said I was too far to get thsat service to begin with. I didn't change to the 3mb service because I would bet my dl speed would decrease.

Odd that this week my speeds went up to 4.5. So I had suspicions of them capping the speed.

I don't think the lawsuit will hurt them as much as people got tired of it and switched to cable. Once people have consistent cable service, they never go back to DSL.

 

[kayvonjoon]

Wooooow , 2 bucks!!!!

/sarcasm/

 

[seriousazn]

I'm not giving all that private information for a freggin 2.90$/month... hopefully Skynet(google) wins the broadband wars!

 

[randomizer]

There are 8 bits in a byte.

I believe transfers over the Internet use 10 bit "bytes" though, because of a start and end bit. So there's some useless data being transferred along with the actual packet which means the speed that you download the actual data at is lower than it could be, even excluding packet loss from a bad line.

Anyway, people complaining about speeds that are lower than they paid for don't understand the technology they signed up for. DSL attenuates over distance. If you live 4 miles from the local phone exchange and paid for an 8mbit line you'll be lucky to see 2mb. AT&T can't correct that aside from lying down a higher gauge line, but a simpler fix would be to simply move your house closer to the exchange.

Of course if you live within 1 mile and still see very poor speeds then you have a better case, but even then this can be caused by any number of other factors which are outside of the control of the ISP.

 

[Glorfindel]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]I believe transfers over the Internet use 10 bit "bytes" though, because of a start and end bit. So there's some useless data being transferred along with the actual packet which means the speed that you download the actual data at is lower than it could be, even excluding packet loss from a bad line.Anyway, people complaining about speeds that are lower than they paid for don't understand the technology they signed up for. DSL attenuates over distance. If you live 4 miles from the local phone exchange and paid for an 8mbit line you'll be lucky to see 2mb. AT&T can't correct that aside from lying down a higher gauge line, but a simpler fix would be to simply move your house closer to the exchange.Of course if you live within 1 mile and still see very poor speeds then you have a better case, but even then this can be caused by any number of other factors which are outside of the control of the ISP.[/citation]

There is no such thing as a 10 bit byte. 8 bits is one byte just like 12 inches is one foot. I believe you'd call it a 10-bit word length instead... Don't you only measure the usable data part of the serial transmissions when measuring bandwidth?

You're right about distance, which was why I was trying to explain that you should subtract around 20% of your speed to try to account for it. Not really sure why 20%, its just something I've read in the past as a good number to use for an estimate.

 

[RazberyBandit]

Randomizer, part of the problem was that AT&T was promising certain speeds and completely unable to deliver them in many areas. Even their cheap-o 256Kb DSL-Lite package was sub-par. My Dad had it because it was all he really needed and dirt-cheap, but nothing ever downloaded faster than ~100Kb, and his connection was constantly dropping. After paying for a line test and passing it, as well as getting a replacement modem installed, it stopped dropping connection as often. But it was still never as fast as advertised, even at 2-6am when traffic is minimal.

 

[Guest]

What about their crappy speeds now? Is their a Lawsuit for that?

 

[randomizer]

There is no such thing as a 10 bit byte. 8 bits is one byte just like 12 inches is one foot. I believe you'd call it a 10-bit word length instead... Don't you only measure the usable data part of the serial transmissions when measuring bandwidth?

I put "byte" in quotes for a reason. I know the terminology is wrong but I couldn't think of the correct term off the top of my head. Maybe I'm thinking of packet or datagram... I think download managers take into account the extra fluff when reporting download speeds but I'm not sure if ISPs do this when quoting bandwidth.

You're right about distance, which was why I was trying to explain that you should subtract around 20% of your speed to try to account for it. Not really sure why 20%, its just something I've read in the past as a good number to use for an estimate.

It depends on which DSL technology you are using. Attenuation has a much smaller impact on standard ADSL (up to 1.5mb lines should be fairly consistent for miles), while higher frequency standards like ADSL2+ lose bandwidth rapidly over increasing distance. I don't think coaxial cable internet really has this problem, plus it is much less prone to varied speeds due to environmental conditions, but it has its own disadvantages such as shared bandwidth.

Randomizer, part of the problem was that AT&T was promising certain speeds and completely unable to deliver them in many areas. Even their cheap-o 256Kb DSL-Lite package was sub-par. My Dad had it because it was all he really needed and dirt-cheap, but nothing ever downloaded faster than ~100Kb, and his connection was constantly dropping. After paying for a line test and passing it, as well as getting a replacement modem installed, it stopped dropping connection as often. But it was still never as fast as advertised, even at 2-6am when traffic is minimal.

That's pretty poor then assuming the line test included internal house wiring, which on older houses can be quite deteriorated.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]I've moved around quite a bit. I have yet to see any service provider actually deliver their claimed data transmission rates. I'm beginning to think it is impossible.[/citation]
I get better than advertised rates. (they advertise 15/1, but I get 25/1, I use to get a 5/0.5 service, but was getting 16/0.5 speeds))
My ISP is awesome.
Their monitoring service also says I used 50-80GB.month, when I know I use 200-300GB/month some times.

But then again, it's $55/month for only a copper line, I expect a lot...

 

[fisshy]

That Has to be good For business

 

[trenity8]

I believe there were 2 issues with this settlement; poor service and deceptive sales tactics. That settlement is horrible...

We moved to an area where our only option was AT&T DSL service and it was horrible. We had the service for 2.5 years and during that time I spent countless hours on the phone each month of service, had 10+ techs out to the house and no one seemed to know why the 6 mb line was giving me dial up speeds. I started tracking the speeds throughout the day and into the early morning hours, from 9am to 3pm speeds were consistent averaging about 5 mb. At 3pm the speeds began to drop, 3:15pm speeds were around 3mb, 3:30pm 1mb, 3:45 500kb, 4pm to 12am we had dial up speeds Mon. thru Fri.

After 2.5 years of a never ending battle, rude tech support and ridiculous service I talked with a good tech on the phone and finally got someone to show up at the house at 2pm, and he stayed till 4pm to witness the speed drop, he was shocked and was on the phone with an engineer at the time. Finally after all the trouble they admitted that I was sold 6 mb service when I should have only been sold 1 mb service due to the distance....

AT&T credited our account with $22 per month for the previous 2.5 years.

 

[kentlowt]

My download speeds have never been the issue. It is the upload speed that are horrible. No matter what my download speed is it seems like the upload speed stays the same pitiful number and I am like 5 blocks from the AT&T network complex...