AT&T Follows Comcast's Lead, Now Charging Users $30 More To Avoid Usage Caps

Last fall, Comcast added a new wrinkle to its plan to impose arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps on the company's broadband customers. It began charging users a $30-$35 premium if users wanted to avoid caps, effectively turning the idea of unlimited data into a luxury option many could no longer afford. Caps continue to be a great way to impose price hikes on uncompetitive broadband markets, charge more money for the same service, with the added bonus of both curtailing -- and cashing in on -- the growing use of Internet video.

And because the broadband market is so uncompetitive, AT&T this week effectively just came out and decided it would follow Comcast's lead. In a blog post, the company announced that it's bumping the usage caps on its U-Verse broadband customers, but it's also going to be following Comcast's lead and charging users a $30 premium if they want to avoid them entirely. That is, unless you sign up for AT&T or DirecTV (now owned by AT&T) TV services:

"On May 23 we will introduce a new unlimited data option for our U-verse home Internet customers. Customers who subscribe only to our home Internet service who anticipate they will use more data than their new higher monthly data allowance - or who don't want to think about how much data they are using - can sign up for unlimited home Internet data for $30 more a month. If you have AT&T U-verse Internet and DIRECTV(R) or U-verse TV service and pay for your services on a single bill you will automatically get unlimited home Internet data at no additional charge - a discount worth $30 a month.

What sweethearts! To soft sell the idea, AT&T emphasizes that they're raising the company's previous caps, but it forgets to mention (and most news outlets aren't noticing) that it had never bothered to enforce caps on U-Verse previously, effectively making these new caps. And like other ISPs before it, AT&T tries to argue that the caps aren't a big idea because most of its customers won't run into them:

"Today, our home Internet customers use just over 100 GB of data per month on average. So even with our smallest U-verse Internet data allowance of 300 GB the average customer has plenty of data to do more...If you don't have unlimited home Internet data and you exceed your data allowance at any point during the billing cycle, you will receive increments of 50 GB of additional data for $10 each. The usage of approximately 4% of AT&T U-verse Internet customers currently exceeds our new higher data allowance.

The fact that the majority of your customers won't hit the caps now doesn't mean they won't in a year or two. It also doesn't magically explain away the reality that usage caps on fixed-line networks simply aren't necessary. They exist solely as a way to take advantage of uncompetitive markets, charging users more money for the same product. They're also an ingenious, anti-competitive way of protecting legacy TV revenue from Internet video. But an ISP can't come out and just say that, so AT&T sells it as a way for consumers to have "more choices":

"We want to continue providing a great experience for our Internet customers so we're giving U-verse(R) Internet customers more choices and more data, including an unlimited data option available to any U-verse Internet customer."

Again, forcing customers to pay more money for the same service isn't giving consumers more choices. All AT&T's doing is imposing a glorified price hike. That's after the company announced it would be charging users a different $30 fee to opt out of AT&T snoopvertising, making privacy a luxury option just like unlimited data. It's yet another example of how the only real competition in the broadband industry -- is a competition over who can screw a captive market the hardest while with a straight face proclaiming they're improving the "customer experience."

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