Mark this date on your calendars – May 2 is the day wireless carriers in the US decided it was time for you to pay even more to get the high performance data connection that you thought your plan would just deliver. For those times where you want to game on the go or are in a high-traffic situation where you still want access to be able to stream your social life, the carriers are here as long as you want to pay extra.
AT&T is the first to try this move with a service called AT&T Turbo.
What is AT&T Turbo? This is a data plan add-on that costs $7/mo and will attempt to deliver “performance data” to your phone with improved “real-time responsiveness and smoother gameplay.” By paying extra per month on top of your already-expensive data plan, Turbo gives you better reliability and stability. That’s wild.
AT&T is explaining the need for this as a solution to problems their network apparently isn’t capable of handling. You see, traffic as grown on their network “exponentially,” with “technical requirements” increasing for data-heavy apps (like games, video sharing, etc.), so they want folks to be able to pay to get better experiences in those services.
AT&T Turbo is a $7/mo fee that is promising you a truly better connection when you want it. I know you thought that your $86/mo Unlimited Premium plan, with 60GB hotspot and “high-speed data that can’t slow down based on how much you use” would be enough. AT&T is here to tell you that you should actually pay more if you really want the high-speed goods.
What exactly do you get with AT&T Turbo, though? We don’t really know any specifics. AT&T isn’t promising a certain speed, they are essentially saying that when the network is busy, you can pay to get a higher priority on the network. That’s it.
Here’s the fineprint from the Turbo page that explains it:
AT&T Turbo: Provides customers the ability to optimize their rate plan’s premium and mobile hotspot data allotments to performance data by enabling customers to prioritize their data traffic for these allotments to help the performance of their data connection, even during busy times on the network.
…
Upgraded Data: Enables customers to optimize to performance data their eligible plan’s premium and mobile hotspot allotments only. Does not provide additional data allotments or coverage. Upgrades data only. Will not upgrade your voice or messaging.
Not good, guys. I can’t wait for you to head to an NBA Playoff game or concert in the near future, your AT&T connection quickly turns to trash with all the people around, and AT&T’s network understands this only to fire off a text to let you know that you can immediately improve that bad connection by paying them $7 extra. That’ll go over well.
If AT&T has figured out that rather than simply delivering a great network at all times they could instead charge you extra for one, don’t expect them to be the last. Who do you think will be next, Verizon or T-Mobile?
I already hate AT&T due to their current commercial with the two singing basketball players.
Greed is a terrible thing and every single corporation has in their minds to cut how much you get in a package, cut the services you get unless you pay up, slow things down, make you pay more and more and more. I tell my wife all the time the package of potato chips we get now will someday soon be counted down per chip and packaged as such. You’ll get a pack of five chips for a dollar…..bank on it…it’s coming.
It’s obvious that this was going to happen. Eventually. Wireless carriers will be able to compete against ground cable carriers. Wireless is going to become the most used and they are going to charge a hefty premium. Then what is the alternative? You need to constantly create competition.
$7/mo to tag your traffic with a higher priority QoS tag, we’re truly living in the greatest of timelines.
Edit: Doing some reading around the AT&T subreddit and it looks like AT&T actually just knocked their highest tiered plans to where their cheaper plans were in terms of prioritization and this basically lets you get back to where you were originally, by paying of course. Absolute insanity.
As a network engineer, I could understand them charging for different data speed tiers, similar to home wired internet plans, but charging for a QoS tag is ridiculous. This could go bad in so many ways.
As someone who wears the same hat it was an interesting dive into how AT&T found a way to squeeze money out of people while also degrading the service of others who don’t pay up, including those who are on AT&T’s top tier plans. All while providing no actual changes to the network.
Now where have I seen this before? Oh yes, ground cable ISPs. What a “novel” ???? idea!
Came here to say this. Their highest plan was already on QCI 7 & just recently it got dropped to QCI 8. So now they are making you pay more for something you use to have. We are seeing this all over now. Like Amazon adding ads to their prime video plan.
Sounds like an excuse for them to deprioritize en masse in congested times or locations.
“Oh you’re not paying for Turbo and our network is bottlenecked? Let’s drop you all down a bit now so our system can handle things a bit better.”
I’m with Verizon. My hope is they won’t follow suit, especially with their UW covering lots of stadiums (to stick with the playoff game example). But, hope usually fails me when it comes to the big carriers… 😉
I have AT&T and recently went to a SF Giants game and I was amazed at how fast my connection was there. It’s been fast their for a while but nothing like what I saw a few weeks ago. 3Gbps.
Funny how when the FCC says they are bringing Net Neutrality, then we hear this.
Net neutrality will enable more of this.
How is this legal?
Lame
like your comment
NO ONE should sign up for this nonsense, and if you’re not happy with your ATT service, maybe drop it and move over to a better carrier like T-Mobile. But do not give ATT any more money and certainly don’t make them think this was a good idea!
Can we trust ATT and other carrier that they wouldn’t throttle down the regular service in order to make turbo service look faster?
I hope so but probably not.
This was cable ISPs in the late 2000s and early 2010s. ???? The cycle of stupidity continues
They already throttle speeds based on the unlimited plan you have. I had their value unlimited plan and then moved to their most expensive for the hotspot data. The value plan still gave me great speeds where I could hit over 200mbps in a good area. But now in the same area with the new plan, I’m hitting over 400mbps. Same phone. But yeah, I’m not paying $7 more. And the with the price of going to sporting events or concerts, the point is to be there and not on your phone 😉
VPN and VPN tethering are your friend for throttling and de prioritizing
They just good a way to pay for all those Experian memberships for users affected from the hack.
The funny part is that I’m sure their turbo will come with a wide range of what their “boost” definition is.
I am curious to have two identical phones in the same location and do some testing of boost and without boost.
And they aren’t really saying or making any real promises. It’s just that you jump to a higher priority on their network by paying $7.