Category Archives: AT&T

AT&T, At&t and T-mobile

“Strong & Centralized FCC leadership” in post-auction transition, urges AT&T

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AT&T, one of the biggest wireless carrier in the US, is all geared up to begin with the preparations for the upcoming incentive auction. Again, AT&T has urged the FCC to lay a foundation for the event, saying that “strong, centralized FCC leadership on the transition will be essential.”
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Later this month, the FCC will begin a “reverse” auction that will eventually see it buy back unwanted airwaves from TV broadcasters. That spectrum will then be auctioned off later this year to companies looking to use it to launch mobile communications services. The FCC has proposed a 39-month timeline for repacking, although that schedule has come under fire by TV broadcasters who say it doesn’t provide enough time.

AT&T didn’t offer an opinion on the proposed timeline in its latest filing, but it did cite the 800 MHz rebanding effort, which began in June of 2005 and was expected to take 36 months but continues today. “We also believe that there are important lessons that can be learned from other FCC projects of similar size, scope, and complexity that underscore the importance of up-front logistical and programmatic planning, careful execution, and robust program management,” wrote Joan Marsh, AT&T’s vice president of federal regulatory, in the filing. “While the 800 MHz rebanding in many ways was more complex than this effort, there are also many similarities. Notably, the 800 MHz rebanding effort began with the belief that the band could be fully re-organized within 36 months. We now know, in hind sight, that the effort will in fact take more than a decade to complete.”

AT&T went on to urge the FCC to make sure it has the resources in place to produce a detailed transition plan for comment and feedback within a few months of the auction’s conclusion. “A carefully developed and regionally prioritized plan, coupled with strong project management, is essential to managing key dependencies and to controlling constraints and challenges,” the operator wrote. “AT&T urges the FCC to utilize all means available to it to ensure that it has the necessary expertise and resources available to establish and execute on an effective and expeditious repacking plan as soon as the auction concludes.”

It is expected that AT&T would be the dominant bidder at the FCC’s upcoming incentive auction, and is even planning to spend around $10 billion on the licenses.

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Consumers Call on AT&T to Help End Robocalls

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Despite of the best efforts to regulate and legislate the robocalls, still consumers complain about the unwanted prerecorded and auto-dialed robocalls. Now, this is not just one man’s problem- thousands of people have come together to curb this practice. Today, a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of people who want the nation’s telecom providers to do something about robocalls to the AT&T headquarters in Texas.

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Though there are tools that allow the individuals to put up robocall roadblocks on their own, but the telecom industry hasn’t taken any strict action to put a halt on such calls. The providers who offer options to block specific numbers generally charge a specific amount for the service or put limits on this sort of blacklisting. For example, AT&T allows their landline customers to pay a certain amount to block up to ten numbers and all anonymous callers. Likewise, Verizon also charges a specific price to block either six or twelve numbers or more. Generally, it depends on your service area.

However, the critics argue that- “this sort of customer-generated blacklist puts the onus on the consumer, and that such small blacklists are often pointless when dealing with scammy robocallers who use spoofed phone numbers and bogus Caller ID information to mask where they are really calling from.”

Consumers Union and concerned Dallas-area consumers delivered that petition to AT&T headquarters. “We’re calling on companies to step in and act and provide companies with free and effective tools to block these tools before they get to their homes,” explained Consumers Union End Robocalls campaign leader Tim Marvin.

In a statement to Consumerist, AT&T acknowledges that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with. “Robocalls are an industry-wide issue and we continue to work closely with the government and industry partners to make improvements,” reads the statement. “We appreciate Consumers Union’s input and will continue our work to help find solutions.”

Moreover,CU has already delivered this petition to Verizon and CenturyLink.

Seeing the current scenario where more than 800 robocalls are being made every second in US, the consumers hope that industry understands the problem and will look into the matter seriously.

 

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AT&T’s New Android App Enables Texting from Landline

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At&t Many consumers still pay heavy bills for their landlines. Most of them are either business owners or elderly. There are still some who use landline and in some cases it is considered necessary. And, if you feel landlines aren’t worth the trouble because they can’t even be used for texting, then you are wrong. AT&T’s new Android app lets you send and receive text messages using your landline.

The official AT&T Android app is not just a text messaging service but is exclusively used for those who pay an extra amount to enable sending and receiving of text messages from their landline. However, they aren’t paying extra at all for this app. It simply costs them $10 for 100 messages a month, or $25 on top of whatever they are already paying for the landline bill in the first place. Although the Android app is a virtual message bucket, it also includes some advanced features like auto-reply, scheduled text and also a call function. It is still not clear if it is a VOIP or a reroute solution that makes this work from their landline number.

The app makes a lot of sense if you are running a large scale business. So this pricey add-on would allow business owners to cater to more of their communication needs. Another major advantage includes that the app is free but only for AT&T landline customers. AT&T obviously hopes that the new Android app helps in making a drastic change in business communication.

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AT&T Sees Increase in Landline VoIP

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Recently procured data has enabled AT&T to infer that the number of customers has continued to increase for VoIP-based voice service as compared to wireline customers. In the first quarter itself, there has been a growth in the form of 5 million new subscribers for U-verse voice service along with an increase in broadband and video subscribers.

The growth in the number of new IP-based U-verse broadband customers was tremendous. Besides seeing a gain in new customers, AT&T has converted around 80 percent of it’s DSL subscribers to IP-based U-verse broadband where it’s available using it’s 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services.

A rising number of AT&T customers are buying a great deal of dual play bundles that include broadband and VoIP service. In an interview, the AT&T vice president of voice and data products said that many of their customers purchase both products but some of them are moving from IP to the DSL network.

E-911, call forwarding, and call blocking are the features introduced by AT&T that differentiate it from other VoIP players such like Skype and Vonage. Moreover, customers can experience a TDM-based equivalent service because the internet network is managed.

Currently, AT&T is offering three U-verse Voice packages. The first is the U-verse Voice International, with the help of which a user can make limitless calling in the U.S., its territories, and Canada, and get discount on calls to other countries. The second is the AT&T U-verse Voice Unlimited with the help of which a person can make limitless calls within the U.S. and Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Northern Marianas. The last is the AT&T U-verse Voice 200 with the help of which a person can make limitless calls to other U-verse Voice customers and avail 200 minutes of anytime calling to anybody in the U.S., the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Northern Marianas.

The Vice President also added in his statement that the rising telecommuting trend is also causing users to rethink using just a cell phone. Call quality through mobile handsets also depends on the proximity to the nearest cell tower, which is another factor driving users to opt for this service.

In the end, he added that voice quality of wireless carriers is not good enough to support conference calls. However, this can be assured in case of landline phones with the help of their services.

AT&T

AT&T Modifies Data Throttling Policy for Customers Using Unlimited Data Plans

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AT&T Mobility recently tweaked its data throttling policy for those using the unlimited data plans. In a recent development, the company has shared that it will now throttle data speeds only when consumers are linked to congested cell sites, irrespective of the type of smartphone they are using.

The renowned network carrier patiently changed its policy yesterday. Prior to this, customers who had been using 3G or HSPA+ phones as well as legacy unlimited data plans were restrained for their remaining billing period after having exceeded a total of 3 GB of data in a month; however, this was done only when certain areas and times faced network congestion. On the contrary, while LTE customers with unlimited plans did not experience their speeds getting throttled until they reached 5 GB of data usage in a month, their speeds were indeed geared down for their remaining billing cycle at all times, irrespective of whether their network faced any sort of congestion during that time.

That discrepancy has now been rectified. According to the new policy, as a result of AT&T’s network management process, consumers on a 3G or 4G smartphone or on a 4G LTE smartphone accessing an unlimited data plan who have exceeded 3 gigabytes or 5 gigabytes of data in a certain billing period may experience contracted speeds when using data services at times and in areas that are experiencing any kind of network congestion. All those customers can still go ahead and use unlimited data without incurring any sort of overage charges, and their speeds will return to normal when their next billing cycle starts.

Not many customers exist who still use the legacy unlimited data plans provided by AT&T. The carrier said that at the end of the first quarter, approximately 87 percent of its postpaid smartphone subscribers were set on usage-based data plans (tiered data plans, Mobile Share and other plans).