AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees

Ladies and gentlemen, the days of unlimited broadband may be numbered in the United States — AT&T will reportedly implement a 150GB monthly cap on DSL customers and a 250GB cap on subscribers to U-Verse high speed internet starting on May 2nd. AT&T will charge overage fees of $10 for every additional 50GB of data, with two grace periods to start out — in other words, the third month you go over the cap that’s when you’ll get charged. DSLReports says it has confirmation from AT&T that these rates are legitimate, and that letters will go out to customers starting March 18th.

How does AT&T defend the move? The company explains it will only impact two percent of consumers who use “a disproportionate amount of bandwidth,” and poses the caps as an alternative to throttling transfer speeds or disconnecting excessive users from the service completely. Customers will be able to check their usage with an online tool, and get notifications when they reach 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of their monthly rates.

We just spoke with AT&T representative Seth Bloom and confirmed the whole thing — rates are exactly as described above, and the company will begin notifying customers this week. He also told us that those customers who don’t yet have access to the bandwidth usage tool won’t get charged until they do, and that AT&T U-Verse TV service won’t count towards the GB cap. We’re expecting a full statement shortly.

Developing…

AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twenty pilot programs to bring off-campus broadband to low-income school districts

The FCC announced on Wednesday the approval of a plan that will ramp up twenty pilot programs in fourteen states. The program — called Learning On-the-Go — will bring wireless broadband connections to students off campus. The devices will include mobile phones and laptops, enabling students to have internet connections when they’re not at school. Starting in the 2011-2012 school year, 35,000 elementary and secondary school students will be impacted in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, California, New Mexico and Iowa. The total cost of the program is estimated to be $9 million, but it’ll certainly be paid back in all those Facebook visits during off-school hours, right? Hit up the source link for the full document (warning: it’s a PDF).

Twenty pilot programs to bring off-campus broadband to low-income school districts originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google reacts to Japanese tsunami with a Person Finder tool

Now this is the sort of activity you’d expect from a true search giant. Instead of sitting on its hands during the tsunami that has stricken Japan today, Google has put together a Person Finder tool where people worried about the plight of their loved ones can look them up by name. There are only a few thousand records up on the site at the moment, but it should still be a useful repository for missing person data, particularly since mobile networks were taken down by the tsunami’s damage earlier this morning. Information should also start piling up as recovery efforts continue. Let’s just hope this Person Finder won’t have to be used for too long and things can be brought back to normal soon.

Continue reading Google reacts to Japanese tsunami with a Person Finder tool

Google reacts to Japanese tsunami with a Person Finder tool originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 07:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aircell releases GoGo tech roadmap: EV-DO Rev B in 2012, global satellite coverage by 2015

Aircell started putting its air-to-ground (ATG) mobile broadband technology in planes about three years ago, and its GoGo in-flight internet’s reach has grown ever since — all the way up to the home of mavericks and mama bears. Presently, the company’s ambit is limited to the continental US, but that’s about to change with the addition of Ka-band satellite coverage that will blanket the US in 2013 and the globe by 2015. Yes, dear readers, that means you’ll be able to poke, tweet, and blog your way over international waters. Not only that, next year a new ATG-4 network using EV-DO Rev B promises four times the capacity of its trusty Rev A service we’ve come to know and love. The company says both upgrades are cheap and easy for carriers — if only they were rapid as well. PR’s after the break.

Continue reading Aircell releases GoGo tech roadmap: EV-DO Rev B in 2012, global satellite coverage by 2015

Aircell releases GoGo tech roadmap: EV-DO Rev B in 2012, global satellite coverage by 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CloudSight Search gives you instant, unified access to email and social networking archives

Remember those thousands of folks who you suddenly lost contact with last week? Unfortunately for them, they’re still looking for years of Gmail records, but if they were proactive enough to initialize a Backupify account, they’d have their entire inbox (as well as their outbox, sent folder, and everything else) just a restore-click away. Backupify’s free backup services have worked well here at Engadget HQ, providing a level of assurance that our emails, tweets, photos and Facebook statuses aren’t going anywhere — even if an account is hacked. Now, the company’s taking the next logical step by introducing CloudSight Search. It’s hailed as the first searchable archive solution for social media and Google Apps, and it lets you type in a single search term / phrase in order to sift through your email accounts and social networking handles for any communications related to the aforesaid query. One search, multiple communication outlets. Of course, it only sifts through what’s archived, but given just how frequently the service backs things up, it’s pretty darn close to fetching in real-time. The only downside? There’s no mobile app, so it looks as if you’ll have to consult a legitimate browser to get your search on. Those interested in signing up for the private beta launch can do so in the source link, or if you’d rather learn more via video, the play button is just beneath the break.

Continue reading CloudSight Search gives you instant, unified access to email and social networking archives

CloudSight Search gives you instant, unified access to email and social networking archives originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 02:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Is AOLifying the Internet—and That Sucks [Internet]

When an entire generation of computer users first poked our doe-eyed faces onto a young internet, many of us were greeted with a single, encompassing, monolithic face peering back: the AOL Home Screen. To call it a young internet isn’t even fair—it was a mature, thriving AOL. It was ubiquitous, it was powerful, it was everything—and it ended up destroying itself, too flawed by design to last. And someone’s trying to rebuild the Death Star. More »

Adobe outs experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, calls it Wallaby

Ah, if only we could flip a big happy switch and convert all the web’s Flash content into (functional) HTML5 code. It’s a dream shared by many and, funnily enough, the company pushing to make it a reality is none other than Adobe itself, the owner and proprietor of Flash. Its Labs research team has just released an experimental new dev tool, dubbed Wallaby, that’s targeted at taking Flash-encoded artwork and animations and turning them into a more compatible mix of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Of course, the intent here is not some magnanimous move to free us from the shackles of Flash — Adobe openly admits that the initial goal for the new tool will be to help convert animated banner ads so that they work on the iOS platform — but hey, even bad tools can be used for good sometimes, right?

Continue reading Adobe outs experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, calls it Wallaby

Adobe outs experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, calls it Wallaby originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Download Blog  |  sourceAdobe Labs  | Email this | Comments

Editorial: Facebook, single identities, and the right to be anonymous

Here in the small but intense world of writing for tech blogs, trolling and spam are a daily nuisance. In fact, on a highly commented-upon blog such as Engadget, dealing with them (i.e., deleting comments, banning spammers, and responding to irrational people) can sometimes feel like a full-time job. I know this firsthand, as I have, possibly more than most of the other editors here over the past few years, made it one of my primary daily tasks (along with our three amazing interns). By engaging with our commenters, I’ve made a few friends. Mostly though, it’s a thankless task, an unending, uphill battle for Engadget, which ranges between 10 and 20,000 comments per day. The low quality of many comments is largely caused by anonymity on the internet, and the fact that anyone can sign up for as many Disqus accounts as they wish. Sure, people can log in using Twitter or Facebook, and while the number of people who choose to do so has risen drastically, nearly half of our commenters still use the Disqus option, which is the most anonymous. I’d venture to guess that 100 percent of our spammers and trolls do so. It’s a major headache, and one which we’ve spent an incredible amount of time combating and discussing, and occasionally, just giving up on.

Continue reading Editorial: Facebook, single identities, and the right to be anonymous

Editorial: Facebook, single identities, and the right to be anonymous originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Heads of Google, eBay, Facebook and Twitter will advise G8 summit on how to search, sell, poke and RT

So what if Barack Obama managed to bring the vast majority of US tech leaders in for a private meeting recently? Nicolas Sarkozy can do it too! The French président and soon-to-be host of the next G8 gathering is said to be preparing some rather handsome invitations to Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and a few other big timers from the internet in order to discuss the world wide web’s future direction. The input from these web sages is to be filtered down into a volume of extremely precious wisdom, which is to then be conveyed to the multinational meeting taking place in Deauville near the end of May. Sarkozy just needs to make sure the other seven participating nations don’t object before sending out the official invites. We have a pretty good idea of what Eric Schmidt thinks our future will involve, but Zuckerberg and the others? That’ll be interesting to hear.

Heads of Google, eBay, Facebook and Twitter will advise G8 summit on how to search, sell, poke and RT originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink HardOCP  |  sourceAFP (NZHerald)  | Email this | Comments

British property search engine Rightmove will soon list broadband speeds alongside standard home info

The internet, it’s kind of a big deal. So much of a big deal, in fact, that UK property search site Rightmove is said to be planning to list broadband speeds as part of its standard information package for homes up for rent or sale. This would be done in partnership with BT, reports the Daily Telegraph, though neither company is yet ready to make the deal official. BT would have little trouble providing the data in question since most of the UK is connected to its ADSL lines — every ISP in the country outside of Virgin Media just resells BT’s copper wire — or newfangled Infinity fiber optic services. Part of this new agreement will involve Rightmove displaying whether or not homes are capable of connecting to the newer, faster Infinity network — which mirrors Virgin’s efforts at informing people whether they’re covered by its cable internet through deals with independent estate agents. Soon there should be no excuses for Brits getting stuck in a picturesque home with a grotesquely slow web connection.

British property search engine Rightmove will soon list broadband speeds alongside standard home info originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceDaily Telegraph  | Email this | Comments