AT&T Quietly Updates its Wireless Plans
Quietly, last night, AT&T revised its wireless plans. In the latest changes to the service terms, it looks like AT&T is trying to exempt its own video services but metering services like the Slingbox or other video web sites. See, this change (changes emphasized):
Context & Ripple Effects
AT&T's terms-of-service edits are becoming a pattern rather than an event: back in October 2007 it threatened to disconnect subscribers who criticized the company, and this week it again revised its wireless service terms overnight, without announcement. The substance this time is metering asymmetry — Public Knowledge flags language that appears to exempt AT&T's own video services from counting against customers' usage while third-party video, including Slingbox place-shifting and other video websites, stays metered.
The move lands at a sensitive moment for the carrier. Its network drew heavy criticism after reported call and text failures during South by Southwest's iPhone-driven load in March 2009, and reports circulating since February say Apple and AT&T have been discussing tiered data plan options for the next-generation iPhone. A carrier under capacity pressure deciding whose video counts — and whose doesn't — turns a network-management question into a competitive one.
First-order effects
- Slingbox owners and users of third-party mobile video sites face effective price discrimination: their traffic consumes the same scarce spectrum but bills differently than AT&T's own video services riding the same pipe.
- Consumer groups like Public Knowledge gain a concrete exhibit that 'quiet' terms changes can restructure competition without a rate filing or public notice.
Second-order effects
- Rival carriers watching the reaction must choose between matching the exemption model — turning their own bundled media into a differentiator — or positioning against it on openness, making zero-rating policy a marketing battleground rather than a footnote.
- Third-party video and place-shifting providers such as Slingbox now carry a gatekeeper tax risk on AT&T's network, pushing them toward negotiating carriage-like deals or multi-carrier distribution hedges.
Third-order effects
- If exempting one's own video while metering rivals' becomes standard carrier practice, the mobile network hardens into a distribution channel where the operator's content arm competes with advantaged delivery — a structure regulators and net-neutrality advocates will increasingly be asked to police.
- The same logic scales with tiered pricing: once data plans are capped or tiered, 'what counts' becomes a product-design lever for the carrier, not just a billing detail.
The trend: Wireless carriers are converting usage-based pricing into preferential distribution for their own media services, with terms-of-service fine print doing the work that rate cards once did.