The AT&T network services a huge amount of people. I mean, does this really have a chance to work? That said, I think that the people should instead try to get a law passed to make the cell frequencies free(at least as in beer), it would have a greater chance(in hell) of making a difference. Sorry if this comes off as antagonistic, i agree with their cause, not their methods.
I personally hate those cellphone companies that limit features, and make data plans that are outrageously expensive. Now they’re limiting data? really?

AT&T is the primary reason I don’t have an iphone. Their current advertising and legal shenanigans aren’t helping their case any either.

IMHO, this is a dumb idea. AT&T will still have their users’ money and now have an excuse to hut a huge number of them off. A false advertising lawsuit might have some effect. But the best way to take action is just to not use AT&T.

Yes, it will be painful to not have an iphone, but then, what steps might Apple take when their sales tank too?
This is not a Guerrilla war, this is capitalism. If AT&T can find consumers willing to pay for a a lower quality network in exchange for a shiny toy, then that is just how the system works.

I don’t think the way to endear everyone to your cause is to initiate a DDoS attack that could not only cause the provider issues but likely inconvenience hundreds of thousands of other users who would be sympathetic. At best, there will be no noticeable effect, which defeats the point and worse, as it indicates people who object to the new policy have trivial, insignificant numbers.

If “successful,” this sort of stunt will make everyone else _beg AT&T for bandwidth limits_ so that this sort of thing won’t happen twice without costing the participants significant money.

This doesn’t mean I support “unlimited” plans that are actually limited. Bandwidth should be commodity. Unlimited, cheap, everywhere. Providers should not sell what they cannot provide, nor mislabel their products.

But this sort of response is childish idiocy that helps nothing.

Fake SteveJobs has already said this was a joke. The FCC was involved in the media hype but no ATT actions were involved.

HEY i sent this story in to get more support please join face book grp if you have an iphone or tell your friends about it if they have one we are trying to get ATNT to give us what they are “selling us”

ps hack a day i love that when i opened up the article there was a sprint commercial between the comments and the story

So wait, based on PURE observation, I can say iPhone users don’t understand sarcasm?

unlimited means unlimited.

I don’t see why the government allows these artificial person thingys to lie to consumers and get away with it.

The next thing you know the gubb’mint will let someone put “grape” on a package of cereal without actually putting any grapes in the package. Nuts! that’s a bad example.

Anyway, as soon as someone builds an open source smart anything that I can use with a flat-rate data plan that’s made available from a reliable carrier or carriers I am so ditching my tracfone.

Can someone explain the mechanics of this to a networking noob? What sort of problems would this cause ATT? Wouldn’t software of some sort just say “nope, too much bandwidth” and slow it down or something? I don’t get why this would hurt the provider. I mean, its not like blowing fuses by drawing too much current, right?

Jake: quoting from the article, “AT&T’s overtaxed data network has led to shoddy service.”

THe system responds to overusage by dropping transmissions, which doesn’t PHYSICALLY hurt the company, but the people whose transmissions were broken get angry and complain. Or launch attacks on the company. THAT hurts the company.

@Doodle

When the comments turned into Bitch a Minute.

This pretty much falls in my it has to get worse before it gets better category.

If you don’t take the bad dog that AT&T is and rub its face in its own shit, it is never going to quit shitting on the living room rug.

This is plain and simple incentive. If AT&T correctly responds there won’t be a need to repeat the same thing again the next Friday or perhaps even Monday morning when the stock exchange opens.

I don’t think this will make a difference. ATT’s 3G service doesn’t work most of the time anyway so i don’t think people will notice the down time. LOL

Initiating a denial of service attack against your telecom is a pretty bad idea. It is against their terms of service to use their network to attack *anyone*, and in this case, the attack is directed at their clients. What sort of winner is going to attack AT&T with the account they pay for? It won’t be tough for AT&T to know who to suspend indefinitely for trying to DDOS them.

@Rollyn01

In AT&T’s defense, they shot themselves in the foot not classifying EDGE as 3g which it was theoretically capable of doing. EV-DO was theoretically capable of 3g speed (even though EV-DO rev 0 never did) and thus you have the situation with the ad campaign today.

Verizon was very pro-active with their network upgrades and you have to give them props for that. Verizon also has to be pissed that they went with non-simultaneous data and voice which their standard can do but it’s too late to change it now.

I’m ready for LTE personally.

I just dropped AT&T today in favor of T-Mobile. I now have unlimited EVERYTHING for $80 a month, with better customer service to boot.

Screw AT&T. Unlimited means UNLIMITED. Don’t sell it if you can’t deliver, and don’t blame the customer for using the product you sold them.

This seems like a lot of work when there are other services out there.

Every iPhone user in America using as much bandwidth as they can at the same time to bring down the big blue ball? Yes please, I’d love to watch. I haven’t used any part of AT&T for nearly a decade thanks to their immoral operation.

heh
on sprint, i use 1+ gigs EVERY month
on a fairly basic smart phone, a palm centro(ie, treo 690)
considering how many phones can stream FLVS from youtube, bandwidth usage is high on any phone
even 3gp streams take their tole

another point…
just to load hackaday main page once without cache is nearly a megabyte!

@Mark Baier

If unlimited, in advertising terms, doesn’t mean unlimited, why use it? Couldn’t they just as easily stated the cutoff? Unlimited means unlimited. If you can’t do it, don’t advertise it. If they had stated the cutoff instead, they would be in a better position. Their customers would know where they stand in making an informed decision and can’t claim ignorance when they go over.

TOS doesn’t help because you can’t define in advertisement what you redefine in a contract. That’s called bait-and-switch false advertising. It’s kind of illegal I heard.

Isn’t this more Engadget news?

can you hear me now? muhahahaha!

^possibility

Unlimited has not meant Unlimited even since the dark days of Dial up … and yes it sucked back then as well

I used to get hassled by Earthlink for being logged in more than 23 hrs a day ….. and running an NT 4.0 Server on my residential connection as well

Yes I am that old ……

everybody get your 32gb microsdhc cards ready!
this will only affect me if you take out the messaging and voice network. i use my computer for the data.

Hey guys – there is a better way: vote with your money. Yep! Your cash. NOTHING sends a better message to the idiots in charge.

If you continue to bandwagon on the latest shiny thing because “it’s exclusive to AT&T” then you get what you paid for. Or not. You know – going in -that this is the service they will allow (NOT what you pay for), and that’s that.

BUT – should you show restraint, and skip over that neat toy because you know – you KNOW – AT&T’s going to rip you for it, *then* you send a message. In this case, you send TWO messages: AT&T’s bottom line sags, as does Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s sales. Do you think that either company wouldn’t notice?

A DDOS attack is *very* temporary. A drop in profits is a stain forever. But the real question is this: Does the geek world have what it takes to make informed decisions, and eschew that which _looks_ cool in favor of that which _works_.

From what I’ve seen, I think not.

this is a demonstration against AtNt
we want to show them it is not a Unlimited network and should not be sold as such.

THANK YOU stunmonkey that is the point i was getting at exactly

So when it was time to show disagreement with apple at&t idea about contract by not buying a product , people did opposite, making hype over mp3 player with build in cellphone data modem, which not even qualify to be called a communicator, making it into god like machine, and now they unhappy? Suck it up it, you own fault.

I also have had issues with being unable to use my service within the “coverage area” with AT&T. 1 bar max in areas that are “covered” does not make for good service. And being unable to send MMS in some “covered” areas is also not good service.

Everybody needs to pay close attention. The cause of this as well as the solution is very simple. It’s about the money.

The highest form of martial arts is the art of turning an enemy into a friend. Use this ideaology.

If I make a car engine that runs on water and say “haha oil companies now I will put you out of business”, they will use their resources to try and stop me. On the other hand, if I find a way to make it profitable for them as well, I am sure to succeed at getting it on the market and make a lot of money.

The same is true in any major business. Find a way to make it substantially profitabe for the ISP (ANY ISP) to truely provide unlimited bandwidth and it will happen.

If you are unable to think of a way to make it profitable for them, then find a way to make it profitable for their competators and/or for congress to make a law requiring it, and it will happen.

You have to think outside of the box.

@ bobbers

But then I’d have to join Facebook. No thanks.

- THIS IS NOT A HACK
- THIS IS NOT A HACK A DAY
- WHY AM I READING NEWS NOT RELATED TO HACKING?
- THIS HAS NO RELATION TO SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE HACKING

Shame on you HACK A DAY
shame on “Mike Szczys” for posting this story.
This is news that should be read on a news site like Digg or SlashDot

I don’t think that this will go the way they think it will go. That is if it even happens at all. AT&T will more likely use this as a reason why they should be allow to impose a bandwidth limitation. This would get a lot more people on there side, and deter other cell phone companies from even thinking getting the iPhone. I don’t think that I need to go further on what harm this might cause. As others have all ready mention, the best plan would be to take your money else where and give up your iPhone. If you do want to keep the iPhone; then I would suggest trying to find a way to hack it to use it on another network. Getting a community together would accomplish a lot more even if it turns out to be totally imposable. If the word gets out that then it could put pressure on AT&T and Steve Jobs. Maybe even allow the iPhone provided by other cell phone companies. I heard that Verizon is getting the iPhone at some point next year. We need to let AT&T know that if they want to keep the iPhone exclusive then they need to stop punishing all of their customers. The iPhone is big right know and maybe the key.

I think this is the perfect place to start. ;)

The problem with the idea of people just dropping service is this; people are under contract.
Unconscionable contracts, but contracts nonetheless.

Don’t count of the government to act against AT&T – its job is to protect its corporate interests.

People can’t just cancel, even for breach of contract, as AT&T decides what part of the contracts they want to change or enforce at their whim, and how many termination fees to apply.

Fail to pay those, the government and courts WILL become involved – to force you to pay AT&T.

This is in essence a big extortion racket backed by the biggest 800-pound gorilla of them all, whether AT&T actually delivers any service or not.

Be happy with what little they give you serfs.

@HerpDerp

“I don’t see how offering an unlimited plan means that every iphone user is entitled to their own personal unlimited bandwidth hotspot.”

You keep using that word unlimited. I don’t think you know what it means.

I support data limits. I’m in Australia where there are no “unlimited” data plans (that I know of).

I have a 1GB/month limit and I work with that. If I need more than that then I can change my agreement.

(I don’t support them changing existing contracts that were sold on the ‘unlimited’ offer)

The network has a finite amount of bandwidth. If there is no cost to using it all up then effectively it isn’t being managed at all.

I would far rather have a limit and know that the network is reasonably available whenever I need it.

@Splynn I thought you knew… Capitalism IS guerrilla warfare…

so like, did at&t even notice it happening?
by the way all, i know this is completely unrelated
google chrome os is made to run on arm x86 x64 and arm
the psp runs a arm9 chip

somone wanna do somthing with it? :D

@Steve
Not sure what service you are using for broadband in UK, but I get a great service, downloading at will and never been maxed out in terms of total monthly bandwidth. And still get great speeds on rapidshare

Also, our mobile deals are hugely different to the USA.

We get to use any phone we choose on our sim, they get tied down to one phone. You cannot put your sim in a new phone, it will be cancelled. Here you can buy and sell your phone and do what you like with your sim. As far as I can see we have it massively easier here in the UK, still can get 12 month contracts, and even rolling 30day ones. Plus, as we are a hugely smaller country that the massive US of A, we can pretty Damn hot connectivity country wide.

lol reaper same shit happened in Mississippi. thought my phone finally crapped out on me but then i posted something on facebook and everybody with ATT was like yea me too. then i thought about this plan to bring ATT down and figured they must have settled on New Years Eve lol.
Welcome to the year: A.D. MMX :D