AT&T Re-adds Slingbox Ban on 3G Network

Engadget Mobile has a different take on things.

AT&T's "new" video streaming terms are a non-issue

There's an awful lot of hubbub going around today about "new" terms in AT&T's wireless contract agreement that seemingly forbid streaming video from your television to your PC or your phone -- in other words, using a Slingbox -- which would seem to be a rewrite of language added and pulled a few weeks ago. Here's the problem: the terms aren't new, and they don't forbid video streaming. One of our editors has a month-old hard copy of AT&T's terms that were mailed to him after agreeing to a new contract, and they're exactly the same -- word for word.

Furthermore, the language in question is this: "This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers..." but the problem is that the examples given here are referring to earlier language. In that language, we see that AT&T is more concerned about "server devices or host computer applications" -- that's subsection (i), if you're interested. In other words, AT&T's trying to stop you from uploading a television stream using its connection, not downloading -- and frankly, that sounds like the most painful operation ever conceived by man anyway, so we don't think we're going to get too many violators here.

In other words, rest easy; we still don't know whether the now-overdue SlingPlayer for iPhone will ultimately be approved, but if it's not, it shouldn't be because of this.
 
AT&T doesn't surprise me. Not like you could do anything with their broadband network anyways. A friend just signed up with their 3G service to use on his PC at home. What a joke...slow...kept dropping connection...etc. And this was with -80 dbm signal, so that wasn't the issue. Too bad he can't get Verizon or Sprint at his house. I know those two work just fine.
 
digiblur-

I had a minor problem with my Verizon EVDO Rev A card too dropping connection. Seems it would work great until I used it here at the house. Wasn't signal either. The problem turned out to be that my wifi was also active for home network and it would conflict with the Verizon card some how. If I had the wifi active, even though that network was not connected to a cable modem, just wifi LAN, the Verizon card would lose connection in about 20 seconds. Very annoying! Disconnect the wifi transceiver and the EVDO card would stay active all day and night and speed was like greased lightening. Go figure. I don't know why that is. The two cards, Verizon and wifi are separate cards plugged into the mother board. They even use separate antennas. Maybe I would understand if the wifi also had internet gateway but I shut that off to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.
Anyway, see if your friend has a similar issue with the AT&T card and maybe an active wifi LAN card too.
 
digiblur-

I had a minor problem with my Verizon EVDO Rev A card too dropping connection. Seems it would work great until I used it here at the house. Wasn't signal either. The problem turned out to be that my wifi was also active for home network and it would conflict with the Verizon card some how. If I had the wifi active, even though that network was not connected to a cable modem, just wifi LAN, the Verizon card would lose connection in about 20 seconds. Very annoying! Disconnect the wifi transceiver and the EVDO card would stay active all day and night and speed was like greased lightening. Go figure. I don't know why that is. The two cards, Verizon and wifi are separate cards plugged into the mother board. They even use separate antennas. Maybe I would understand if the wifi also had internet gateway but I shut that off to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.
Anyway, see if your friend has a similar issue with the AT&T card and maybe an active wifi LAN card too.

Nope. No wifi in his house at all...no routers...no wifi adapters. Not even a single cordless telephone. Last time I talked to him the AT&T adapter was back at the store and Wildblue was on their way. Apparently his neighbor came over and looked at it, then his neighbor showed him Wildblue and his mind was made up quickly. No DSL there, no WISPs, and the cable doesn't come down his road. They had a cable plant expansion estimate for the 8 or 9 houses down the road and it was like $9,000. Only cell provider there is AT&T, which you can see the tower blinking at night about mile away.
 
Too bad he can't get Verizon or Sprint at his house. I know those two work just fine.

It doesn't sound like Verizon and Sprint work any better in his case. It sounds like it has more to do with location than AT&T in general.
 
It doesn't sound like Verizon and Sprint work any better in his case. It sounds like it has more to do with location than AT&T in general.

If they had one more tower towards his house they would work great. Go about 2 miles down the road and a Verizon or Sprint card works fine. So they do work better in this area than AT&T's oversold network but just not at his house. I could setup a yagi with an amp but that's just too much to deal with.

Yeah, but if you look at it that way you can't bitch about AT&T which seems to be what this thread is about.

The motto around here is "More bars in more places that you still can't use."
 
I just heard Clark Howard in conversation with Mark Segal who is some big shot with the at&T wireless company explain why they don't want you to watch sling box on their 3G network. He claimed that their network is just not capable of handling the speeds required by sling box and if people began to use this service it would bring their network down at this time. He did correct the rumor that AT&T was restricting iphone users from watching video on YouTube and said that they will not restrict anyone from watching YouTube or any other video, just not sling box. Clark Howard suggested that Dish Network will be really mad at AT&T because they own Sling Media and his comment was that their problem, but AT&T forbids any sling box usage on their network.
Segal also said that they will strictly enforce the 5Gb limit and he believes that normal people using their network will never come close to the 5Gb limit as long as they stick to normal web site surfing and e-mail usage. Also, if you use AT&T's video programming it will not count toward 5 Gb limit. This is a subscription PPV like service.

One thing was certain and that was, AT&T bully was not going to be intimidated by Clark Howard and the target was clearly directed at hurting Sling users.

The big question is-- IS AT&T network really that fragile that it won't handle 100kbps a sec ( what is typical for good cell phone video on sling media) sling video? MY guess is YES, it is. In Las Vegas at CES, while I had no problem surfing the net and slinging to my Verizon PDA at the convention center, other iphone users were down for the count.
 
I must comment that in a semi-remote area where I camp, they've made some improvements. This year, I can use my USB dongle on my laptop with AT&T 3G and get speeds close to DSL. A few months ago, it wasn't much faster than Edge. That was when I gave up any idea of using it to sling HDTV from home to RV. And now it seems that Archos will never get their new HD devices to play nice with Dish ViP series HD DVRs. So that option's out, too. I can use Blu-ray - but only if I want to put up with rather poor AQ.

Same for iPhone use- pages are snappier.

So things are improving. Perhaps they are waiting to spend their bucks on 4G, when IT comes out.
 
See this link for related info. Heavy 3G use affects all the carriers.

The world is on the 4g network 3g is the past.

Sprint is ahead of everyone else in that they have the 4g network. The new IPHONE PRO will have 4g since apple wants to sell more IPHONE to the rest of the world.

Next year expect to see the IPHONE on other carriers who will begin to offer 4G.
 
Well its their network. They dont want a few sling users hogging it up for everyone else.
No I pay for INTERNET access and I am allowed up to 5GB data transfer every month. If I want to use it to watch my Slingbox via the internet on my iphone I should be allowed to as long as I don't go over my 5GB is data allowed per month.

They are selling me internet access, let me use the internet as I please.
 
No I pay for INTERNET access and I am allowed up to 5GB data transfer every month. If I want to use it to watch my Slingbox via the internet on my iphone I should be allowed to as long as I don't go over my 5GB is data allowed per month.

They are selling me internet access, let me use the internet as I please.

Scott, Where have you seen that the iPhone is limited to only 5GB per month? I know that the other data plans are limited but I have not seen anything about the iPhones having the same limits.
 
iPhone usage is not capped. The cap is only for plans that include tethering.

I can say that 3g is very unreliable in a crowd. Everytime I go to a baseball game at Chase Field (DBacks), I cannot use the internet when the stadium fills up. I'm personally quite disappointed that wireless data is so poor after so many years of development.

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-plans/pda-personal-plans.jsp
 

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