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 prohibiting services like the Slingbox.
Sound familiar? I wrote it on April 3rd. iPhone and PDA users literally felt their significant investment get less valuable. They complained and AT&T removed the offending language by the next day, calling the language a mistake.
Guess what? It’s back!
Sometime in the past 24 hours, AT&T changed the TOS again:
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,*** web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.
This is a company that already limits users’ consumption of Internet company (it has a 5 GB cap). As I said back on April 3rd, it’s not very “Internet” when the ISP is picking and choosing what legal activities you may and may not do with your Internet connection. With AT&T prohibiting you from watching your TV, they figure that you’re much more likely to subscribe to their “AT&T Mobile TV” service.