Users: AT&T Comcast Should Change Policies

Computerworld - Unless AT&T Broadband and Comcast Corp. change their policies toward business broadband users, the merger of the two companies will result in the creation of an even larger entity characterized by a hostile approach to remote workers and small businesses, users and analysts say.

AT&T Corp. last week agreed to merge its cable television and broadband unit with Comcast Corp. in a $72 billion deal, creating a new company to be called AT&T Comcast Corp. While the company that would be created through the merger is being hyped as a competitive alternative to local telephone companies for high-speed data services, not everyone sees the deal as a particularly positive development for users.

Mark Kersey, an analyst at ARS Inc. in La Jolla, Calif., said the companies' policies will force users to choose "between the lesser of two evils [for broadband]—the phone company or the cable company."

Philadelphia-based Comcast has a policy in place that forbids the use of virtual private network (VPN) clients over residential connections. And AT&T last month instituted a 1.5M bit/sec. cap on download speeds when it shifted users to its own network from the bankrupt At Home Corp. VPNs provide remote workers with a protected tunnel to corporate servers through the Internet, guarding data from hackers.

Sarah Eder, a spokeswoman for Englewood Cliffs, Colo.-based AT&T Broadband, said the company intends to eventually introduce tiered packages that will provide higher speeds at higher prices. She declined to disclose pricing.

Sharp Limits on Downloads

Eder added that the company intends to sharply limit the amount of data a user can download each month without paying a higher fee. "We're in the a la carte business now," Eder said, adding that AT&T Broadband can no longer support At Home's "all-you-can-eat" policies, which led to abuse of the system. "One percent of our users in places like Silicon Valley account for 30% of our traffic," Eder said.

Comcast offers a telecommuter service that supports VPNs for which it charges $95 a month, compared with $39.95 a month for residential service. The company's Business Communications subsidiary also offers a range of corporate broadband services priced from $150 to $695 a month.

"Those prices will have to come down" if the new AT&T Comcast wants to make inroads in the corporate broadband market, Kersey said.

Peter Gnas, network administrator at Wixon Fontarome Inc., a St. Francis, Wis.-based bread-mix maker, said he's disturbed that providers charge extra for VPN connectivity. Gnas, whose company recently switched its field sales force from dial-up to broadband to support bandwidth-hungry XML applications, said he views the VPN ban as equivalent to "charging people extra for speaking another language on the telephone."