AT&T has decided to tweak the terms of service for its wireless users taking aggressive steps to manage network traffic. These changes forbid streaming, filesharing and data tethering. This could effect currently available apps already installed on many iPhones.
iPhone owners already a bit upset with Sling's move yesterday that looks like forced upgrades and now wondering about SlingPlayer Mobile which was expected to launch anytime now in the App Store.
As the Public Knowledge Policy Blog points out, the AT&T Wireless terms of service now explicitly prohibit “downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, customer initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices.”
Sling Media spokesperson Jay Tannenbaum has commented via email to NewTeeVee, “Even with high quality of the stream that we provide we have never really encountered any complaints about exceeding the 5gig cap. What we strive to do is offer the best quality while shielding the user from carrier bandwidth constraints.”
AT&T has announced that they will offer subsidized netbooks as part of Internet at Home and On the Go, that will have built-in 3G wireless capabilities. It seems this change in the TOS was timely due to this netbook announcement.
So this one should be fun to watch as it develops!
UPDATE: That was fast. AT&T has basically said, "You thought we were serious!"
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