AT&T Wireless has surprising new terms of service

AT&T Wireless has surprising new terms of service

via Crave: The gadget blog by Dong Ngo on 4/3/09

This Slingbox app for iPhone isn't out yet, but you are already no longer allowed to fully enjoy it on the go.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

For a moment, I thought AT&T Wireless' new Netbook offerings were good deals. As it turns out, not so much.

According to Publicknowledge.org, the company silently revised its terms of service on Monday, just a few days before it announced the new program to offer discounted Netbooks to its 3G broadband service customers in Atlanta and Philadelphia.

In the "Prohibited and Permissible Uses" section, the new terms of service explicitly state:

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 is prohibited.

This means you are potentially no longer allowed to stream content from third-party Web sites, such as You Tube, and may not even freely use video-streaming applications, such as Slingbox (both the existing Windows Mobile and upcoming iPhone versions) anymore. In terms of the bigger picture, AT&T is now treating its 3G wireless data network differently from its wired high-speed DSL network, which still allows you to do whatever you want. This is probably because the company does have to pay for the wireless spectrum, in addition to other investments.