Without any sort of fanfare,
AT&T Inc. has started offering a broadband Internet service for $10 a month,
cheaper than any advertised plan. This isn't really a goodwill effort by the
company, though. According to an AP report quoted by Yahoo News, the service is
the result of concessions AT&T made to the FCC to get its acquisition of
BellSouth approved, and AT&T isn't going to any great pains to advertise the
budget offering. The plan is reportedly hidden away on the company's DSL
residential service page behind the "Term contract plans" link.
Nonetheless, customers in AT&T's 22-state service region can now sign up for the
service, which requires a one-year contract, local phone service, and comes with
a free modem. But as one might expect, users of the service won't be breaking
any speed records-Yahoo News quotes a maximum downstream of 768Kbps (96KB/s) and
a maximum upstream of 128Kbps (16KB/s).
