In the very first entry in this blog back in late 2006 I moaned about the tendency ofbroadband service providers to market their services with the term "up to" when offering different "tiers" of service. Well full credit to AT&T for taking the initiative to move away from this misleading practice. While full details have not been announced yet, the telco has confirmed that it plans to begin offering "non-overlapping tiers" rather than the traditional "up to" packages. In essence AT&T is guaranteeing a minimum level of service, something which is not at all usual in the BSP world. So if a BSP offers a service of "up to" 8Mbps today, in theory there is nothing to stop its service averaging at 1Mbps or less. After all, "up to 8" can be anywhere from 0 to 8. A tiered approach, however, might offer, say, 5-8Mbps, in which case users would at least know the minimum they could expect. AT&T's challenge will be to match the tiers to the technical capabilities of its network. No matter what the technology, all broadband services are inherently unpredictable to a degree, so there will likely still be fine print conditions. Nevertheless, we approve of the company's initiative and hope all others will follow, driven by commercial forces rather than regulator pressure, which is looking increasingly likely in the UK and elsewhere. Client Reading: AT&T's Tiered Service: Taking A Bite Out of Fraudband?