AT&T's Metered Billing Off By Up To 4,700% 250
jfruhlinger writes "Metered billing for home Internet service may be the way of the future. But shouldn't we have the right to expect that the meters will at least be accurate? As AT&T moves its DSL and fiber customers to plans where they'll have to pay for overages, some users have noticed that the company's assessment of how much data is being used can be wildly inaccurate."
One more reason to not do metering. (Score:2)
It ends up being a power grab, much like the old days were. That, and it has a not-so-nice way of killing innovation.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:5, Insightful)
It ends up being a power grab, much like the old days were. That, and it has a not-so-nice way of killing innovation.
The issue is largely one of accountability. For example, I have electric and natural gas service at my house. There are meters out back: they're built to government standards, are quite reliable and generally track my usage very well. Occasionally, I get a bill in the mail that has some outrageous numbers on it (I once got an electric bill for some three thousand dollars one month.) Usually that's because the meter reader mistyped something into his computer, or because of some issue with their billing system. Regardless, I still have the meter itself to fall back on, and I can call up the utility and either request a new reading or just give it to them over the phone and have the bill corrected. When I got that big bill, I was asked to go take a manual reading, and to just "tear up that bill, will send you a new one. Sorry for the inconvenience." No problem.
That's not what's going to happen here: AT&T is expecting people to just accept whatever usage they decide to bill for, with no recourse whatsoever if it turns out that they're wrong. And this will happen, with monotonous regularity, and most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is, and how it relates to what they actually do with their computer online, and because Internet access is becoming less and less of a disposable luxury for millions of people.
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>>>meter reader mistyped
Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).
>>>most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is
I hope they're smarter than that. If I received a $200 bill from my ISP, even if I didn't know what a gigabyte was, I'd demand an explanation from their customer service associates.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>meter reader mistyped
Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).
>>>most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is
I hope they're smarter than that. If I received a $200 bill from my ISP, even if I didn't know what a gigabyte was, I'd demand an explanation from their customer service associates.
This was a few years ago, I know they were still doing manual reads. Now I know my gas meter was upgraded: they still have a meter reader come by but there's a small black box on the front of the house. I think he just walks by and grabs a reading with a handheld of some kind, or maybe it goes over the power line or something, like you said. I don't know if my electric meter was upgraded or not: I haven't any problems since then.
That's not the point though: I was able to instantly correct the mistake because I had an accurate reference for my actual usage. I didn't have to depend upon some remote computer system to provide me with a tally of how many kilowatt-hours I'd used, a machine that is not under my control, and can't be argued with.
And we're not talking about people getting giant bills. What we are talking about is the potential for deliberate, systematic overbilling: small amounts that the subscriber might not even notice but that add up to billions over time. Matter of fact, that's guaranteed to happen. Didn't Verizon get busted for it recently? It's just too tempting: they just shouldn't be allowed to do it unless there are regulatory safeguards in place.
With a fixed bill every month, you immediately notice a rate increase (or an increase in Local, State and Federal fees, although some ISPs have put fake charges there too, so people will think that it's the "guv'mint" that raised their bill.) With metered billing, how will you know if you're being ripped off if there's an extra buck on your bill each month? Far too much potential for fraud here.
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Seems like a painfully simple app to write for you programer types out there. My nokia has a meter but I've never reset it. It should have a field for billing date and update automatically. Also could have a reconciliation function and or link to carrier website listing of you use.
It's not only simple, but a number of third-party firmware offerings for certain models of low-end routers already do this. I run Tomato on my venerable WRT54G: it has bandwidth monitoring and it works reasonably well. The problem isn't that end users can't monitor their usage, it's that the providers won't care if they do. "Oh sure, Mr. Smith, we'll be happy to knock a hundred bucks off your bill because your little toy router says so. Now go away and pay your bill before we turn your happy little ass off.
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The remote readable electric meters are not everywhere, my meter has analog dials that require reading by a human. I don't believe my utility has any plans to change that anytime soon.
You mostly see them in places where electricity rates vary by time of day, which doesn't happen here.
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Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).
Not everyone has had their meters updated yet. I'd be willing to bet that most people's haven't. My parents just had their meter upgraded to a "smart meter" about 2 months ago, and to get that they had to sign up on a special early adopter list and then pay a few hundred dollars for the meter itself. And I'm not actually sure it transmits the data over the phone line, I think it only records time based usage, as opposed to just total usage, that the meter-reader then downloads with a PDA-like device.
I live
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Build your own "meter" ... Setup a cheap little spare box with 2 nic cards in bridged mode.They will not require a Real IP address so anyone can set this up!! Then just install bandwidthd and Apache2. It may not be perfect but, at least YOU will know about what your usage is and have something to show to back you up.
I've had this setup for years now and Thankfully I've never needed it...sure nice to know what my systems are doing bandwidth wise though!!
Doubt anyone here would need it it but, if someone doe
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Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:4, Informative)
Build your own "meter" ... Setup a cheap little spare box with 2 nic cards in bridged mode.They will not require a Real IP address so anyone can set this up!! Then just install bandwidthd and Apache2. It may not be perfect but, at least YOU will know about what your usage is and have something to show to back you up.
I've had this setup for years now and Thankfully I've never needed it...sure nice to know what my systems are doing bandwidth wise though!!
Doubt anyone here would need it it but, if someone does need some help with this setup feel free to email me.
And it still won't mean a thing:
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is largely one of accountability. For example, I have electric and natural gas service at my house. There are meters out back: they're built to government standards, are quite reliable and generally track my usage very well.
The difference is that when you use more natural gas, the gas company has to buy more natural gas. When you use more electricity, the power company has to put more coal in their furnaces. When you use more bandwidth, unless the network was already at 100% capacity, it costs the ISP nothing and the capacity you would consume would otherwise go to waste. If the network is at 100% capacity then it needs to be expanded whether there is metered billing or not. That is, unless you set the metered rate so high that it will materially suppress usage -- also known as "destroying innovation" -- in which case everyone will get less service for more money since you're now paying extra usage fees but the ISP no longer needs to expand capacity because metered billing is suppressing usage, so all the extra money goes to profit.
Metered billing is the model of perpetual stagnation. It gives the ISP an incentive to never upgrade because the more scarcity there is, the more they can charge for it. Why on Earth would they make a capital investment to alleviate a supply shortfall, the result of which would be lower prices to customers? They certainly have no real competition to make them do it.
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The difference is that when you use more natural gas, the gas company has to buy more natural gas.
Well, that's true, but that just means that the company has a vested interest in accurate billing so they don't lose money. As you point out, ISPs have a vested interest in exactly the opposite, so I agree with you about metered billing.
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I'm usually against increased regulation, but looks to be true that there's no free market way to deal with what appears to be another natural monopoly in place. Personally, I think this should become a public works project now, like power and the sewers. Yes, we'll probably have companies operating the infrastructure, but it needs to be regulated to provide access for everyone and the ability to upgrade it not based on a pricing model, but based on increased demand. It's very true that the backbone prov
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Stop bringing truth and common sense into this. You are going to hurt the telcos and cable companies that are barely making a dollar. Hell they were only able to give their CEO's a 7 digit bonus this year...
Honestly the only answer is to have the govt declare that internet access is a utility and all ISP's have to follow strict utility rules. They certainly will not do it on their own.
require actual and accurate meters for each customer that must be able to be read from any web browser and as a XML rss f
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Sounds good, would it be OK to post your schematics and details on construction? I think double checking everything is necessary today.
Thanks,
Jim
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Your last sentence is key. What you're saying is true only if there's inadequate competition. If there's competition, then metered billing is
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We already know a flat fee for unlimited bandwidth is unworkable.
How is it that we know that? The only problem with it is that the ISPs have taken all the money they should have been using to increase capacity and instead used it to buy each other up and line their own pockets. The solution to that is to either bring about competition (e.g. municipal fiber) or to pass legislation requiring them to make upgrades. Metered billing does nothing -- they would still have no competition and no incentive to expand capacity, and any solution that gets them to expand capacity suff
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:4)
Perhaps the price per megabyte needs to be regulated, as well as the method of measuring that usage?
I don't see how that would fix it. The problem is that there is no sensible price. If you set the megabyte price low enough that it doesn't suppress usage then you might as well have flat rate pricing for all the difference it makes. To the extent that you set it higher so that it does suppress usage, you create exactly that amount of disincentive for capacity upgrades -- because who needs more supply if high prices are driving down demand?
Metered billing is, literally, raising prices to reduce demand. That is precisely the opposite of what we want, which is to increase supply and have lower prices.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:4)
the electronics that deliver the service to you consume no electricity at all
The electronics consume effectively the same amount of electricity regardless of the transfer rate or number of active connections. To the extent that there is any difference at all, it's negligible.
the ISP doesn't in turn have to pay for bandwidth connections to other ISP
It works the same way for upstream connections. Metered billing is bad whether it's between the ISP and the end user or between the backbone provider and the ISP. The fact that it may exist in one place is no reason to extend it somewhere else; it should be eliminated across the board.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:4, Interesting)
increased usage *does* cost them more via increased electricity usage
Let's go ahead and measure the actual increased electrical usage caused by increased transfer rates and make that the usage charge then. But when it turns out to be something like one cent per 100GB, we might realize that the cost of metering exceeds the metering charge.
It is impractical, if not impossible, to buy phone lines that are so big that every user can use the network at 100% and not saturate the link. It would sit there 90% unused.
It's a good thing they don't actually have to do that. All they have to do is build enough capacity for the expected usage of actual customers -- which is what they have to do either way. The only thing metering even has the potential to do is to suppress demand by charging artificially high prices -- which is a bad thing, because we like demand for bandwidth. It spurs demand for services, which provides incentive for innovation, creates jobs, etc.
it finances the upgrades
The ISPs already have more than enough money to finance the upgrades. But nobody is forcing them to actually make the upgrades, so they instead use the money to buy each other and line their pockets. Metered billing would provide them with more money, but how would it give them any incentive to make more upgrades? Especially if it causes usage to go down?
it causes them to think twice about downloading every fucking Buffy episode in 4000k resolution.
Which is half the problem. It causes services like Netflix and YouTube to have fewer customers, which stifles innovation and encourages consolidation in that sector.
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The fact that they may be operating at less than 100% capacity is not a good reason for them not to charge you to use it.
Are you serious? That's the exact reason they shouldn't charge you to use it. No one benefits from equipment going idle.
It costs money to run a network. The more use, the more load, the more electricity consumption, the more maintenance.
In other utilities the amount of costs that come with increase utilization are significant. A ton of coal costs a lot of money. In broadband they are trivial -- the amount of extra electricity used because an interface has more packets going through it is totally immaterial, and there are no increased maintenance costs at all. Moreover, replacing a 1Gbps router with a 10Gbps router is a on
Going further... (Score:2)
This is exactly why someone needs to standardize, as soon as possible, a consumer device for metering your IP. The device should be small (pocket sized), possibly battery operated, has a liquid crystal display, and simply shows the IO flow of IP packets into and out of your home, with totals. The device should be under $10.00 or $20.00 USD. To use the device, you would simply place it in-line between your ISP modem, and your home router. Every month, you would simply read its value from the LCD just like th
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Home routers, in theory, could possibly perform the function, however there would be wildly varying methods of reading and displaying the data. All older router firmwares would need to be updated, and the metering method used would need standardization.
So, I run dd-wrt, and MY router certainly has this function, and has for a long time. I can see little graphs of my usage back to when I first installed dd-wrt on it. (It makes it easy to tell when I get on a torrent kick 'cuz my upstream jumps through the roof) I don't remember whether my stock-firmware routers stored history or not, but I know that they all told me the in and out numbers since the connection started. Where it gets hard, though, is with the ISPs marking significant quantities of the in
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Well, the only thing we can really do about it is:
Write your congress-folks... Start doing it. Tell them to give the carriers a choice:
1) Don't meter.
2) Submit to utility-style regulation...
Make them pick their poison.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:4)
You might also mention to your congress-critter that letting AT&T buy T-Mobile is anti-competitive, anti-consumer and violates the spirit of the anti-trust laws that are already on the books.
Congress can still put the brakes on this merger, and it's in our interest to do everything we can to make sure the merger is stopped.
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Yet every single time metering is done, it ends up stifling people, instead of actually getting improvements. It won't provide the money to innovate at all, unless you count additional ways to nickel-and-dime people.
The huge bandwidth excuse rings hollow when you still have the same problems with the metering in place.
Re:One more reason to not do metering. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? While i'm against the metering stuff to an extent, this statement is just nuts. This can provide the money TO innovate.
No, it won't: the big boys have a vested interest in only offering us the minimum service levels they can get away with (they've been petitioning the FCC to lower the definition of "broadband" in the U.S.) and have no particular desire to innovate. They just don't: these are money grubbers whose interest is in pleasing the stockholder first and the customer second (if at all.) AT&T is doing this now because they feel they've sucked enough customers off of Comcast's crappy service and can afford to start putting the screws to us just as that Robertson asshole did.
If they are in the public eye, financially, they will have to do something with all that money.
Sure. But if you think that automatically means network upgrades you are just nuts. They'll bank the money, invest it on the stock market, whatever they think will make them more money.
... they took the money and ran. In the meantime, we're stuck with the likes of cable and U-Verse's VDSL.
But I think the GP was referring to innovation on the part of Web and Internet services offered by third-parties, not the ISPs themselves (correct me if I'm wrong.) Take Youtube; it's bandwidth-hungry but incredibly popular: would it be so if people were paying by the megabyte? What other services do we enjoy that use substantial bandwidth that might never have existed if providers were nickel-and-diming us to death?
We need to be moving forward, making bandwidth cheaper and faster. Look, they got nearly a hundred billion dollars in tax breaks to build out a nationwide truly high-speed network
So no, I don't expect SBC/AT&T, Comcast or any of these outfits to roll their extra profits back into the network.
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They personally did not get the money to build a nationwide network. That money was put into a fund for under-served communities to request the funds so they could offer projects back to anyone that could build it out for them.
The county I live in was one of those counties. Within the next year or so I'll have an actual ISP in my area (likely WISP for me, I'm too far for the fiber they're running).
Anyways, none of the major carriers are in my area. I know that whoever is the ISP that will be taking over
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They personally did not get the money to build a nationwide network.
No, they personally got some 90 billion dollars in tax breaks, took the money, and ran off with it. What they delivered was 1.5 mbit/sec DSL.
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Excerpted from ScrewMaster (602015)'s rant on iLECs and metered Internet usage:
the big boys have a vested interest in only offering us the minimum service levels they can get away with ... and have no particular desire to innovate. They just don't: these are money grubbers whose interest is in pleasing the stockholder first and the customer second (if at all.)
That behavior is far from confined to the telco industry. In fact, it's ubiquitous within the U.S. business sector, and nearly as much so in the rest of the capitalist world. Virtually across the board, this is because they're run by MBAs. MBAs have it hammered into them from admission to matriculation that increasing shareholder value at all costs is not simply their central duty, but indeed their only goal in life (aside from c
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False. Back in 2009 the FCC definition of broadband was the same as the OECD's definition - 256 kbit/s.
Dude, I read it on Slashdot, so I presumed it was true.
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This can provide the money TO innovate.
This can provide money. As in, raise the price of internet access. The thing is though, they already make a mint, even before this. Whether that money goes to upgrades or profit is a different question. And the answer is that it goes to profits -- because hey, when you're making a mint by rationing scarcity, why make a capital outlay to alleviate it?
Moreover, the idea that ISPs need to "innovate" is ridiculous. They don't need "innovation," they need fiber. The idea that they need to do something new or inv
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The deal isn't final, and the FCC will be involved heavily. I still think it'll go through, but at least there will be a review, of sorts.
What do you expect from SBC? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'd like for them to do is tell me what kinds of traffic are being counted on my bill (do port scans count? What about all the other crap that floats around the Internet that happens to have my IP in it?) Do they provide monitoring tools that I can use to verify my usage, and compare against what my router tells me I've used? If not, then they can make up anything they want and bill me for it, and knowing AT&T^h^h^h^h SBC that's exactly what they will do.
Now we start to understand why the government used to enforce quality of service standards. The fact that these guys got an exception for data services is just too bad.
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That's also why AT&T wanted to buy up T-Mobile. Why let customers go to the remaining national carrier for GSM that provides superior service?
Just kill metering for bandwidth due to all the ways it always goes wrong.
Re:What do you expect from SBC? (Score:5, Informative)
If it's anything like the metering done ubiquitously in many other countries, then yes, all traffic that hits the WAN side of your router is counted, solicited or not.
I'm in Australia on a metered plan. Metering is the norm here for the vast majority of plans - there are a couple of unlimited ones out there but most users don't need that much and choose a cheaper plan with an allowance that suits their usage (metered plans range from as little as a few GB/month, to over 1 TB/month, so only exceptionally heavy downloaders would find an unlimited plan better value).
Anyway, if AT&T is going to meter, they have to do it properly. The (good) ISPs here could probably give them some advice. The ISP I'm with seems to meter very accurately: their figures never vary more than ~0.5% from what my router reports (i.e. maximum of a couple of MB discrepancy every 1 GB, and it's not always in their favour). They provide usage statistics via their website and a number of other tools: downloadable desktop widgets, Android and iOS apps, and of course, email/SMS warnings when you hit 70%, 90% and 100% of your monthly allowance. Additionally, they publish the API for their stats server so anyone can write their own tools to monitor usage if they want. The stats are also fairly timely, generally lagging 30-90 minutes behind the actual usage.
In my experience, only a very negligible amount of my traffic can be attributed to port scans and the like - I get only a very minor amount of unsolicited traffic, generally = 1MB/day, so it's not a big deal. On the odd occasion that something weird happens (like you get DDoSed or something), the ISP can generally see this in their logs and will waive the usage (never happened to me personally though).
What's happening at AT&T sounds very much like what happened here 10-15 years ago when (metered) broadband started becoming common. Many ISPs had significant bugs in their metering systems. Accuracy of the stats was one problem, timeliness was another: some ISPs used to have huge lag times between the actual usage, and the reporting of that usage. Sometimes you'd get only tiny bits of recorded usage for a few days then all of a sudden, it would 'catch up' and you'd get a massive chunk land on one day. That's been ironed out now (at least for the reputable ISPs). At least part of the reason for this is Australia has very strong consumer protection laws, and various independent bodies you can complain to about this kind of issue that have the power to inflict penalties on the ISP for this kind of behaviour.
Re:What do you expect from SBC? (Score:5, Interesting)
what AT&T of old being gone? sorry but I disagree back in 1996 we had worldnet dialup and they pulled this exact same shit. One day I came home to a mad dad who thought I had downloaded the internet cause he got a 300 dialup bill for going over his limit
but dad you signed up for unlimited Internet, have you changed plans? well of course not they just up and decided to start capping bandwidth and showed us what we had used in a month with their metering technology (excel bar graph) which got them another prompt call of "how the fuck do you download 1.8gig on a 28.8 modem with a 4 hour disconnect in under a month genius?"
To me it just sounds just like the good ole days
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what AT&T of old being gone? sorry but I disagree back in 1996
I said "old". As in, pre-breakup days. 1996 is way after that.
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oh the days when they forced you to buy their overpriced equipment or else expect huge overcharges
my bad
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oh the days when they forced you to buy their overpriced equipment or else expect huge overcharges
my bad
You're missing the point. At least AT&T was competently run from a technical standpoint, and that was because the government required them to do so.
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"Don't mess with us, because we're all you've got!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dktVJ3qRGS0 [youtube.com]
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Back when they made you lease their equipment, and charged you by the number of phones you had in the house, and when long distance rates were about the same per minute as the minimum wage?
Or maybe the near past, when they couldn't keep a pair of T1s running with even 2 9s of service? AND would switch your long distance plan to someone else, even though you are on a contract?
AT&T has always been a bunch of asshats. They are just fully capable of changing with the times in their asshattery.
Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see a 50-state lawsuit coming out of this. Wonder how ATT feels about taking on 50 government all at the same time.
Bastards.
- It reminds me how they tried to charge me extra for my 80s-era 1200 baud modem (i.e. ~1 kbit/s). I was paying for "unlimited phone calls" rather than per-call billing, but they said my 16-hour per day usage was excessive and tried to charge me an extra "data fee". I threw the letter in the trash.
Later-on we got phone company choice, and I switched away from ATT.
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I can see a 50-state lawsuit coming out of this. Wonder how ATT feels about taking on 50 government all at the same time.
Highly unlikely, all the telcos (and cablecos) spend a ton of money on lobbying and campaign donations. Pretty much none of our elected officials are willing to mess with them, no matter what party. (The democrats do a bit better, but they're still unwilling to really make the telcos/cablecos accountable.) It would take massive, massive and widespread public outrage to get the state AGs to even consider going after AT&T. So perhaps our best hope is that they do get too greedy and try to rip us off e
complain to the state attorney general (Score:4, Insightful)
complain to the state attorney general and make them sue.
Gas and power meters are certified and are at your home and not in some office.
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but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.
So clearly certified meters at your home are not a universal method.
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but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.
So clearly certified meters at your home are not a universal method.
No, but Federally-mandated quality-of-service standards with stiff penalties for failure are. The problem with metered billing is that a. there's no way for the majority of users to know if they're being overbilled (and no, some Web page saying "you've used x percent of your monthly allowance" doesn't count) and b. the fact that these companies simply cannot be trusted. Especially the likes of Comcast or SBC/AT&T. These guys lie before breakfast, just for the practice.
Re:complain to the state attorney general (Score:4, Insightful)
but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.
But they can back up the readings of "long distance phone calls" by producing CDRs of the inter-LATA/Toll calls/Paid feature activations; every individual call made always has to be recorded date, time, duration, calling party, called party, originators billing DN, IDT, CRV, terminators billing DN, ODT, CRV, identification of providers' physical circuits used for the call, Caller ID status, ETC., which can be matched with records kept by the call's terminating provider -- if they lied, they could eventually be caught.
Not that billing errors are impossible.. it's just that as long as your phone line doesn't get crossed with someone else's, there are definitive records to fallback to, which could be reviewed by the carrier to fix it, or subpoena'd by the court.
It's not like electricity where "the number reading" is the only thing that can establish your usage. And it's accurate, unless you can prove something is wrong with its readings.
Broadband as a Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Broadband as a Utility (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.
Why the feds? Usually it's the Member State government that regulates natural monopolies aka utilities (like electricity, water, natural gas, sewer, etc).
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Because the major laws to bust existing monopolies, such as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (and RICO if fraudulent practices are being performed), are Federal.
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this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.
Why the feds? Usually it's the Member State government that regulates natural monopolies aka utilities (like electricity, water, natural gas, sewer, etc).
First, a natural monopoly is one where a single party naturally has control of a resource, like owning the only water source in an area. What you're describing is a government mandated monopoly where, for the sake of reliability and easier regulation the government passes laws creating an artificial monopoly. There's no physical reason we can't have multiple sewer systems and natural gas, water, electricity, etc. distribution networks. It's not really a good idea, but it is the law that prevents it from hap
Of course percentages can be misleading (Score:3)
If the correct charge is $0.01, and I'm instead charged $4.80, that's a 4700% difference but a significantly different matter than, say, getting charged $480 rather than $1. When it comes to people being overcharged, I'd much rather have the absolute figures as our measurement of how much SBC is being a corporate jackass.
Re:Of course percentages can be misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Having it as absolute figures might get a handful of individuals to get their bill corrected, but $4.79 multiplied by how many tens of thousands of customers every month adds up to how much in ill-gotten and possibly systematic gains?
If were all ripped off a little at a time, it's not as big of a deal?
Metered Internet is not the future (Score:3)
Metered internet is not the future.
As described, it doesn't even make any sense either the reasons why or the implementation.
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Metered internet is not the future.
As described, it doesn't even make any sense either the reasons why or the implementation.
Yes, you're correct. Metered internet is the present for everywhere but the USA. And no one is really sure when USA broadband is going to catch up to the rest of the world [scientificamerican.com] ...
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The issue is that metered internet doesn't encourage the ISPs to figure out how to decrease the cost of providing service or provide more bandwidth as they have a get out of jail free card for over promising their capacity. The major problem is that ISPs haven't been investing in their networks up until now, which is why I'm stuck paying $50 a month for 5mbps when Qwest my ISP charges similarly for a 40mbps connection in some other areas.
If it were a competitive market and there were some assurances that t
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It doesn't make sense because they're not metering your internet now; you're forced to pay a fixed fee for some arbitrary amount of bits (related to a monthly allowance, which makes no sense whatsoever), then you're charged arbitrary large fees for overages which are designed to be punitive rather than to reimburse.
The fees at their heart are (a) simply raising prices (b) allow ISPs to avoid improving infrastructure (c) designed to inhibit services (such as Netflix, Hulu, iTMS video store etc) which are beg
U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine (Score:3)
The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes.
Wouldn't it be nice to get enough notice to evaluate if AT&T's product meets my needs? Alas, my router tells me I've used 230 GB over the last month; that's pretty close to their 250GB limit, and if the numbers are 'fuzzy' then all bets are off.
Because U-Verse TV service is IP-delivered, I'd like assurances that they're not including this traffic in any metering - I'm already paying for this content and its delivery on the 'TV' portion of my bill.
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I tried to get my usage information for my (internet-only) 12/1.5 U-verse account, and instead saw the following:
Note: Your internet plan provides you with unlimited usage. There are no usage details to display.
*shrug*
AT&T needs to get destroyed (Score:2)
It should have its incorporation revoked and all top executives and board members barred from ever being in the telecom business again.
These are the same players from the time when the first break up occurred. They did not learn their lesson about abusing their position, building monopoly and being bad for the consumer. They had their chance to straighten up and fly right. They can't be trusted to behave.
Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed (Score:5, Insightful)
It should have its incorporation revoked and all top executives and board members barred from ever being in the telecom business again.
These are the same players from the time when the first break up occurred. They did not learn their lesson about abusing their position, building monopoly and being bad for the consumer. They had their chance to straighten up and fly right. They can't be trusted to behave.
No they're not. SBC bought the old AT&T, and kept the name AT&T. What you have are the people who operated the worst of the original thirteen Baby Bells now running the show. Which is, I agree, not an improvement. Also, whatever you want to say about the old AT&T, remember that they operated under some very strict regulation, and did provide us, for a very long time, with about the best phone service in the world. Much of the problem we have now is that none of the big ISPs operate under any real regulation anymore, no real service standards apply: they can do pretty much whatever they want with little if any penalty.
But yeah, I think that most of the big players ought to be up on anti-trust charges at some point. What they're doing is not in the consumers' interest at any level.
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Actually, there were quite a few colors. [frillfreephones.com]
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What a bunch of bullshit. When AT&T ruled the earth, you couldn't connect anything but a Company Approved Phone [tm] to their lines, otherwise something might explode. Oh, and you can't buy a phone from the store, you have to rent one from the company store. You can have any color you like, as long as it's black.
I wasn't talking about subscriber level equipment. The service worked, it worked well, and that was what was required of AT&T. How often did your phone service simply not work? Sure, AT&T owned the phones ... but they were built like brick outhouses. Their technicians were generally far more competent and well-trained, the network itself better maintained. "Better" is a relative term. All I know is that nowadays (and I have AT&T U-Verse for my phone service) is that I'm subject to more outages,
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Actually, SBC is AT&T, well a portion of the old AT&T after the break up. Similarly Qwest is another remnant of the old AT&T that's changed its name and bought out some of the other portions of the old business. It hasn't quite gotten to the point where it was originally, but at this point it's down to AT&T, Verizon and Qwest primarily controlling the assets that had been the old AT&T.
Illegal or not? (Score:3)
It is not illegal to offer a metering service without the customer has access to said meter? It was my understanding that such services, like the water company, electric and gas MUST have a meter available for their customer to read as well, not because they are super nice guys, but because US law mandates it.
How is metered internet service different?
If they insist on saying, well the utilities do it this way and that way, and when they insist on acting like utility, should they not also be bound by the same rules?
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It's an interesting thought. Once on starts metering (or otherwise measuring) a product, one exposes ones self to the jurisdiction of additional regulatory authorities. Usually at the state level, although sometimes local (county and/or city) inspectors get involved as well.
This is a situation that telcos, ISPs, and cable companies have been trying to avoid. Having to comply with numerous different sets of regulations. Well, welcome to the world of utilities.
One other side effect of this move is that AT
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Do you have access to the metering service of your phone?
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Consumer law doesn't apply to ISPs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't billing based on inaccurate weights and measures fraud?
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Someone in another forum suggested that Measurement Canada should get involved to standardize billing for ISPs in Canada. From their website:
Measurement Canada is responsible for ensuring the integrity and accuracy of measurement in the Canadian marketplace. We:
develop and administer the laws and requirements governing measurement,
evaluate, approve and certify measuring devices, and
investigate complaints of suspected inac
Unwanted traffic (Score:4, Interesting)
Like someone on the comments section of the article said.. what about if someone is ping flooding you, DDoS'ing, or otherwise sending traffic your way... here's a very true story about a similar situation my friend had with Nextel:
Years ago my friend had Nextel, and I sent him a text bomb (basically I just stuck his cell # into the TO field as many times as I could on a single text message and hit "send". After it sent, I went into the sent messages and just kept hitting "resend".)
So he received around 100 or so messages. I didn't know his nextel plan didn't include texting, and he'd be charge $0.25 per message. That's about $20 bucks out of his pocket FOR NOTHING.
He called Nextel and explained.. and got no where. So he bitched.. still got no where. After 2 hours on the phone trying different people and supervisors bitching about "how can you charge me 25 cents a message for messages A> I don't want, and B> I can't stop/block from coming in?!
Their solution was "well we can block all text messages".. at that point he told them to go f' themselves if they can't run their damn network correctly and understand how you could cause someone you disliked to have a HUGE phone bill, and told them right then and there he was leaving their messed up network. He promptly switched and ported his number.
But it just goes to show they DON'T take those situations into account, or just don't CARE about those situations.. which either way is a very sad thing indeed.
I hate these companies so much (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I live I have two choices, AT&T and Comcast. It's like trying to pick a side to root for on the Ostfront in WWII. Can we root against them both?
I've gone through a six month period of terrible service with the AT&T fuckers. Service keeps dropping out, problem isn't on my end. Their fucking Indians don't have any clue what's going on with the service techs over here, nobody updates the account info properly, nobody gives a damn. And while we're at it, why do I have to type in my phone number for them to route it properly if they're just going to ask me what it is when I get there?
The problem is that there's no fucking free market. There is no competition. There's a duopoly with each choice being craptastic. The next pro-business cheerleader who goes teary-eyed about the marketplace of choice is getting my fist in his gob.
"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."
-- Larry Kudlow, CNBC host and failed human being
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Around here it's Qwest and Comcast, trust me this isn't that much better than what you have. I swear that Qwest isn't giving us the throughput we're paying for.
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Where I live I have two choices, AT&T and Comcast. It's like trying to pick a side to root for on the Ostfront in WWII. Can we root against them both?
It's like the Devil you have, and the Devil you used to have until he got so bad you went with the Devil you have.
Sucks, I know. I'm in the same boat, but I have managed to play them off against each other on occasion. "Oh, you won't fix my problem? Well, I guess I'll have to head on over to [Comcast | AT&T] again. I'd rather not, but I'd rather have service than not."
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The problem is that there's no fucking free market. There is no competition. There's a duopoly with each choice being craptastic.
Every telephone company that I sign up with becomes AT&T in the end (with apologies to The Police, and not the ones you cheese it for.) I was just thinking about getting a T-Mobile phone again... sigh. My last phone company was Edge Wireless. Right now I'm using a crapfone because... WTF.
The next pro-business cheerleader who goes teary-eyed about the marketplace of choice is getting my fist in his gob.
Please do something more subtle. Slashdot needs you to be free.
My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT& (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm paying for PPPoE and ATM overhead, I'm gonna be pissed.
AT&T must be measuring bits at the DSLAM, if what they're reporting is anywhere close to being accurate. If a 150GB "cap" includes the approx. .5% PPPoE and 10+% ATM overhead, what I'm seeing means that my 150GB cap is in reality closer to 135GB.
Sucks.
Is it ever accurate? (Score:2)
And then there's the legitmate traffic (Score:2)
...that isn't your fault.
My friend figured that he was getting 2GB of ARP traffic hitting his router every month. If he exceeds his limit, does that get billed for?
Real Life Metering Inaccuracy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Headline based off one anecdote, seriously?! (Score:2)
One guy claims:
AT&T's data appears to be wholely corrupted. Some days, AT&T will under-report my data usage by as much as 91%. (They said I used 92 meg, my firewall says I used 1.1 Gigs.) Some days, AT&T will over-report my data usage by as much as 4700%. (They said I used 3.8 Gig, dd-wrt says I used 80 meg. And no, this day wasn't anywhere near the day they under-reported.)
And another speculates:
Another user in the thread suggests that the discrepancy is because AT&T is measuring usage at the DSLAM, thereby creating unrealistic totals that incorporate PPPoE and ATM overhead
And we're taking that as gospel? AT&T needs to get off their asses and answer the questions, but so far we've got nothing to go on.
The speculation brings up a valid point, though. The government could actually be useful here by working out common overhead amounts for various types of services, or a test suite that the service (or a subscriber) could run. Essentially, if I'm using a cable modem, and I download a one gigabyte file, the meter might internally read 1.1
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And we're taking that as gospel? AT&T needs to get off their asses and answer the questions, but so far we've got nothing to go on.
They also may very well not be using the same methodology in every service region.
DSL modem firmware updates? (Score:2)
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It's because they're charging you by the naked breast viewed.
I found I can reduce my bill by only look at the left one.
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The net providers on the other hand don't want to improve their networks, they'd rather screw their customers.
...and metering bandwidth is another way to do it, with a ready-made excuse.
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Do you really need to transfer 300 gb in a month?
Yes. Before i was trying to think of how it was possible as well, then it hit me:
Digital Distribution.
It easily makes these limits attainable. In December, between purchasing on Steam and Xbox's Marketplace, I would've blown way over the 150gb limit set in place (I think at then end, I was around 260). And I'm not even a Netflix subscriber. Since most of my downloading happened overnight/during work hours, I would've still been able to watch movie and using even more bandwidth. Even with their mete
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If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.
Sure. But they're not going to care about your router's stats.
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If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.
Sure. But they're not going to care about your router's stats.
Exactly. I once tried to tell a police officer that I wasn't going as fast as he said I was. I even measured it with my speedometer. Apparently, the people making the rules don't care too much for your opinion if it is different from theirs.
I'd suggest you take them to court, but people have been taking telecoms to court in the USA for decades... and you're still having the same problem - which leads me to believe that it's the system that's broken, not the players. Since you can't change the system...
Re:How is this different? (Score:5, Informative)
Thing is, in the countries where metering is standard, there's also a choice of metered plans. So if 300 GB isn't enough for you, then no problems, pay another $5 or $10/month and upgrade to a higher-allowance plan.
For example my current ISP (in Australia, FWIW) has the following ADSL2+ (24 Mbps down/1 Mbps up) plans at the moment.
30 GB
150 GB
250 GB
350 GB
600 GB
1 TB
I'm currently on the 150 GB plan and am lucky to use more than half of that on an average month. But if my usage patterns changed I'd upgrade to the 250 or 350 GB plan, which aren't that much more expensive. (Incidentally, traffic from Steam and quite a few other popular sources is 'free' on my ISP, i.e. not counted towards my usage - as a gamer this makes a huge difference and is one of the reasons I picked this particular ISP).
Anyway, my point is that metered plans are fine provided you have the option to pick a plan that suits your natural usage of the Internet. From what I can tell though, what's happening in the US is that they are starting to meter plans but NOT offering a choice of different plans. They are basically doing a 'one size fits all, and if it doesn't suit your needs, tough luck' approach. Which sucks. :(
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Wow that sucks. I always thought that Canada, with its proximity to the US (which has the majority of Internet hosts that English speakers would access), would have higher caps and lower prices than Australia. Both are untrue. Not only do our caps go up to 1TB+, but our prices are cheaper than yours for the same sized caps. I get 150 GB for $44.95 (AUD and CAD are worth about the same so conversion not really necessarily).
That's a bit sad when most of our traffic is US-bound and has to go through a handful
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Australia has a slightly unique situation, in that it has mostly English-speakers and most English content is hosted in the US. It's not the internal network capacity that's the problem, it's the capacity on the handful of undersea cables linking us to the US. Metering in Australia has mostly been required to prevent those international links from hitting capacity (the cables as a whole have plenty of capacity, but ISPs obviously only buy a particular amount of capacity, and it's damn expensive). For an ISP
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Although you are correct in theory, that's not how water or electricity use is measured or billed. It's almost like buying a car. Yes, the sticker price is one thing. But that's not the entire cost. Even if you avoid freight and delivery by buying used, you're still paying taxes. And even if you avoid ALL those fees, you still have insurance. And even if you avoid insurance, you've still got gas. And even if you're stealing gas, you're still "paying" with time. Although the companies in the USA might call it metered billing based on usage, and they may not be clear about what you're being charged for, there is still overhead and the actual "cost" of usage will include more than digital bytes flowing across a cable.
This makes no sense. My electric company has to pay for things that aren't the actual fuel it burns to make the electricity they're selling me. They have infrastructure, billing, the janitor at the power plant, etc. The proper way to account for this is some combination of fixed fees and increasing the cost per kilowatt hour (or in AT&T's case, cost per megabyte.) I can verify that my electric company isn't overbilling me by checking the meter, multiplying that number by the cost per kWh, and then addi
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I use my internet connection to back up my computers at home. While that doesn't require 300gb every month, it does require a large amount of bandwidth. Also game companies are increasingly turning to digital distribution for games sales and video streaming from Netflix is more and more common. You might not need 300gb every month, but knowing that it's there if you need it is really important.
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Yes, but thanks to their scale of efficiency, they can pick our pockets in the most efficient manner possible. Imagine if we had to have a dozen companies picking our pockets for that money, now aren't you glad that the government turns a blind eye to the lack of competitive market place?
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I repeat, do not fucking do business with AT&T.
Not unless you like getting both yourself and your wallet fucked in the ass.
AT&T makes Comcrap, Microsoft and Apple look benign.
Hell they're probably even nastier than Exxon-Mobile.
I dunno ... I agree that AT&T/SBC is nothing but a criminal gang in three-piece suits, but the reality is that (so far!) I've had much better service from AT&T than I ever got from Comcast. That sounds like it's changing though. All I have in my area is U-Verse, Comcast and some wireless outfit, so it's not looking good.
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Yes, the trolls are way beyond the one obligatory FP item that everyone ignores.
In the new redesign, the customizable comment modifiers seem much harder to find. The easiest method seems to be http://slashdot.org/my/comments [slashdot.org].
For the longest time I used to have a penalty on 1 sentence comments and left the rest alone, but lately some if the informative comments are coming through at 10 words + a link, and the trolls are writing more.
Now I switched it to penalize the last 40,000 accounts created, enough to kn