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Houston DSL users File Lawsuit Against SBC
cprincipe writes "According to this story on Yahoo, Houston DSL customers of SBC Communications have filed a lawsuit alleging that SBC has intentionally lowered connection speeds to its customers. " SBC, it should be noted, is the parent of Southwestern Bell, and recently acquired Ameritech.
Just as a test I did a ftp session to ftp.kernel.org (zeus.kernel.org) and did some transfers and this is what I got.
get linux-2.4.0-test6.tar.bz2
local: linux-2.4.0-test6.tar.bz2 remote: linux-2.4.0-test6.tar.bz2
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-2.4.0-test6.tar.bz2 (18106527 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
18106527 bytes received in 122 secs (1.5e+02 Kbytes/sec)
That's what I expect 1.2Mbps download speed, so as you can see it's not an all 128k cap on everything.
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
Finally, a reporter who understands why people need DSL. :-)
Attempt to dodge off-topicness: 128k is pathetic for DSL, isn't it? I doubt they can win a suit, but good luck to them.
Ever hear of oversubscription? Each customer isn't going to use the whole line all the time, so it's acceptable to put more customers on the line than you can support (to a point).
Also, instead of lining their pockets, the executives might want to spend money buying another T3. It would be good for their business in the long run.
IANAL,
The problem is most Public Utility Commisions (PUCs) which are charged with keeping the phone company in line really have to look at what the tarrif says. They really aren't charged with looking at marketing.
For instance, U S WEST, now QWEST, originally filed DSL as being 640K down and 256K up (Note, this was at a state level, with the FCC they filed 256K both ways). However, read closely this is an UP TO speed. The actual minium rate is 1K.
The phone company may be able to say these are the public documents defining the service. We fulfilled the tarrif in full.
And even at that, that's still speeds only between the customer and the ISP. Once you're outside the ISP it's hard to sue based on internet speeds. At the very least it's not hard ot confuse the issue.
It seems to me that it's going to come down to laws in the state. For instance, if the PUC already voted against taking action on this issue the laws in the state may allow the case to be thrown out.
Even if they lose the only people who will make anything will be the lawyers.
While I understand how the plaintiffs feel in this case, and intentionally lowering speeds might not be a nice thing for a DSL company to do, I can't see how a suit like this could be taken seriously. Has a law been passed that I'm not familiar with which outlaws such an action?
If a company offers you a service and they say they are going to GUARANTEE 384kbit/s to email, they kindof have to abide by that, it's simple contract law. If at any time that speed goes under 384kbit/s, regardless of cause (act of god notwithstanding), they can be held liable.
If people aren't happy with their DSL service, why can't they just switch providers?
In many cases there is only one high speed provider in the area, a "virtual monopoly" if you will. Sure, you can switch providers... but it'll be dialup.
-- iCEBaLM
A T1 line is 1.544 megabits per second (mbps), which translates roughly into about 150 kilobytes per second (kB/s). Anyhow, like I said, I have conversed about cable with many cable customers, and 200-300 kilobytes per second (kB/s) is not unusual for them. 300 kB/s is about 3 megabits per second (mbps), which is roughly twice the 1.544 mbps speed of a T1 line.
The difference between bits and bytes is probably what causes the confusion, which is why ISP's resorted to using megabits and kilobits in their ads instead: the numbers look bigger to customers, who think they're getting a better deal.
Emerson Willowick: Thinker, Writer, Human Being.
I've worked (and keep working :) in telecoms all my life and after reading most of the comments I have some comments.
Are you sure that they are capping bandwidth or are they congested? In the telco industry to oversubscribe (I've seen rates from 1/2 to 1/512) a service is a common practice (You usually take into account the bandwidth you have and assign a worst case scenario in which a percentage of all subscribers transmit and receive simultaneously). The bad part is that most network engineers don't take several factors into account like exactly what applications are being used. It's a lot different to oversubscribe if the final app is web browsing (Where you know that most users go to only five or six pages and you have proxies around) or Napster/FTP (Where you're going to have your bandwidth maxed for periods of time).
Another issue, how good is their connection to the Internet backbone? How many NAP points do they have? Usually having one huge pipe to one provider (as in bbn, uunet or digex) is not enough, you need two or three in order to have some traffic balancing. Also most IEX points are congested and unfortunately most of the content seems to be placed in 2-3 major providers.
So IMNHO I think this is a sign of poor network design as much as malice from their marketing dept.
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
I was in a meeting about 6 months ago where people were joking about how long it would take for the first class action law suit over deceptive DSL advertising to show up... The throttling is done by the network design. The DSLAMs concentrate the traffic from 576 customers onto a T3 (45 mbps) line. Do the math... That comes out to about 78 kbps/customer. Far below the guaranteed rates. BTW, I have RoadRunner and will change to DSL ASAP. Despite the deceptive ads DSL is still better than a cable modem. And, I can have as many machines as I want on a DSL and I can have a server on a DSL. Things that I can't have on RoadRunner. Not to mention that RoadRunner is about to become AOL.
It sounds to me like what happened was that Bell decided that email and newsgroups were low-bandwidth services, and that nobody would complain if they got choked a little, so they throttled the speed down. This seems a good idea for home users, (who REALLY needs to fetch their email faster than 128kbps?) but when you have a full-fledged business, you need the bandwidth. So they got caught. Sort of.
I suspect however, that the Houston co won't be able to prove anything, because there are 500 factors that COULD be responsible for the slow speed, and their case will fail.
I've had the advertised "384kbps-1.5Mbps downstream / 128kbps upstream" DSL from PacBell for about a year now. I used to have it with the PacBell ISP, and I've often got download speeds of ~250k/sec. In other words, even beyond 1.5Mbps. Well, a few months ago I've gotten a letter in the mail from PacBell that they no longer have a choice of ISPs, and the ONLY ISP available is through SBC, to which I was automatically changed. With this new change, my downstream is FIXED at 80k/sec, I guess 640kbps or whatever. Now, I wonder if this is illegal, because it is obviously CAPPED at 640kbps. And I am paying for "384kbps-1.5MBps depending on how good your line is" deal, so if it's capped, at least they should cap it at 1.5MBps. Long story short, SBC sucks.
Normally, I would say shut up and get another ISP. But that's not really possible, because phone companies and cable providers have monopolies on broadband home access. And because of this, I think such a lawsuit is greatly justified.
Although I would question how they know that their access is being slowed by the ISP. It would seem to me that it'd be very difficult to prove such a thing.
Because things like DSL and Cable are in the infancy, this case will determine how much control an ISP actually has. This will also further determine ISP's relation as telecommunications providers.
It's what you do with it.
Really, though. This article doesn't explore in-depth the 'tests' he ran to determine he was being cheated for bandwidth.
Since SBC uses an ATM fabric all the way out to their DSL modems, it is possible to assign priority to different types of traffic. SO, it
is not a question of COULD SBC be doing this, but ARE they doing it?
The question to me is a matter of physical bandwidth vs. logical bandwidth. After all, the customer can still pass 384K of traffic, but there's nothing in the guarantee that says SBC's news servers must be able to support twenty-thousand users hitting them at 384K at the same time.
Good customer service would dictate that they attempt to keep up and provide servers which can handle the traffic. However, I think it would be terribly hard to PROVE that news bandwidth was being intentionally limited at the customer end. I'm not saying it COULDN'T be limited there, just that it could be limited elsewhere without technically violating the agreement. I would really appreciate more detailed information about the supposed 'tests' that have determined this.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
DSL = Damn Slow Line.
at least in this case.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
While I understand how the plaintiffs feel in this case, and intentionally lowering speeds might not be a nice thing for a DSL company to do, I can't see how a suit like this could be taken seriously. Has a law been passed that I'm not familiar with which outlaws such an action? If people aren't happy with their DSL service, why can't they just switch providers?
Last time I checked, the SBC DSL offering in Houston was for 384 (minimum) downstream (up to 1.5MB/s, if you had a good line), and 128 fixed upstream.
Note this is the guaranteed rate from your premesis to the local SWBell CO. There, you get patched onto SWBell's local ATM service, which connects you to the "ISP" part of their business.
It sounds like these people are complaining specifically that they are only getting 128kb/s mail and newsgroup access. They don't complain about web access speed. This definitely would be feasible- SWBell could run newsgroup and mail access over different ATM virtual circuits, which would enable them to easily throttle bandwidth to different services they please.
I doubt they'll win the case- I'm guessing the SBC / SWBell service agreement doesn't make any guarantee about newsgroup or mail access speed. It seems a little nitpicky to me- you'd have to be doing some serious binary newsgroup stuff to have 128kb/s be an issue. Given how much more easily available pron is on the web, I'm not sure there there are many people would notice or care about this.
However, I'm not going to defend SBC's exploitation of vagueness in their terms of service... they need to be up-front about what they're doing. I judge this kind of thing by the "principal of least suprise"- you need to be explicit about things that are contrary to the natural assumptions people are likely to make. Given unspecified service terms, I don't think very many people would assume that newsgroups or e-mail would be bandwidth-limited.
BTW- I was an SBC ADSL customer for a year prior to moving to another city, and frankly I miss it. They were early on their install date (this was 18 months ago) and I was getting consistent 1 Mb/s, right on the fringe of the 12,000 ft ADSL limit. I'm not aware of any outages during the time I used it, and I was hosting a mailing list server on it full-time. I'm now in a neighborhood in Atlanta where my only choices are Northpoint (expensive, lower bandwidth) or Bell South (crappy service). Sigh...
I was the first paying customer of DSL in Northern Nevada. I'm happy with the final-mile portion. Words cannot describe my dissatisfaction with the ISP portion of the service -- I was overpaying at $10/month. Further, when I disconnected from the ISP I got a larger bill from them. I'm taking action, though, as described at the end of this screed.
I didn't wait for the lawsuits to start before I decided to do something about the problem. When several local ISPs got their ATM connections up and running here in Northern Nevada, I switched.
Oh, the complaint list is a long one:
I switch services on March 6, 2000, to an outfit called Pyramid.Net -- and I've been happy with the switch. Things haven't been perfect, but when I call things get fixed. Period.
SBC isn't finished with me yet!I used to be billed $39 for the DSL service and $10 for ISP service. When the total charges went up I took a closer look at my phone bill. There was the DSL charge of $39, which was correct. What wasn't correct was a charge by "Nevada Bell Internet Services" of just under $29.95 for ISP service I wasn't receiving. I never had a dial-up account, yet when I fired NBIS they "converted" my account to a dial-up account...without authorization. I reported the problem in June and again in July. Nevada Bell (the telephone company) says they can't do anything about it because NBIS is a separate company.
Indeed it is a separate company! It isn't listed anywhere -- not in directory service for California, Nevada, or Texas, not in the telephone books, not even on Switchboard.com! I even called the main customer numbers for Pacific Bell (CA) and Nevada Bell (NV) and they had no record of an address or phone number other than the 800 number that I had already unsuccessfully dealt with. When I spent a day tracking down exactly what was going on, I found that all four Internet Service companies in SBC-land are serviced from a single office in San Francisco! And the dispute resolution? That's with Pacific Bell. In San Francisco. California. WHERE I DON'T LIVE.
Now, it's almost the end of August, and the bill dispute is still unresolved.
But that's all right. Because of electrical deregulation here in Nevada, there is a PUCN docket item investigating utility billing and payment practices for all utilities here in the State of Nevada. I am registered on that docket. My input, based on this experience, is simple:any utility that places a charge on a bill needs to be responsible for the charge, have authority to take action on the charge including reversal instantly, and be accountable for the charge. When a charge is disputed, it is removed and the third-party billing company has to deal directly with the customer.