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High-Speed Greed
cprael writes "AT&T has decided that anyone using their broadband network is their customer, and any online merchant that sells them something owes AT&T a cut of the pie. They are apparently planning to charge for both delivery of the customer, and for the value of any goods/services bought by those customers. Article on Yahoo News." See also a CNN story on the same subject. Hey, it's just like the phone company takes a cut every time you phone in an order from a catalog... oh wait, they don't.
AT&T will be able to kill net buying for all their customers. I'm sure they will keep a big customer base when the consumers realize online retailers refuse to sell to them.
Happy Joy
Sometimes I feel like a nut... Ok so it's most of the time
From what I got out of the two articles AT&T is gonna charge merchants a per-transaction commision-style fee for referrals. Web-based advertising referalls that is. it would be impossible for it to happen any other way. So while the vast majority here rant and rave about some form of internet tax being imposed by AT&T, it's really nothing more than a change in how they charge their advertising. Tracking it becomes a non-issue because of the contract you'd have to sign to get the advertising space they're selling. My first impression was that they were going to try something like if Chevy were to charge Wal-Mart for me driving to the store in my car, but what's really happening is if Chevy charged Wal-Mart a commision on what I buy there after driving to the store in my car that has an ad for it on the dashboard. The differance is a little subtle, and the articles didn't do much to define exactly what was happeneing.
I don't think this would work. I'd switch carrier for my e-store. If the Net as a whole goes this way I'll join whatever group branches off a 'free' net (generic term, not the software) and just ignore greedy corporate munks like AT&T. As a user of @Home cable modems I'd be really pissed to find out they were doing this to e-stores I used. It'd drive prices up for me.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If they are paying attention to packets, they are not common carriers, and are thus liable for any illegal content (child porn, drug deals etc) that they deliver too.
"How exactly would you determine that a purchase was made..." They don't want paid just for the purchases, but if one browses the site too. Armstrong was supposed to be the ATT savior. This is the DUMBEST most IDIOTIC thing I've ever heard. So in the future, if I read an ad in the LA Times then call Nordstroms for an order, will the Times get a piece and the telco over which I placed the order. The local RBOC AND the long distance carrier if it's not a local call? T is at a 52 week low. This should cut it down further as any self respecting web site should start to abandon them in droves even at the hint this is going to take place. And if ATT can't get enouch money in a quarter cause they can't handle the 100billion he spent on cable to provide phone and broadband, what happens... they tell all ATT employees to visit all their hosted web sites to pump up the income or something? Don't like a site so anyone can just drive them out of business by 'browsing'. Sounds like they'll actually promote DOS attacks, as I'm guessing they'll want money for any site hit, period. I sold my T stock some time ago, after my problem with them showed me they have no idea how solve a problem. I sure understand how it's dropped to the mid 20's. It's truly a shame. ATT was one of THE branded names... but it sure don't shine these days!
They're doing it - because they can.
Can BT or AT&T monitor your phone call and find out that you're ordering something? No.
Can BT or AT&T scan your packets, see which host you're talking to, and maybe even detect if you've "1-Click"'d at Amazon? Yes.
It's disgusting. If only there was a competitor....
I can see it now: just below "CA residents add 8% sales tax" on the order form is the "AT&T customers add 2% corporate greed"... :-)
I am just waiting for some highway authority to say: "Hey! Your customers drove on our roads to get to your mall! You owe us a percentage of sales!"
Well, I'm glad we got that one sorted out.
The first is a dying revenue model of advertising - big deal. The second scream "unfair business practices! Sherman Antitrust Act! DOJ! HEEELP!"
So yeah, AT&T isn't stupid - they're going to put their necks in the noose like that.
They were also quoted a couple of months ago in the Washington Post, saying that their numbers indicate that the only branch in e-commerce which "has no difficulties making a profit" is the porn industry. They declined to say what percentage of their traffic can be attributed to porn on their networks. (This is no flame, I am just too lazy to search for the article, it was written at least four to five months ago)
They are shrewd and very sure of their own analysis to consider such move without fear to loose a customer base. I don't think they worry about other e-commerce branches, which are not profitable enough to begin with.
>I am just waiting for some highway authority to say: "Hey! Your customers drove on our roads to get to your mall! You owe us a percentage of sales!"
All ready exists.
Fuel Tax
Toll roads
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Charges based on the client's ISP would not be unenforceable. All AT&T would have to do is tell Amazon.com, "If you don't agree to give us a cut of all sales that come from AT&T customers, we'll block all traffic to your site."
AT&T wouldn't have to block traffic. Time is money; and faster web site response equals greater sales. AT&T not only owns the wires, but their end of the network routing tables. Amazon doesn't want to play? Fine. All traffic between @home suscribers and www.amazon.com gets routed through a ISDN switch in Pakistan instead of a NAP right into the AT&T optical backbone colocated with Amazon's servers.
"Gee, the B&N site seems so much faster this month, maybe I'll shop there instead."
Suddenly the Amazon accounting department figures out how to identify @home purchasers.
First, ATT has no monopoly on business web hosting, and if they try to implement this policy web hosting customers will stay away in droves. The articles were more than vague about how ATT was going to enforce their billing in an SSL-enabled world, they neglected the subject entirely.
What could they do? Filter out connections to business IP addresses who refuse to pay netgild? Not with this or next year's technology. Filter whole netblocks unless all merchant sites submit? Probably lawsuit material.
And they would have arrayed against them not just their customers but all the businesses that would be impacted, and their lobbyists. Count this under "wishful thinking" on ATT's part.
But of course... Amazon would get sick of having to see if it came in through an AT&T line or not, and they would thus buy all AT&T lines to simplify things... Wait - this implies that they have lines from people other than AT&T. In that case, they could just drop AT&T!
I don't think it's possible for AT&T to follow through with this plan without driving their business into the ground.
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name
>>Hey, it's just like the phone company takes a cut every time you phone in an order from a catalog... oh wait, they don't.
>Sure they do -- someone's paying for that 800 number.
This assuming there IS an 1-800 number.
When I do catalog orders I end up paying postage..
I don't actually exist.
- How do they ever enfoce this idea? -- Are they going to block every https site out there? Monitor every website for a shopping cart? Sending threatening letters to merchants in the Caymans who won't fork over the dough?
- Is anyone going to subscribe to an on-line service that can't access Amazon? LandsEnd? I mean sh^t a 56k modem is slow, but if I can't reach my favorite merchant who cares, I'll dial in.
- The whole value of the Internet is that its a network of networks, where everyone can reach everyone else. Take that away and the thing is worthless.
- Whats next charge for each e-mail? Go back to pricing by the kilocharacter?
- Even if the merchants decided to pay, why wouldn't they just pass the price onto the customer with a breif statement on their site saying you could save 10% just by switching to AOL/prodigy/whatever.
In summary if this is T's big plan to revive their revenues we should all just start shorting thier stock now because they'll be broke real soon. Even if they never implement this idea, the fact that they even mentioned it, was absolutly stupid. Releasing this idea as a trial ballon only creates negative equity for the AT&T brand, and since it can never be implented; you just make yourself look mean and stupid.> in a manner similar to the way that shopping malls charge rents to tenant stores The web hosting companies that provide the web services to these merchants are like the rent that malls charge. This is more like a surcharge. The store gets charged for every individual customer that walks through the doors of the mall just because that customer will 'see' the store. And an extra surcharge if the customer buys anything.
>It's disgusting. If only there was a competitor....
My appartment manager signned a deal with a company that provides broudband (Cable modem) to bring in lines of there own.
(I don't know how that works)
So we have two cable jacks.. one for AT&T and one for Siren (or whatever)...
I use nither but plan to give Siren a try...
I don't actually exist.
Everyone talks about the weather. No one ever actually does anything about it.
'nuff said
Thank goodness we have the internet to blow hot air so we are not adding to the environmental problems out there.
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
- Bob works for GM, and saves money over the years. He invests some of his net pay (after tax pay) in mutual funds.
- Then his friend Bill tells him that he's putting together a great startup, and asks for some Venture Capital. Bill tell's Bob that he would be pre-IPO, which clinches it for Bob.
- So Bob takes some money out of his mutal fund, paying capital gains taxes on the amount over his investment. (BTW, this taxes the money created by inflation [which isn't truly a gain for Bob, just keeping up with the Federal Reserve], as well as the real profit.)
- Bill and company do very well, and the IPO is wildly successful. But Bob doesn't have faith in Bill or his company, so Bob sells his stock a week after the IPO. And Bob pays capital gains taxes again.
- Bob takes this money and buys a car to replace his 15 year old clunker, paying taxes on the car.
- Bob decides to give up his apartment in the city and move to a small town, so he takes the rest of the profit from the IPO (and some other savings he was wise enough to keep away from Bill) and buys a house. Bob pays all sorts of taxes on this house, and he has to pay property tax each year. (Pet peeve: why is a property tax based upon the appraised value of the land and buildings? My grandparents paid off their house decades ago, why should they pay a few thousand dollars each year when they are just living at home? Property taxes have forced people to move because they couldn't pay the 'taxes' on land owned for decades, especially if the owners have fixed incomes.)
I agree that double taxation is wrong, but it seems to be the law of the land. I don't see any easy solutions. Sigh.Louis Wu
"Where do you want to go ...
Sure they do -- someone's paying for that 800 number. The business you call pays for it. A lot. And the interexchange (i.e. backbone) carrier that takes the call gets a chunk of that money from the carrier who provides that 800 number to the business -- though that's a cut of the phone call, not a direct cut from the order.
However, I do not think we want to see the sort of rate system established in internet transactions that exists for telephone calls, nor do we want a set of elaborate contractual schemes where backbone providers require local providers to require contracts from merchants to cooperate with this sort of thing. I am curious to know how AT&T plans to enforce this sort of fee. It seems the plan must refer only to internet merchants who are themselves AT&T customers (as with the merchants and providers on the PocketNet service). They can't just walk up to a merchant who has no direct contractual relationship with them and start demanding money. But it seems to me that that is an awfully good way to send those merchants over to WorldCom, Sprint, or other broadband providers. Is AT&T planning to put pressure on every local network provider connected to its backbone so that the endusers pay settlement-rate-like fees for every transaction that passes over its backbone? Do they want their broadband services to tank like their long distance services are?
I don't like the idea of the charge. To accomplish what they want to, they'd probably have to get other backbone providers to do the same thing (which would be anticompetitive, and would start raising antitrust issues). If they want to get at every transaction, they'd have to get deals from those who connect to their backbone to get deals in turn from their subscribers. The whole thing smells a little odd.
Hm.
Like many other @Home customers, I was fat dumb and happy until about 3 weeks ago, when I received my cable modem it was rated at 1 mbit up, 3 down all was good until they decided to 'servers' by limiting upstream to 128 kbs, on top of that if you have a backgroup upload running, and it gets limited, your downstream is limited as well the official response is that it improves the service for 99% of the users.... take my advice, do not use them any longer then you have to, they invented this game, if you pay them, they will win.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Yeah, but most end users don't really know much about stuff like this. If AT&T has the lowest prices anyways (since it does have a monopoly) and it can control its prices to a point of being cheap enough, it will be more suitable for any end user to go through them because it doesn't affect them directly. AT&T will not lose many customers because many people don't have enough knowledge to be hopping from ISP to ISP. Many people are content with the serivce they start off with and don't have the want to change because their service is excellent. I don't know if AT&T has good service, but I would assume this has no effect to the user base (except for the people who read this on CNN and /.)
"If you don't agree to give us a cut of all sales that come from AT&T customers, we'll block all traffic to your site" If it's done for economic reasons such as this, IMHO, it'd be time to look into 'restraint of interstate trade', of which there is much legislation on the books.
HA. Great idea.
I can see it now. People set up massive mp3/mpg files on their server and choke the hell out of it, but to cover their bandwidth costs they set up a small shopping area which sells something stupid like thimbles that look like Bea Arthur. (which of course no one would buy)
"Sorry ATT, I only sold one Bea Arthur thimble this month, your cut $.05. BTW, I think I need to upgrade to a OC3. I'm sure I'll sell more Bea Arthur thimbles next month with the wider pipe."
Heh heh.. Where do I sign up?
MP
My studio - www.graylands.ca
I think that reuters screwed the story up. I bet this is AT&T saying that they will offer placement and full hosting (ala akamai style) for internet etailers.
Anyone have an actual press release, and not this drivel from reuters?
-- dieman - Scott Dier
"Actually the phone company does get a cut in phone orders. Either you or the company you are calling are paying toll charges. 800 numbers aren't free, the recipient just pays the bill." There's no logical comparison to getting a 'cut' in phone orders to taking a percentage of sales. The 800 numbers simply permit the recipient to pay for a long distance call vs. the caller. The long distance is being paid for their services in providing long distance. They do NOT get anything based upon anything being ordered or not ordered, or the value of any order placed. They are looking more at things like mall leases / brick and morter comparisons that may charge tenants a percentage of gross sales as part of their lease. What they seem to forget is that this is virtual brick and mortar and one can move pretty quickly vs. a store in a mall. What I'm trying to figure out is who actually thought up this idea and who let it actually get to the point of going public...and if they still work for ATT. (well, and how 'virtual' stores have already called the 'movers')
This might be just another ploy some genius thought up to see if they can get away with it. Why not come up with lame schemes to see if there's money to be made? There's one born every minute after all.
This whole trend is getting ridiculously tiresome. I think it's time to start paying my membership fees to the barter society
now that gorcery stores, bookstores, electronics outlets, entertainment facilitites, magazines, fashion retailers, restaurants, gas stations, and home contractors have all gone out of business because of massive online purchasing -- i'm forced, absolutely forced to buy every product or service through my @home connection.
this will destroy morality, democracy, and The Children!!
c'mon, people, what's the deal here? ATT can't possibly bill a webmerchant simply because an @homer ended up on their page -- even ignoring the technical/paperwork nightmare involved in tracking and generating Accounts Receivable statments for every single user's every single click, there is no way to enforce such a policy:
@Home: Merchant, you owe us $27,300 for the people that accessed your page during the last week using our service.
Merchants: Um, but we didn't invite your users here. Someone posted our URL on Slashdot and all the geeks just flooded in.
@Home: Still, they got there using our wires, so you better pay up!
Merchants: Whatever. Honk off, Bozo.
Federal Judge to @Home: Yeah, Honk off, Bozo!
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
The real issue here is why is a company as large as AT&T so desperate. The answer is how it is going to fund its expansion of AT&T@home, the cable modem/DSL service. Several states (including California) have already placed moratoriums on sales of this service due to poor performance, not meeting contractual obligations with subscribers, etc. They have totally over-sold their existing infrastructure and in many cases the state Attorney Generals offices have given them time limits to being supplying the bandwith they have already sold.
In many areas AT&T is the only choice for cable. I know they just bought @home and already own Media one. Those are the only providers I know of in lower Michigan. In East Lansing @home is the only available provider. From what my friends tell me the service is really bad. I've heard complaints that connections are constantly down. It makes ssh'ing into the computer science server at midnight to upload a project really difficult. I know a few of my friends had to get an extension on the project they were working on because they couldn't upload it.
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-- Ernest Hemingway
I think there's a misconception. IIRC, ATT wants to charge those for which they HOST the web sites. They cannot charge ANY merchant because someone comes from an ATT connection to a web site that is NOT hosted by ATT. IANAL, but I don't believe there's ANY contractual agreement implied or otherwise between an ATT and the web site hosted by another ISP just becuase a customer uses ATT to access that site. But I wouldn't mind ATT trying to bill me for their customers access to my site... toilet paper is getting expensive and their bills would be a perfect replacement.
Is it me or does thi sound like taxation without representation. You know we, as the consumer, will eventually pay the cost of both "fees". If you were to replace fee with tax and company/corp with country, we could have a tea party over this.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Well, of course it was taken out of context. How would this work, exactly? You, Mr-Hip-Online-Merchant get your Internet service provided by MCI. One day you get a bill from AT&T, a company you have no contractual relationship with, in the mail demanding a cut of all the sales AT&T says came over its network? That wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on. A more likely plan is this: AT&T is mulling replacing flat rates for service to the merchant with a percentage-of-sales rate, in a manner similar to the way that shopping malls charge rents to tenant stores. Maybe they charge a little bit extra if the sale comes in from a AT&T broadband customer, maybe they don't. What isn't going to happen is the scenario described in both those articles, where Joe-Random-Company gets a bill just because an AT&T customer bought something from them. Not unless AP departments achieve a whole new level of stupidity. Gotta luv web-reporting.
There was something early farmers used to organize against the oligarchy of rails, called a grange, basically giving a group bargaining power, like unions. While Freenet is a hedge against greedy ISP's, it may fall prey to something of the nature AT&T is up to.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It is not as if they tell all their customers that they will be charging the sites that the customer visits for bring the websurfer and the site together.. Things like this need to get well beyond Slashdot to affect AT&T's customer base. -Brent
-b
Just my (tax-free) $0.02.
I think you'll find the phone company make a small charge every time you order something. If it's a 800 number the company pays. Otherwise you pay. The phone company ALWAYS receives. BugBear
Ignorance is curable. Stupid is forever.
It sure sounds like it. The CNN article says:
I don't know how illegal it is; it's their network, they could argue they're just forming a "partnership". As to how practical it is, simple; if the merchant refuses to agree, just block them.
Then again, I still haven't been able to get onto Yahoo to check the other article, so maybe the CNN one is off.
--
"With the new pricing plan, AT&T may be able to mine a lucrative new market. "
This is just people in the AT&T Marketing dept. saying they created a new way to suck money out of your pocket on a process you currently don't pay for!
Technology is only a vehicle. People are the ones that drive it.
They are NOT planning on charging every web merchant for every web transaction that takes place - obviously that's technically (and legally) impossible.
What they're talking about is charging the merchants that pay for advertising on the AT&T Broadband customer home page - they plan to expand their charging scheme to make it based on purchases instead of just a CPM banner style.
This is very much the same as the relationship AOL has with retailers - AOL gets a cut of each sale in addition to a referral fee. AOL makes PHAT cash from this arrangement and AT&T just wants a similar system.
Most geeks will change their homepage off the AT&T broadband page in about 30 seconds after installation, so you won't see their ads and won't shop at "their" merchants, and this won't be an issue.
i guess i didn't make myself sufficiently clear.
i was not referring to your post at all. i don't see any mis-spelled words in your post.
i intended for moderators to go look up the word "informative". the original might be considered "insightful" or "interesting" as an example of one argument in the discussion, but it did not itself present any data.
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I wish I could believe this was simply a ploy to illustrate the inherent evils of something, but not only can I not think of what that something might be, I wouldn't trust AT&T as far as I could throw their corporate headquarters.
I guess now all we can do is sit back and hope for a retraction that tells us the "comment was taken out of context" or something along those lines.
Or we just wait for AOL to chime in with the AOLerific "Me, Too!"
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
I hope the merchants just tell @Home to shove their bill up their arse. And let @home try to block them. Could you see the howls if people cant get to Amazon.com or Ebay.com because they these companies won't submit to this type of extortion. I would think that this a good way to get a lot of negative PR (and lose customers!)
Well, I've been wanting to go adsl with bellsouth instead of ATT@home. Looks like this will be my soon deciding factor. If this is true does it affect major backbones? This is a very scary topic.
you have @home? then you dont have at&t you have Excite@home. If you called the cable company then you are barking up the wrong tree. they install the modem, they have nothing to do with the @home service. that is handled by Excite (a really dumb move).
so correct your statement here.... you are p.o'ed at Excite, the ISP you have for @home. AT&T just brings the bandwidth to your house.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Timothy, meet michael. Michael, Timothy. Shake hands. There you go.
-- Fester
-- Fester
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
Quite so. Any company that can run fiber to my house for $20 can have my business (which'd be the only way for the company to guarantee I used their pipe to do whatever).
;-)
;-).
I say fiber because broadband has existed for awhile, but we still don't have it here. I assume our regional ISPs will just forgo cable and DSL and move right into some kind of fiber. Probably won't happen for 5 to 10 years, depending on how quickly more major backbones are added to the net.
Anyhow...
I realize this whole thing will either never happen or flop horribly, but it would actually be a VERY good thing for the consumer, provided the infrastructure was in place (which it isn't).
I'd suggest these ISPs start implementing something like this AFTER every house on my block has a fiber optic connection. Course, that is quite awhile off, but QWest is extending broadband here in Minnesota at a pretty alarming rate. My secluded town should have a backbone running right up main street in a year or two.
I'd be willing to pay Qwest (or whomever) thier little per-purchase internet tax if I had the ability to actually purchase anything worthwhile on the net (online multimedia content such as audio, streaming video, IP-telephony, etc). Being able to download a complete Linux distro in a couple minutes would be well worth it
Wow. I just thought of a nice business model... ISPs offer free T-3 level inet access, and the user donates spare CPU cycles to the ISP (ala distributed computing). I bet the ISP could get some heavy government subsidies that way
Thats all. Thank you, drive thru
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
This has to be one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long time (and I've heard some bad ones).
As somebody who knows quite a lot about internet commerce (I founded CyberSource and beyond.com) I can say with a high degree of certainty that the merchants will laugh in the face of AT&T trying to collect money from them.
It won't fly because:
1) There is no contractual relationship between a merchant hosted by say Exodus and AT&T - absent the contract how will AT&T assert their claim?
2) Assuming for a moment that they are stupid enough to block sites that won't pay they would have an instant PR disaster.
3) If by some reason I can't think of they manage to force merchants to pay then the sites will probably pass it on as an "AT&T surcharge" - this will piss off AT&Ts customers.
I suspect what we're really talking about here is not taking money from every merchantt - it's promoting some merchants in return for a transaction fee (instead of a page views based model). This is not new and was part of the original @home model.
Move along folks there is nothing to see here.
John
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
The answer to this problem is simple. Use a different ISP! This is a problem in which their policy will surely cause them to lose customers.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Whether or not this will work is doubtful, but it's nice to see that the Robber Baron techniques don't change over the centuries.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
I'm an online merchant. ATT thinks I'M goint to pay THEM when someone buys something from my site. They can kiss my ass. I'm not paying them shit. I don't care if they're coming from ATT's network or not. For one, how are they going to prove it, magically decrypt the SSL transaction and read everything that goes on? You don't think the national ISP's keep logs of the sites that are visited, and from what dynamic-IP, and from what user-ID? Hmm.. Mr. Stevens... It seems there were three thousand four hundred thirty two visits to your business' website. At industry averagesof one-half percent, you have done 18 sales. However, our logs show three hundred SSL connections. How do you explain that, Mr. Stevens? I don't possibly see how this could ever work. They bill me because someone else PAID THEM to access their network and use it to buy stuff from me? Whatever. I don't know what they've been smoking, but they've obviously smoked it all. They were smoking the best hash in Amsterdam. That way, they can fail the drug test and legitimize the results. Right now, the net is a loss-leader. Deregulation happened, and the telcos are scrambling to get newer money makers at expense of service and reliability. I mean, a decade and change ago, payphones were all over the place and a local call was a dime. Now, it's 35 cents. IF you find one. (I mean, outside Manhattan.) It costs a nickel off the hardline to call my dialup node, but to call further than eight cable-miles is a dime a minute. My home's wiring is so old, we can't get a second line without extensive work. (We actually have an old Blackphone rotary in our laundry room!) And service will take no less than a MONTH to do anything! All thanks to Amerit-!@#&%!)@#&)(!*##*#! NO CARRIER
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Come on! This is the first step towards Corporate taxes on the people. Stamp it out!
According to the Article, they are just mulling over it and havent made up their mind. As usual, At Slashdot its much ado about nothing :).. Aahh..just another day in the geek community
Rapid Nirvana
This big-bad company is going to steal from the little-ole companies. The customer will get screwed all around.
Let me tell you guys a story about a little boy who cried wolf...
jred
www.cautioninc.com
caution, inc.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
I know for a fact that I do not get directly charged any amount for any taxes or tolls that the trucks might incurr in getting a package from the wholesaler to my local store.
I pay for that in the markup at the store. Why should I have to pay AT&T anything beyond the price I would pay for an AT&T account, or beyond the markup the company feels they need to include to compensate for their AT&T connection? If they feel they need their fingers deeper in the online commerce pies, they should raise their ISP costs for the user, either home or business, and see what happens then.
I bet they won't like it
I'm connected through a dialup account with my old ISP at the moment because the cable modem service in our area is down. It's been down since September 28. Their customer service line tells me they're "Working on it." but can't provide any sort of time frame.
For the first three months we had the @Home service every 2 hours we'd recieve a DOS ping attack, lasting over 30 minutes each time. Our logs showed our computers being pinged up to 3000 times/second. You know where it was coming from? AT&T's "security" server.
We logged over 500 calls to AT&T. I've got a spreadsheet with the names of every person I talked to. We went to the highest levels they would give us access to. We sent e-mails, we attached logs, we did everything they asked us to. They refused to fix the problem for 3 fucking months.
And now they expect to harass online retailers that I want to shop with, just because I use AT&T as an ISP. I don't think so. If they do that I'll bother ever DSL company on the east coast to bring service to my town so I can use surf in peace.
I hate AT&T. The second there's an option for another high speed service provider here, I'm jumping on board. I'd pay three or four times a month what I'm paying AT&T just for some sort of service. I've never had a worse experience with any company.
--
Lets pattent this busness model before at&t does, and sue em if they try to use it..
who says the grannting of patents for dumb ideas cant be used to our advantage
Yeah, well it's too late. Slashdot once again decided to spread FUD with the opening sentence:
Well, AT&T has decided that anyone using their broadband network is their customer
I'm not trying to beat up on slash or michael here. I don't expect this place to be completely impartial (hell, not even close). I would just like people to try to state the facts as facts, and the opinion as opinion.
The change would help AT&T reduce dependence on its shrinking consumer long-distance telephone business
The reason why AT&T's business is shrinking is because they are a bunch of sphinkters. I just left AT&T because their long distance prices are too high compared to competition. I called AT&T to let them know I was switching and the representative wanted to know why. I told het AT&T cost too much and she became defensive and said that they weren't. When I told her what my new service was charging me she shut up and said goodbye.
Hey AT&T... higher prices != happy customers
It seems that all these Big Companies (ATT, Microsoft, Amazon, etc) have a new business philosophy:
1. Make dozens of wild and impractical user policies, patents, copyrights, and pricing schemes.
2. Sit back, and see which ones hit the fan the hardest.
3. Profusely apologize for the ones the general public complains about the most, restate your commitment to fair pricing/competition/whatever, and basically grovel and kiss ass until all is forgiven.
4. Make money hand-over-fist on the one's that get through.
Every time I see a Slashdot story about some company trying to get over with something ridiculous, I can't help but wonder how many others ridiculous things are out there slipping in under the radar.
Will electric companies expect a slice of the pie too because they're supplying the electricity? And then will Verizon want a cut for phone-in orders because we're using their phone lines to place the call? Come on! We're paying for the service!
We don't have long distance at all because of those fees...however, some sort of "you have no long distance so we'll charge you a fee" fee still pops up, but it's less than any long distance company's fee - I guess it's like the "I have no car insurance" insurance. ;-)
For when we do need to make long distance calls, we do it for free using dialpad.com. So you fill out a questionaire, big whoop. THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANYWAY.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
The most significant part of the article was this:
The fees, however, may alienate some Web merchants who already struggle to break a profit on their online sales, analysts said.
Given the expense of attracting customers, many major Web retailers lose money every time they sell anything, a study by consultant McKinsey & Co. and brokerage Salomon Smith Barney said.
This will be the real kicker to the deal. 99% of internet-based companies do NOT make a profit. Amazon, probably the foremost of all e-tailers is constantly in the red. You cannot charge these companies because they do not have enough capital on their own. And this will have a very simple solution. When Amazon who is not making a profit gets the letter from AT&T saying that they need to pay on every transaction, they will move to UUNet because they simply will not be able to afford to stay with AT&T. This plan is doomed for that reason.
Mostly because AT&T is not provideing service to these merchents. They are providing service to the customers of the merchant. What is AT&T going to do, start sending out unsolicited bills?
100 Visits By AT&T Broadband customers- $100
Merchant- Crumble--- Chuck.
What does AT&T do now? Can't sue them, they never signed a contract. Could block their site, but you block enough merchent sites (especially big ones like Amazon) and suddenly your customers don't want to use you anymore. The plan as presented in these articles doesn't make any sense. Someone must have misunderstood.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Whey your municipality grants a most unnatural monopoly cable franchise to a single company, people who live there go without the joys of capitalism. Why is it that I can't run a cable around my neighborhood? I don't know! Might be because someone wants to shear their sheep.
You bet! I'll be more than happy to use my cable modem to build up a shopping list, then use a free dialup to make the actual purchase. And I'll be sure to send a taunting email to AT&T every time I do it.
Oops, but when downloaded your modem software and clicked OK, you agreed that all shopping carts made while on the AT&T network will be purchased exclusively through the AT&T network. Now you're going to jail for contributory circumvention of shrink wrap licenses!
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Very good points. And all the merchants have to do is switch to other services. This, if true, will probably lead to a loss of usage for AT&T because so many merchants will find any other service that doesn't have this asinine plan in effect.
:P
A couple other things to consider as to why this would be a bad idea (from the AT&T POV).
1) What to do about spoofed orders? It is exceptionally easy for anyone who knows how to spoof an order on a merchant's site.
2) Credit card fraud. The customer really didn't order it. The merchant is being defrauded because most credit card companies refund fraudulent orders.
3) Lawsuits. The sales information is supposed to be protected, AFAIK, as AT&T is not the merchant and has no right to look at how much you spent at a particular merchant's site. How long before they get sued by an upset customer for being aware of how much they spent at some sex-toy site (as an example). It's one thing to have the merchant know how much you spent... it's kinda necessary. But it's another for a third-party organization who is not involved in the original transaction to be aware of it. (Note: IANAL, so take all of this with a grain of salt. For all I know, anyone can look at your credit card statement sans the card number...)
All in all, this is sounding like a really bad idea. Maybe we can get Clinton and Lazio to debate against it...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
But it is on it's way . Remember that QoS is , in fact , an integral part of IPv6 and it should be .
...
...
There are many real needs that QoS addresses --- the need to forward ( more quickly ) packets carrying streaming content , realtime information , etc
It will inevitably be used to discriminate between higher paying customers and lower service consumers .
Consumers WILL be charged on both ends of the transactions as innovators will pass on 'customer delivery' costs to the consumers . Now that the internet has been completely comercialized ( few exceptions ) the good , cooperative , nettiquette that current protocols enforce WILL be slowly degraded
Until people begin asking pointed and informed questions about why their service is being reduced .
With the number of people who are apparently cozy with locking themselves into 3 year subscriptions for internet access , my optimism that we will revolt is in the toilet .
What do you think might happen .
Your Squire
Squireson
I'm having a problem w/ my account, just seeing if I can still post.
``We are the people our parents warned us about.''
I'm sure they'd just point out the paragraph buried in the Terms of Service that say you agreed to allow them to eavesdrop and do whatever the heck else they wanted.
How exactly would you determine that a purchase was made. That the person didn't simply visit the site fill up a shopping cart and decide the shipping costs were too high and left. This would mean some pretty sophisticated and invasive survailance on a huge scale. This whole thing is stupid. It would only work with the cooperation of the merchants. I don't think that would happen unless there is some benefit to the merchants(advertising/promotion).
That way, the transaction is actually "completed" over the phone and not on the web site.
In general, I feel vendors will figure out ways to squirm around this, probably by allowing the consumer to select a higher price vs. less convenience.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
Do your good deed for the day, kill some greedy corporate executives! Kill them before they create another opportunity to rape your wallet and your self respect.
While you're at it take a trip to your local college or university and snuff any business students you find wearing a tie, or especially a damned suit. Anyone between 18 and 25 who would want to wear either is neo-yuppie scum and probably a future greedy executive. Either way they should be removed from the gene pool before they can piss in it. Kill them twice if you find them reading the Wall Street Journal or talking on a cell phone. If you see them in an SUV, kill them three times and burn their damned pseudo-jeep! SUV's are nothing more than 21's century land yachts! I'd call them mountain yachts except they're all based on car frames and would never make it up a respectable hill, let alone a mountain.
Its stories like this that make me want to set aside my ethics and become a cracker. Make the execs at AT&T and TW/AOL wish they'd never even heard of the internet. I'd love to get medieval on some corporate ass! But I won't because I'm a hacker, not a cracker. I do have money to spend however and it won't be going into their pockets. I'm not a pirate just like I'm not a cracker, but I'll pirate songs and movies from TW!
Seriously though, the best way to put a stop to something like this is to cancel your AT&T worldnet or AOL accounts if you're using their service. When you do, be sure to tell them why. Also don't buy any music or movies released by one of TW's subcorporations. This is called holding the corporation accountable to its customers as well as its stockholders.
When a corporate entity behaves unethically or ruthlessly, the best way to put them back in their place is to refuse to do business with them. The only problem is, most people don't care unless they are the one who is being directly hurt by the company. The plight of others gets little more than a passing glance from most people. Our apathy is endemic. We are the only ones who can make corporations behave themselves. Laws can't do it. Loss of revenue certainly can and will, but it means that each person must listen to and act upon their conscience, which is something that few people do in this day when making the convenient choice is preferred over making the right one.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Au contraire... The point of spinning off successful operations isto keep systemic failures of the rest of the business from dragging them down. Looks like it worked out just fine here. Also, the parent corporation is generally left holding a very sizable chunk of stock. Although I don't know the details here, I'm sure this was no exception.
You obviously haven't been paying attention. The stock market race to new 52 week lows is a dead heat between Lose-cent and AT&T. Lucent is spinning off chunks of itself so fast it would make your head swim.
This is one of the dumbest ideas I've read yet. It would cost them more to monitor the traffic than they could hope to recoup--unless their goal was driving eCompanies out of business. They're looking at credit card issuers and saying: "they get 1 or 2 percent of every sale, why shouldn't we?" Guess who ends up paying for it. You and me. The merchants either swallow the cost and end up in bankruptcy court, or pass it along to us.
--
Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
Setting asside the disturbance of my network sensibilities... I strongly disagree.
Qwest and Sprint have spent tons of money setting up networking pipes, and both make plenty-o-money off it. The problem with AT&T is that their business model, for the last half century, was entirely based on overcharging consumers for long distance service. Now that they've gradually lost their edge on reliability, service and customer loyalty, they have to compete on price alone... just like every other "M" "C" and "I"
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The other half of this is that the ATT Cable advertising dept. can approach those self-same businesses hawking their crap on @Home for package media buys on cable TV-- 'buy 50 spots on comedy central and we'll let you on the homepage for @Home . . . '
davejenkins.com |
Who is ever going to sign up for thier service?
How can they track if you buy something or not?
What the hell?
--
RumorsDaily
I'm an online merchant. ATT thinks I'M goint to pay THEM when someone buys something from my site. They can kiss my ass. I'm not paying them shit. I don't care if they're coming from ATT's network or not. For one, how are they going to prove it, magically decrypt the SSL transaction and read everything that goes on?
I don't possibly see how this could ever work. They bill me because someone else PAID THEM to access their network and use it to buy stuff from me? Whatever. I don't know what they've been smoking, but they've obviously smoked it all.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
mod the parent up. Something is fishy about this idea. It seems that anyone who has taken Internet 101 would see this as an impossible thing to do without the consent of the merchant. If a merchant refuses (and many if not most will), @home can't shut these merchants off without pissing off way too many customers. C'mon, even AOL allows users to use the web.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Here's what your invoice on a web buy would look like:
Subtotal: $100
Tax: $8.25
AT&T Surcharge: $2 (Click here to learn why AT&T charges YOU extra and what you can do about it)
Total: $110.25
In other words, merchants will pass it on, not subtly but blatantly, and their customers will rebel instantly. Welcome to the information age.
Yahoo
This will be the birth of corporate taxation of all of us. Hopefully some lawyer will be able to prove that this is taxation without representation or some other loophole but I just can't see this as being a good thing in any way. The home based online businesses will be the first to die off if this happens followed shortly thereafter by all of the struggling
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Ok does this quailfy as a Internet tax? Too bad ATT is the only source of broad band I have.
guvf vf zl fvt
I don't understand. If I pay AT&T for my internet connection, am I not paying for the hardware, whatever software and service they provide, and the ability to use the service as I see fit? Sure, there are some limitations. I can't send out hundreds of gigs worth of bandwidth, that's abusing the system. But I pay for my 'net connection so I can go shopping. Now I've got to pay again? I don't understand, I really don't.
If AT&T can't afford to offer low flat-rates for high-speed internet connections, then they have to raise the price. If nobody buys their service because of the higher price, then a company which is more streamlined(read: a company that doesn't have a finger in every pie) will win out. That's the free market. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
What dim bulb moderated my post as off topic?
It takes a prize moron to think that post was off topic, but if you don't cheer with the rest of the rabble in this forum it's to be expected.
What would be a simple and effective way to solve this problem is for a company like Amazon or B&N to say sure, we'll just pass the cost along to the consumer as an "AT&T Surchage" with a detailed note like this:
"Our system has detected that your are connecting to our servers from the AT&T@Home network.
Unfortunately, AT&T has adopted the practice of billing us for its customers who purchase goods from our site. We feel it would be unfair to raise our prices to all consumers because of a single ISP's presumption, and therefore we must past these surcharges on to you.
If you feel that you've already paid for the right to browse and buy products over the internet, we agree with you, even if AT&T does not. You have three alternatives available to you:
1) Make this purchase from a machine not connected to the AT&T@Home network. Simply disconnecting your computer from the AT&T@Home network and dialing with a 'Free ISP' will suffice.
2) Contact AT&T customer service and explain to them that their policies are affecting your ability to shop effectively-- an ability for which you have already paid.
3) Contact one of AT&T's competitors and take your business to a company with more sensible billing practices.
We apologize for the inconvenience."
Second alternative:
"Dear AT&T,
During the first quarter of 2001, approximately 26 million visitors from your network visited Amazon.com, resulting in (insert bandwidth estimate here) of traffic.
We represent (insert name of bandwidth provider), and have determined that you have profitted from these transactions through our network. Accordingly, you are being billed (insert obscene figure) in accordance with your 'billing at both ends' business model."
-- "You live and learn. Or you don't live long." -Heinlein
There is a petition strongly urging AT&T not to do this unprecedented, potentially contagious pricing strategy! Please read & sign it: http://www.actionize.com/view.php?action=3907 Just takes a minute--- once it gets 100 signatures it will be printed & sent to AT&T headquarters by Actionize.com
I think what most bussinesses will do, is blatantly pass on this fee. I'd like to see AT&T explain their way out of this one when customers realize they are paying extra just for using AT&T networks.
Usually the actual ordering is done over SSL. AT&T cannot know for certain if a transaction actually took place. They would have to map a site to find out which URL's meant what. How many on-line merchants are there?
Besides, if I was a merchant using a provider other than AT&T, I would laugh on the phone if AT&T tried to charge me. If AT&T ever tried locking out those sites that refused to pay them, they would very quickly get a name for themselves they would really not like. AT&T: Land of the Broken Links.
I can't see them pulling this off.
From the: Wow,-I've-never-had-problems,-really dept.
:)
I find it amazing that so many people who have AT&T broadband cable service have so many problems. I've had it since June and have had two downtimes, each lasting 15 mins. And that's it. Huge speed, little slowdown, I can run servers, websites (I run a webcam), telnet, anything....the technician that installed it even said they didn't care what I did unless I used the entirety of their 4 T1 lines' bandwidth. Come to my area! Or, I'll run CAT5 to your place!
I feel almost bad about it...my service is well worth the $45/month I pay, while it seems other people are just getting raped with a sandpaper-wrapped broomstick.
Blog,Twitter
he'll make sure that at&t will be able to pass this through!
This is not a bill; there is nothing to pass. You probably believe everything CNN tells you too. Sigh.
I totally agree on your point three. The ATT account surcharge would (will) be exactly my response. I have subscription based content, and if there's a surcharge to pump it to you based on how YOU are getting to me, you're paying it until you gain some sense. The unfortunate reality is that no one is willing to take on the the big broadband consumer providers just yet, as they are too busy filling the re-election coffers of way too many politicians. I'm against regulation in most areas, but I see no particular merit in a very few monopolies controlling broadband access to consumers, and that is where we are at folks. Consumer setups aren't adequately profitable for the new CLEC's at the moment, so things are unlikely to change for now. Maybe this is the logical follow on to the "Bill 602p" thing, except that this dying monopoly mave have a stranglehold on your cable access. personally I think I cn already hear the laughter starting..
Sounds like AT&T is forgetting who needs who.
Without those sites all over the place, joe average has no reason to use AT&T.
I suspect that those NICs with the built-in SSL accelerators may gain popularity if this hair-brained scheme goes into effect and is not violently opposed in the courts. If I were running a business site, I'd encrypt EVERYTHING.
On a side note, does anyone know what happened with the idea to add univeral encryption to IPV6? That would be a wonderful way of protecting some semblance of privacy and freedom out there.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
The sooner the ground-connection carriers like AT&T and Time/Warner/AOL/CNN/Netscape go insane with hubris based on their terrestrial dominance, the sooner wireless will take over -- and the sooner wireless takes over, the sooner the infosphere goes into orbit.
Seastead this.
AussiePenguin
Melbourne, Australia
ICQ 19255837
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
AT&T if you're reading this. I for one will drop your service if you do this. I will also drop my long distance, and cell phone service that you provide. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will do this.
OK Rant over...
Um, this is my sig.
This is fucking rediculous!
... just kidding!!
How can AT&T expect to be payed for sales using thier internet service?
As the topic says, that would be like the phone company asking for a percentage of sales made using the phone, which is absolutely rediculous.
AT&T is just excersising its assfuck attitude to boss people around, thinking they run the financial wold and everyone owes them something, because as we all AT&T -is- in fact the ruler of the financial world
Quite frankly, im sick of these corporations trying to take everything, and controlling the whole market in a bullish fasion, and where is the FTC in this? Isnt the FTC's job to insure American's have a fair marketplace, the Microsoft cases helped a little, but only caused confusion instead of reform.
We need to see some steps forward to reduce monopolies, and to ensure customers rights.
Systems Administrator
Servu Networks
http://www.servuhome.net
Brent Jones
If they are going to put an extra charge on e-commerce transactions, how do you expect them to know which stores you are just browsing and which ones they are purchasing from... Also doesn't the web browser encrypt data on both ends... What are they going to do, block everything from https://??
It just doesn't make any sense! Look at the monkey, look at the silly monkey!
Mike Crawford
Using the phone as an analogy, is it legal for AT&T to charge merchants for customers delivered to them simply by using their phone lines? I simply can't imagine how this could fly. If it does work, many online retailers will close due to non-existent profits. As the article points out, online retailers are losing money on sales in hopes of creating a customer base. Amazon has been following this policy for years, and has yet to turn a profit. If Amazon has to pay AT&T a cut, and the States start passing Internet Tax laws, say good-bye to the e-commerce industry.
It simply kills me that AT&T has to resort to this type of behavior to turn a profit. You can almost see the board room at AT&T corporate:
CEO: We're losing our shirts in the long distance market! What can we do to create a new revenue engine?
SUIT: Well, making a real product could take time and money, and that would hurt our share price. Why don't we just charge people money for the hell of it? Let the lawyers work out the details.
CEO: What would you suggest? We can't just start charging people's credit cards. I don't think that's legal.
SUIT #2: Well, let's cash in on this e-thing. We'll charge merchants, since they have more money than customers. Besides, most companies just roll over when you sick a few lawyers on them. Take Rambus and 1-click shopping for example.
CEO: Beautiful. Why don't we just charge retailers for providing customer "leads". After all, we own most of the networks. That could be worth billions! We create a massing team of lawyers to handle the strongarming and politician-buying, the lawyers take half, and we still get billions. And we don't even have to produce anything! We just sit on our butts and let the pot 'o gold roll in! Excellent. Gentlemen, I think we all deserve a big bonus for such innovation.
SUITS: .
Corporate America makes me puke.
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
They couldn't be stupid enough to try this
Any Merchant not wanting to be billed out of the blue will block AT&T users from accessing their servers if they have any sense.
Any AT&T user not wanting to pay more for merchandise will switch ISP's if they have sense.
I expect them to come to their senses before they shoot themselves in the foot like this
Here's a great Idea Let us put our Internet division out of business.
Then again maybe their calculations show that there are enough Sheep out there for them to get away with it.
The Taxation Method worked for M$
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Actually the phone company does get a cut in phone orders. Either you or the company you are calling are paying toll charges. 800 numbers aren't free, the recipient just pays the bill.
informative??
i have just three words for that:
"dictionary dot com"
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Gi Joe doll for the son at Brick and Mortar Toys R us$15.00
Same doll online : $8.00
Shipping : $10.50
State tax for your and foreign state: $2.00
6 emails back and forth to online company: 30
AT&T's greedy addon
Priceless
(This is if everyone has their way, money grubbing politicians and the like.)
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
How dumb can a company be. The instant the net became huge among the average person, AT&T's revenue from long distance was assigned a death warrant. There is no such thing as long distance anymore. Wireless and the net have made DISTANCE a moot point. The money is in BANDWIDTH.
Welcome to the new economy AT&T.
While I have to agree with the logic that the newswire likely screwed something up here, this does make sense. Before you go flaming me, let me explain why.
As long as anyone is allowed to run whatever protocol they want over the Internet, the pirates and warez groups (as the RIAA/MPAA/SPA call them) will be able to survive. However, if content is only allowed on the Internet via accepted protocols to "approved" content that "approved" users have access to, it becomes much harder to illegally acquire works. While this does impose a burdern on the Internet since these rules will have to be enforced on several levels, the technology to do this likely exists today.
Think of today's firewalls that are "protocol aware;" these won't let you run telnet over a web connection because they know what a web connection looks like. By the same reasoning, an "approved" protocol could allow your ISP to collect money on your purchases.
Sure, it would require a large number of sites on the Internet to follow new rules and install new equipment in order to this, as well as likely government legislation, but I believe we are witnessing the commercialization of the Internet. As companies take control of the backbones, they will control what you say and do on *their* network. Desperate companies worried that their works may be in jeporady likely will speed up this process.
Don't like what the Internet may be coming to? Start your BBSes again, and pray they don't tap your phone line. I wish I had better advice, but that's it.
Hmm. Having read the CNN piece, I have to play a little devil's advocate here. AT&T has pretty well been killed in their once profitable Long Distance service, with rates as low as 5 cents per minute. Considering the infrastructure this ancient behemoth has in place, it's not suprising they are grasping at straws to turn a buck somehow.
The concept initially sounds stupid and difficult to manage, consider:
Counting hits over your broadband network to a merchant site
Determining a purchase was made
Handling refunds for returns
Running a meter on a proposition like this means the merchant has to buy into it, by cooperating with AT&T to notify them of any of the above taking place. Perhaps not such a big deal for an online merchant who does a highvolume of high margin goods, but how many of these are there? The bookkeeping would get pretty hairy were they logging every $5.00 sale at Amazon, not that Amazon can spare a cent, it might be what drives them under.
This is a risky gambit, obviously in desperation, for AT&T. Seems like they should have held onto Lucent.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Its not about news anymore, its about posting a summary that will get everyone mad and generate lots of comments, or should I call them banner hits? Apparently michael chose to use the word "decided" while the real article clearly states AT&T is "considering". You talk of your hate for large greedy corporations while knowingly posting incorrect material to get those banner hits. Just admit you've completely sold out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If the employers didn't give the stock away in options they would retain the value of the original shares so it is perfectly legitimate for them to write this off. The employees who benefit when they exercise the options pay capital gains tax anyway so the IRS doesn't lose out.
What do they want? The corporations to pay tax on money they give away in employee benefits AND the employees to pay tax on the same earnings? That would be double taxation and obviously wrong.
If the share price grows massively the employers find they have given much more away and lose equity in their own company and therefore stockholder value. At the same time the employees pay substantial amounts of capitol gains tax.
Begone with your ineffective demons! Instruct yourself in the proper use of web browing computers! For I am Rational...and approval by Ayn Rand is my metier!
Join our unholy alliance, or perish in shame!
Carousel is a lie!
Furthermore, the CNN article goes on to read: "AT&T would also collect a fee from retailers each time a customer accesses their site through its network." What!?!? Think about this for a moment, I see a new opportunity for poor college kids. Rather than do something like AllAdvantage or any of those other pay to surf, do a pay to not surf. Say to these companies who would get hit by a charge from AT&T on a per visit basis, "I won't visit your site for 10 cents a day, otherwise I will visit your site several times, racking up charges for you."
In any case, I can't see this working, everyone will switch ISPs, AT&T stockholders will complain, etc.
<brief_rant>
See, folks, capitalism works just fine, we don't need to gov't stepping in and makig mandate after mandate... If businesses are doing something funny, let the consumers make them change their plans by voting with their dollars.
</brief_rant>
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Besides.. you encrypt the data, and they don't know what you are sending. Hell, go look at http://www.distributed.net, all those cpus and they still haven't cracked RC5-64.. no chance that that AT&T would beable to crack billions of encrypted 128 bit sessions..
world according to me..
Yeah, but then you, and a couple hundred million other web users and merchants, hit AT&T with a class action suit. You sue the crap out of them for restraint of trade and everything else. If AT&T were to try something like that, they'd be history. The gov't would have no choice but to carve them up, yet again. I can't imagine anyone dreaming that they could get away with a plan such as you describe. (Oh, yeah, I forgot about Micros~1.)
No, I read the article and I came away thinking, they must be talking about charging those fees for merchants connected via the AT&T backbone and not for customers using the AT&T backbone. The article is ambiguous on that point.
If AT&T comes around asking me for a cut of stuff bought on my web site by @Home subscribers, I'll tell 'em to stuff it, block @Home subscribers, then sue the $ out of them. By the time it's all done, I'll own their a$$ets!
No, I don't see how they can legally charge anyone who isn't already their customer and who also agreed to the charges up front.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-09 -20&res=l
--
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
How is AT&T going to know what a "web retailer" is? I mean, sure, it's obvious for the big ones; you go to www.landsend.com, or www.amazon.com, or www.cdw.com, and AT&T's gonna know it's a retailer. But what of the million and one dinky stores out there that let you buy things over the web? How is AT&T going to tell the difference between a browser visiting a retailers site or a browser just browsing? Second, if I ran a small outfit that marketed over the web, and suddnely AT&T was going to start *charting* me for every customer that they somehow claim to have redirected my way, you had better believe I'd start blocking all AT&T addresses from my site. Hate to lose the sales, but hate to be charged by AT&T for every browser they want to take credit for. How could they even enforce this? I sure hope this is just more noise, because of anything comes of it, it's going to be very ugly. -Rob
I would highly recommend trying another route, namely the government.
Here in Washington State we have the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, which has proved very helpful in my dealings with USWest. My roommates and I were some of the first to sign up for DSL service in June of '98 and we didn't get service until around November, a typical USWest installation horror story. Through the whole ordeal, my roommate was a savvy enough consumer to keep meticulous records of all of our trials and tribulations with USWest and then get the state utilities commission on USWest's case. We ended up getting a few months free, no installation costs, no long term commitments, and a couple of other things out of the deal. Not full compensation, but it was nice. Nothing we did had a greater impact on our dealings with USWest than calling the State Utilities Commission.
Since most of the telecommunications monopolies have yet to really break up, there are still strict rules imposed by the government regarding acceptable levels of service. I'm sure most states have a similar regulation body and with your well-documented evidence, it shouldn't be too hard to receive some level of redress through them. Plus, I think the utility marks you off in their customer database as someone not to piss off in the future. : )
HTH,
n8_f
Uhh .. what's the fuss?
AT&T's not saying they're going to tax every single 'net initiated monetary transaction that passes through their network - they're just going to tax the transactions that they're directly responsible for facilitating, through something like their start page. Think Netscape's netcenter. Read the CNN article and you'll notice they use thier pocketnet wireless service as an example. (They're just selling prominent merchant placement just like Yahoo or Google would.)
--aai
Under the possible plan, AT&T, the No. 1 U.S. telephone and cable-television company, would charge for each customer that accesses an Internet retail site using AT&T's high-speed communications network. It would receive an additional commission when customers buy something, said Gartner Group analyst Ken McGee.
ATT refused comment, I won't.
This sucks jagged rocks, as does the rest of their cable modem direction. Changing from static IP, BZZZZT! Banning virtual IP addresses in your own home, BZZZZT! EULA that continues to outlaw any kind of serving, but having unreliable (MS of course) never up mail and DNS, BZZZZT! Just about requiring Windows and thinking that they have the right to poke around your system, BBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT! Overall a system that provides zero privacy, discourages all but the worst kind of file sharing, and forbids real publishing.
Cable companies need some real competition in the form of wires owned by other companies. Having everything owned by ATT unregulated does not seem like the logical result of telco deregulation.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
AT&T's fairly insignificant as a backbone provider. I'd be worried if it was MCI/Worldcom pulling this shit.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yet, is it legal?
:
I will MAKE it legal.
Great idea! They should also be heald liable for any crime going across their network. An online merchant doesn't pay their taxes, IRS goes after AT&T!
I've been a MediaOne cable modem customer in LA for about 2.5 years. I've got one of the big finned cable modems too, looks cool. It has also been outstanding service for practically the whole time, barring about a month when the operation of the service was switched over to RoadRunner (which was before the AT&T merger). I wrote themto tell them that I would cancel their wonderful service the day they put this plan into effect. I did so through their web page, so probably no one important will ever hear of it, but you never know. I'd really hate to have to cancel it, finding a DSL provider with comparable service would not be easy (though at least there's some choice there.)
After all, it's merely one more line that could be hidden among this list of stuff on a recent phone bill I received:
Taxes and Surcharges
Local Services
Local number portability fee: $0.23
Network acces surcharge: $3.50
Federal excise tax: $0.70
State and local taxes: $2.27
State and local surcharge: $1.00
Long Distance Service
Federal Excise Tax: $0.82
State and local taxes: $0.25
Federal, state, and local surcharges: $1.40
National access fee: $1.46
Federal universal service fee: $1.65
Payphone access fee: $0.30
That's 11 items already. Who actually reads all this crap? What the hell does it even mean? (State and local taxes; state and local surcharges.) Who's gonna notice one more surcharge? Especially if they give it some bogus name like "National broadband infrastructure support program".
Call me cynical.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
How has all of this come to pass under a Democrat with a line item veto? Oh yeah, he's the same dude who signed the DMCPA, and pushed it too!
Sellouts top to bottom?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"And the company that will bring it to you... is AT&T"
20 years later...
"And the company that will stick it to you... is AT&T"
Ed R.Zahurak
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
hehe, good idea, though i bet the alleged @home hypothetical policy under discussion would have some basic monthly minimum regardless of sales. kinda like the inverse of how many salespersons are paid a low base salary to provide incentive to achieve sales commission. /. FUD, i'm willing to guess that this idea is more of a hassle than would be profitable, and won't actually see the light of day.
but because this is
see also #28
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Damn. I could by a BMW each month! I'd love to see a Spam tax or surcharge! ;)
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
An e-commerce site PAYS for it's internet connection. Say it happens to come from AT&T, then AT&T is already getting their money from the e-commerce site. Isn't that why a site would pay for a connection? So they can have people come to their site?
Another point of view...The customer has a connection from Blah.net, therefore they pay Blah.net to use the internet. Blah.net buy's their bandwidth from AT&T. The customer is still indirectly paying for their RIGHT to access/buy something from Foo.com.
I don't see what their problem is. If AT&T isn't making enough money, then for god's sake, they should raise the price for their Modem/ISDN/Cable/High Bandwidth Customers.
The people that are paying for an internet connection are paying for exactly that. They are paying to access the INTERNET.
Just think about how life would be if you had to pay extra, above and beyond, everytime you made a sale over the phone. Do you pay restraunts money(besides for a meal), when you make a business deal over lunch? How about meeting for business at Starbucks? Do I pay Logitech a monthly bill when I type up an Invoice? Wait a minute, who own's the "air" with which we use to speak?
Obsurd ain't it?
IANAA, (I Am Not An American) but hail from thier neigbour to the North. Since much of what goes on below the 49th eventually happens up here, I'll comment anyway.
Isn't it amazing. Here we are, 224 years after the American Revolution, and we're back to square one. If this follows through, the Citizens of the Good Ol' US of A will be paying sales tax to a coproration. Heh. Something like that hasn't happened since, ohhhhh... the British Crown decided to tax tea. Read the link, kids - that was to save a faltering coporation, namely the East India Company, too.
So, we have taxes on audio capable blanks to make sure the RIAA and it's kin get thier fair share, absurd patents and copyrights whose sole purpose is to guarantee profits for already successful companies, and now this. Makes you sick, especially when this and this stare you in the face each night on the news
Welcome to the Free World, fellow serfs, look what the American Free Market eventually brings you - The Copristocracy. It works just like an Aristocracy, but instead of being appointed by a King, the people in it founded a successful company, are paying off our "elected" officials to pass laws so they keep thier fabulous wealth, so they can pass it on to thier progeny - just like a Duke, Prince or Barron. So much for the Revolution, eh?
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
It may be fun to shake you aheads against these things when you read about them, and wonder "what's the world coming to?". But things are really getting out of hand. We constaly learn of how companies (mostly companies anyway) come up with really truly stupid things (like this AT&T business, stupid patents, etc). I fear that soon these things are going to start to catch on! What if that happens? The world (well, the US anyway unless the madness spreads) will become a greater hell whole than it already is. Imagine you paying someone for walking on the pavement, for using their broadband access, for looking at a web page, for each key stroke you do on your keyboard. Something has to be done to prevent this madness (and it really is madness, and I believe those that are behind it know it too - they just think they can still make money off of it, madness or not). Is there no procedure through which citizens or organizations can propose law changes to make these things impossible? It's not like you're local representative (congressmen I believe it is in the US) is gonig to listen, since the person in question probably have no idea what the "broadband connection" really is, and what role it plays. Similar arguments apply to most of these things. I am truly scared of this outrageous development.
/ Peter Schuller
--
peter.schuller@infidyne.com
http://www.scode.org
This also happens in certain industries - Electronic Data Interchange (E.D.I.) for example. Used heavily in the medial/dental fields for insurance claim submissions, certain corporations own the network infrastructure it rides across and as such take a cut of each and every EDI claim. In the dental industry in Canada, each time a dental office sends a patient insurance claim electronically the insurance company pays fifty cents - of which the carrier company gets about $0.15.
Not quite the same situation, but it's likely this will be the future of business-to-business communications.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
The problem with AT&T's logic is the assumption that online business models would support this. Take Amazon, for example. Margins are absolutely cut to the bone. Reduced pricing is one of the things that make online retailing attractive. If you add cost on top of the current prices for purchases, let alone *accesses* then that cost is passed through to the consumer. As a result, by some factor, online purchasing is not as attractive. Not a good strategy for something still in its infancy.
The two questions that lurk in my mind are:
1. AT&T is planning on charging for access and sales on the basis that they are crossing their network. Hasn't that access already been paid and accounted for by either: a.) consumer paid fees to ISP's or b.) merchant fees for their bandwidth? It seems like all of the cost AT&T could already incur is paid for.
2. Doesn't this set the stage for a Miscrosoft of the internet? For example, there are 2 services, X & Y. AT&T invests in X, but not Y. AT&T then gives substantial discounts (perhaps even waiving) the merchant fees for network access to X, thereby making it more competitive. This part extends beyond books and DVD's, in as much as AT&T could charge to access things such as paid tech support or downloads of updated products. What about live internet radio and other broadcasts? They have revenue streams from ads. AT&T could decide to charge for access to those items.
The whole concept isn't workable. It is like an excise tax that is paid to a corporation. It also flies in the face of free interchange of ideas and information.
Although it is on the fringes of freedom, I hope the EFF takes a look at the possibilities here.
Marc
This looks strongly like a press release for the Gartner Group
Nope. I've checked both here and AT&T's site (see below) for the actual releases and I can't find anything.
Quite frankly, the way this article is written, it sounds like AT&T wants to charge all on-line merchants for each sale made to AT&T broadband customers. This cannot be the case.
First point: I, as an on-line retailer do not use any of AT&T's services. As long as I do not push anything onto their network, I have no accountability to them. If their customer wants to pull something from my servers onto AT&T's network, the bill belongs to and stays with their customer.
Second point: AT&T, while it can monitor traffic to individual sites, has no means of determining just how much I have sold to their customer. Packet-wise (especially SSL-based communication), all transactions look the same and AT&T has no and should have no means of peeking into those transactions.
Third point: The internet exists where AT&T doesn't. If I want to run an e-commerce site from HavenCo's Sealand fortress, there exists no juristiction under which AT&T can pursue any claims of unfair bandwidth usage.
With this in mind, let's re-examine the article. It sounds like AT&T is planning on setting up a basic, ad-supported service, whereby customers can use the broadband in exchange for viewing ads placed by sponsors. In this model, AT&T takes a percentage of the revenue generated by this placement. Thus we have three consenting parties in the transaction (you-consumer, me-merchant, AT&T).
So, this begs the question... If two people, using part of AT&T's broadband network, meet, fall in love, and so forth, specifically what piece of pie does AT&T think they're entitled to?
First of all, i wonder what their quarterly reports look like.
14 Desk Thingies : $11,304,110
04 Original Cans of Spam: $145
87 Fooblargs : $2,492
01 Stuff : $6,000,000,000,000
Or maybe they are just spending a lot on Stuff on trips to Amsterdam.
In any case, wait one second while I remove The Shaft That is AT&T out of my backside.
Carousel is a lie!
Bluntly, these guys are in a market who's revenue isn't growing. There's too much competetion and too many price wars for the revenue from network services to make double-digit percentage growth targets.
The problem isn't that AT&T isn't growing, it's that it isn't growing fast enough. AT&T was used to it's de-facto monopoly for many years. Things were stable.. Then the long-distance wars started heating up. It started to lose profitability.
Then came the internet. Not only has it greatly increased competetion, but it will fundamentally destroy AT&T's fundamental revenue maker even more, long distance voice calls, but its setting up an expectation of double-digit profit and revenue growth. AT&T can't do that. No way.
So, AT&T is between a rock and a hard place. They're stuck selling a commodity whose price is decreasing exponentially, they have a circuit-switched network instead of a packet-switched.. And they need high growth targets.
In order to remain viable and prominent, they have to find some other big money-maker.And siphoning a share of every commerce transaction is a good technique.
This is the other big fight going on. Everyone is fighting to become the 'middleman' that people go through. The middleman role will give them a free cut of every transaction, and insane profit margins.
The whole AOL versus MSN consent decree in 95 was the fight to be the consumer network provider, and thus THE middleman. Fortunately the public and open internet won the first battle. But the fight still goes on. AT&T, Microsoft, AOL, EBay, Priceline.
In the internet, the way people will win big is to become the middleman, the de-facto monopoly that everyone goes through.. That way you get a cut of every transaction.
This is AT&T trying to join that club.
AT&T network services and support don't even know what a ping is. How can they possibly expect to do something of this magnitude?
This could be bad, however it could also be REALLY good.
Your site no longer pays for bandwidth, just a fraction of sales, you could save significantly.
And if you really don't like it go with someone else.
This is disgusting. AT&T is not "delivering customers", I can go buy something on my own volition, thank you very much, and I can come from any ISP I please. AT&T did absolutely nothing special to get me there, and neither I nor the person I'm buying from should have to be penalized for that.
Someone do something about that, please. I didn't mean it to dilute the actual issues that the article brings up, I just wanted to vent and share my frustrations. Thanks!
--
1) how can they monitor what's being bought/sold?
if i buy something from eBay, how will they know what i bought/sold and how much i paid?
and if they can...uhh...there goes all sorts of privacy, since most transactions are done via SSL
2) if it is relatively possible and AT&T does intend on following through, the market/government will decide what goes...
and i'd be VERY willing to bet that
a) general society won't be too pleased (ie: have to pay AOL everytime they buy something)
b) if general society doesn't like it, politicians won't support it
c) if general society doesn't like it, other ISPs won't support it
d) if neither the gov't nor the market accepts, guess what? it crashes
i might be wrong on some points....i'm not sure, but that's as much quick reasoning you'll get at my state of mind right now...
--------------
however that is neither here nore there. let it be said that each & every one of us must at this moment
throw our televisions out the window
Ya got that? Breaker breaker one nine, I believe we are in trouble if you didn't
don't drink soap! keep out of eye! dilute! dilute! ok!
The only reason you are not part of the good old USA is because you chose to fight for your recent royal English conquerers instead of your freedom. To this day, your honor holds you a slave to the crown. It's on your currency and in your laws. Say what you may about the ability of the crown to enforce those laws, it all amounts to the hollow declarations of a slave rather than a law abiding citzen or subject. A failed revolution is better than none.
You are just as much an American anyone else on this wide continent. Keep fighting for your interests and the truth.
Good bye, fair Karma!!!!!!!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Reading the article, I got the impression they were talking about changing from flat-rate hosting to commissions on retailers that connect through AT&T, not charging retailers a commission on sales by an AT&T subscriber (which would be unenforceable).
IOW, if Amazon.com has a link direct to AT&T's backbone, instead of paying a flat fee for the line, they'd pay based on traffic and sales through that line. They're not going to charge Amazon just because you bought a book and you're an @home subscriber.
It still sounds like a dumb idea though. I imagine this would require retailers to check which pipe an order came through, and AT&T to audit that information.
This
By becoming the "owner" of each transaction, would AT&T lose its common carrier status and become answerable to any dissatisfied customers? In other words, could I now sue them if a merchant ripped me off, because AT&T was responsible for the transaction?
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Why does AT&T think they can tax the Internet when even the majority of the Gov ernments have adopted a hands off policy in relation to taxes . We the ISP's pay more than enough to the backbone providers for the Internet connections. Then on top of that we again have to pay premium prices for the Broadband circuits. Each of which is taxed. With a t1 starting at around 750$ minimum for the line and 1000$ minimum for the Internet service per month. Then we have the equipment, Advertising, support, and billing. Each of which adds an operating cost to the providers. The bad part is that any additional costs will be passed on to the enduser.
I have a simple solution that will rather quickly put an end to any major corporation, which initiates a plan of this nature. As a network administrator the first step I would take is block any and all traffic from AT&T to my customers and my sites to AT&T customers. If enough ISP's and larger service providers took similar courses of action, we could end this policy within 2 days max.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
An article on TechTV.com indicates that they are demanding that ISPs who provision their customers with Time-Warner broadband surrender 75% of tgheir subscriber fees, 25% of all other revenue, and editorial control of their home pages and exclusive rights to a prominant area 'above the fold' on those pages to Time-Warner!
At least the Devil lets you have exclusive use of your soul until you die!
You've got to be kidding me, how greedy can they really be? Oh well, time for the consumer to step in and tell them where to stick that highspeed pipe...
-HobophobE
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
When the ecommerce first started, some companies wanted businesses to host their Web sites on their servers: AT&T being one of them. Now that businesses, have fast internet access (such as DSL and T1) relatively cheap, they host their own sites bypassing AT&T. So, if nobody wants to host their sites with us and we take a cut of their profit, then we change the rules and take a cut based on providing the connection to you regardless of the bandwidth. The only thing is that there could be numerous players taking a cut since it isn't only one phone company providing the connection. You have the local loop carrier the long distance carrier (i.e. AT&T) and even the international phone carriers all wising up to the fact that they can take a cut of the profit. This is usually 2%. In addition, you have the VISA card company taking 2.4% and the software company who provided the DBMS', and Web software taking a 2% cut, and sites that provided referral services thru banner ads taking a 2% cut. Before you know it it cost the ecommerce company 8.4% of their profit on every sale. Now wait till the federal, state and local governments take a piece of the action. Now the person renting you office space bases their rent on your profits. This is how it's done at your local Mall. The landlord looks at your books and says the base rent is this (what market will bare) and should not be enough to cause you to go out of business during the slow times of the year, but when your business goes up, we want a percentage of your sales to make up for the cheap rent! In the ecommerce world, they raise your rent based on how successful you are even though you have only a small office space. This is what is going on in San Francisco now. Dot coms are being charged a higher rent than the old economy businesses for the same amount of floor space. A person told me a story where FORD Motor company has a contract with the local parts supplier for their cars for a certain dollar amount per item. When the parts supplier bought a new piece of equipment which would allow them to increase the number of parts per hour and at a higher quality so that they could increase their profit margin and not increasing the cost to FORD, FORD told them to refund part of the money they had paid to the parts supplier since they felt they were "OWED" a discount as a result of this increased productivity. In essence, negating this companies attempt to increase their profit margin and giving it back to FORD. How does FORD know this, well they have company representatives that review all their parts suppliers books and operations and tell you what to do. If you tell them to stay out of your business, they just take their business away from you and give it to somebody else. Hence, the parts suppliers can be considered a subsidiary of FORD Motor company and not an independent free market one. Thus, this defeats the whole purpose of upgrading ones manufacturing capability, if another company can come in (your customer) and dictate how much profit you can make! In fact, once you start hearing about how big business or business in general is done, it makes you sick. Forget about what you have learned in Economics class since that is just theory. The real-world operates differently, with big biz making sure the little guy doesn't get to big. And if one little biz succeeds after all of this, then they just buy you out starting the whole process again. The same applies to government contracting. The tidbits are given to small business and the federal government wants to protect the big guy. The government calls this "protecting Americas industrial base" which in fact is supporting big biz and their inefficiencies. Take a look at the 6 billion dollar award given to EDS for the Navies worldwide computer support contract. They essentially forced all the local small biz's that supported the local base to go out of business. Their only choice is to work as a subcontractor now to EDS. But in all government contracting the prime (EDS) gets 15% of the small business contracting dollars as a mangagement fee over you even though you know what you are doing and having been serving that base for a long time. The Navy shifts the management problems onto one company and doesn't have to associate themselves with the small business company. Out-of-sight out-of-mind philosophy. So in conclusion it is a common practice, it's called dog-eat-dog biz practice and goes on behind closed doors without any public visibility.
The comparison would be amusing, if AT&T's plan weren't reality!
---------------------------
Dear Internet Subscriber:
Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.
Under proposed legislation the U.S. Postal Service will be attempting to bilk email users out of "alternate postage fees".
Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt to charge a 5cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Washington D.C. lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law.
The U.S. Postal Service is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign "There is nothing like a letter". Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents per day, or over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal Service for a service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy and non-interference. If the federal government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a surcharge to email, who knows where it will end. You are already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureacratic efficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from New York to Buffalo. If the U.S. Postal Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the "free" Internet in the United States. One congressman, Tony Schnell (r) has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on all Internet service" above and beyond the government's proposed email charges.
Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of email surcharge "a useful concept who's time has come" (March 6th 1999 Editorial) Don't sit by and watch your freedoms erode away!
Send this email to all Americans on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say "No!" to Bill 602P.
Kate Turner
Assistant to Richard Stepp
Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Attorneys at Law
216 Concorde Street,
Vienna, Va.
------------
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
I hope people realize how stupid of an idea that is. Companies are going to keep creating stupid policies like this unless us, the consumers, stop falling for it. AT&T wouldn't have started charging a commission unless they knew that there were enough customers who buy online and would still use their service to offset the amount of people who quit because they realize that they're being cheated. The cable company doesn't charge for buying things off infomercials. They know that if they did, they would lose more customers than would benifit. People already know how cable and infomercials work. It's the ignorance of the human race that lets these policies hurt us like this. Pardon me, I'm off to sign up with MCI.
Some ISP's already do charge per byte.
It isn't very popular because people like flat rates, even if they cost more.
(wasn't there an article on this recently?)
The cypherpunks sites always redirect to an ssl server. Gossip, bomb recipies, orders -- encrypt it all. Consider the cost ratio for processing power vs. bandwidth. Encrypting your traffic isn't going to make a dent in the costs of serving.
Uhm. According to these figures at the AT&T Investor relations site, AT&T had assets as of June of $204,356 million and liabilities of $125,215 million. This means(if I am reading this right), that they made a profit of around $75 billion dollars
Scroll down that PDF a little and you get to Owners Equity, which is is not profit. Profit is not a difference between Assets & Liabilities (unless you are Intel selling stock like they did earlier this year and throwing the capital gains in with revenue to manipulate your stock price, but I digress), Profit = Revenue - Expenses.
I direct your attention to AT&T's income statement, ended June 30, 2000. For the 3 months ended June, they had $16,221 billion in Revenue, $12.954 billion in expenses, for a gross income of $3.267 billion. After other expenses and taxes they net a measley $1.767 billion. Even the last 6 months is only $3.508 billion. Not exactly a promising investment, I'm better off putting my paycheck in a 5% savings account.
Now go invest some of your money in taking an accounting class so you can understand the difference.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What an ingenious strategy...
to send customers running to competitors...
oh wait, there are none, since TimeWarner and at&t have illegal non-compete agreements
800 numbers are cheap. My mom had one for her business. You basically pay for your customer's long-distance call at a pretty reasonable rate (basically about the same as you would pay for long distance service per minute). This is in no way comparable to what AT&T is planning. What would be more comparable is if the merchants would pay some fraction of your broadband bill when you place an order with them. But that's not what's going on here.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If they charge for one, they are claiming that they are an active participant. And they will not be able to shy away from the less desirable activities, or outright crimes, that their participants commit. No matter what the terms of service say.
Although upon reading some of the comments, this may be just a VERY badly worded article.
Damn it's raining hard this morning.
When you hear a loud popping sound, your head is out of your ass.
...is how it's turned into a general AT&T hatefest. This isn't to say that AT&T doesn't deserve a good drubbing- but it all seems terribly offtopic.
On the other hand, there's so little information to actually go on...
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet is how feasable this even is.
AT&T would have to be monitoring all of their customers web traffic to know if they were shopping or not (I certainly wouldn't be telling them voluntarily if they wanted to charge me) which would invariably lead to numerous privacy concerns relating to the tracking of web browsing habits (and of course AT&T would *never* sell this information because the customer *always* comes before profits ).
I just don't see this as a problem we have to face right now, though sometime in the future, most likely we will.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
This makes very little sense-by doing this, AT&T is just alienating their customers. Who's going to say "Hey, I want to pay extra for stuff I order!" It makes me wonder if they're trying to lose money for a tax writeoff of some sort-reminds me of Catch-22, where Colonel Cathcart's job in America is to run businesses into the ground for writeoffs. AT&T is probably doing the same thing-they're making too much money and need to lose some :P
Colin Winters
Business to Consumer sales expected to grow to about $152 billion in 2002 .. Its not like they're going to take 10% of sales... they're going to take 1% or less, and likely we won't even know. Heck, if they took 0.1%, it accounts for $152 million. It's like that .9 of a cent tacked on to gas prices. Unfortunately, this is inevitable. Maybe we won't see it in the same ridiculous fashion as what AT&T is proposing, but we'll see it, if not already.
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<br>Its a numbers game... its always a numbers game.
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<br>Is it possible that your Bank is rounding off your Interest to 0.01%? Imagine how much that will accumulate to over time.
The scheme would involve retrofitting all 250 million Americans with thought-monitoring microchips that would detect whenever someone thought about using a telephone.
Carousel is a lie!
The article wasn't exactly clear on how AT&T wants to do this, and I think if you read between the lines a little there are indications that this concept which AT&T wants to try is nothing new.
A quote from the article:
"AT&T spokesman Ritch Blasi said the program is not a new one, and is currently offered as PocketNet service on the company's wireless phones. Under PocketNet, retailers pay for highly visible spots each time someone logs onto the Internet with their wireless phone."
What I think AT&T means by this announcement is that AT&T will use the "portal page" that, IIRC, is locked into the browsers they give to their customers (by use of a standard branding kit from the browser's manufacturer.) My guess is that they are going to begin having openings for retailers to advertise directly to AT&T's users, and then take a cut of the profits in an affiliate-style program.
In other words, this is much ado about nothing, until we hear more about AT&T's specific plans, which should be forthcoming if this is anything remarkable.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You'd think serious journalists (ha, I crack myself up!) could afford a spellchecker:
With the new pricing plan, AT&T would be able to mine a booming new market.
They misspelled gouge.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
You've inadvertently stumbled upon one of the major philosophical differences between a circuit-switched network and a packet-switched one.
In the case of a catalog order placed through an 800 number, Ma Bell is being paid to complete a physical circuit for a given amount of time, not to facilitate any particular transaction.
This analogy can't be used to justify AT&T's idea of charging e-commerce vendors for hits to their web sites. Those vendors are already paying for their bandwidth! Think of an Internet connection as an 800 line that's off the hook 24/7. A fat 'Net pipe already costs many thousands of dollars a month to maintain... just as those toll-free lines do. It is not reasonable for a carrier to impose content-based surcharges on packet-switched networks. They add no intrinsic value whatsoever to e-commerce transactions, and they have no reason to know or care what's in our packets, as long as the pipe is paid for.
A more appropriate analogy would be AT&T charging more for 800 calls that actually result in a sale, as distinguished from calls placed to inquire about a product or speak with tech support. I don't think that would fly in the Real World of direct-sales merchandising, and neither will this harebrained scheme.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
What would AT&T do? Would they cut access? Wouldn't that be a denial of service from the consumer point of view? A breach of contract if you wish?
I signed up with MediaOne (Los Angeles) just about one month before the AT&T merger deal was announced. If I had known that was in the works, I would have passed.
(Background: I used to be a (fairly) happy AT&T long-distance phone customer. Then one month I noticed this "minimum usage fee" on my phone bill: suddenly, my long-distance costs went from about $0.89 (I don't call that many people out of my area, and those who do all have 800 numbers) to over $10.00! (Higher tax rates, etc.) Needless to say, I was pissed, namely becuase, I was never informed of this new charge. I bitched to the poor customer support lady until she rescinded the charge for the first three months. But that got me looking for a new long-distance provider, anyone other than AT&T. (I switched to MCI -- same lame-ass minimum monthly fee, but at least I get frequent-flier miles...))
Anyway, I am now an "AT&T Broadband" customer (in addition to AT&T Cable, and AT&T Telephone -- with MCI Long Distance, I just love the irony). For the first month -- the "money-back guarantee" period, and approximately the time span before the Mediaone-AT&T merger finalized -- my cable modem kicked ass. D/L speeds of 1.8 Mbps were the norm, and the slowest I ever measured it was just shy of 900 Kbps. (U/L speeds suck, of course, but I rarely need to upload anything other than website images and text documents... and telnet doesn't exactly require a lot of bandwidth...) Like I said, this lasted until about the end of the trial period. Then, over the span of about one week, the service totally went to shit. Dont' get me wrong, the speed was still there -- but the cable modem would randomly reset itself anywhere from every 30 seconds to every 30 minutes. Not a huge problem when you're browsing the web, but it was wreaking havoc on my ssh and ftp connections.
It took over a week for the tech to make it out, but I finally got it fixed. Works like a charm now (even better than originally, AFAICT). The solution? Swap out the 31337 Toshiba cable modem with this old clunky mutha (no manufacturer easily visible) that has cooling fins across the top -- and puts out enough heat that the design is justified!
So what's the moral of the story? Right now I am happy again, but I am also waiting for the next problem with my service. (Knocking on wood as I hope that I remain one of the only people in my area that has a cable modem...) But if AT&T does try some kind of shit like this -- and trust me, if they're considering it, they probably already have it approved by upper management -- I don't think I could in good conscience continue being their customer.
Locked into a contract? (I am in a nice 12-monther.) IANAL, but I seem to recall that a contract can be severed if one of the parties tries to impose "unconscionable" clauses on the other. Going to charge me a private tax on items I buy? I find that unconscionable.
Three final thoughts:
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
... as the tax-man? This feels to me like they're trying to impose an internet tax (at least on their networks). I guess they're trying to beat the government at their own game =)
Shusssssshh! They might get ideas!
If this would somehow bring broadband to the average consumer for just a few bucks a month (as opposed to $40+/month), then it could be viewed as a good thing.
Thoughts?
This is probably the best thing ever to happen to sprint :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
To see what's really going on with AT&T, you have to understand that there are two big paradigms in corporate America.
One is, make the kind of return that those Internet IPOs made to investors before the bubbles burst. Since that was all smoke and mirrors, we know that it is not possible to make such a return based on actual earnings.
Failing that, look good in an Economic Value Added analysis, an idea trademarked by SternStewart & Co. Run this on AT&T and you will see why they are in need of new revenue sources. Don't try it unless you are fluent in balance sheet and income statement, as well as having a passing acquaintance with the fine print in the notes to financial reports.
In fact, the technique is so widely used, you should learn how to calculate it anyway if you want to understand what is going on in the markets today. Ocean Barb
This is the kind of numbnut robber baron tactics you would expect from AT&T.
However, I thought these sort of tactics were prohibited by some of the previous ant-monopoly rulings against this company. They can do it.
Yet, is it legal?
I thought this was the sort of things that the feds were screaming about with other cable companies and such.
ACK
Both articles are dependent on quotes from McGee, and unattributed "other analysts" who disagree.
This looks strongly like a press release for the Gartner Group, rather than actual information from AT&T.
I have a close relative who helps stock analysts improve their performance. In all cases, working on unattributed data gives poor performance.
If McGee is working from known sources within AT&T, either heads will roll, or folks within AT&T are doing a little dance, because their trial balloon has such good publicity.
In either case, it's pretty silly journalism for remarks from one analyst to turn into two breaking-news articles. These would have better been two-paragraph speculative pieces.
I am just wondering, how excactly they are planning to track this. If they plan on tracking every packet that comes out of my cable modem I will cancel my account. Not only is it greed, it is also invasion of privacy. Who hell to do they think they are. Some needs to say something quickly, I know I am.
Someone mentioned that AT&T have a special service for their telephone-surfer users, where merchants pay (either a flat fee, or a commission of sales) in exchange for primary listings. Perhaps AT&T intend to extend this pricing plan to the Web instead...
Consider this. AT&T offer to colcate a merchant's web site at their facilities. Nice and fast (one would hope). AT&T do not charge any colocation fees at all, but, charge a very small commission on any sales from that site. (Part of the agreement would be that the merchant use AT&Ts web shopping facilities, sorta like Telstra's SureLink (which absolutely sucks, btw)). Being AT&T, they'd be able to get a phenomanally good merchant rate for their credit card transations, and they can use the margin on that to get their profits up. If the margin isn't enough, then they can sting the merchant for a small amount, but the merchant is still happy as they've had no outgoings for their web site, and get primary listings in front of AT&T's broadband customers.
I think something like that would work, and isn't too far from what the article was saying.
I still think it sucks, though. If I was to get a service from AT&T, I would want it to be generic... and not a 'AOL flavoured' style service.
Encryption and eavesdropping is the name of the game here. First, run SSL or similar between remote and the vendor. Secondly, if they claim commerce happened, accuse them of intercepting your traffic. In my mind, a transaction between me and a retailer is private, and my ISP or their upstream providers have no business on that.
... and today's pet project has
So, of course AT&T will be paying the online vendors for providing the reason why AT&T's customers have signed up for internet access, yes?
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
The PocketNet phones have preselect vendors to choose from on the website.
So, Barnes & Nobel wants to be the number 1 vendor, over both Amazon and CDNOW.
They will pay damn good money to be first on the list of merchants.
This is the same with Yahoo and its Portal of merchants.
You read a review of DVD, the link too buy is a perferred vendor.
Or the perfered news service is ABCNEWS not Reuters or AP...
As things dwindle down to the last remaining Internet portals, the merchants who are preferred win.
-Brook Harty :)
BTW, its cool to see a product you run on Slashdot... I run the PocketNet servers.
The article says
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) is mulling a plan to charge
Internet merchants for the customers it delivers
to their Web sites and for the value of goods
bought there, industry analysts said on Monday."
Can i get my cut for choosing to click there? It wa alot of work in deciding which one to go to, and ultimately it was my work which allows At&T and the business to get my business, so i deserve a cut too.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
What everyone needs to remember is that this is a free market and big business can screw you over just as much as the corner store clerk near the university here.
If business practices are offensive or overly expensive to the consumer, the consumer will win out in the end. Sure the RIAA is trying to save its ass. Do you think AT&T doesn't need to do something to lift it's bottom line? They are going to try a lot of bizarre things while trying to redefine their reason for being.
What they do is try bizarre obvious things and some really bizarre hidden things. The consumers will tell them what they can and can not do. That is the joy of Capitalism.
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
The charge-per-traffic cheme was once used, and still is for dialup services in France, for example. Problem is, nobody in their right mind would by from AT&T if they did the rest of the major Telcos would pick the bones of AT&Ts dead carcass like so many vultures.
AT&T wants to force businesses to charge internet
customers more money? I could call up the company
This would be the perfect reason to switch to DSL.
"Use Qwest DSL instead of AT&T @Home and you can
save 3% on every purchase over the internet!"
What a great ad campaign.
Just like getting a cash discount when filling
up at the petrol station.
http://nwbagpipes.com/
It's a good thing AT&T got their monopoly broken up. Otherwise think about how much power they would have. Oh, wait. Can they be broken up again? And smacked around for being anti-competition, kind of like the 3 strikes policy?
Too bad there is no moderation for ironic...
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Ok. There are two scenarios here.
In scenario number 1 (which I believe to be the most likely one) AT&T will stop charging ecommerce hosting customers based on traffic or flatrate fees. Instead they'll take a cut of each sale. This means many many companies will move their networks over to other big-pipe supplies, like sprint or uunet. Otherwise, the cost will be passed on to the consumer. Note that this could be a good thing! The per sale charge might well be less on average than the company was spending on their bandwidth at the flat rate or by traffic fees, especially for smaller ecommerce buisnesses.
Scenario number 2 is that, somehow, they track each individual home broadband users purchases, and force merchants/customers to pay a "tax" on those transactions. This is ethically, legally, and technologically questionable. If, somehow, they did get this working, I forsee a great rise in SSL proxies outside of at&t networks, or the rise of shell accounts on *nix boxen with ssl'd lynx. They'd never see a dime.
Assuming ATT is figuring they will know with some degree of certainty when a transaction takes place, as most websites only encrypt the actual ordering phase but not the browsing phase and plan on confronting the e-tailer about that apparent transaction:
- Would it likely be cheaper to incur the overhead of having all browsing at a particular site done via SSL so that ATT would have no clue whether that customer visit resulted in a sale or not?
I think discussion on how they will know about a transaction would be interesting. Also, if they are making their own web hosting customers sign contracts are they going to impose that further downstream with the CheesyHostingCo that signs up hosting customers for $19.95/month?
This is scary. I can only hope that there will be enough resistence from the larger e-tailers by taking actions such as - sending orders to another server on a different network. possibly overseas, to circumvent this absurd (planned) policy - and make it a dismal failure.
--Aaron Greenberg
I just don't get it. They want a piece of the pie coming and going. First for the customer to get to the retail site and then a commission for the sale. I hope that this is not a legal thing to do. If they get away with this new 'income engine' then we are going to have to come up with an alternate scheme of some sorts similar to the current plague of various long distance carriers and phone card telcos. Is there a way to force your data packets not to use thier networks? I can't imagine what fledgeling .com biz's are going to do in response to this. Effectively, this will be the end of many of them just by people browsing thier sites.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Hold on! They haven't decided yet. And if enough people bitch and moan, they won't do it. So don't start thinking that they are going to do it, but it's probably a good idea to let 'em know your thoughts on the idea!
Write to AT&T and tell em what you think!
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com