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ATT Raises Prices for Cable Modem Owners

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-we-own-you dept.

MBCook writes: "It appears that AT&T broadband doesn't like it when customers own their own cable modem. According to this article at ZDNet, ATT will be 'changing' their prices for all users. If you own your own cable modem, your bill is going up $7. If you lease your cable modem, you end up paying the same ammount you were before. I guess AT&T likes to milk it's customers. If I don't have a long distance service with any phone company, I have to pay for the privilage of not depending on them. Now I'll have to pay for the privilage of not depending on AT&T for a modem?"

2 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. Their lines, their rules by ObviousGuy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Now I'll have to pay for the privilage [sic] of not depending on AT&T for a modem?

    Are you just bitter that you shelled out cash for a worthless piece of crap? You won't be able to use it anywhere once all cable modem companies standardize on this pricing scheme.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
  2. You know nothing! or your one of the morons! by phunhippy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    you say: This involves them doing the standard, is your modem turned on, is it working, is the green light flashing.... you don't have a green light, oh its your own modem, so how do you tell if thats working ?

    You do realize the people that they have working the "LEVEL 1" call centers are complete morons right? They are probably over-qualified if they are taken from the welfare to jobs progams. You'd think if you explain to a level one tech that yes your compitent and you've already done some basic check troubleshooting(like being able to ping the local edge router for example, but nothing else) would make it so that you dunt have to listen to them say: ok go the left corner of your screen and hit the start button with one click of your mouse, now go to control panels and click once... and etc etc etc...

    If anything they want everyone to use the same modem so they're dumb ass level 1 techs have a slim to none chance of ever helping someone out.. I really do hope those people don't make more then minimum wage too!

    2 weeks ago with comcast there was an outage in our area(could ping the routers) and i had to go through all that, and after much pain i asked the level 1 dweeb to try and ping my assigned IP. She/He/It said that her/his/its ping program was not working and could not verify it for me. I asked if he/she/it could then ping from the command line on his/her/its desktop and they had no idea what i was talking about!!!!
    So then i asked to be passed off to the next level tech so i could talk to someone who might be able to help me or i could realisticly explain my problem too. but the the DUMB ASS LEVEL 1 tech said he/she/it could not transfer to a higher level tech until she diaganosed my problem.
    So I then mentioned that she/he/it was unable to diagnose my problem(in their eyes) cuz there ping tool was down and they should transfer as a result of that, but no they said! because of that i'd have to wait until thier network came back up and they could test & they said they would not know when that would be and just to try and call back through out the day...

    ::sigh:: ok i hope they make less then minimum wage!