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ATT Raises Prices for Cable Modem Owners
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?"
Maybe they decided to do this instead of charge people for exceeding ridiculously low monthly bandwidth caps...
-- V
While everyone will shout and scream "I don't want AT&T to maintain my cable modem", but when the line gets dropped and AT&T need to diagnose the problem they will apply the first rule of problem resolution
"The user is a moron, the fault is at their end"
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 ?
So it does cost them money in terms of call and tech support. They have to have special call centre scripts, new diagnosis procedures etc etc.
And your cable modem might have a bug which buggers their network.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Now that a major US provider is changing the rules, it'll be interesting to see how Slashdot readers take the news when it affects them a bit closer to home.
This is a problem that affects us all.
DD.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Cable modems got cheaper so the difference between
those who own c modem and those who don't should be
smaller - down to $5. This means that overall
this is a rise for everybody - just for
those who don't own cable modems the rise is
compensated by the fall of cable modem prices.
When the modem is leased from the provider, they have more control on everything. They can be more prepared for customer oriented oddities, failure claims etc resulting in better predictability of incomes and less uncertainties in general.
According to the ZDnet article, the additional charge for renting a cable modem is $10; you're still getting a discount if you own your own cable modem (albeit a very small one).
from the article "Customers who lease their modem from AT&T will have their lease fee reduced by $7, paying an additional $3 per month for the modem."
And the customers that own their own modem are having they're bill increased by 7 dollars.... So essentially by owning your own modem, your now helping to subsidize the cost of users who don't want to buy their own modem but lease it.. That seems very wrong to me, hell completely wrong.. why should I have to pay 7 dollars to have my own modem as opposed to 3 dollars to rent it? I smell some lawsuits here..
Glad I have Comcast Cable modem here in PA..
They have increased the price of their service by $7. They are reducing the sting a little by allowing people to rent their cable modems for free. People who have their own modem can still take advantage of this offer. People who do not will not be paying more. They simply will not be paying less.
What we really need is more competition in the marketplace. We need at least a dozen different services, then one of them would relaise the good niche market of people with their own cable modems.
Essentially what AT&T has done is imposed an ownership tax that penalizes its users for owning their own equipment. The folks there probably just saw the latest reports and saw cable modem leasing was down. And of course AT&T prefers that the money is in their own hands, not the cable modem manufacturers'.
I'm surprised AT&T hasn't made their own cable modem yet and FORCED users to buy it. That wouldn't surprise me. This does.
-Evan
And don't forgot the D.C. Appeals Court decision from last week. This is part of the "competition" to DSL that is sufficient to let the phone companies not line-share.
Notice how the "competition" is driving prices down?
Ummmm....
but what the hell... deal with it.
Thats right, get over it. The precedent in slashdot was set when a lot of posters told us Aussie to get over our shitty cable modems.
The businesses are going to keep sending up prices, and finding new ways to tax the consumer. It would be half-acceptable if they bought it down again in times of growth, but they don't. So first of all, if you don't want to get reamed, don't get cable.
But if you want cable, there are a few options. First of all, contact you industry ombudsman, if you have one. Also lobby the nearest democrat member of congress and the senate, make sure your complaints about this discrimination reaches someone who could possibly give a shit, and do something about it.
In other words, if you cannot change from AT&T to another cable server or adsl, make sure yo fight dirty (a.k.a political). What is another option is to publicly shame AT&T, perhaps with a few letters to the editor of you local newspaper. So instead of bitching about it, get over it, and do something about it. The more people that give a shit, the more people that read about it, the more bad publicity the company will get, and that WILL get their shareholders pissed.
(Recent example of bad publicity at work, our biggest bank in Aus (NAB) were making a drastic change to their reward scheme. Quite a few people got pissed, and they half-reversed the scheme just as quickly as they had announced it. Bad publicity works, and it starts with their own customers.)
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Some days ago, users in Australia had their broadband access severely limited [slashdot.org] as the major providers changed the rules [slashdot.org]. There were many Slashdot posts effectively telling these users to 'get over it'.
- contracts (even those with obscure clauses, or that get rewritten by the vendor after they have your money) posts. This whole meme that businesses have as their sole responsibility to make money, and ethics, much less their customers' satisfaction, be damned is nonsense from start to finish, doubly so when you're dealing with telco type situations (of which cable companies are an example) where there is an effectively monopoly (or duopoly) on your choices.
... perhaps we should end that sufference in a couple of high-profile cases and the other behometh's will fall in line. That presupposes, of course, that our democracy isn't so far gone, and our leaders so profoundly corrupt, that the people can still have a voice politically. The jury is definitely still out on that, but it would certainly be worth a try.
[...]
Now that a major US provider is changing the rules, it'll be interesting to see how Slashdot readers take the news when it affects them a bit closer to home.
A-fucking-men. I get so utterly sick of these Randian libertarianesque businesses-can-do-no-wrong every-consumer-should-be-an-expert-at-deciphering
Most homes can only get cable/cable-modem service from one providor, or local telephone service from one providor (in both cases, the company that owns the last mile of copper going to your house), so telling people to "vote with their feet" is literally tantamount to telling them to physically move to a new community or do without what is becoming an increasingly vital service.
It is utter crap when these self-styled free marketeers (who apparently can't recognize a limited, non-free market when it hits them in the face) tell folks in Australia that sort of nonsense, and it will be equal crap when they do so in this thread.
It is past time that people and consumers organize once again and restore some social responsibility to these businesses. Businesses and corporations exist at the sufferance of the people
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Free Market? Excuse me? I have one choice for Cable -- AT&T. I have one choice for local phone service -- SBC. I have one choice for Broadband Cable -- AT&T. I have no choices for DSL. How exactly is this a free market when the FCC limits which companies can offer service in my area? If you want a real free market, get the FCC to either enforce the rules of the 1996 telecom act requiring local providers to open their markets or have Congress rewrite the rules. Me, I won't hold my breath. Political contributions from Fortune 500 companies always win out over the desire of the people.
Chances are if you're the kind of person who would want to own your own cable modem, you're the kind of person they'd really rather leave anyway. It probably means you're more technically inclined and not willing to simply be a "consumer" -- you probably want to run some services, perhaps use some VPN tools to get to work, and all that other stuff that really pisses them off. They really just want customers who might browse the web for a couple of hours a night or send an E-mail to grandma. Once customers actually start really using the internet for serious applications, their revenue model gets all screwed up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I was lucky when I signed up for AT&T Broadband, I got free installation. That makes a huge cost difference, and even makes up for the fact that I rent their cable modem. However, the good thing about renting is that eventually, I'm going to want to upgrade my connection, maybe to satellite (if it becomes cheaper and faster), fiber to the home (they're offering that in Lansing, MI, which is only about fifty miles away from me), or something else even faster when it comes out (powerline networking, possibly?). I don't know when, but when I do upgrade, I'd hate to have a $200 cable modem sitting around, which probably will not be worth a dime.
Look at it this way: If you buy a cable modem, it costs you approximately $200 (with taxes) on the spot, and saves you $3 a month for as long as you have the connection. In roughly five and a half years (66 2/3 months), it will pay for itself. Do you see yourself staying with AT&T Broadband service for five and a half years? If not, then rent, it will save you money. If yes, then buy, it will save you money. For me, I couldn't see the benefit of buying even when it saved $10 a month, that's 20 months I have to keep the service to get my money back! What if I want to switch to DSL when it becomes available (which it just did, about two months ago)?
Just do the math.
The speed of time is one second per second.
Customers will bitch, a few will change providers (those lucky few that can)
That's the real issue. Change providers? To who? Cable is an unregulated monopoly in the US, so you can't just change cable companies and get different service. And the FCC and Congress decided that allowing customers to choose their ISP on cable/DSL was unimportant, so you are stuck with AT&T/Charter/Time Warner/whoever for what you do have. DSL is going down the same path now, if you can even get it.
What other options are there really? Partial T1 tends to be too expensive, even in major cities with heavy telecomm systems.
The rule is simple - when there is no competition then the companies have all of the cards. Traditionally the consumer has the ultimate power in the form of voting with their wallet. However when there is a monopoly that sole ability is removed, because the consumer has no place else to go.
It's sad, really... the Telecomm Act of 1996 was supposed to fix all this. All it's done is move us backwards 50 years AND removed government oversight. Happy happy, joy joy.
In case you haven't noticed, telcos are struggling right now, and any move that can keep them afloat (ok fine, keep the share holders happy) they are going to do.
This is exactly the point. These companies aren't gouging their customers, they're just trying to make a little bit of money and not lose money. They brought out the service at as low of a price as they could reasonably afford to do to gain market share. With the economy being shaky, they haven't been able to scale up as high as they'd like to be able to pay off their initial investments with lots of subscribers. The result is they have to raise prices. If you look at how they did it, it was done pretty fairly. Cable modem prices have dropped significantly, and the cost of leasing the modem was reduced accordingly. If they kept the price of the modem high, those who lease their modem would be subsidizing those whose who owned theirs. Everyone got a $7 increase in the cost of their service. That's a pretty big increase, but it may very well be justified by their costs. If AT&T or other providers were making a fortune providing cable modem service, you're complaints would be justified, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
Yeah, of course the rights and all that are subject to change, but enough of running rough-shod over your customers. We are people too, and don't always have the convienence of having a ton of loot sitting around, or customers we can up prices on without telling.
It doesn't look like AT&T sent this info to ZDNet in a press release. The article said that AT&T was planning on announcing this later in the day. The article also states the current subscribers will get coupons so that they don't feel the bite of the price increase for 6 months. That seems like a pretty generous amount of warning of a price increase. I don't blame you for being upset about a price increase. No one wants to pay more for the same service, and most people don't have the choice of just switching to a different provider.
In a similar rant, a lot of these companies do these things without even pausing to consider what the risks are, simply because there (for the most part) ARE NONE.
They do have some risks in not raising prices. As we found out from the dot com crash, you can only have a business model where you don't make money for a rather limited period of time. Telephony companies are losing lots of money right now. They either need to find a way to start making money again, or your choices of providers could go from one to zero. How to you increase revenues when you can't do it by lowering the price and gaining more customers? You raise the price and hope you don't lose customers.
One ATT broadband customer (YES CUSTOMER, NOT CONSUMER (tired of being labeled consumer)), one cable-modem used. I think the cable modem Co. prefer one big consumer (:^) to a few thousand one_unit_customer.