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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?"
I considered briefly buying my own cable modem, but for the monthly cost of leasing, it was cheaper in the short term. (I live in an apartment, don't want to buy a cable modem in case I move to an area that doesn't supply that type of service)
That being said, I rather expected this move. 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. Rather nifty of them to tell anyone, as I am a subscriber, and I didn't receive any information on this. 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.
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. Customers will bitch, a few will change providers (those lucky few that can) and other than that, NOTHING WILL CHANGE. YOU might care enough to drop service, but most people are so apathetic about stuff like this, it's comical. Bitch, moan, give em the money. Hell, it makes business sense to do this. Too bad the customer gets it in the end eh?
Sent from your iPad.
In a situation where the modem is the culprit, AT&T should just say so and tell you that you're on your own because it's not AT&T's. They should of course prepare a good excuse for when they told you it's the modem and it wasn't.
and having worked in support for a dial-up ISP I can tell you that it's fairly common to blame problems on the wrong kind of modem. I was told to always recommend 3Com modems.
You make a good point, except for one fact, when I signed up for ATT Broadband they were encouraging you to buy your own modem. They also had a list of approved modems which negates your point about the modem being a source of bugs. Why does it matter if I'm using a PCX1100U that ATT gave me or that I bought at Best Buy?
The thing that upsets me most is that ATT is taking it upon themselves to jack up my rates after I paid $80 for a cable modem in an effort to save money in the long run.
The thing with DOCSIS modems is you can query them for info such as Uptime, and ping their internal network IP remotley (we do this from the helpdesk). The only other thing to check is the link light to the PC, which you can check on the back of the ethernet card anyway. The DOCSIS tools also give info on wheater the modem is up, and if not if its in any of its initialisation stages. Eg. Ranging, IPComplete etc.. so we can tell if its stuck somewhere.
I'm on Rogers, and they raised prices. I know Bell Sympatico raised prices. All companies are doing this because of the small percentage of people sucking up a huge amount of bandwidth. It's costing them too much money.
Not quite true what you are saying here. AT&T (or any cable modem operator) has complete control which modems can and cannot log onto the network by using the OID of the cable modem manufacturer. AT&T Denver's broadband labs test every DOCSIS modem and re-certify it for use on it's own network. If they find, that a modem is not compliant with their setup, they simply turn it off.
As for support, since the modems are DOCSIS, it is quite easy. The boot up steps are the same for all modems. Find downstream frequency, find upstream frequency, ranging for US/DS attenuation, IP configuration, authentication and registration.
In terms of tech support, the operator can see (almost in real time) which modems have problems and which do not based on the RF values. Heck, you can even do that with MRTG yourself.
So, in the end, your arguments are not valid. This is not a technical decison but a business decision. How can we milk the customer a little bit more. Nothing less and nothing more.
This doesn't come as a shock for those 'senior' citizens who never looked at their bill that was once an AT&T customer.
AT&T used to bill senior citizens, and still do in some part of the country, for renting out their 'touch-tone' phones. Not that I am trying to bash on senior citizens or anything, but many individuals who never looked at their bills for years and knew their rates were remaining fairly constant never knew that they were being billed for a phone that they had in their home that was actually installed and owned by AT&T.
There was a news report done on this where an individual took care of his mom and when he started to do her bills, he had noticed that she was getting charged for having an 'AT&T' phone. The funny thng is when he found ou that for years his mom was paying for the rental of the phone, he rushed right out to the nearest store and bought her a simple $9.99 phone with big buttons (so she could see). Called AT&T and told them to remove the phone.
This may not be the oldest form of AT&T milking their customers, but it certainly is one of the most interesting ones that I have heard. Fleecing of America (especially our senior citizens). *sigh*
I agree... As soon as I get my next bill, I intend on getting on the phone with a manager at customer service and letting them know that I will switch broadband cariers as soon as annother option becomes available.... If enough people do this they might just get scared and listen...
...or they might just tighten thier grip on their monopoly
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Cable modem service went up $7 for everyone regardles of if they own the modem or not. Modem prices haved dropped to 1/3 of what they were, and AT&T dropped the cost of leasing the modem accordingly. You aren't paying an extra $7 for using your own modem, you just are only saving $3 a month instead of $10. AT&T obviously structured the price increase so that their customers that lease modems wouldn't notice, but it really isn't fair to expect those that lease their modems to subsidize the costs for those who use their own. The price of modems has dropped, the price of leasing them should drop accordingly. This was a price increase for the service that just happends to be masked for many subscribers by a decrease in the cost of leasing the equipment.
>They have to have special call centre scripts, new diagnosis procedures etc etc.
[sarcasm] Exactly. This is just the same way as they need special scripts for people who buy non-AT&T phones because the equipment is all so different [/sarcasm] (hint: It isn't very much different to the end user at all, just like, to the end user, all external telephone modems look and work the same).
Now, IIRC, there wasn't special pricing on the phone line for people who decided to opt out of the leased phone equipment racket when they finally had the choice. Perhaps I'm out of the loop?
I once asked about this. The telco said it is a surcharge (about USD 3, last I checked) just for having access to those various 1-900, 1-876, etc., toll call numbers. ATandT charges I believe USD 6 just for being listed in their books.
I use an internet calling card exclusively and was looking to drop long distance on the land line altogether. The fact is, you CANNOT, unless you go to the extreme of having NO land line. In the age of wireless communications this is of course possible, but I don't know of a cellular phone contract that works out to being less expensive than a land line.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Most of these ISP cable modems have upstream bandwidth caps coded in the prom. If you flash the prom to eliminate the cap and it's *their* modem they can kick you for violating TOS.
If the customer owns the modem then it's harder for them to deal with bandwidth abuses. This is just their free-market way of coping with the costs associated with people trying to run high-bandwidth servers w/o paying the business rates.
About a year ago, I got my dad set up with @home. At the time, you could save about $10 a month off your @home bill by buying your own cable modem. Cable modems then cost about $170, so we figured buying one was a no-brainer, as it would pay for itself in less than two years.
Then @home went down the toilet and my dad's service was taken over by AT&T. Now it looks like our decision to buy wasn't so smart after all. My take-home lesson from this: never bet your own money on the assumption that your cable provider won't change the rules of the game.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I use an internet calling card exclusively and was looking to drop long distance on the land line altogether. The fact is, you CANNOT, unless you go to the extreme of having NO land line. In the age of wireless communications this is of course possible, but I don't know of a cellular phone contract that works out to being less expensive than a land line.
It's not particularly extreme to have no land line and go with a cellular phone. I've been doing that for over two years. It's cheaper for me to do so. In the past I'd pay Ameritech around $25/month plus long distance for a land line that has an unlisted and unpublished number (not available in the phone book or directory assistance). Invariably my credit card companies or other companies with whom I have done business would sell my number on a telemarketing list or I would begin getting telemarketing calls from them ("Please consider our credit protection insurance policy" kinda crap) and I'd have to pay to change the number. This was a hassle.
On top of that, I'm usually at work all day and out somewhere in the evenings, so I've had wireless since 1995 or so. Any of my friends, family members, or business associates would always call me on my mobile phone because they knew that they could find me quickly. My monthly wireless bill was usually around $40 a month, and I thought that was pretty reasonable.
After a while it got to the point that I never answered my land line, I just let the machine get it (voicemail would have been another additional monthly fee from Ameritech). It was never anybody that I wanted to talk to. After a month or two of this I decided that it was pointless to pay $25/month for a phone line that was only used by people who I didn't want to talk to (or for the occasional long distance call), so I had the land line shut off. I also upgraded my wireless plan to account for the potential of more minutes, and I now pay around $55/month for wireless service. That includes all the minutes that I use, plus free voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, and 3-way calling. Right now I'm looking into plans that offer no roaming and no LD charges too. One of the features that I especially like is that their "411" information service is really information, not just directory assistance. For example, if you call and ask for a number to a movie theatre they'll look up what movies are playing and give you showtimes too. Try getting that from Ma Bell! Plus I don't have to ever worry about my number being listed somewhere for telemarketers to get at.
On that note, I know that telemarketers aren't allowed to solicit you on your mobile phone because it costs you money, but I wonder if they have a list of mobile prefixes for each area code? I've never gotten a telemarketing call on my mobile, even after giving it to my creditors.
At any rate, from my perspective it makes sense to go purely wireless. It ended up saving me around $10/month since I already had wireless service, and it includes far more features than my land line did. I've got several friends and coworkers who've done the same thing after seeing how well I've gotten along without it. If you're afraid of the contract issue, just buy a mobile phone and get a pay-as-you-go plan. Phones have become so inexpensive lately that buying them up-front isn't that big of a deal, especially if you don't need one that does WAP and SMS and all that other garbage. Wireless companies are getting much smarter about this and now offer family packages with shared minutes (great if you're married, but I'd still get a land line for the kids).
"but I don't know of a cellular phone contract that works out to being less expensive than a land line"
.. just take any job where your expected to own a cell phone so you can be on call.
Easy
I did the math when I needed internet access at home cable was cheaper than either land line+dialup or DSL.
I don't know about where you live, but here in Maryland Verizon flat out refused to allow us to use their service without a long distance carrier. They don't care who you use, but they won't let you not use anyone....
Unless the lady on the other end was just lying, as I suspect she was....
The reason that AT&T is doing this is simple. They don't want you to own the modem. It actually saves them money when you use your own modem, they don't have to replace it when it breaks and they don't have to maintain a stock of modems, which is why they tried to encourage people to buy modems. They have changed their minds, because they realized that they cannot control modems that they do not own. There is nothing stopping you from running diffrent firmware on a modem that you own, getting around any speed caps that they may have placed on your account. All of AT&T's traffic shaping takes place at the modem. What you are going to soon see is tired service, pay more to get a faster connection, pay less to get a limited connection. However, the only real diffrence will be the firmware that they send to your modem. Hence, they want to stop the spread of modems that they cannot control.
AT&T Broadband *increased* upstream transfer rates for many customers. They're making it a flat 256kbps across the board. Funny to see how the articles about bow AT&T Broadband is screwing people make big news, but when they increase the piddly upstream cap that people bitch about constantly, nobody seems to care.
Article here
restore some social responsibility to these businesses
An easy platitude to utter, but exactly what are you proposing? Brainwash the management? Throw 'em in jail as an example? Pass a law that says they have to be nice?
Don't be silly. Suspend their corporate charter and take away their license to do business for acting against the common interest. If you look at the wording of the laws that allow for coporations to exist, you'll see that they require said corporations serve the public interest.
Indeed, it was very uncommon in the early republic for corporate charters to be granted, and not so terribly uncommon for them to be revoked, essentially putting the offending company out of business. Of course, back then corporations were not considered "real" people like they have been since a particularly bizzar (and unprecedented) California court case some eighty years ago that turned everything on its ear and granted corporations all the rights and priveleges of real, breathing, living human beings.
I think one or two revocations of corporate charters would be sufficient to change the behavior of other large corporations, without the need for managerial brainwashing or laws telling people to be nice, don't you?
As for jail time, if someone is managing a company (like, say, Monsanto) that knowingly falsifies FDA test results in order to get dangerous milk hormones approved for public consumption [c.f. Into the Buzzsaw] or knowingly and with premeditation poisons the groundwater of a town in the southern U.S. in the 1990's (and gets caught with the memos discussing how to deal with the political fallout should they ever get caught) [c.f. just about every major American Newspaper, pre 9/11], then yes, I do think the fucking bastards should be put in jail. Perminently, if their behavior, or negligence, has resulted in the loss of human life.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Let them ship you their modem. Take it out of the box, examine it, make sure it isn't damaged, and then... put it back in the box and stick it in your closet. Use your own modem. Who's going to know?
If they run tests and decide that you're not using their equipment (either by checking MAC addrs, which, as a practical matter, they really can't keep on file, or by issuing instructions to the modems), what can they do? You're "testing alternatives."
Besides, hey. This way you get a backup modem, in case the spiffy one you bought dies. And you can plug the modem in and turn it on when you're having service problems, if you feel like it, too.
Get off my launchpad!
Good point. If the fixed/infrastructure costs were the same, the formula should be something like
.5. So, for cable, let's say the fixed cost is, what, $12 still? they don't have to pay for business phone lines, all they really do is maintain the existing infrastructure that they have, which they're already doing anyway. So it should be less. Let's say $10.
.5 * (50 - 10)
.5k/sec, that's 15k/sec.
bandwidth = multiplier * (monthly charge - fixed costs)
for dial-up, it'd be
4k/s = multiplier * (20 - (i. cost))
assume fixed (by which I mean everything but the bandwidth) was, say, $12(making this up), and the multiplier is
So, X =
X = 20
20k/sec.
Of course, I'm sure there are a million other factors, but the bottom line is, if the fixed costs the same amount to maintain, you're buying another $30/month worth of bandwidth. If $1 =
Let's say that 20k/sec is what you've purchased, but that you can average it out over a month. That'd work really well; it would allow them to uncap your line until it looked like you were going to go over your quota, then slow you down so that you ended up averaging 20k/sec over a month. During peak times, they could cap it to prevent congestion, but when you needed 400k/sec for 5 minutes at 3am, they could give it to you. That's what they should really do. Because when they buy bandwidth, they don't buy it by the gig, they buy it by the kbps. Therefore, you should get it by the kbps. The trick is, to get it to where what you're paying and what you're getting is fair. They're trying to do this, and they may be acting in good faith, but they're going about it the wrong way. They need to charge you:
(fixed costs + bandwidth costs)* (1 + (%profit margin))
That's it, that's all there is to it.
Is that not a good idea? I really think it is. Critique it if you disagree.
Synergy is your friend