DSL Surcharge Plan Abandoned by Major Carriers

thedletterman writes to mention a USAToday article about the proposed surcharges on DSL lines. The FCC stepped in just as major carriers Verizon and BellSouth made moves to add a $1-$3 surcharge to their DSL services; they were coincidentally to add this charge just as the Universal Service Fund fee was being removed from all DSL services. From the article: "Verizon, in a statement, said it was dropping the new fee as a result of feedback from consumers: 'We have listened to our customers, and are eliminating the charge.' Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union had another explanation: 'They got caught red-handed in a blatant consumer rip-off. Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge.' The FCC last week sent Verizon a 'letter of inquiry,' the first step in a formal investigation."

Comments

Say what?

[tomstdenis]

They wanted to add a charge under the guise of some FCC fee after the fee was eliminated?

Sounds about right. Who's the terrorist now?

Tom

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanted to add a charge under the guise of some FCC fee after the fee was eliminated?
 
It wasn't going to be "under the guise of some FCC fee" at all. That would be one step above their backhanded methods to an outright fraud that would have probably gotten someone some jailtime.
 
  Who's the terrorist now?
 
In what fashion? Please, if you're one of the people who thinks that the term is thrown around way too much now don't start being a hypocrite and thinking it's cute. It's simply not.
 
I hate to defend Verizon in light of this news article and I think there is a lot of crap that goes on in the name of better telecommunications that is simply hype. Despite all of this, in the face of the cable industry and their "phoney" ad campaign, Verizon is a fairly honorable company compared to their competition. In a system where we have little choices to be made in the case of broadband internet providers Verizon is probably one of the best companies that I know of. Certainly a sight better than Comcast and their incompetence or their outright lies.

Re:Say what?

[Fyre2012]

Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge

Proof positive that giant companies will do whatever they want until forced otherwise.

Re:Say what?

[Monkeys!!!]

Who's the terrorist now?

The people using terror to reach an ideological goal? Not the greedy companies draining stones of blood.

Re:Say what?

[jank1887]

It wasn't going to be "under the guise of some FCC fee" at all

Correct. Here's the cut and paste from my notice:

Effective August 14, 2006, Verizon Online will stop charging the FUSF (Federal Universal Ser vice Fund) recovery fee. We will stop being assessed the fee by our DSL network suppliers. Therefore, we will no longer be recovering this fee from our customers. The impact of the FUSF fee is as follows: for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 768Kbps, the fee eliminated is $1.25 a month; for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 1.5 Mbps or 3Mbps, the fee eliminated is $2.83 a month (based on current FUSF surcharge amounts). On your bill that includes charges for August 14, 2006 you will see either a partial FUSF Recovery Fee or no FUSF line item at all, depending on your bill cycle.

Starting August 26, 2006, Verizon Online will begin charging a Supplier Surcharge for all new DSL customers, existing customers with a DSL monthly or bundle package, and existing DSL annual plan customers at the time their current annual plan expires. This surcharge is not a government imposed fee or a tax; however, it is intended to help offset costs we incur from our network supplier in providing Verizon Online DSL service. The Supplier Surcharge will initially be set at $1.20 a month for Verizon Online DSL customers with service up to 768Kbps and $2.70 per month for customers with DSL service at higher speeds.

On balance your total bill will remain about the same as it has been or slightly lower.

It was their hope that the last line was all that anyone would really notice when the bill finally came. "Hey, my bill went down a nickel! Cool!". It was some Verizon exec's way of saying, "hmmmmm... people are willing to pay our prices, and here's a slick little way to add that dropped FUSF fee right into the Profit Margin. No one will be the wiser! We'll call it a 'cost offset'. AND, we'll let them know the 'initial price'. I bet later we can tweak it up a bit at a time, and still keep our advertised rates the same. W00t!"

Glad the pressure got to them.

Re:Say what?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I hate to defend Verizon in light of this news article and I think there is a lot of crap that goes on in the name of better telecommunications that is simply hype. Despite all of this, in the face of the cable industry and their "phoney" ad campaign, Verizon is a fairly honorable company compared to their competition. In a system where we have little choices to be made in the case of broadband internet providers Verizon is probably one of the best companies that I know of. Certainly a sight better than Comcast and their incompetence or their outright lies.

In what sense? They have terrible customer service (yes, worse than Sprint), and I've had to call about 5 times in a year because my bill is wrong. And calling a blatant cash grab a "fee" is different than Comcast how?

Re:Say what?

[RevDobbs]

Verizon is a fairly honorable company compared to their competition. . . . Certainly a sight better than Comcast and their incompetence or their outright lies.

I'm not a Comcast customer, so I can't speak on them.

I was, however, a Cablevision internet ("Optimum Online") and Verizon DSL customer at the same time for about a month, back when Verizon was still running the "Cable is shared and teh slowz!" advertisements (that the FTC later made them stop running). I learned first hand (and demonstrated to anyone I could get over to my apartment) how much faster cable was than DSL -- with out the hassel of putting filters on all the other phone lines, or of PPPoE.

When I finally called to cancle the service, they tried to keep me on by offering everything from faster service (I didn't even realize that faster DSL was an option) to one year of reduced fees. When I finally said "Look, I have cable, and it is faster with large data and has a lot less lag", the VZ rep put the cancelation through with any further protest. Even Verizon's own employees know that they can't compete with cable internet on a serice basis.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIC they're all out to squeeze up their prices whenever and wherever they can, after all they have to make it look like they're doing something whiloe simultaneously upping their profits such that they look good to investors. Of course they'll find another way to tack on the surcharge, likely claiming that they have to "upgrade" their network when in reality they won't do jack until it's falling apart as usual. At that point they'll whine to the federal gov't for a handout. (It's kind of funny in light of this that the congress critters think that network "neutrality" is a bad thing, esp when I really don't think that the FTC will watch closeley enough, likely only to do something after years or decades of consumer gouging, and even then only with the right political pressure.)

Verizon: The only reason I believe that in Verizon's case that there are mitigating factors is wrt their fibre rollout. That IS fairly expensive, but it also IS useful to consumers, but not if they use it leverage a monopoly position whose sole purpose is to gouge the hell out of consumers in the end. (Although IIRC from when I was a little kid right before the Bell breakup(consent decree) that Bell was advertising that they were laying(or planning to) miles of fibre, and implying that it was going to end up at your doorstep...)

I'm almost beginning to believe that a nationally run telecommunications monopoly may be a better thing after all... or at least require the telecoms to be non-profits, along with other utilities...

Re:Say what?

[grapeape]

I recently switched back from DSL to cable after initially falling for the "cable is slow because it shared" campaign. After the AT&T merger my DSL bill went from $29 to over $100 month for "pro" DSL with 1 static IP. When I called to see what was up they acted quite rude and firmly stated the "deal" I had was no longer avaialable and had the nerve to say I should be grateful that my rates stayed unchanged so long after the merger, so I hung up, called the cable company and ordered the all-in-once service. Digital Cable, Internet and Digital Phone and its about half what my bills were separately. When I called to cancel my phone service suddenly AT&T wanted to talk...evidently this is happening alot since I was bounced from a "customer retention specialist". They offered deal after deal and just didnt seem to want to accept "shut it off" as an answer.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what sense? They have terrible customer service (yes, worse than Sprint), and I've had to call about 5 times in a year because my bill is wrong. And calling a blatant cash grab a "fee" is different than Comcast how?
 
A single case does not depict a trend. From the Verizon vs. Comcast front and the many users of both that I know Comcast has had a large number of complaints in comparison. For my own part I have Comcast digital cable and it's nearly a scam. The OnDemand is mostly a joke that hardly works, I have just as much cable downtime as satellite users in my area and anytime that there are quality issues Comcast's customer service is just as bad as Verizons. Customer service in general is a problem no limited to any one company. I think that the commonly followed customer service model that is in place in most large companies is pathetic.
 
I find it hard to see how the /. crowd can bitch and moan about Comcast one second and turn around and bash Verizon as being the same. When was the last time Verizon stopped e-mails inbound from another service provider? When is the last time Verizon capped their bandwidth volume to individual customers? Hell, I know people who had to pay for newsgroup usage because Comcast put the clamps on that too... These all make Verizon look very very good to me.
 
It's fine that Comcast is offering a higher bandwidth rate but considering how they dictate the usage of it I will not switch. Not to mention the fact that Comcast promised broadband in my area for two years and it wasn't until Verizon installed DSL in the local area that Comcast finally got their asses in gear and provided cable (a full year later). I seen this exact method followed in several other local communities.
 
So while Comcast may have better technology to offer in my area today their policy and their public relations stink. I can hardly wait for FIOS to become available to see what Comcast is going to try to pull out of their ass next to hoodwink subscribers in my area. From everything I gathered I should have FIOS available in the next year to eighteen months, Comcast will have nothing on Verizon, in my eyes, on that day.

Re:Say what?

[Ucklak]

I'm almost beginning to believe that a nationally run telecommunications monopoly may be a better thing after all.

Um, no.

I remmeber AT&T as king dog and I also remeber phone leases and elevated long distance calls.
In the 70s, a phone lease was about $5 a month and a one time purchase of about $70- you never owned the phone you used, kinda like the cable box or satellite receiver is now.
In state long distance for my state started at 12cents a minute past 40 miles from the center of town and went up from there. Out of state calls were $.35 a minute - I still have a phone book from the 70s with the rates published.

Keep in mind that in the mid 70s, movies were $.75 for a matinee and $3.00 for evening rates. I was a kid and paid $1.25 to see Star Wars.

Re:Say what?

[JimmyJava]

verizon communications is the single largest builder and owner of fiber in the entire country. however, they are forced by the government to operate at a loss. since they are considered "communications", they are required to lease out their lines to other providers, wheras cable companies are not required to do so. part of the cost is absorbed by the small amount of money they receive in federal funding, but since the USF is no longer available (of which they only got a tiny portion), the best thing to do would be to silently replace the fee. this way the customer pays no more than they used to (i believe a little less in this case), and they get more money to build and maintain all the fiber that their customers and partners use. and still, they operate at a loss. i'm not against the government heavily regulating them. while it's a shame they've been in the red for so long, i firmly believe commodities like communication infrastructure needs to be regulated. the USF was removed to protect consumers, and verizon added the fee to protect themselves as well as their customers, which they have a right to do.

Re:Say what?

[Feyr]

if you're getting lag on a DSL connection, try asking the carrier to disable interleaving on the line. that usually take care of the issue. they usually enable it by default to speed up downloads, at the expense of interactive traffic (ssh, games, etc..). the latency goes down from 120-140ms to 15-30ms

you WILL have to go through a higher level of tech support. most level 1 folks just look at you blank eye when you utter "interleaving" :)

Re:Say what?

[wtansill]

verizon communications is the single largest builder and owner of fiber in the entire country. however, they are forced by the government to operate at a loss. since they are considered "communications",

Do tell? Well, for operating at a loss, their execs sure are well paid. For instance, in 2005, salary ans other compensation (rounded) for the top five VZ execs were:

Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman, CEO: ~ $19,400,000
Lawrence Babbio, Jr. Vice Chairman/President: ~ $8,600,000
Dennis Strigl EVP, Pres/CEO VZ Wireless: ~ $10,100,000
Willam Barr EVP/General Counsel: ~ $15,200,000
Doreen Tobin EVP/CFO: ~ $6,700,000

Source: SEC Def/14-A filing
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/732712/0001 19312506058648/ddef14a.htm

Hard to justify those salaries for a company operating at a loss, don't you think?

Re:Say what?

[RevDobbs]

You could do that. I could do that.

Grandma Foobar is going to complain that her favorite recipe website seems as slow as it was on dialup, and dump the DSL service.

I understand that with interleaving DSL there's a trade off between latency and throughput, and the choice made is probably the best default choice.

... but I don't have to make that choice with cable.

(And, arguably, if the most common user is just sufing some websites and downloading email (relativly small data transactions), they would benifit more from the reduced latency than increased throughput. But reduced latency doesn't spin dials on Bandwidth Meters, which again indicates that Verizon is choosing lip service over service.)

Re:Say what?

[Feyr]

it's a tradeoff, but the actual impact on bandwidth is negligible (my bittorrent addicted friend can't tell the difference)

and grandma foobar won't feel her favorite recipe site is slow and won't notice the difference between dsl and cable. she's most likely used to dialup anyway.

as for reasonable default. bell canada seems to be disabling interleaving on all new installs.

Re:Say what?

[RevDobbs]

grandma foobar won't feel her favorite recipe site is slow

Four years or so ago, my (now) wife ordered DSL when she got her first apartment. She was hard pressed to tell the difference between dialup and DSL - websites did not seem to load any faster. She kept the service just so that she could surf and not tie up her phone line.

A couple of months later I moved in, bringing my cable modem along and ordering that service. Same computer, same NIC, plugged into the cable modem versus the DSL modem provided very different results: the cable service was faster, on everything from medium sized binary files to websites.

I don't know if it was the PPPoE client, the phone lines, or just the nature of DSL, but out-of-the-box performance was unimpressive, and was blown away by cable.

Re:Say what?

[dosius]

I got a friend on Cox, they sent him a shitogram when he downloaded a telesynch of Click off BitTorrent.

I've downloaded a cam, a telesynch, a workprint and 2 telecines off BitTorrent with impunity off Verizon. (Granted, I have a business line and he has a residential line.)

-uso.

Re:Say what?

[Bryansix]

Verizon is a fairly honorable company compared to their competition.

BUAHAHAHAHA! Are you serious? These are the same people who refuse to offer any customer support. Their phone lines are in business 24/7 365 days a year but they only staff a call center from 9-5 PST where I live. When I call the phone number listed on the bill I am told that they only deal with phones and not DSL. The phone number for the DSL call center is not listed on the bill. In addition neither call center communicates with the other. I have given up on calling verizon at all for any reason. Now I only communicate through email.

Verizon does not offer "naked DSL" in my area or at least they don't let the consumers know if they do. As a result I have a phone line that I do not need. One month a charge appeared on this line even though the line is not even connected to a phone. I called the "Fraud" hotline listed on the bill. Instead of taking me to a fraud department, it informed me that if I continued that I would be charged a fee. I gave up on that and complained via email. They said they could not remove the charge because it was from a third party company. So much for advocating for their own customers! I called the other company and the charge was removed. I asked Verizon to put a note or flag my account for fraud since I don't use my phone line. Therefore no charges should appear except for the monthly charges and fees that they are raping me for even though I don't use the phone. They refused to do anything and even said that they have no way of flagging for fraud. This is an obvious lie but I think it is because they refuse to train their call representatives.

In my area GTE used to service the phones. When Verizon bought them out is when everything went downhill. My uncle used to work for GTE and when Verizon took over they offered him an early retirement package. A lot of employees took this package. When Verizon was de-briefing these employees, they told them to file for unemployment. So of course my Uncle did. Then Verizon turned around and said that it was illegal for these employees to file and sued them! All of the employees had to give back any money that they had received. This bankrupted more then a few people. My uncle was fiscally responsible so he was fine but it was still an evil backstabbing thing to do!

So no, Verizon is not honorable. They are a poorly managed mess of a company that only looks out for profits at the expense of the consumer. They hold a monopoly and so are regulated yet they still get away with ripping off consumers on a daily basis. Did I mention that I hate Verizon? This DSL fee crap is just one more thing in a long list of reasons why I hate them. I would switch to cable Internet but that company is even more evil if you can believe it.

Re:Say what?

[Bryansix]

I forgot to mention that when I signed up for DSL it took three months for them to acknowledge my order, ship my modem and turn on my DSL. At first I figured that they lost my order so I submitted another one. Then I got a package with the DSL filters but no DSL modem even though the DSL modem was on the packing slip. How do you leave that out? So I call and they finally ship it. FINALLY I have Internet access in my new apartment. Then for three months I notice a "DSL Dial Up" charge. I disputed this by email and it was removed and I was credited. I just can't figure out how it got there in the first place. I just signed up for regular 1.5Mbps DSL. Why the hell would I want the ability to Dial in with a modem if I have DSL? Bunch of retards!

Re:Say what?

[jrockway]

Back in the day, cable had a lot more bandwidth than DSL. DSL was around 128k or maybe 384k, while cable was 3M+. Now that 6Mbps consumer DSL is common, this isn't the case anymore. (And with DSL, the 6Mbps is *yours*, you're not sharing it with anyone as you are with cable.)

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, ALL the top IT staff at VZ is Iranian. They even have their own prayer room at work. I can tell you from personal experience what it is like to work for them, but you wouldn't believe! Nuke now, bargain later;^)

Re:Say what?

[RevDobbs]

Yeah? That 6Mbps is mine? Where can I view the SLA?

Sorry, I'm just not interested. And if FiOs ever makes it to my neighborhood, I'm not getting wrapped up in that, either. I'm not paying a penny more to Verizon than I have to.

Let me be the first to say..

[Rob T Firefly]

Veriz0wn3d!

Darn

[jayhawk88]

Now they're going to have to wait 6 whole months and spend 10 whole minutes coming up with another lame-ass random fee to tack onto your bill!

Re:Darn

[avdp]

Or... just raise the base price of the service by $2.70.

Frankly these fees are ridiculous. Everytime I call a utility company for a quote on phone or broadband services, I specifically request they add all their random little fees and made-up taxes in any price they quote me. It usually takes a little bit of scrambling from the salesperson to get me that number, but they've always been able to tell me. I make my decision accordingly.

The best so far: Verizon Fios (fiber, if you're lucky enough to have it available in your area). It was $35/month, no fees, no taxes (not even sales taxes!) charged to my credit card monthly. But I moves to the other side of town about 8 months ago and there no Fios available on my street. I do understand that they started charging taxes and/or fees now. I guess it was good while it lasted.

Re:Darn

[mzwaterski]

When I signed up for SBC/AT&T DSL they automatically quoted me the full with tax price for every single package that I asked about.

Re:Darn

[markwalling]

ditto, when i signed up for time warner road runner, the website said ~40.00. when i was on the phone with the rep, i asked how much it came to on average a month, and was surprised when he said that was it. now if only the cell phone carriers would start doing that. my plan is $39.99 by the time i pay my bill its $60, and i only have a $5/mo text messaging plan.

Re:Darn

[monkeySauce]

You got fiber and then you moved? What the hell is wrong with you!? I would kill to have FTTP, and you go and give it up to move across town.

The only way phone companies look out for...

[Anonymous Coward]

... consumers is the way sharks look out for chum.

Finally

[yellekc]

The FCC stepping up to actually protect consumers? Guess the Telcos need to buy off some more commissioners...

Re:Finally

[Amouth]

anyone else get that "haha" sound from the simpsons in there head as they read that????

Re:Finally

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

No.

Re:Finally

[cyberchondriac]

anyone else get that "haha" sound from the simpsons in there head as they read that????

http://www.phrets.com/muntzed

Hey! I know!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's all switch to Comcast

That'll show em!

Text of the original Verizon explanation

[rickkas7]

Here's the specious explanation that Verizon originally gave for the "Supplier Surcharge":

Dear Valued Verizon Online Customer,

Effective August 14, 2006, Verizon Online will stop charging the FUSF (Federal Universal Service Fund) recovery fee. We will stop being assessed the fee by our DSL network suppliers. Therefore, we will no longer be recovering this fee from our customers. The impact of the FUSF fee is as follows: for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 768Kbps, the fee eliminated is $1.25 a month; for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 1.5 Mbps or 3Mbps, the fee eliminated is $2.83 a month (based on current FUSF surcharge amounts). On your bill that includes charges for August 14, 2006 you will see either a partial FUSF Recovery Fee or no FUSF line item at all, depending on your bill cycle.

Starting August 26, 2006, Verizon Online will begin charging a Supplier Surcharge for all new DSL customers, existing customers with a DSL monthly or bundle package, and existing DSL annual plan customers at the time their current annual plan expires. This surcharge is not a government imposed fee or a tax; however, it is intended to help offset costs we incur from our network supplier in providing Verizon Online DSL service. The Supplier Surcharge will initially be set at $1.20 a month for Verizon Online DSL customers with service up to 768Kbps and $2.70 per month for customers with DSL service at higher speeds.

On balance your total bill will remain about the same as it has been or slightly lower.

Re:Text of the original Verizon explanation

[finkployd]

What made this so amusing was how they denied afterwards that the new surcharge had anything to do with the FCC ending their fee. If they wanted to pretend that, would it not have made more sense to announce them in seperate emails at least?

Finkployd

Re:Text of the original Verizon explanation

[bhmit1]

The "Supplier Surcharge" that Verizon Online DSL pays could only be something paid to Verizon the phone wiring company. So they needed to charge this fee to pay the other part of their own company more, not to mention that this is something that should be factored into the cost of DSL. The various fees are essentially a way to allow false advertising legally. The solution is to make advertising rates without including all the various fees illegal and the problem will quickly go away.

P.S. Listening to their customers? Haha. Good one. Makes me think of this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TCX4owupPmo&mode=relate d&search=

Moo

[Chacham]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities. But with consumer's getting more stupidly passive, and companies more ingeniously aggressive, i'm left without a force to join, and the companies, who as a result of frequent changeover and short-termed decisions, never think of the customers as more than a quick way to make money, we need a government body stepping in.

We are no longer practising Capitalism. This is more of a MoneyGrabism.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just picking up on that now? And MoneyGrabism = Capitalism as a gov and eco, and that's basically what we have.

Re:Moo

[truckaxle]

In my area (Idaho) there is no market - it is Verizon or the dailup.

Re:Moo

[gfxguy]

I agree - the free market is great when it's actually free. When there's collusion (price fixing), then I can support government intervention.

Re:Moo

[CagedBear]

But the broadband providers have become monopolies in many areas. If Time Warner raises their rates, my choices are:
a. satellite
b. dialup
c. move
d. send post cards through the mail

Re:Moo

[Intron]

Let's try an experiment in letting market forces rule. I set up a PBX and connect up the 6 houses in my neighborhood. I get a bill from the phone company and apportion it based on fixed cost + per minute to the folks using the phone. I will also provide backup VOIP for when the phone goes out or all lines are busy, and a UPS for power outages. My guess is that I have just cut our phone bills in half.

The experiment is to see how many days it takes for the government and phone company to come out and cut the wires and arrest me.

Re:Moo

[TheCarp]

I don't know about stupidly passive. I think its easy to say that but... I think Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame had it right in one of his books (I believe it was "The Dilbert Princible")... the world is far too complex to be smart all the time.

I mean ok... the DSL provider just switched around a couple of fees. One no longer being recovered, one new one to line their own pockets.

The difference is minor... probably about what I spend on my morning coffee. However thats one bill, from one service provider. Take my situation... I pay electric, gas, cell phone, cable, a mortgage, collect rent, collect 4/5 of the bill money from my roomates, water bill, house insurance.

Theres alot of room in there for a change to just go unnoticed, because I also work 40 hours, study martial arts, and try to have a social life, including seeing my friends and dating. Never mind spending some time here and there with the family.

Um... believe it or not, I don't have that much time to spend pouring over each and every line item on each and every bill. In fact, if it wasn't for gnucash, I might not have a clue as to what my finances really looked like overall.

So yah, I could easily get extra fees tacked on and not notice. Does that make me stupidly passive? I don't think its that so much as overly active. My time is spread pretty thin sometimes. I think that is true of alot of people.

-Steve

Re:Moo

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm generally libertarain minded, too, but the problem is that it just doesn't work in this day and age. These companies are too big. I got charged for a collect call I never accepted (never even received it) last month. Verizon would do nothing and just passed the buck. The original collect call company is difficult to reach and just stands by their "you accepted the call" story. Complaints to anyone in a regulatory agency or government offices produces nothing.

How am I supposed to fight this? It has nothing to do with being "stupidly passive". I tried to fight it, but it reaches the point where my time invested worth more than the original fake bill, and the scammers know that. They know a person will only fight for X number of hours per Y dollars of fake charge.

My idea of libertarianism is that you don't have many laws, but when you do break them, you are hit so hard that the example to others is loud and clear.

Re:Moo

[ppz003]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities. But with consumer's getting more stupidly passive, and companies more ingeniously aggressive, i'm left without a force to join, and the companies, who as a result of frequent changeover and short-termed decisions, never think of the customers as more than a quick way to make money, we need a government body stepping in.

We are no longer practising Capitalism. This is more of a MoneyGrabism.

Unfortunately, the more we rely on the government to protect us, the lazier people will get thus perpetuating the need for laws and regulations. The only way to not need so much regulation is to educate the people to start participating in the free market.

Re:Moo

[Mr. Underbridge]

I'll vote for you.

Re:Moo

[Dun Malg]

Let's try an experiment in letting market forces rule. I set up a PBX and connect up the 6 houses in my neighborhood. I get a bill from the phone company and apportion it based on fixed cost + per minute to the folks using the phone. I will also provide backup VOIP for when the phone goes out or all lines are busy, and a UPS for power outages. My guess is that I have just cut our phone bills in half. The experiment is to see how many days it takes for the government and phone company to come out and cut the wires and arrest me.

Don't be daft, you won't be arrested. Large office parks and multi-story buildings do exactly that all the time. The only reason you can't build your own competing phone system is that the first time you need to string a wire across or under a street, you're fucked.

Re:Moo

[Aladrin]

You're assuming they don't take the easiest way out and simply revoke your service or accidentally cut your lines numerous times, angering your customers and making them switch from you to regular service.

Of course, if it was the goverment that discovered it, they'd probably do the arrest thing because you were breaking the law by not paying your taxes on each line you provide.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

The corps may not have him arrested but they can ALWAYS sue him right into poverty...

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities

In that case I suggest you read some of the publications of this nobel prize winning economist, consider why you used the word "belief" in the above sentance, and then re-assess your views.

http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ind ex.cfm

Re:Moo

[Quiet_Desperation]

Oh my God, the *last* thing you want to do is give me any real power. I'd wind up turning the world into radioactive rubble, and that's just if I won a city council seat.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities.

Traditionally, I expect assholes like yourself are just clueless fuckheads. This time though, I think you just like a good hard bleeding assfucking.

Oh I love the Free Market! Oh do me again big business! Sloppy this time! Harder big business, we'll get even by not buying your things! Oh it hurts so good big business! You're so naughty, I am definitely not using you again Verizon, oh, oh, harder harder this time.

So tell me, are you just a clueless fuckhead, or a jerkoff that likes a good hard bleeding assfucking?

Re:Moo

[GalacticCmdr]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities. But with consumer's getting more stupidly passive, and companies more ingeniously aggressive, i'm left without a force to join, and the companies, who as a result of frequent changeover and short-termed decisions, never think of the customers as more than a quick way to make money, we need a government body stepping in.

The problem here is that there are no market forces in most places. If you want high-speed internet access you have maybe 1 DSL provider and 1 cable provider. If I want to start up my own high-speed service I cannot because I an not allowed to run my own wires because of a government created monopoly. That is why there is people trying all kinds of things like WAPs and Fixed Wireless.

Market forces only work with an active market.

Re:Moo

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities.

Hello? The government already stepped in and created the monopolies that the telcos enjoy. If it weren't for their so-called "natural" monopoly on the cable plant, they would not be able to get away with 94.32% of the bullshit they do today.

Anyone who talks about the local telecommunications markets as if they were anything even remotely resembling free markets has their head up some lobbyist's ass. At least the members of congress have the sense to get paid for sticking their heads up there, I'm not sure why anyone else does it.

Re:Moo

[Johnny5000]

Don't be daft, you won't be arrested. Large office parks and multi-story buildings do exactly that all the time. The only reason you can't build your own competing phone system is that the first time you need to string a wire across or under a street, you're fucked.

For someone who lives in an apartment, maybe this is something that is feasable.
I should look into this more and talk to my neighbors and landlord.

I'm sure we'd all save a lot of money if we split the internet, cable, and telephone bills.

Re:Moo

[awehttam]

Co-Ops are a wonderful thing. So is Wireless, for those annoying little Rights of Way issues. Good luck.

Re:Moo

[tinkerghost]

Actually, chances are pretty good he would be arrested. Phone service is extremely regulated - more to keep new people out than to actually control the people already in.
Office parks and MSB are all corperations controlling the buildings that are being wired. As such they are in effect wiring their own property. Also most MSB's actually don't own the PBX, the TelCo just installs one there for convienence. If he were to wire his own house with an Asterisk server - no problems, but reselling that service outside his house is likely to get him in trouble.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

It's amazing how far the Internet isn't. Many Candians have the same problem.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

When there's collusion (price fixing), then I can support government intervention.

Actually, i'm a bit more harsh than that. If there is collusion, just don't buy the product. If it is a necessity, start your own business and charge less. (I think that works at least theoretically, and should be pursued before jumping to regulation.)

When it is a necessesity (water, oxygen, etc.) and limited, there is no recourse (you must buy, and from them) an equal force (a governing body, representing the people as a group) should step in. (And probably take them out of business and give it to someone else.)

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

I could easily get extra fees tacked on and not notice.

I was really referring to more spectacular cases, but we need to fight it everywhere, even on the small ones.

We have public media, and it is pretty much their unofficial mandate to report these things. For example, right now on slashdot we hear about it. Now that we all know, we can refuse service, together.

Does that make me stupidly passive?

No. But people who just give in because they don't want to lose anything in a fight end up being passive, and IMHO, stupidly so because of the ultimate outcome.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

How am I supposed to fight this? It has nothing to do with being "stupidly passive".

This is a bit different in the original case where you have a choice to purchase the service for a published monthly fee, or go without service (from them).

They know a person will only fight for X number of hours per Y dollars of fake charge.

And for sure requires government intervention. It's usually called the police (or FBI, etc.) and they enforce this thing known as laws, which in general prohibit stealing. Something basically everyone is for encoding into law.

My idea of libertarianism is that you don't have many laws, but when you do break them, you are hit so hard that the example to others is loud and clear.

As long as the punishement is not greater than the crime. We cannot make one person pay to be a deterrence, unless his actions voided some earlier deterrance.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

The only way to not need so much regulation is to educate the people to start participating in the free market.

So you are for regulation (mandatory education) just you believe in pulling instead of pushing.

Re:Moo

[vtcodger]

Let me get this straight. You're going to set up a communication system without provisions for a warrantless wire tap? Why any terorist could use that to ... to ... well ... something bad. ... I dunno ... depopulate Idaho maybe.

It's beautiful Guantamo Bay for you, you fascist, communistic, islamic fundamentalist pig.

Re:Moo

[evilviper]

But with consumer's getting more stupidly passive,

How can you blame consumers for being stuck with only one or two choices for broadband?

It's a duopoly (at BEST), and should be regulated as such, instead of pretending there's any kind of a free market here.

Re:Moo

[ppz003]

The only way to not need so much regulation is to educate the people to start participating in the free market.

So you are for regulation (mandatory education) just you believe in pulling instead of pushing.

It's like forcing people to become motivated. I don't feel that all regulations are bad, just most of them. Vote what regulations you want in place. Encourage (educate) as many as you can to do the same.

Re:Moo

[evilviper]

The government already stepped in and created the monopolies that the telcos enjoy.

They didn't really CREATE them... that's why it's called a "natural" monopoly. You can't have 500 phone companies getting permission to install telephone poles in your yard, digging up the roads, etc.

The problem isn't that it's a monopoly... The problem is that the government refuses to treat it like the monopoly it is, and regulate it accordingly.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

In a true open free market profits rapidly move to zero. Ever business knows this, so they try to avoid and destroy free markets were they sell products. Today, where many businesses are larger than governments, this is a serious problem and should not be ignored even by the most liaise-faire free-market anti-government nut. Free markets exist where the government creates and maintains them. Even liability law (hated by "free market nuts") is needed for a free market to function.

Re:Moo

[TheCarp]

I see what you are saying and agee. Though a few things come to mind. My mother was always fond of reminding us "Don't cut your nose off to spite your face".

Lets take cell phones. I am pretty much locked into Verizon on a contract. Sucks, I could buy out the contract, which would be good for them in the short term, but would hit them in the long term and they know that (thats why they make it expensive to buy out.. like $150)

Anyway... I got a new phone and verizon sure makes it hard to put on custom ring tones and stuff like that. So far I have been unable. Honestly, the phone has bluetooth... there is NO REASON I shouldn't be able to just transfer files over... but they disable it.

Now... if I leave verizon, it costs me $150, plus I need to then get on a new service... and none of the other services have quite as good of a network. I just am not convinced that it is worth it. It might be, but I don't know yet.

I would love to take a stand and say "No Verizon, this is obnoxious, my dollars are walking". However, is it worth the trade off? I don't know yet. Maybe, I almost have myself convinced to dump them.

-Steve

Re:Moo

[Nakarti]

Well I would wait and see for the Breach of Contract letter and threat to sue.
Because if you have the proper business line contract(you do agree to one when you get phone service, if only verbally) then you are quite free to do exactly as you just proposed.
Except then you'd need at least a dozen neighbors to break even, run your own wiring, etc... and then you might as well be a phone company yourself.

Re:Moo

[ScrewMaster]

Some years ago I called up J.U.L.I.E. and had them mark all the underground stuff my yard so I could dig without accidentally cutting a telephone trunk or punching a hole in a sewer (my town had aboveground power lines, so I wasn't too worried about that.) Once I knew that the space between my neighbor's house and mine was clear, we trenched a length of CAT-5 between our homes so he could share my 4 Mb @Home connection (4 mbit/sec symmetric in those days, pretty cool.) We had a lot of fun with that setup: I had a dozen machines in my basement at the time, and we (and our friends) played Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior and since he was a part of my LAN he could join up anytime. Would have been easier with a WRT54G or a DI624, I suppose, but those weren't available back then.

Re:Moo

[HiThere]

Have you checked satellite connections? I understand that though their is high latency, the throughput is very good. (OTOH, I have heard something about needing a secod voice line...so I may not understand what's involved.)

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

I vote for a system that i think is fair to everyone, and (from the many that fit that category) addreses what i like. Regulations are then to keep the model going. Just voting for regulations that i like would be anethema to me.

Re:Moo

[gfxguy]

I can support your position, but define "necessity". Is gasoline a necessity?

So, seeing as how I've spent way too much time arguing about DRM in another slashdot thread, is music a necessity? Are movies? So those guys can collude as much as they want (and obviously do), and I can simply not buy it. But there are a lot of things that might fall into a gray area.

Do you NEED DSL? Well... it depends how you look at it. Strictly speaking the answer is definatley "no". But then you don't need a regular telephone either, strictly speaking of course.

It's a lot easier when you say "water, oxygen, etc." and compare that to, say music and movies. It's a lot more complicated when you talk about something like gasoline (and no, I don't accuse the oil companies of collusion, it's just an example). So I'm not disagreeing, but there are things that are so valuable that they can be considered necessities. But then it gets tricky.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. I'm in the same problem. But, i recently went off contract with them, and am planning on switching very soon.

But then, why do *all* the cell conpanies do that? Why doesn't someone start one that doesn't? Is there a good reason. I have no idea.

My mother was always fond of reminding us "Don't cut your nose off to spite your face".

True. I think i care more about the primary drive in regualtion, and if it becomes relied upon as the normal way to do business.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Bah! Caught! I specifically avoided that. :)

There are definitely different grades, and this is a "grey area" because noone has defined it yet.

Personally, i'd grade monopoly rules based on necessity rank. Water and oxygen being on top with absolutely no monopoly allowed, electriticy under that, movies being closer to the bottom wiuth some monopoly allowed (should it happen on its own, based on customer response). But that is just an idea.

Anything required to sustain life is a necessity. Sustaining business according to current trends (gasoline, internet for some) is not the same, but must be addressed properly. Self-preservation and all.

Re:Moo

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Anyone thinking of doing this, watch out for ground loops. You and/or your neighbor might be on different phases and/or have their polarity reversed (non-polarized plugs for example).

It could blow things up or shock/electrocute people quite fast.

Re:Moo

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They didn't really CREATE them... that's why it's called a "natural" monopoly. You can't have 500 phone companies getting permission to install telephone poles in your yard, digging up the roads, etc.

Maybe not 500, but even just the small poles that are around my neighborhood look like they could carry more than 10 different sets of data cables, especially since it would be unlikely for any one house to have more than 2 or so drops.

Re:Moo

[pipingguy]

We are no longer practising Capitalism. This is more of a MoneyGrabism.

This is what happens when "professional managers" (MBA types, mostly) move in and take over without knowing much about the core business and even less about customer service. It was all the rage recently, as it allowed said types to float around to different industries and focus on only one thing - money.

Re:Moo

[CTachyon]

AFAIK, Ethernet is already electrically isolated from line voltage. This is pretty much universal for any cable that uses balanced signals (Ethernet, USB, Firewire), and everyone's been switching to balanced signals over the last 20 years because they radiate less EMI. The resulting electrical isolation is a happy accident.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

take over without knowing much about the core business

Or caring.

That is, instead of being on the business end of Capitalism (which requires participants) they are grabbing money under the guise of being a business.

Hmm... maybe less then regulations, we need guidelines. Same thing with another name, but the thrust ought to be different.

Happy Happy Verison Land

[mobiux]

"we have listened to our customers, and are eliminating the charge."

I want to live in Verison world, where unless people tell you otherwise, they want to be ripped off.

I just can't comprehend how fucked up corporations are.

Re:Happy Happy Verison Land

[jo42]

It's all about grubbing for $$$.

blame the government, not us

[spyrochaete]

These "service charges" should be illegal as they stand today. Many Canadian cellular carriers use this very same practise. There was some sort of meeting between the heads of the carrier families where they all agreed to introduce a "government licensing fee" or "federal satellite licensing fee" of $6.95 per month. This went on for years. The government finally perked up and said "Hey, we don't charge that licensing fee" and demanded the charge to be dropped (though not refunded, naturally). The carriers eagerly complied by renaming it a "system access fee", and it is still in place today.

These fees are nothing but a vehicle for false advertising and a covert way to increase prices unannounced. Carriers can legally advertise a plan to be $20 per month when in fact it is $26.95. Thus, no carrier can afford to be honest or they will appear to be the most expensive service.

Hello, legislation?

Re:blame the government, not us

[CastrTroy]

What's really interesting is that when I was on prepaid cell phone service, I didn't have to pay for the system access fee. Mind you, they charged me 33 cents a minute, but I didn't pay it. 6.95 gets you 21 minutes at the rate they were charging. If you are a casual cell phone user and don't make long calls, only calls when necessary, you might be better off with prepaid cell service. However, this was about 3 years ago. I'm current on a plan, which ends up costing me $50 a month.

Re:blame the government, not us

[spyrochaete]

Precisely why I'm about to switch to prepaid. I'll probably go with Virgin Mobile who offers all kinds of extras for a lower price.

Re:blame the government, not us

[erroneus]

I'd like to attach a rider to that legislation that would remove that STUPID-ASSED 0.9cents/gallon tacked onto the price of a gallon of gasoline!!! We all know why they started doing it. It's just shy of a penny. Some people actually think that it's a "tax." It's not... the tax is much higher. But the brain registers $3/gal when it's really closer to $3.01/gal.

Let's call it the "straight-shooter" law that disallows the misleading publication of prices in consumer advertising. The spirit of the law should be that if is cost is inseparable and not optional, that the value cannot be omitted from the advertised cost. Such a law would also include taxes unless carefully worded otherwise, but frankly, I wouldn't mind that a bit.

Re:blame the government, not us

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you entirely. I also think sales tax should be included in the ticket price. No other country is stupid enough to let people put a price on an object and then refuse to sell it for that price by blaming the government. Then again, we also tollerate deceptive advertising and tell our children it's not ok to lie.

Listened to their customers?

[End Program]

If they really wanted to appease their customers, why don't they drop cost of DSL to $4.99 /month? I am sure a few of their 'customers' are calling for lower rates.

comcast ha

[luther349]

fees are just a way to charge what they relly whant for the service. you think comcast is better ha they have more bs fees then anyone else.

Re:comcast ha

[Phreakiture]

This is one of the things I like about Road Runner.

I was quoted $44.95/month.

My bill is $44.95/month.

See the connection? No fees, no taxes, no charges besides the $44.95/month. The service is pretty good, too.

Now, before someone suggests that I look at my cable bill for the hidden fees, or asks about what I pay for my cable service, I think I should point out that I do not subscribe to cable (I get my TV fix through Dish Network). It is not well known, but you can unbundle Road Runner from TW Cable TV, and I have done so. When you do so, you will pay exactly $44.95/month for the middle-tier Road Runner residential service, and not a cent more.

Re:comcast ha

[MyNameIsEarl]

I unbundled my RoadRunner from Time Warner cable by getting DirecTv and switching to Earthlink cable which goes over the exact same RoadRunner lines and costs me 41.95 a month. Since my cable modem was already in place all it took was a call to Earthlink who switched me to a Time Warner rep, with no hold time!, and they made an adjustment in their computer system. Time Warner bills me, Earthlink provides customer service, I win.

Re:comcast ha

[Anonymous Coward]

And you get to use Earthlink's spam filter that can filter virtually 100%* of spam coming in your inbox!

* Virtually 100% in their imagination.

what about Netsukuku?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article reminded me of Netsukuku: a new type of "internet" connection.
actually, it is more an other internet, without ISP, decentralized etc... read the site, please. the only problem with netsukuku would be how the nodes are mantained, since there has to be someone that cares of them...

Listening to the customers and dropping the charge

[Danga]

Riiigggght... more like they got busted attempting a money grab and are taking the charge away to save face. I mean what do they think there really are customers who like paying 10,000 extra little fees on top of the advertised "$29.99" or whatever per month. If they really wanted to listen to the customers then they would get rid of all of the additional fees that customers have gotten used to as well.

How many people here hate getting a phone bill and while you signed up for some great deal such as $29.99/month the real charge with all of the extra hidden fees is more like $39.99? That pisses me off to no end and I wish they would eliminate doing that completely but I know the chances of that ever happening are nil.

They'd be better off to admit the attempted fleece

[The_REAL_DZA]

because once their customers get the idea the companies are actually listening to them there's going to start hearing a lot of complaining.

More on this

[dcgirl20006]

This is the website from Kimmelman's team, has a bunch of info on the press release and the fees.

This logic is sadly familiar

[The Monster]

It seems like every time there's an election, there's a referendum on one tax or another. There is a particularly nasty trick that the tax advocates play:
Year X: This tax is temporary, only for Y years.
Year X+Y: This isn't really a tax increase, because it replaces the tax passed in Year X. Your tax bill isn't going to go up if this passes.

Of course, it's usually a different group saying these two things, so that the lie isn't as blatant.

The regulated monopolies are so in bed with the government that they start to think the same way.

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[diersing]

Their nickel & dime strategy has been working for decades, I'm surprised they backed down - after all, with no direct competition for users what is the recourse?

My favorite telco trick is still call waiting. You inevitably answer the call just long enough (a few seconds?) to say you'll call them write back and the company gets to charge the connection fee and 1 minute of airtime. I guess voicemail was sucking them dry, yay the free market!

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[MindStalker]

Their nickel & dime strategy has been working for decades, I'm surprised they backed down - after all, with no direct competition for users what is the recourse?

Well in a lot of the larger markets there are. And they would have had an even tougher time explaining to the FCC changing different markets different fees.

One has to ask? Is this a win for the new instant communication driven capitolism where the consumer really has a voice and can vote with their wallet due to their size in numbers.
Or is this a win for regulation where with new instant communication people can voice their opinions to the FCC easier and the government can crack down on these problems.
//Flame on!

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be talking about SPLOSTs (the penny or so sales taxes some places have for "The children") Every time one of them is about to expire, someone finds a new "crisis" that needs that penny sales tax.

>The regulated monopolies are so in bed with the government that they start to think the same way.

Yes, sadly most government entities and (usually large) businesses have set themselves up in a nice cozy feedback loop where each side apes the others' disingenuity.

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[Yartrebo]

Oddly enough, the Bush administration has been doing the opposite - passing 'temporary' tax cuts to make the ten year projections look nicer, with no intention of ever letting it expire (they're generally set up to cause maximum political pain to any politician who dares let it expire).

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[shawb]

Don't worry... corporations also scratch the back of encumbant government officials and parties in their pocket. Expect to see the price of gas go down and down in the near future, possibly dropping to pre 9/11 prices for a very brief period of time, likely ending right after the elections. That way the encumbant officials can say "see, we've fixed the problem with the price of gas. Nevermind that the problem was caused by some of our largest campaign contributors and we realy did nothing to stop it in the first place, as the millions of dollars they donated of course have to be paid back by allowing them to gouge the consumers for billions of dollars." (numbers in that quote are simply pulled out of thin air, not to be used as an actual source of information) Having a Republican controlled presidency, senate, house and supreme court happens to be a very desirable thing to the oil companies, as there is no "voice of reason" balancing things out and asking questions about legislation that passes, or about lack of enforcement of existing laws.

I'm not Republican bashing here... a government dominated by Dems is equally as indebted to their own special interest groups (primarilly large businesses, just different ones) and is just as bad for the country A balance between Republican and Democrat allows the federal government to be indebted a lot more to the people than special interest groups. I personally feel that more than two parties would be a very good thing, but two is better than one. Although I'm doubtful that this trend can be extrapolated to one party is better than no, in which every elected government official is elected based on their ability to govern and a bank of trust they have built in the community rather than adherance to party lines. Although one could argue that in such a system, each person running for office is their own party. A citizen can dream... right?

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[operagost]

So the point of your post is... vote for Nader?

Having a Republican controlled presidency, senate, house and supreme court happens to be a very desirable thing to the oil companies,

The Supreme court is NOT "Republican controlled". There are three strict constructionists, four liberals, and two moderates.

Re:This logic is sadly familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

It was just kindof an unplanned rant. And the Supreme court thing... I meant to put in something along the lines of "and they would love..."

I guess my original post should serve as a warning to me to try not to post before caffeine.

Hooray for the free market!

[Goaway]

Remember, kids, governement regulation is BAD! In a free market corporations always do what is best for their customers thanks to LIBERTARIAN MAGIC!

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[the_B0fh]

The parent is in no way a troll. Please mod up.

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[jank1887]

umm, no, it is a troll. correct, but still a troll. (usage: trolling, as in "to fish for by trailing a baited line from behind a slowly moving boat", not as in "you're an ugly troll".)

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[Goaway]

No, it would have been a troll if I had been talking about Ayn Rice and her famous vampire book "Atlas Shrugged".

This is just plain making fun of the naïvete of libertarians and other free-market idealists.

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[Anonymous Coward]

He was modded that way because he forgot his tag and the moderator was an idiot. It amazes me that idiots come to a nerd site, and amazes me even more that they actually get mod points!

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[jank1887]

no, in that case it would have been -1 Offtopic

This was a troll. It was leaving an inflammatory (to libetarians) comment likely to start a whole thread of pointless quibbling. Yes, usually, but not necessarily, offtopic as well.

Re:Hooray for the free market!

[Goaway]

You really have no idea what the word "troll" really means, do you?

Pay attention to the complaining

[Mabonus]

It seems to be a fairly common sentiment here that people really really hate that verizon and other telcos like tacking on five $2 charges to each bill, bumping the final cost above the advertized cost. Nobody likes it, and it sounds like public opinion of verizon is in the gutter. People still use verizon though.

Now pay attention here...

If the telcos suddenly started blocking sites or intentionally slowing down competitors, what would you do?

Local competition is negligable. If people had a viable alternative to being harassed and bent over the barrel I think they'd be gone by now. There are very few industries where such a crappy product can survive for so long, but that's the limited monopoly granted by the government, which is why letting the free market sort things out isn't going to work for everything.

Re:Pay attention to the complaining

[spyrochaete]

The American DSL monopolies are very unfortunate and entirely avoidable. In Toronto, Canada, there are over 160 ISPs in addition to the major ones, and 56 of those are DSL. The mom and pop DSL ISPs are just as fast as the big boys (at 3.0Mb, though we have a cable internet monopoly and that network offers at least 6.0Mb for a similar price) but the little guys are cheaper and more flexible. For instance, little ISPs tend to have no monthly transfer caps, allow you to buy your own modem instead of renting, allow you to run servers, don't throttle Usenet or common P2P ports, etc. Plus, due to all the competition, the little guys work their asses off to keep their fickle customers on board. Competition is a great thing!

Re:Pay attention to the complaining

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, stupid?

but that's the limited monopoly granted by the government, which is why letting the free market sort things out isn't going to work for everything.

Government interference != free market. If the free market had anything to do with it, you'd have as many options as profitability would allow. If a supplier became abusive, over-priced, and a pain to work with, someone would be able to realize a profit from taking their customers. It's called competition, and it works wherever it's been tried.

Government regulation, semi-regulation, and artificial barriers to entry (like, for example, tons of red tape) are what prop up these monopolies, not the free market.

Re:Pay attention to the complaining

[falconwolf]

Local competition is negligable. If people had a viable alternative to being harassed and bent over the barrel I think they'd be gone by now. There are very few industries where such a crappy product can survive for so long, but that's the limited monopoly granted by the government, which is why letting the free market sort things out isn't going to work for everything.

You're equating a government granted monopoly to a freemarket. The universe could fit in between the two. A monopoly, government granted or not, is not a freemarket.

Falcon

How many people here immediately thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

...about those cable-company and ISP provider commercials "Net neutrality means you pay more, you as the customer lose. Mumbo Jumbo from greedy silicon valley...".

Seeing things like this (service fees, etc.), I am lead to respond: "Aren't you going to try and bilk me of all you can regardless of what happens? Because it sure looks like you are trying to."

Simple Economics

[Hoi Polloi]

Didn't you study economics? Costs such as this used to be called "The cost of doing business". In today's modern economy however it is now known as "Sticking it to you as hard as we can and you can't do shit about it".

I look forward to seeing on my bill:
      $5 Gas for installation truck fee
      $10 Catered lunch for marketing dept fee
      $20 Lack of alternatives in the market fee
      $3 Sending you this abusive letter fee

Re:Simple Economics

[ocdude]

...and this after watching brazil...

Re:Simple Economics

[Anti_Climax]

I can't find the exact post, but someone here previously suggested sending a bill for your "Check Writing Fee" or something similar along with the payment you make.

No one will likely notice or care, but after 90 days, send a quick letter to their accounts payable department letting them know it will be going to collections if it's not paid. Chances are good you'll get a check for whatever amount you're looking for, provided it's not overly large.

Might I suggest a bill for your "Consumer Resources Recovery Fee"

Re:Simple Economics

[Si]

But..but.. wouldn't their A/P dept just send you a bill for *their* Cheque-Writing Fee - making it oh, one penny (cent) more than yours..?

And the circle of crap is complete.

Re:Simple Economics

[Mattintosh]

To that, you send back:

- Check-writing fee (+$0.01 over their returned one)
- Monopolistic Asshole Relief Fund Fee, $15.00
- Billing Fee, $5.00
- BOFH Fee, $500.00
- Halibut Fee, $7.83

With each iteration, invent more fees. See how long it is before this escalates into all-out war.

And in case you didn't get it, the "halibut" fee is "just for the halibut" (say it out loud).

Re:Simple Economics

[Paco103]

XM Radio charges you for sending you a bill. If you mail in your payment instead of using a credit card, it costs you $2.00 extra each month. And as soon as you fill it out with your credit card they stop sending you a bill. They don't even e-mail me when they put a charge on my card. I'm not complaining about the price - but an e-mail would be nice. Guess then I'd get a fee for that too.

Re:Simple Economics

[Hrodvitnir]

Not exactly the same, but my auto insurance company charges me $3.50 every time I make a payment. So if I just pay the monthly bill, I end up paying an extra $21 during a six month insurance period. Talk about sleezy.

my last bill

[gEvil (beta)]

I saw this on the last bill I received from Verizon. There was a leaflet indicating that they would no longer be charging me the $1.73 FCC Universal Service Fund fee. However, they were then adding their own (non-FCC mandated) fee of $1.65 to the bill. There was additional language basically saying that I should be grateful since I'd be saving a whole 8 cents a month blah blah blah. It pissed me off when I read it, but I'm glad the FCC stepped in and stopped this crap. Of course, it just means that Verizon will end up tacking on a similar fee somewhere else where they can get away with it (like an "oncall operator service fee" or some such nonsense).

Re:my last bill

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm glad the FCC stepped in and stopped this crap.

Really? I called Verizon myself immediately to complain that it sounded like they were trying to scam me by raising my rates on an existing contract. This was before the FCC letter, and already Verizon had changed its position from the original notice (posted above) to say that they wouldn't add the scam tax to existing subscribers. So I know they had already gotten a lot of calls from other subscribers. I'm glad WE acted to stop this crap.

Re:my last bill

[gEvil (beta)]

Interesting. The article I read (the USAToday one linked above) said that Verizon dropped the fee after the FCC began a formal investigation. However, Verizon issued a statement saying that they were doing it due to customer feedback. Keep in mind that they also justified the cost by saying it was to cover rising "supplier costs," when Verizon themselves are their own supplier. I'm personally more inclined to believe that it was the FCC pressure that brought about this change rather than Verizon saying, "Well, our customers told us they didn't want this fee so we'd better not charge them."

Re:Listening to the customers and dropping the cha

[KDR_11k]

I think automatic fees beyond what is advertised are illegal in many countries. If you add a 10€ fee to every monthly bill that must be declared in readable form on the ad.

Verizon enables criminals

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm dropping Verizon land line service in favor of VOIP in a week or so. I got an expensive collect call charged to my bill last month, a call I never accepted, and the date/time stamp showed it supposed ocurred when I was at work (and I live alone). Verizon's response was "Oh, we just poass those charges from the original collect call company." Contacting the other company produced nothing, and a quick online investigation shows that they are the source of many phone line scams.

Fuck you, Verizon. By passing on the charges and doing NOTHING for your customers, you are an enabler, and just as guilty as the other company. Fuck you, fuck the cocksucking MBAs who made you what you are, and kiss my lilly white ass.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Rob the Bold]

I'm dropping Verizon land line service in favor of VOIP in a week or so. I got an expensive collect call charged to my bill last month, a call I never accepted, and the date/time stamp showed it supposed ocurred when I was at work (and I live alone). Verizon's response was "Oh, we just poass those charges from the original collect call company." Contacting the other company produced nothing, and a quick online investigation shows that they are the source of many phone line scams.

I used to work at a phone company that billed collect calls from jails. We were a legitimate business, but we could make mistakes. We had billing agreements with phone companies that they would put our bills on their customers' phone bills. Here are a few suggestions from my days in that business:

Contact the shady operator and tell them you are gonna file a report with FCC if they don't cancel the bill.

If they don't, contact the FCC and file a report.

Tell Verizon that you won't pay the bogus bill -- go ahead and pay the non-contested part.

Most phone companies would back down on collecting 3rd party billings if you refused to pay that part of the bill. We never had a phone company "go to bat" for us and actually take any action beyond billing to collect a 3rd party bill. The bad debt on our legitimate collect billings was at leat 25%.

Verizon probably knows they are bogus, and will do whatever is easiest for themselves. They would much rather have your $40-80/month than turn your phone off to collect for another company.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Anger kills as surely as the other vices.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Nonillion]

Yeah, kind of like how back in 2000 Verizon said by 2006, 80+% of US households would have 45+ M/bit synchronous fiber connection. All the while bilking customers for all they're worth; on top of all the government grants they got that seemed to go nowhere except into the shareholders and CEO's pockets.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Quiet_Desperation]

Well, they are losing my $40 a month AND my intention to get DSL. I'll stick with Charter Cable and upgrade to their new VOIP/3 Mbps package. *They* haven't scammed me (yet), and their uptime in my area is about 99.9%.

But you illustrate what I mean. I have to file something with the FCC for a $20 phone charge.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Trailer Trash]

IANAL, but:

Rather than ranting like a lunatic, don't pay it. Verizon cannot legally drop your phone service if you don't pay that 3rd-party charge. The 3rd party has to come after you to collect, which they won't do if the charge is fraudulent. Also, take 2 minutes and file a complaint with the FCC.

http://www.puco.ohio.gov/PUCO/Consumer/information .cfm?doc_id=1168

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/news/080702fraudwk3.html

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[puto]

I just resigned from around 4 years of my life working with a BellSouth Companies.

The problem with the fee is it is not the carriers fault, but the FCC.

Common carrier status legally has to let large telcos bill for third parties over their network. nothing Verizon can do about it, but hold off on the contested charges until the 30-60 days which they will do. You just have to call and tell them, and they can dispute it for you.

The Tele act of 1996 allowed this to happen, which is good in a lot ways, because now the Bells wholesale lines out to third parties and sometimes you can get cheaper rates, but it also opened a door for all these third party charges.

Verizon is only doing what the law says. And if they do not, the fees are crazy.

Puto

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Double_Dark]

It's unfortunate that this happended but, if nothing else, you should be able to go to a state agency to be able to help you with your problems. I know in WI that you would contact the Public Service Commission.

Re:Verizon enables criminals

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Good for you. I recently dumped Verizon in favor of Speakeasy w/VoIP (via Covad). I think Verizon is still getting a cut from Covad, but I can't help that. The local cable company is worse than Verizon.

A few years back, my long distance carrier was changed ("slammed") to MCI without my authorization. I called Verizon and had to get them to put me back and waive the "change of carrier" fees ($10 for LD, $10 for regional LD, all times two since they charged both for the unauthorized change and the reversion). This took several months as they kept forgetting that there were four $10 charges that I wasn't responsible for.

After this happened, I asked how to avoid it and they said I could put a lock on the number which would only allow a change if I authorized. I said "do it". Three months later, it happened again (including their failure to promptly credit me the $40). When I asked how this happened with a lock, they said that MCI must have asked to unlock it. I asked what good the lock was (I may have said "fucking lock"). They said that I could add a password this time. I asked why they didn't think to tell me that in the first case, but fine. I came up with a password on the spot: "Verizon Sucks". They told me it could only be 10 letters. "V-E-R-I-Z-O-N-S-U-X". They checked with a supervisor who said they could accept that password. (Yes, I know, I shouldn't share a password, but I don't have them anymore).

The only good that came out of all that was that in the future when I called to fix billing mistakes (a fairly regular occurrence with Verizon), they would ask me for my password and then they knew exactly where I stood with them vis-a-vis their service.

I have more stories, but I don't have my blood pressure medicine handy so they'll have to wait for some other time...

Verison Land?

[fribhey]

i want to live in Verison Land too, is that anywhere near Verizon Land?

Re:Verison Land?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it is slightly closer to Venison Land.

Mmm, venison.

When did this kind of thing start?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union had another explanation: "They got caught red-handed in a blatant consumer rip-off. Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge."

The FCC last week sent Verizon a "letter of inquiry," the first step in a formal investigation.

[snip]

Verizon said the new surcharge was necessary to cover rising "supplier" costs associated with providing DSL for customers who do not also buy its phone service. Verizon is its own DSL supplier, however, so the new fees would have been going from one company pocket to another.

BellSouth had argued, initially, that it needed its $2.97-per-month fee to cover regulatory costs associated with DSL. The problem with that argument? DSL is an unregulated service.

I'm late middle aged, I don't remember big corporations being run by thieves and thugs when I was young. When did this change? Why did it change? It seems that everyone in power these days are sociopaths and psychopaths. WTF has happened?

Re:When did this kind of thing start?

[HikingStick]

I think the thieves and thugs were out there--we either did not care when we were younger, or they simply were able to get away with their actions more often because press covereage was not as rapid and broad-reaching.

Or, in some cases, it may have been that the frauds were on a more localized level. When they did occur, the shameful acts were not discussed as openly. The merger-mania of the '80s broadened the scope of many companies, so issues that were once easier to hide are now more difficult to conceal.

Re:When did this kind of thing start?

[puto]

Walt Disney was crazy.
John Delorean, cocaine rebate in trunk.
The Kennedys bootleggers
Senator McCarthy
J Edgar Hoover

I could go with lists of politications and business owners over the years who were theives and thugs, are just crazy in general.

Nothing new, just better press, and people are starting to question a bit more.

We sweep less under the rug now.

Puto

Re:When did this kind of thing start?

[bruins01]

Delorean? Cocaine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_delorean#Entrapm ent_by_Police

Wrong.

money back

[Joe The Dragon]

Now we need them to be forced to refund this unjust tax to the people who paid it.

Re:money back

[Aladrin]

RTFS. Nobody paid it. It was cancelled before it even existed.

makes me feel warm and fuzzy

[sulfur_lad]

That's just great. I really enjoy when I read stuff like this. Here's what you do if you see stuff like this happening to you: buck'em for the competitor. After getting horrible lip service from Telus Mobility for years (very long story), I just up and left. They tried their bloody hardest to get me to transfer my account to someone else ("are you sure you don't know anyone that wants a cell phone?" ... I told them my friends were mute), and it took me quite literally two hours to cancel the stinking account. I signed up for a competitor, Fido (now a Rogers subsidiary). After a month or so, I cancelled my Telus land-line too.

I paid less talking long distance to my fiance for over 2000 minutes a month than I did to receive three local calls on my land-line.

Telus keeps on trying to get my buddy to switch back to them (they phone him weekly). "We'll give you 4000 long distance minutes!" So tells the truth: "I don't care! I have unlimited long distance!"

The further you can stay away from the worst of the bunch the better. I am proudly a Telus-free zone. Seriously, sometimes the government stepping in is a good thing. Ya boo sucks to Verizon. I wish our government would give companies like Telus a real "suck less," instead of just a slap on the wrist. The great thing is that without a land line, they can't phone me. :D

No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[PopeRatzo]

We are no longer practising Capitalism. This is more of a MoneyGrabism.

Actually, this is exactly Capitalism in it's mature form. I know it's sacriligious to say this in America, but we are seeing the limitations of Capitalism/Free Market Fetishism. Growing poverty while 5% of the population of the US gets 95% of the payroll (from the latest census, just released), a hundred million American citizens with no or insufficient health care, salaries dropping for working people, the powerful pushing Religious Fundamentalism upon the New Poor to keep them distracted.

This is how the twilight Capitalism looks - its fundamental flaws floating to the surface and emerging in our cities, our ghettos, our lives. Capitalism has served its purpose and helped us create a wonderful nation. Our challenge is to supplant it now with something less corrupt, more equitable. There are places in the world that are doing better than the US. We have to learn something from them.

Re:No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[PopeRatzo]

I apologize, it should have read "5 % of the population of the US gets 50% of the payroll". It's not quite as bad, but very very bad nonetheless. That means that 95 percent of us have to split the bottom half amongst ourselves.

Re:No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[SpecTheIntro]

Actually, this is exactly Capitalism in it's mature form.

No, it's not. There is no free market. Capitalism in a "mature form" was pre-Great Depression, when government regulation was very low. America was the wealthiest country on the planet and had the highest standard of living. The problem at that time, though, was that capitalism in its purest form is extremely responsive to market forces, so when the stock market bottomed out from over-speculation, it literally sent shockwaves through the rest of the American economy. The famines of the time didn't help either.

As a result, the government stepped in to try and blunt the blow. Whether or not this worked (or was even a smart thing to do) is still being debated. But what has happened since is that the "New Deal" has not yet been dismantled, but instead has grown as the government regulated more markets. The reason Verizon gets away with shit like this is because the government will not let anyone else run wire. You think if anyone could lay down fiber that we would be having this problem? Verizon would have its ass handed to it. Competition makes the world go round--just look at the cellular industry. There's no regulation there; none of the big companies are granted monopolies. As a result, prices continue to fall. (Although the big telcos are doing everything in their power to establish the wireless market as a replica of the wired one.)

We need to get the government OUT of business again. I'm sure there's a middle ground where a safety net is provided to prevent another Great Depression, without letting big business control whatever the hell they want. But don't kid yourself and say "this is capitalism": we haven't had real capitalism, as it is laid out on paper by Adam Smith, since before the 1930s.

Re:No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[gilroy]

The invisible hand is only one-half of Adam Smith capitalism. It's the half that sounds nicer and all hunky-dory, but there's another side. It's called the "pin factory". Assume that one pin maker learns (before all others) to divide the labor in his factory (it's the 18th centurty, so all owners are "he"). This will be more efficient. So this manufacturer will be able to undercut his competition a little, garnering a slightly higher market share.

But the advantages of division of labor scale.

This means that the larger factory derives a proportionately greater benefit from division of labor. It's better to divide the tasks when you're moving 10,000 pins a day than 100. Thus, the factory with the highest throughput will have the lowest per-unit costs... meaning they can drop their price to garner even more market share, putting them even a little bit further ahead on the curve -- and the cycle repeats. Very rapidly you end up with only one pin factory, because its costs are so much lower than any competitor than it can drive them out of business. Then it's a monopoly "regulated" only by keeping its price just low enough to keep competition out.

In other words, monopoly is a natural outcome of capitalism. It's not the only natural outcome, though in fact it seems much more stable than a free market of many diverse players.

It's entry cost that determines how stable this is. In a market like telecom, where the cost of entry is high (laying fiber, getting right-of-way, building a network), it can be damn stable, even without governmental help. One reason that cell phone service is less monopolistic than landline service is that the physical cost of "string" the network is much lower, since you don't have to lay cable.

Knoweldge and the Wealth of Nations is an excellent, extremely readable introduction to the Pin Factory.

Re:No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[Chacham]

(it's the 18th centurty, so all owners are "he").

Why? Before the middle class (19th century) and the women and children restrictive labor laws (late 19th century) women worked just as well as men. If anything, owners were more likely wealthy people, and this included both genders.

The reason we say he, is that unknown (or mixed) animate object are usually refered to as he, and inanimate as she.

Very rapidly you end up with only one pin factory, because its costs are so much lower than any competitor than it can drive them out of business.

Only if the people allow it. People are not sheep. They can realize how not supporting smaller business will hurt them. In fact, having anti-monopoly laws does that for us. However, ideally, people would do it themselves. But, being stupidly passive, they don't.

Re:No, Chacham, it IS Capitalism

[SpecTheIntro]

Then it's a monopoly "regulated" only by keeping its price just low enough to keep competition out.

Exactly. They have, in effect, found the market equilibrium of supply and demand. If they charge too much, a competitor enters the arena. Then they can lower their prices in an effort to keep the competitor out, and then raise them again once the competitor leaves, but the end result is that the company can never consistently use its monopoly powers effectively because there is nothing to prevent someone else from coming along and establishing a business.

The problem is when there is an actual barrier to entry, like the government. It's not Verizon that keeps other companies from laying down fibre--it's the government. As long as you have perfect availability of information (another tenet of capitalism) then the market will determine how much it values a good--whether that good is produced by one company or fifty is really inconsequential. A monopoly is only negative when it artificially maintains itself; i.e. when it resorts to measures outside of the market. To date there has never been a monopoly that has been an "efficient monopoly," or one that actually provides the good to market efficiently enough that competition cannot provide the good cheaper. They have all resorted to unfair business practices, thus becoming coercive monopolies. But that is the only time a government needs to step in, and even then, it's in lieu of what should be the market regulating itself--if people actually gave a damn about business, they would use their own market power to effectively boycott a firm engaging in coercive tactics. The market isn't meant to be a static, idiotic figure--we are expected to respond in kind.

Phone companies didn't pay their bills!!

[erroneus]

If they had been paying off their politicians correctly and on-time, this would never have happened. Shame on you telecom companies. I hope you've learned your lessons.

Surcredits

[gregRowe]

I'm tired of companies that offer a contract with a set price only to change the price arbitrarily with "surcharges." The odds are completely in the companies favor. They have a customer locked into a mult-year contract with a certain minimum price but the company can raise prices on a whim with "surcharges." If they can do that why can't I add in my own "surcredits?"

I recently dropped my garbage collection company because of surcharges. I've really respect companies that charge me ONE price per month with no lengthy contract (Time Warner is the ONLY example I can think of). I really don't care what factors into some companies cost of doing business. I don't care how much gas costs Waste Management and I don't want to see it on my bill.

Simple regulation would let market forces fix this

[swb]

An extremely simple regulatory fix is really all that's necessary -- require the advertised or quoted price for any good or service to be inclusive of any and all fees, regardless of origin, including the maximum possible sales tax payable in the region advertised.

Advertised prices would then actually represent what you'd pay (or even less, if for some reason your area had a lower sales tax than the maximum), and businesses wouldn't be able to raise prices without raising prices.

And, here's the retraction...

[StressGuy]

Elimination of DSL Supplier Surcharge Fee

Effective immediately, Verizon Online is dropping its previously announced plans to impose a DSL Supplier Surcharge. We are eliminating this surcharge in response to customer concerns. The supplier surcharge has not been included in customer bills, with the exception of a small number of customers who bill their Verizon Online charges to a credit card or receive a direct invoice from Verizon Online. Some of these customers may have already been billed for one month of the supplier surcharge. They will automatically receive a credit on a future bill.
We thank you for choosing high speed Verizon Online DSL. We appreciate and value your business. ....not too many choices where I live, anybody try the Satellite DSL provider HughesNet?

Speakeasy's doing the same crap.

[base3]

They jacked up the "Regulatory Compliance Fee" (i.e. we want you to think this is a tax, but is just gravy for us fee) from $2.24 to $4.16.

Help! Help! Regulation!

[lynx_user_abroad]

Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge.

Damned Federal Regulators! Just once I'd like to see a Liberitarian Administration in power that would once-and-for-all allow our precious Corporations the Freedom to conduct their business without the constant threat of Federal Regulators stepping in.

Then we'd see an Internet where I could watch Home Shopping Network in High Definition Video without having to worry that all the pipes will get filled-up by miscreants making free phone calls over the Internet, or posting to their silly little left wing communist hippie blogs.

How come slashdot still doesn't support the <SARCASM> tag?

Modern life = too complicated for that

[dal20402]

educate the people to start participating in the free market

Hmmm, let's see. To run my daily life I deal with...

• three major credit card companies
• three major national banks
• two giant telecommunications companies
• two insurance companies
• one power monopoly
• one large property-management company
• one federal government (student loan) bureaucracy
• one auto company
• 2 city, 1 county, and 1 state government
• and the usual mix of consumer retailers and manufacturers.

So what I need to do is drop my life's plans and ambitions (to say nothing of my job) in order to spend years learning about every little detail of each of these businesses or regulatory entities. Even if I do that, I will still have less knowledge about any one of them than any of the thousands of professional staff who have spent their careers learning the details.

Face it. There is no way even the smartest, most willing-to-learn consumer can prevent himself/herself from being at an information disadvantage in modern society. If the consumer actually wants to live a life instead of constantly learning about uninteresting subjects, the information disadvantage will be worse. If we want to take advantage of the possibilities modern technology and finance offer us, we need to protect the consumer -- not because he/she is "lazy" but because it's *impossible* for him/her to learn all the details.

There are now only two alternatives to regulation, as imperfect a tool as it is:
1. large companies and government bureaucracies that are able to screw consumers at will thanks to superior knowledge, or
2. reverting to a world simple enough for everyone to know all the details... uh, no thanks, I like having cars, computers, electricity, and plentiful food.

Re:Modern life = too complicated for that

[Chacham]

Or have a group study it for us, publish their findings, and having the people make informed choices.

Saying that it's too hard to fight, so i'll vote someone in to fight for me, and i will get more without giving up anything, it exactly what i call "stupidly passive".

Re:Modern life = too complicated for that

[Moofie]

OK, Sparky, so how do YOU be "smartly active"?

Re:Modern life = too complicated for that

[dal20402]

Or have a group study it for us, publish their findings, and having the people make informed choices.

This approach sometimes works OK when a well-known magazine helps you decide which $50 DVD player is the best value. But it breaks down quickly when things get more complicated.

First, industry associations often will publish their own materials, and a consumer seeking to educate him/herself may not have any way to tell the difference between a truly independent review and industry publicity. Second, any review or comparison that is exacting enough to capture all the important details in complicated transactions or on complicated products is going to lose the comprehension of readers who just don't want to spend time and effort on the subject. "Informed choices" these days require a truly staggering amount of knowledge. Don't believe me? Let your uncle Bob buy a PC on his own, even after he does an amount of research that seems appropriate to him at a level he understands, and see what he brings home. Now realize how often you are doing exactly the same thing in other areas. Scary.

In such complex environments, abuses become easier to hide. The purpose of consumer regulation is not to enforce that everyone get the best value all of the time -- we don't need to regulate against your uncle Bob bringing home a $1000 Pentium 4 box with integrated video -- but to prevent egregious abuses and anticompetitive behavior by companies with huge, impossible-to-change market-power and information advantages.

I don't really understand how fighting to have verifiably independent professionals on our side, which might actually protect us, is "stupidly passive" where beating our head against incomprehensible small print without any help or possibility of getting a different outcome is not. I can only conclude that you, like many, many others in the US, are fetishizing anything done by a single individual while rejecting collective action out of hand, regardless of the actual effectiveness of either course of action in any particular situation.

This is nothing new...

[Pollux]

Phone companies will quite frequently attempt to pass off certain charges to the consumer through "fees." For example, the Universal Service Fee is a payment from you that goes directly to the FCC for the Universal Service Fund, the fund that pays for eRate, the government subsidization program that helps fund schools' telecommunication access (POTS, internet, long-distance, equipment to keep it all in order). The same thing is done with 911 access. The government bills the providers, and the providers just pass the bill onto consumers.

When our school switched over from AT&T to a regional long-distance provider, the rep at the regional company gave me a little insight to AT&T's various "fees." Ever take a look at the "FCC Line Charge"? According to AT&T (requires flash, and you'll need to zoom in to read the thing), it is an "FCC-approved flat-rate monthly charge paid by consumers to their Local Telephone Company so that the Local Telephone Company can recover the costs, not recovered in local rates, that are associated with connecting customers to the long distance network." Now don't you love how that works? They can advertise that their phone line only costs $18 a month, then hit you up for another $11 to cover costs that are "not recovered in local rates." And how about the "Carrier Cost Recovery Fee?" AT&T just doesn't want to have to pay their own property taxes, so they pass the cost onto consumers. I was told by the rep that AT&T has been known to pass whatever fees it can to the consumer, whatever can be FCC and state approved. Even approved "expansion fees" can be funneled into paying for new office buildings that "house infrastructure."

Re:This is nothing new...

[ghostfacehallik]

I thought it was illegal to do that. For example If I run a store and I accept Master Card I am not allowed to pass the cost of the card transaction fee onto my customers for their purchases. WTF??!!

Speakeasy customers should let management know

[thatseattleguy]

Mod parent up.

Speakeasy customers who resent this blatant (and sneaky, underhanded, unannounced) fee "land grab" should email the Speakeasy management team directly: mailto:exec@speakeasy.net> and let them know exactly how they feel about this crap.

I've been a Speakeasy DSL customer since early 2000, but I've started to check into Qwest and other DSL providers in my area as a result of this. They're certainly not the same "do no evil" company that I signed up with back then, and my loyalty to them has basically evaporated.

I'll miss my grandfathered SDSL line, but FWIW a much faster RADSL line from other providers looks to be $10-20/month cheaper.

Re:Speakeasy customers should let management know

[base3]

I haven't written the executive offices, but I did open a ticket to ask about it.

Re:Speakeasy customers should let management know

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a couple threads about this on DSL reports now. If you're an SE customer, open a ticket and ask about this!

Trust me, they'll still charge it

[scronline]

Believe you me, they WILL continue to get the income from it one way or another. As a DSL provider myself, our circuit costs mysteriously went up 1 month before the FUSF fee was eliminated. FUSF has ALWAYS been nothing more than a slush fund for the telcos anyway. Which in and of itself is why they wanted to replace it with a service fee.

Because people keep using the telcos for things like this (money speaks louder than words with corperations) very few independant ISPs have the power to do anything about it. Look at it, Earthlink couldn't stop it, Covad couldn't stop it, and I know I sure couldn't have stopped it. If people quit using telcos for their DSL and went to the independant ISP we could actually fight stuff like this on capitol hill.

There's no sense in rehashing all this yet again so....'nough said

Bringing in the Fiber

[djc664]

I'm working on bringing utilities to a new construction building in Maryland (around DC). While they do not have fiber (Fios) at the location right now, I was told by the Fiber Service Group for Verizon that if you request fiber to be installed they will do so at no additional cost (typical $80 dollar install fees, of course). They will also supply the converters to translate the digital signal to analog, essentially replacing whatever trunk line they would have put in (in my case, two 25-pair cables backbone cables). When they finally get Fiber into your particular area, you are already set up and ready for it.

Of course, that's only helpful if you're building a new house/building.

Cost increase OK, "Fees" are not

[Kadin2048]

Or... just raise the base price of the service by $2.70.

And you know what? That would be totally acceptable.

Raising your rates is one thing -- that's just business. It may cost you customers, but it's all part of the value proposition.

But trying to tack on an unadvertised "fee" that's not really a 'fee' at all, but which somehow you don't advertise as being part of the price of service, that's getting pretty close to misrepresentation in my book.

Even if all the FCC action did was cause Verizon to take their $2.99 fee and move it from a line-item "Compliance Fee" to part of the base cost of DSL service, that would be a Good Thing, because it would make it harder for them to advertise a price for service that wasn't true.

IMO, it's unethical and false advertising for them to advertise a price that doesn't include everything except federally mandated fees which are not kept by the company (e.g. sales tax). If it's not going directly to the government, it's not a 'fee,' and it should be included into their advertised rates. If that makes them less competitive, so be it.

These 'Regulatory Compliance Fees' have got to go; they're misleading to consumers and they make it difficult to make a fair comparison of the costs of service between different companies (i.e. cable and DSL, or cellular and landlines).

Re:Listening to the customers and dropping the cha

[GreyPoopon]

I mean what do they think there really are customers who like paying 10,000 extra little fees on top of the advertised "$29.99" or whatever per month.

Verizon is notorious for this, even in their wireless service. It proves that the arrogance issue starts at the top, given that wireless is in a different Verizon subsidiary. We changed a year from T-Mobile to Verizon. We picked a plan that was advertised at almost exactly the same cost. It had a slightly smaller number of minutes included in the package, but the amount included was more than enough. I have absolutely no complaints about the service, but the total bill ends up being 20% higher due to all the hidden "taxes" and "surcharges". Rest assured that when the contract is up, Verizon will fall off my list of carriers to do business with until I hear that they have had a change of heart.

who owns the infracture?

[falconwolf]

I'm almost beginning to believe that a nationally run telecommunications monopoly may be a better thing after all.

Um, no.

I remmeber AT&T as king dog and I also remeber phone leases and elevated long distance calls.
In the 70s, a phone lease was about $5 a month and a one time purchase of about $70- you never owned the phone you used, kinda like the cable box or satellite receiver is now. In state long distance for my state started at 12cents a minute past 40 miles from the center of town and went up from there. Out of state calls were $.35 a minute - I still have a phone book from the 70s with the rates published.

There is a way around that. The locals, in whatever way, shape, or form, can own the infracturer but then allow anyone who wants to to provide services. IEEE's Spectrum has an article on A Broadband Utopia . In the northeastern region of Utah a group of communities got together to build and offer broadband services. If someone wants to sale services like broadband, phone, or tv they can through the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency with "a fiber-optic cable at data rates that now reach 30 megabits per second. Soon, service providers there will be offering speeds of 50 and even 100 Mb/s."

As a Libertarian I am against the government owning many things, but like the highway system I can go along with this. Or a coop or other organization can own it, however because it creates a natural monopoly, it would have to be open to all who want to offer services.

Falcon

Re:who owns the infracture?

[Ucklak]

Libertarian too, roads don't change that much every 5 years. Until we get personal teleportation bandwidth, there is plenty of competition space in broadband yet to be conquered. I would like to see infrastructure different from service provider though. I don't want verizon service on verizon backbone as this ensures compatability and fair competition.

If the locals can own the infrastructure and keep up to date, then let that be another competitor. Hell, if I can offer a T1 service on a local cheaper than a Bell, then I'm for government competition.

Don't you guys have Local Loop Unbundling?

[Colin Smith]

Y'know, the right for someone other than the local monopoly carrier to come along, plug their own hardware into the local exchange and charge customers for DSL services?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling

Mmm, looks like you do, so your DSL services should become more competitive.

Re:Don't you guys have Local Loop Unbundling?

[jrockway]

http://speakeasy.net/ works for me. 6Mbps/768k, no bandwidth cap, servers allowed, and 8 static IPs. ~$120/month, but so worth it.

anybody try the Satellite DSL provider HughesNet?

[falconwolf]

I haven't tried satellite nor will I. For one simple reason, latency. It's alright if all you do is surf and check email but if you chat, game, or use VoIP there is a wait between the ground, satellite, then back down to you as well as the return trip. Now if I were out somewhere hiking I wouldn't mind it but not when I'm at home.

Falcon

We are no longer practising Capitalism.

[falconwolf]

No this is the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of.

Falcon

This is all a show

[pitdingo]

I can not believe no one has seen through this nonsense. This is a simple dog and pony show for the net neutrality debate. The telcos add this fee to the cost...the mighty FCC steps up and smacks down the telco monopolies. See...the FCC will protect us against these monopolies...we dont need net neutrality laws.

Of course the FCC will not do anything once the telco monopolies start extorting web sites for money. The FCC is bought and paid for.

natural monopolies

[falconwolf]

Actually, i'm a bit more harsh than that. If there is collusion, just don't buy the product. If it is a necessity, start your own business and charge less. (I think that works at least theoretically, and should be pursued before jumping to regulation.)

In general I agree but not for landlines, whether copper or fiber. The local governments grant a natural monopoly to the companies that laydown the cable or fiber, I've never heard of someone else being able to laydown cable or fiber alongside what was already there, so there is no competition. You could go wireless but the FCC tightly controls the airwaves. And the standards they use date from 1934, hope I got the year right. But with the technology available now these regulations are wait out of date, and that's just how mass media wants to keep it. Check out those who want to operate their own radio stations, "pirate radio". If the FCC were to open up the airwaves there'd be much more competition.

Falcon

Re:natural monopolies

[Chacham]

The local governments grant a natural monopoly to the companies that laydown the cable or fiber

Making it limited. And although not water, phone service is considered a necessity. Thus, being a limited necessity, i am for anti-monopolistic intervention.

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[Chacham]

They already do this. Look at your phone bill.

cable, isp, and phone service

[falconwolf]

For someone who lives in an apartment, maybe this is something that is feasable.
I should look into this more and talk to my neighbors and landlord.

I'm sure we'd all save a lot of money if we split the internet, cable, and telephone bills.

A small group of people are already doing this in NYC. An engineer and tech from a phone or cable company started a business where they laydown fiber from their co to apartments, homes, and offices. They then offer cable, internet access, and phone service and for all three services the cost is cheaper than what the customer would normally pay. This has enabled those who otherwise could not afford these services to get them. They have been negotiating with city officals to expand the service. It was featured in an article in IEEE's Spectrum .

Falcon

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[evilviper]

including the maximum possible sales tax payable in the region advertised.

So nation-wide adverts should be at a distinct disadvantage to local adverts?

If you're advertising in a state with no taxs, your quoted price will be MUCH lower than those advertised across the entire country, and forced to quote the "maximum possible sales tax" (probably 10% higher).

I was with you up until there, though.

freemarket, monopolies, and regulations

[falconwolf]

Unfortunately, the more we rely on the government to protect us, the lazier people will get thus perpetuating the need for laws and regulations. The only way to not need so much regulation is to educate the people to start participating in the free market.

I'd agree with you except there isn't a real freemarket. Er, correct that, the only freemarket is in the illegal drug trade. Simply government, whether local city or county, state, or federal, has granted a few corporations natural monopolies. The only way out I see is if locals owned the infracture, and the FCC opened up the airwaves.

Falcon

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[ppz003]

My cell phone package is advertised as 35.99 USD per month. The actual bill is just a little over 50 USD per month.

When I had a land line, the cost was advertised as 15.99 USD per month. The bill each month (without long distance charged added in) was 21 USD per month.

They do not add in all fees unless you explicitly ask them to do so. They advertise a lower price.

Verizon Huh

[Nom du Keyboard]

Verizon, huh. Aren't they the nice FIOS people that are trying to give us an option to the rotten Comcast monopoly? Now they're jerks too!

It's really too bad that enough people don't get together, buy their stock, and make them treat their customers -- who are now also their stockholders -- nicely.

prepaid cell service

[falconwolf]

If you are a casual cell phone user and don't make long calls, only calls when necessary, you might be better off with prepaid cell service. However, this was about 3 years ago. I'm current on a plan, which ends up costing me $50 a month.

Because I rarely use the phone and a good portion on the phone is long distance I checked into getting a prepaid phone. On investigating a couple of different plans though I walked away from getting one. For the plans I saw, you paid X amount for Y minutes then you had to use those minutes within a month, or 3 months. If you didn't use all the minutes they expired. The cheapest plan I saw was for 200 minutes and expired in 3 months. I hardly ever use the phone for more than 10 minutes a month. Three months come to 30 minutes, so I've of paid for 170 minutes I never used. Now things may of changed since I looked into it as it was three or four years ago when I checked, but I don't directly pay for my phone service now anyway as my sister got me a phone and put me on her service, which is cheaper than if I got service myself.

Falcon

dsl monopolies

[falconwolf]

The American DSL monopolies are very unfortunate and entirely avoidable. In Toronto, Canada, there are over 160 ISPs in addition to the major ones, and 56 of those are DSL. The mom and pop DSL ISPs are just as fast as the big boys (at 3.0Mb, though we have a cable internet monopoly and that network offers at least 6.0Mb for a similar price) but the little guys are cheaper and more flexible. For instance, little ISPs tend to have no monthly transfer caps, allow you to buy your own modem instead of renting, allow you to run servers, don't throttle Usenet or common P2P ports, etc. Plus, due to all the competition, the little guys work their asses off to keep their fickle customers on board. Competition is a great thing!

I'm not saying DSL is available from more than one provider in the US, to the contrary many places have a choice of who offers DLS. However everyone who offers dsl still has to go through the telcos. The same with cable. My isp is Earthlink, but they provide it through Time Warner, now Comcast.

Falcon

Re:dsl monopolies

[spyrochaete]

Toronto DSL ISPs ride on the Bell Canada infrastructure, but somehow they are $5 to $15 per month cheaper than Bell's Sympatico ISP.

So this was the fund that Anti-Net Neutrality ..

[unity100]

... advertising & bribing spendings were going to be met from.

Bribe congressmen and senators, spend 500 million $ in advertising, and accrue it from the clients.

Splendid understanding of the concept of 'loan'.

And they were saying that the anti network neutrality laws were going to make the services cheaper. So thats how cheap its gonna be.

You're lucky

[Slashdot Parent]

I couldn't get Verizon Wireless to reveal what my monthly charge would be, inclusive of all junk fees, until I got my first bill.

Incidentally, they also asked that I stop referring to the junk fees as "junk fees." I'm not sure why.

Collusion

[Slashdot Parent]

When there's collusion (price fixing)

With whom are you accusing Verizon of colluding? Methinks you do not know what the word "collusion" means.

Re:Collusion

[gfxguy]

The FCC stepped in just as major carriers Verizon and BellSouth made moves to add a $1-$3 surcharge to their DSL services; they were coincidentally to add this charge just as the Universal Service Fund fee was being removed from all DSL services.

Uhh.... BellSouth? Or do you think, in a free market, one company could get away with it while the other one didn't?

Re:Collusion

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm pretty sure that Verizon and BellSouth do not serve the same markets. That's like saying Verizon was colluding with Ethiopia Telecom. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but at the end of the day, who does it affect?

In Economics, collusion refers to the cooperation of two firms that would otherwise be expected to compete with each other. An example of collusion might be if a particular community only had two options for broadband: DSL from Verizon and Cable Modem from Comcast. If Comcast and Verizon decided to cooperate and set the price of both DSL and Cable Modem at $65 per month inststead of competing with each other, that would be collusion.

Re:Collusion

[gfxguy]

It is probably not 100% overlap, but they do, in fact, serve many of the same markets. I'm in one of them, although I have a cable modem so was not affected by this.

Re:Listening to the customers and dropping the cha

[Rich0]

Pretty soon we'll be walking into Walmart with a big sign on the door saying "Everything in this store is FREE!!!!" with a note in 1-point font that a nominal restocking fee will be assessed for each item at the register.

I'm with you - advertise what it costs. It is one thing if it is a tax based on the final price. It is another thing if you're charging a "gas price surcharge" or a "electricity rate hike surcharge" or a "upstream bandwidth fee". When you buy a spatula at walmart it isn't 50 cents plus separate fees for assembly, pastic, steel, transport, wages for all the above, lunch for the trucker, etc...

Ob. Simpsons Quote

[CrazyTalk]

Quimby: There's a $1000 tax on puffy director pants

Directory: But I'm not wearing puffy pants!

Quimby: Then there's a tax on not wearing puffy pants.

Re:who owns the infra[stru]cture?

[markschneg]

I'm loving the fact that my city council (in Utah) voted in the affirmative to support the Utopia network here. I use the service at work, and am awaiting the install to my residence right now. Many other cities were lobbied successfully by Comcast and Qwest to vote the initiative down, and are now wishing they had not fallen for the lies!

Over the Utopia network, residential customers can get a 15meg SYNCHRONOUS line with static IP for $40/month. Business customers can get a 30meg synchronous line for about $125 (depending on bundling with VoIP and promotions). There are currently four ISPs offering internet service on the Utopia network, so you also get to take your pick. It's a WONDERFUL system to have in the area, even though they're not finished deploying some segments of the involved cities, and still working some of the kinks out. I hope other cities in the nation are successful in emulating it, and that they will likewise not be bought or talked out of it by the incumbent providers.

As a sidenote, the presence of fiber-to-the-home in my area has helped keep comcast and qwest in check. I can get Comcast's highest-speed cable modem in my area for about $20/month as long as I happen to mention that "i'm considering this new fiber-optic thingy I heard about in my neighborhood ..."

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[Chacham]

The fees are still specified on the bill. What you are talking about is advertising, and that is a whole other thing.

Re:who owns the infra[stru]cture?

[falconwolf]

As a sidenote, the presence of fiber-to-the-home in my area has helped keep comcast and qwest in check. I can get Comcast's highest-speed cable modem in my area for about $20/month as long as I happen to mention that "i'm considering this new fiber-optic thingy I heard about in my neighborhood ..."

Competition does some wonderful things. Unfortunately most places don't have any, many can't even get broadband. I can see Utopia type systems popping up in under/nondeveloped nations, and a lot of money for those who set them up. Wireless even. Earlier today I read an article about how African countries, Kenya was specifically mentioned, where more people are getting their electricity from small solar systems inexpensively made than from the grid. These systems may only be enough to power some lights or a tv for a few hours a day but they are scalable. With them people may be able to do more work thus increase what they earn and/or their children can use lights to study. That's what one business is doing in Southeast Asia.

Falcon

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[swb]

Prices vary all over the country anyway, so national ads for pricing are inherently unreliable. And most ads with specific pricing tend to be regional, related to the specific market able to get to specific retail outlets.

If you exclude sales tax from any kind of bill mandating truth/transparency in pricing, you'll end up excluding *any* imposed cost with regional variability, and we'll be back where we are now -- being lied to about prices and fees in sympathy for the poor retailer who simply wants to tell us how cheap his product is.

Re:Simple regulation would let market forces fix t

[evilviper]

Prices vary all over the country anyway,

Not at all.

An Xbox is an Xbox, no matter where in the country you are. It's only the sales tax that varies.

SBC/Verizon DSL service is the same price, nation-wide, with the exception of taxes. I don't know whether the hidden fees vary or not.

Netflix is the same price across the country, except for sales tax.

etc. etc.

Practically everything is that way. Advertising sales tax puts nationwide chains at a real disadvantage.