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iPhone Bill a Whopping 52 Pages Long
PoliTech writes "iPhone bills are surprisingly large - 'Xbox Large', according to Ars technica: 'AT&T's iPhone bills are quite impressive in their own right. We're starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we've never seen a bill like this. One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too. What gives? The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you; well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as Data Transfer. The Type of file? Data. My total charge? $0.00. This mind-numbing detail goes on for 52 double-sided pages (for 104 printed pages!) with absolutely no variance except the size of the files.' You would think that a data company would have a more efficient billing process."
They were never able to get my bill correct for the 6 months I was with them after the initial AT&T merger. I left, went with TMobile for a year, and I am now back as an iPhone customer. I probably should review my bill.
and you can have it removed by a single request to customer service. What a non-issue. Of course, if detailed billing wasn't offered by default, I'm sure there would be people whining that they're not being told where their charges are coming from.
This issue has little to do with the iPhone and much to do with AT&T Mobility/Cingular Wireless' odd record keeping. My BlackBerry service also generates a massive bill -- length, not cost -- every month. Nothing new here, folks.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
its $0.005 per kb - half a cent per kilobit,or 4 cents per kilobyte (more like 5 cents if you include data tranfer overhead, etc). In other words, $50 per megabyte.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobit
kb = kilobits, same as mb = megabits, not bytes. kB == kilobytes.
Today's front page of slashdot weights in at 517KB - that's over half a megabyte. At that rate, $3000 is just over 100 page views.
That's why you surf the lighter-weight versions of pages: http://slashdot.org/palm/ gives a front page that weighs only 8 KB. A page view at those rates is a dime, instead of $25.00
The slashdot.wml file http://slashdot.org/slashdot.wml is even smaller - 1,471 bytes, or 6 cents.
6 cents for a page using wml, a dime using wap, or $25.00 for "the full experience."
If you really want to get anal, mb is not megabits, it would be millibits (which doesn't make much sense, but hey). The mega prefix is always a capital M.
not quite -- cingular was bellsouth and SBC
cingular did indeed buy at&t wireless (which had been spun off as a separate company from AT&T) -- I worked at the company that did the billing for AWS and cingular took it in-house
cingular became at&t through the SBC/AT&T merger and name change
Stephen Colbert has a pretty funny bit about the whole full circle path that AT&T has taken
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Or just log into your account at http://wireless.att.com/ and switch to paperless billing. That's how I did it years ago when it was Cingular. I would expect the option is still there.
Depends on what you consider is a website ;) The average myspace website is about 5-10mb ;)
Try w3m, it supports tables, mouse, etc.
Because the php scripts are written by a C programmer. I spend at least 10% of my time at work trying to explain to compiled language programmers how to write in a scripted language. They are simply used to include everything and the kitchen sink and rely on compiler to sort it out.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
It sort of explains why it takes AT&T whole 10 days (WTF?) to prepare my bill after period close. Still does not explain where they get the audacity to charge me a month in advance when they can have no idea how much I am going to use my phone or why they would not prorate any of this fee back if I quit in middle of the month. If any of this happened in Europe, the wireless operator would be out of business in three months.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
No no no. SBC bought the corpse that was AT&T, and renamed itself AT&T, but Cingular was a joint venture between that and Bellsouth. Then the new AT&T bought Bellsouth.
To recap:
AT&T & AT&T Wireless exist, with the former owning the latter
AT&T Wireless fails, is bought by Cingular from AT&T. Cingular is a joint venture of Bellsouth and SBC.
AT&T is bought by SBC, which then names itself AT&T.
SBC (Calling itself AT&T) buys Bellsouth. Now Cingular is a joint venture of SBC (Calling itself AT&T) and Bellsouth (owned entirely by SBC, which is, again, calling itself AT&T) or, in other words, wholely owned by SBC, aka, AT&T.
They rename Cingular AT&T.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?