AT&T Sued For Systematic iPhone Overbilling

Hugh Pickens writes writes "UPI reports that AT&T is facing a lawsuit that says AT&T routinely bills for 7 percent to 14 percent more data transactions than normally take place, which could blossom into a costly class-action case. Court papers claim that attorneys set up a test account for an iPhone, then closed all of its apps and left the device unused for 10 days. AT&T still billed the account for 2,292 KB of usage. 'A significant portion of the data revenues were inflated by AT&T's rigged billing system for data transactions,' say court papers filed on behalf of AT&T customer Patrick Hendricks. 'This is like the rigged gas pump charging you when you never even pulled your car into the station.' Attorneys say they would file to have the case moved to class-action status, which makes the outcome relevant to all of AT&T's iPhone accounts."

Comments

AT&T's Fault?

[Kneo24]

Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it. If the device is ON, but not being used, well, there's a lot of shit that goes on in the back-end of things, like update checking, etc...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[nhstar]

Agreed. It would be interesting to know if they ran the same test with the data service actually turned off on the phone. Then I'd start to see fault with the carrier.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[TiZon]

Indeed... If they would of have turned 3G/Data off, OK. But it is never stated....

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Gaygirlie]

The article indeed doesn't give much information, but it does say they disabled a bunch of running services on the phone, and left it unattended for only 10 days. 10 days, with no apps on and no user interaction is simply too little to rack up 3 megabytes of data. As a reference point I don't own an iPhone so I don't know how relevant it is, but my N900 only racks up about 25kb-100kb a day at max if I turn off mail-checking, even less if I disable automatic updates. As such I can't help but feel the 3MB of data for 10 days is indeed inflated.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but without the /customer/ initiating the data when they got the phone from AT&T in the first place, should the customer be liable for those data charges?

Nobody's denying that the data transactions are taking place, that's "proven" via the experiment described in TFA, the question is who pays for it.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it.

The phones are typically purchased through a contract with AT&T. What difference does it make whether it's the phone, or the cell tower, or some bit of equipment in the exchange etc. etc. It's AT&T who are responsible to the customer for any irregularities in data use or billing when they provide the device and they run the network.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Kneo24]

I don't get the attitude around here. When Microsoft's latest phone had unexplained data usage, no one blamed the carrier, they blamed the people who designed the phone -- Microsoft. Now I'm not going to fully disagree with you here. I think the carrier should assume some responsibility, but to what extent it's their responsibility, I'm not sure.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[49152]

Were the phone and the service sold as separate deals? I think that might be an important point.

Many places in the world iPhones are only sold as a bundled device with a service plan from a specific provider and the phone and service can be seen as 'one product'.

I do not know if that is the case here, but in such a case it does not seem fair that the customer is charged for traffic he did not initiate. The provider who sold him the phone + service plan should be responsible for the behavior of the product as a whole.

Of course, if you buy the phone and service separately I guess you'll be on your own.

Disclaimer: IANAL and this post just reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the matter.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[halcyon1234]

Not that people need proof or anything to sue these days, but...

1. I would have had (at least) one phone with it's battery out (or dead, or both)
2. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone turned off.
3. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone left on
4. Another with it's services on, and the phone off
5. Another with it's services on, and the phone on

I would then take a second group of all the above phones, and a few times a day, send them a phone call (unanswered) and a text message (unread).

(For the sake of cost efficiency, you could use just one phone in all the above states, it'd just take longer)

Ideally, the phones that are off or dead should have no consumption, those that are on or have services running should have more. There's a non-zero chance the off-but-not-dead are in a "vampire" state, and will still draw a trickle of data.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Custard Horse]

Wasn't that buggy software designed by MS though which they admitted to? This article seems to suggest that the charge for data is over and above the actual data used.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[commodore6502]

They'll probably settle out of court.
Offer to give customers refunds.
And I'll get a $50 check like I did with the Paypal and CD Companies lawsuits.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Sockatume]

Might depend on how data's billed. Some providers round up to the nearest whatever, and if that whatever is 10kb I could see the occasional 1kb push service handshake message, or something, causing a lot of data usage.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Fusen]

The only extra info I could find was this; "The lawsuit also said the consulting firm bought an iPhone and turned off all apps and services -- location services, push notifications, even e-mail. The consulting firm said it received data charges from 35 data transactions over 10 days, totaling about 2.3 MB. "

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[dkleinsc]

So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.

The obligatory car analogy: Do you think it would be ok for automakers to charge customers for the privilege of replacing recalled parts? (especially considering the Fight Club math of cost of recall >= probability of failure * units sold * average court settlement)

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If they would of have

Would HAVE. HAVE.

Please, think logically about your language before distorting it through laziness.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[commodore6502]

I don't understand why any phone should be sending data (and wasting customers' money). My Nokia Shorty phone doesn't send any data, except the standard "I am here" via SMS texting to the local towers (and that isn't considered data).

If I had one of those phones that is sending "background" data back to Microsoft or Google or Apple, I'd be billed at $1 per megabyte, which would suck.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Possible candidates:
- renewal of DHCP leases
- NNTP/clock synchronization
- replies (e.g., RST packets) to Internet "garbage"
- etc.
These attornies are loosing their time and reputation on this one.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[daniorerio]

Maybe they did, but the phones turned off didn't get billed so they're not mentioned?

From the provider's point of view it is pretty easy to determine if a phone was actually on or not, so if you're going to overbill it's probably wise to overbill phones that were actually turned on...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[flappinbooger]

Not that people need proof or anything to sue these days, but...

1. I would have had (at least) one phone with it's battery out (or dead, or both)
2. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone turned off.
3. Another phone with all it's services turned off, and the phone left on
4. Another with it's services on, and the phone off
5. Another with it's services on, and the phone on

I would then take a second group of all the above phones, and a few times a day, send them a phone call (unanswered) and a text message (unread).

(For the sake of cost efficiency, you could use just one phone in all the above states, it'd just take longer)

Ideally, the phones that are off or dead should have no consumption, those that are on or have services running should have more. There's a non-zero chance the off-but-not-dead are in a "vampire" state, and will still draw a trickle of data.

That's a good scientific study. But these are lawyers, at least they have something. For lawyers that's good.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem was Yahoo! Mail. Read article here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-phantom-data-leaker-unmasked-as-yahoo-mail-fi/

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[oreaq]

TFA is light on details but the court filing states that all push notifications, e-mail checking etc. were turned off on the iPhone.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an iPhone, it just works. Apparently even when you don't want it to. Simplicity.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Luckyo]

This actually sounds to be small enough to be caused by a number of potential software issues with the phone itself.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[pthisis]

I don't understand why any phone should be sending data (and wasting customers' money).

It shouldn't be wasting customer's money; the iPhone was designed to be used only with unlimited data plans (precisely so that Apple could have it do all kinds of "user-friendly" junk in the background without the customer paying for it), and for years after it was introduced you were required to have such a plan with it. AT&T moved that rug out from under it a year ago or so.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article indeed doesn't give much information ... my N900 only racks up about 25kb-100kb a day at max if I turn off mail-checking ... As such I can't help but feel the 3MB of data for 10 days is indeed inflated.

People like you are the problem with western society today.

You purport strong conclusions based on nothing but your incidental personal anecdotes and "feelings". Assuming your example is even correct at all, you state that your phone uses up to 100 KB/day without mail checking enabled. That is approximately 1 MB over a 10 day period, or about half of what the lawsuit claims the AT&T iPhone used.

Any number of things could account for the iPhone using twice as much data for similar operations. Perhaps Apple uses an inefficient data serialization mechanism to transmit requests and responses over the network for update checking. Maybe it checks for updates twice as often. Maybe the fact that visual voicemail uses data plays a role.

Point is that maybe from your uninformed point of view it makes sense that you should "feel" like 2 MB is too much (as the article states 2 MB, not 3 MB), but I highly doubt that you could back that up with real data that would stand up to peer review.

A wise man once said "assume ignorance not malice".

I should add that underworked attorneys are filing BS lawsuits like this all across the country in a desperate attempt to generate some cash. The cases are often dismissed and if not they rarely if ever go to trial. The pleadings and early motions are expressly designed by the plaintiffs to generate a quick cash settlement from the defendant to avoid the extremely expensive e-discovery procedures, and the damaging process of establishing a national class.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[neosaurus]

We've experienced this with the iPhone 4. I've had the second generation iPhone which is the primary phone and the iPhone 4 which is on WiFi on all days except on the weekend. iPhone 2 with unlimited data plan didn't go over 200 Mb per month for two and a half years but the iPhone 4 transferred 65 Mb **when the phone was on WiFi**. And the data transfers were at odd hours. And this was with the phone on it's default settings, no apps and all notifications turned off. Sure enough we talked to AT&T about this who just told us to complain to Apple. We went ahead and filed a complaint with FCC.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

the iPhone was designed to be used only with unlimited data plans

Citation?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[xenobyte]

They also missed the obvious test: Two or more *identical* phones with everything tuned off except the basic interface, each on a different network. They way, data sent by the phone even when everything is turned off will be revealed, as will inflation if it happens.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to side with the carriers and Apple on this, but yes they should. You bought a smartphone and allowed it to access the 3G network as needed, knowing that the phone will use data from time to time. If you don't want it to use 3G data, don't allow it to use 3G data unless you explicitly tell it to do so. I do that with my Nokia by removing the username/password combo from the access points' properties, so it can never use 3G/EDGE data without asking me first.

Maybe Apple doesn't make it clear that the device will use 3G in the manual. Maybe the salespeople don't mention that to potential buyers. In those cases, maybe the complaint has a point; but complaining that a data-hungry device uses data is simply ridiculous.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you are the problem with western society today.

You purport strong conclusions based on nothing but your incidental personal anecdotes and "feelings".

How do you not see the irony there?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if the guy turned off as many running processes as he could find, one byte is too much. He was sold a phone, he went to (at least) the lengths that an ordinary consumer would go to to avoid being charged for data, and he got charged for data anyway. That's, effectively, the end of the story. What does a non-geek care why the phone is using data when idle. He made every attempt not to, and the phone (whose software was never completely under the control of the user) consumed data anyway. It's no different than if the phone started making calls on its own, without the user's consent (and with the user making active attempts to stop it) and then the user getting billed for these calls.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[PopeRatzo]

I should add that underworked attorneys are filing BS lawsuits like this all across the country

Your name wouldn't be Randall Stephenson, would it?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[scubamage]

I disagree that this is a BS lawsuit. If the user is not interacting with the phone at all, and the user is getting billed purely because of data that the phone is using in the background (not due to user interaction) AT&T should be aware of this. Even if its administrative overhead, the fact is the user isn't generating it and so they shouldn't be billed for it. If they are going to be billed, there should be a disclosure at purchase time stating "this phone will generate X bytes of data every N minutes even without user interaction, so be prepared to see that on your bill."

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

They bashed windows phone 7 cause its Microsoft. When Steve-o's toys do it, it must be the provider. Every phone uses background data. Digital phones always have(reception checks use data). You just get billed for it on a smartphone.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Low Ranked Craig]

I also didn't see how the comparison was made. How do they know it's more? Maybe the data usage tracker in the phone is not counting everything?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[bluefoxlucid]

If it's on an access point it won't use EDGE/3G ... my phone doesn't ened anything for EDGE/3G except a SIM card.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[scubamage]

I doubt it. All of these are administrative overhead, and NOT something an average user would care about. Hell, I'm surprised AT&T hasn't been sued because of SYN, SYN/ACK, and ACK packets yet which don't actually bear any data. And I don't expect Joe-enduser to understand. If he did, I wouldn't have a job. But if we don't expect him to understand it, why should we expect to be able to charge him for it?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod this idiot down.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[parliboy]

I got some data billing from AT&T a couple of years ago due to international usage overage. I got a lot of 0.6k line items on my bill from frequent checks. But nothing like 10k at a pop.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Existential Wombat]

Maybe actually packet trace the phone and see if there is data transfer, and how much?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[EvilBudMan]

This is hard to know. A better test would have been to turn the phone off by pulling the battery. I'm not sure how you do that with the iPhone, but there must be a way.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[fast turtle]

and it's idiot's like you that give idiots a bad rep. First off, TFA indicates that it's an overage charge by AT&T. In other words, their billing practices are to over charge you for even having the damn thing and as they stated in the summary, it's like going to the store and buying a 2 litre bottle of Cola only to discover that the bottle had 1.8 litre in it.

What the real point these lawyers are looking at is making this a class action lawsuit so they can cash in on the problem instead of the customers by racking up lots of Fees that get paid.

That's my take on this issue. Sure there may be a problem and it needs to be resolved but this is the States and Corps run this country not the people anymore.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[lwsimon]

Indent and spacing are off in Opera 11. Still readable.

More of an issue is the fact that I can't log in from the homepage - I have to go into an article, and even then, half the login modal is off-screen.

You would think that a "news for nerds" site would hire better nerds, that actually test in popular browsers other than IE.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[sorak]

They'll probably settle out of court.
Offer to give customers refunds.
And I'll get a $50 check like I did with the Paypal and CD Companies lawsuits.

Refunds or coupons? I would imagine the settlement would be "$10 off your next iPhone"

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[whoop]

That was an issue with Microsoft's phone using data without the user knowing, on top of what data they intentionally use. This is AT&T completely fabricating data usage (unless the underlying OS actually uses data while doing nothing, then it'll be Apple's problem too).

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[swb]

Drain the battery dead.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance of the law isn't a defense. You didn't notice the odometer and went 15mph over the speed limit? Sorry, you're getting a fine, no one cares if you "meant to". Lack of intent may lower punitive damages, but doesn't lower statutory damages.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[narcc]

If the user is not interacting with the phone at all, and the user is getting billed purely because of data that the phone is using in the background (not due to user interaction) AT&T should be aware of this.

So... how do you propose that AT&T distinguish user-initiated data from other data?

this phone will generate X bytes of data every N minutes even without user interaction

Oh, I see. You're under the impression that this "background" data is some constant amount. Can you think of no reason that this would be variable?

the fact is the user isn't generating it and so they shouldn't be billed for it.

The user pays for data sent and received. If their phone does 'background' things on the users behalf, why should they get a break? Why force the rest of us to pick up the tab for your data usage because you don't think you should pay for services you use?

Here's an idea: If you have a problem with paying for "background" data, how about you trade your toy phone for a phone that *doesn't* use tons of data in the background?

When this happened with those Windows 7 phones we blamed the *phone*, not the carrier. I guess you apply different standards to Apple. Heaven forbid there could be any problem with the sacred iPhone.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is "can't help but feel" conveying "strong conclusions"? Sounds like the poster was quite aware that there wasn't enough information to make a strong stance.

And whomever said "assume ignorance not malice" has obviously never heard of Sony, Microsoft, or most other modern corporations.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[narcc]

The consulting firm said it received data charges from 35 data transactions over 10 days, totaling about 2.3 MB.

The only question left is "Did those transactions actually occur?"

If there were indeed 35 data transactions totaling 2.3mb, then this lawsuit is a joke. If some of those transactions didn't happen, then the lawsuit is justified.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the OP clearly articulates his gut tells him something, you do the same thing with your comments. I don't really see the difference.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[AmberBlackCat]

I can't find my previous post to link to it so I'll have to repeat myself. My last sprint phone would charge us for data if I used the mp3 player. And it would do this even if I had the internet capability turned off. If you use the web browser, it asks if you want to turn the internet back on in order to continue. If you play an mp3, it turns the internet on and starts charging by the minute with no warning, even though you're just playing a file on a memory card. To make things worse, external contact with the phone could launch the music player. I guess one of the external buttons was a music button.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

except that there is a 'turn off data on the cellular network' option right in the settings.
http://technicians-blog.kingcomputer.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/iPhone-General-network-settings-data-roaming-off.png

so unless they turned this off, it's moot to turn off other options at random.

also, if they turned the option off and the phone used the data network, they should target apple, not at&t

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

A wise man once said "assume ignorance not malice".

The only point where I would disagree with anything you said is that we are talking AT&T here. Assuming malice when dealing with AT&T (which is no longer the AT&T of old, but was taken over by the onetime Baby Bell SBC, arguably the worst of lot) is actually a good defensive strategy. Those boys rarely do anything by accident, and shafting customers is a fundamental tenet of their business model.

However, given the amount of random traffic that appears anywhere on the Internet a megabyte either way doesn't sound all that suspicious, statistically meaningless when you get right down to it. What I'd like to see is the exact opposite of what they tested. Track every single byte that is transferred in and out of that phone, and use it heavily. Download big files, watch Youtube constantly, turn all the background sync options on that you can. Do this for several phones, over several months. Then compare the actual transfer to the usage charged: you'll get a much better idea if you're being ripped off in any meaningful way.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Kneo24]

This is also an issue with the phone using data without the person knowing about it or maybe it's AT&T fabricating data usage. It's hard to tell based on the scant details.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[tophermeyer]

But if the speed limit isn't posted you can employ an 'improper posting' defense. You also have a defense if the new car you just bought had a faulty odometer that wasn't properly calibrated.

To bring the analogy back on topic, the claim is that the iPhone on AT&T's network uses data in ways that aren't clear to the customer and the customer has no ability to identify/terminate the usage. Seems to me that this is a legitimate cause for concern when they are billed for data usage that they legitimately did not initiate.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[satch89450]

Here's an idea: If you have a problem with paying for "background" data, how about you trade your toy phone for a phone that *doesn't* use tons of data in the background?

Here's an idea: the phone vendor discloses the amount of "background" data the phone will send, and the charge that will be applied to that "background" data. That way, if the background charges are disclosed, I can make an intelligent choice based on the disclosures.

All this reminds me of the situation with shrinkwrap licenses, especially the ones you can't see until you open the box...and here is the Catch-22: "Breaking the shrinkwrap indicates your acceptance of this license." If the background transmission is required for proper operation of the phone, that data transmission cost should be built into the monthly billing, not tacked on as an uncontrollable "extra charge". AT&T can predict the overhead, because they and Apple know what's running on the phone when you shut every app off. That test with the no-app phone, by the attornies, shows the problem quite well.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[tophermeyer]

So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.

Only if the customer was informed that the phone contained such a "feature". A full disclosure of the device's data usage and appropriate billing for that usage ought to be required. Unfortunately in my experience the carrier will tell you generally that the device will use some data to check for updates, but nobody can actually tell you how much data, when it's used, what it's used for, or how to disable it.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ruiner13]

According to this article: http://www.reghardware.com/2011/02/02/wyahoo_mail_windows_phone_7_bug/, MS asked yahoo for a non-standard IMAP implementation. This non-standard implementation is why it has excessive usage. They are getting MS to use the real standard which should fix the problem. So, if that is true, then this is still MS's fault, for again implementing a standard in a non-standard way

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[LBDobbs]

The cases are often dismissed and if not they rarely if ever go to trial.

Not going to trial does not mean the plaintiff's case has no merit. There are several great reasons to settle a case without going to trial. Here are a few.

• The settlement offer is high enough to make the extra expense of trial plus chance of losing in court less attractive to the plaintiff.
• Settling out of court does not create precedent. And bad facts make bad law. Citizens really should be careful about what they take to trial.
• A settlement means it is over. No appeals, no chance of the plaintiff losing the case, etc.

It is almost always better for everyone to settle cases rather than go to court. Faster, cheaper, satisfactory results for both sides, etc. People suing to "make a point", as "a matter of principle", or to punish a wrongdoer have completely misunderstood the US civil legal system.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[bugs2squash]

I'm willing to bet that the people bringing this up probably tried this and the results were not quite the sensation that what they wanted. The whole idea of keeping the phone on but unused seems to me to be more contrived that simply letting the battery run down or turning it off or keeping it in a tin box or, as you say, turning off the data service or having it connect via wifi.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[narcc]

AT&T can predict the overhead, because they and Apple know what's running on the phone when you shut every app off.

If you concentrate really hard, I'll bet that even you can figure out why this is wrong.

That test with the no-app phone, by the attornies, shows the problem quite well.

That "test" demonstrates nothing of the sort. Given the information we have, I don't see how you can claim that it shows *anything* at all.

Additionally, the lawyers are not claiming that background data use is a "problem". They're claiming that AT&T is charging users for data that was not transmitted.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[I8TheWorm]

Void your warranty with a soldering iron.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[I8TheWorm]

Maybe BS as to who the lawsuit is targeting? Nobody in the article seems to suggest that Apple may be at fault here. The testing method is certainly weak, and if the phone is actually causing the issue, it wouldn't be AT&T's responsibility to warn the user, it would be Apple's.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Apple uses an inefficient data serialization mechanism to transmit requests and responses over the network for update checking. Maybe it checks for updates twice as often. Maybe the fact that visual voicemail uses data plays a role.

Maybe it actually got an update? Auto-update as a profit center, now there's a business strategy.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[I8TheWorm]

You're right. Everything on the phone is an app including the phone (which *shouldn't* use data).

Phone, contacts, the "killswitch", GPS if you allow cell tower helpers, etc..

Had the testers actually turned off data services rather than shut down some apps, we'd have a better picture of what was really going on. As simple a test as that would be, I'm led to believe they chose a different route on purpose.

Spot on with your WP7 comparison too.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[kev4573]

This is a corporation we are talking about here, why on earth would you 'assume ignorance not malice'? That's something I would give to an 'individual', not a corporation. I agree any number of factors could have contributed to an inflated usage of data in the lawyer's test, it might be anecdotal, and might be throw to the curb by the courts, who knows. The decision about which carrier to use may indeed involve 'feelings' believe it or not. If enough people 'feel' they are being screwed, stuff like this happens. Whether or not those are well-placed feelings is another story which usually doesn't even matter. Also, this person is not 'the problem with society' merely because he/she expressed their experience in a public forum...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[I8TheWorm]

That's not necessarily true. In Texas if there's no posted speed limit, then the speed limit is 30MPH.

Ignorance of the law...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[bstender]

the AT&T corporation was the reason i never got an iphone. clearly it's the customer's fault for signing with them.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

"People like you are the problem with western society today."

No, you are. Anyone who takes a smartphone data issue analysis, and turns it into a commentary about the whole of the western society, pointing to it as THE problem (as in a significant problem), is just a freakjob.

And then you overextend his analysis of data into a dialogue and rant about lawyers and suers, when they are quite separate issues. Saying something is probably wrong in a supposition form is not the same as verifying the legitimacy of a probable class action lawsuit. Why don' t YOU get that?

You don't have much pause or self-restraint when you clump together things you don' t like, do you? And besides, TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS, global warming, wars, the economy, the disease state of the upper and lower classes, and a host of other issues, those are all pre-empted by a smartphone data analysis which is otherwise quite accurate? Seriously?

Or at least his argument holds as much weight as your counter claims, which means they're both freaking wrong by your pissy value system in that until someone looks at the data being exchanged, or an absolute positive test but not exclusionary to other positive results, like turning the phone off and being charged, you both don't know shit and are being hypothetical.

The problem with western society? Ignorant to all the ills of your world much?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[I8TheWorm]

It seems nobody has bothered to talk to Apple as to whether or not this is their problem.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put one phone in airplane mode for the entire bill cycle.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[DragonWriter]

They also missed the obvious test: Two or more *identical* phones with everything tuned off except the basic interface, each on a different network.

Since currently testing iPhones that are publicly available in the US on two different networks is impossible, its not surprising that this test was "missed"; even when the Verizon iPhone is available in a couple of days, testing identical models on different networks will still be impossible.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

And science has no place in a court of law!!! Law is about the psychological manipulation of the jury and not the truth.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[smart_ass]

How about put it in FLIGHT mode.
Isn't supposed to be transmitting / receiving anything.

Then contact AT&T ... if they blame Apple, tell them to report Apple to FAA ... they would be interested.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Whorhay]

In order to make it accurate though you'd need one phone for each variation you intend to test and running the test at the same time. Otherwise the tests could come up with different sized updates and such. It'd be simpler if the phones are all identical to start with and are tested for the same time and time period.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[LordLimecat]

Yes. AT&T has no control over the hardware or software of the iPhone; its job is to provide metered internet access.

For a better car analogy: If you buy a ford that has a hole in its gas tank, should you be able to sue Exxon for having to spend more money on gas?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confused. Basically you're saying that feelings aren't proof. Everyone else but you knows the feeling was not offered as proof but as a reasonable suspicion. I think what you need is a laxative.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your points are very valid and echo pretty much exactly what I would say except I wouldn't call the parent poster ignorant and I wouldn't say his assumptions represent the problem with western society today.

Speaking as a very experienced Mobile Developer who has worked with a dozen different mobile OSes I would simply say that the parent poster's comments indicate not having enough experience to make reliable assumptions. After all, based on your experience you are challenging his assumption which, in itself, is an assumption -- one that is made based on your greater experience.

Quite frankly, the parent poster did a great job of explaining why he made his assumption where he included concrete facts that he based his assumption on. That's the best starting foundation for assumptions and indicates his comments were not based on "feelings". On the other hand, your comment including no facts, but rather seems to be based only on "feelings" if you really want to argue the point.

So, yes, I agree with you, but my reason is tilted more towards having no trust in lawyers being technical enough to actually turn off all apps that use data. And, yes, sue happy trial lawyers are actually a parasite -- I really mean they are a parasite -- who do untold damage to the organism which is the engine of our economy with only a very, very, very small benefit (as is the case with real parasites that often do have some very small benefit).

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Chris Pimlott]

WTF?

I understand what you're talking about but I have no idea why you choose to go off on this poor guy. He stated his opinion, made it clear it was only his opinion and backed it up with some the reasoning behind his statement. He in no way claimed to be absolutely right; in fact, he even pointed out a reason why he might be wrong. Perhaps he was a bit foolish to assume similarities between iPhone and N900 but one is free to draw that conclusion thanks to the information he provided.

In short, he offered a reasonable and fairly modest observation along with enough support to allow the reader to make their own judgement on whether to accept it.

This guy is not your enemy.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Chris Pimlott]

Thank you. It saddens me that most news outlets still routinely omit easily-addable links to in-depth information like this.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[smallfries]

Bugger. Tried to mod you funny but hit overrated by accident. Crappy slashdot UI with no way to undo but this...

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[compro01]

Even better analogy : If you buy a ford from an Exxon car dealership, which offers financing if you sign a gas contract with them, that has a hole in its gas tank, should you be able to sue Exxon for having to spend more money on gas?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[smallfries]

All this reminds me of the situation with shrinkwrap licenses, especially the ones you can't see until you open the box...and here is the Catch-22: "Breaking the shrinkwrap indicates your acceptance of this license."

I love that kind of license. Because no contract can be formed when one party is unaware of it.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking about Access Point Names, not Wireless Access Points, which should be obvious from the context. If you're using GPRS/Edge/UMTS/HSDPA data or sending/receiving MMS on a 3GPP phone, you're necessarily using it through a APN, which you can configure on your phone. Look deeper in the configuration pages, you most definitely can edit APN settings on every phone that can do even basic WAP.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[honkycat]

That's a very cynical view of class actions. What do you suppose the actual damages are to any individual user? A few bucks or tens of bucks, maybe a bit more if it's been going on for a long time. Certainly not enough to warrant a rational person pursuing a lawsuit to recoup. Yes, the lawyers are interested in building a large enough class that the damages from which they'll draw their fees are substantial enough to be profitable to them. And you know what? That's pretty much the purpose of a class action lawsuit.

In some cases they're abused, I suppose, and I have had my share of worthless payoffs (gee, thanks for those 90 minute domestic long distance calling cards, Sprint, too bad I have free long distance). Still, it is a mechanism for private parties to effectively punish small-scale but large-volume misbehavior by large companies. I don't know of many others.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[commodore6502]

>>>"$10 off your next iPhone"

Well in MY class-action suits, the court required actual cash be handed to the customer by Paypal and the CD Companies respectively. I took the check and put it in the bank.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[asvravi]

What do the other four users feel?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe GP said 100 kb, not 100 KB. It's a difference of 8x.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[mcrbids]

Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it.

I'm guessing you haven't done much business with AT&T? Because this is AT&T that we're talking about. Making up random crap to put on the invoice and then sending you to collections seems to me to be what they're all about!

My daughter was a foreign exchange student in Germany. I signed up for an international calling plan ($5/month, $0.10/min) before calling her. AT&T was nice enough to charge me the $5/month, and then $4.00 per minute, making my $90 bill closer to $4,000.000. (Yes, that's right!) I spent HOURS on the phone with their support reps, with names like "Mike" and "Sally" with barely comprehensible Indian accents and horrid call quality, none of whom seemed able to do anything at all to correct the bill.

After 4 months of angry-looking bills and threats to send to collections, I called AT&T and threatened to quit their service. Guess what? I ended up talking to somebody named "Sally" with an AMERICAN accent who corrected the $4,000 bill in 10 minutes! Thinking balance had been restored to the Universe, I decided to leave it be.

The next month, they overcharged me $20. If you've read this far, you're probably thinking: "Oh, this guy just had a bad experience... this isn't usual"..

There's more!

A few months after all this, my son wanted an iPhone and wanted me to co-sign. So I showed up at the AT&T store to find out that their "co-sign" is better read as "it's my contract". Smarting from the previous experience, I refused to sign, and left the store.

A year later, they sent me to collections for $150 for breach of contract. AT&T sent me to collections for a contract I never even signed. It took another two hours and 6 call transfers to clear this up.

Do you think I *ever* want to do business with AT&T?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[dave562]

The only point where I would disagree with anything you said is that we are talking AT&T here. Assuming malice when dealing with AT&T (which is no longer the AT&T of old, but was taken over by the onetime Baby Bell SBC, arguably the worst of lot) is actually a good defensive strategy. Those boys rarely do anything by accident, and shafting customers is a fundamental tenet of their business model.

This point deserves to be re-enforced. AT&T screws their customers over on situations like this one. Any time there is a large enough transaction volume, the customer needs to be aware of the potential for billing abuse by AT&T. The last company I worked at had about 50 cellphone with AT&T. Because they were added at various times there were about four or five different plans. AT&T refused to consolidate us onto the best plan, so it was all piecemeal nonsense.

We constantly had problems with numbers that weren't ours showing up on the bill. Over the course of two years, there were five or six occurances where we had to call AT&T to dispute charges. I'm not talking about a couple calls that were on one of our numbers. I'm talking entire phone numbers that belonged to other accounts that showed up on our bill.

Also, we had employees who travelled interntionally from time to time. During those time periods, we would call AT&T and have them activate international roaming, data, etc. We weren't switching plans. The accounts were international accounts. We just had those features disabled when they weren't needed. 75%+ of the time after activating the international features, AT&T would manage to "accidently" knock the account down to the lowest tier, most expensive possible. So the month after the employee got back, they'd start getting overage charges for state side data. We'd call AT&T, and it was always the same story. First they swear that nothing is wrong. Then after two hours of dealing with their inept reps, a manager's manager finally admits that the account type got changed and they flip it back and undo the charges.

There is a clause in every AT&T contract that you only have a certain amount of time to dispute charges (60 days I think). They will also only refund a certain amount of overbilling. If you have been over billed for two years, they will only refund the last month or two worth of charges. With AT&T's shady business practices and subpar network, I won't go anywhere near them. They are terrible. Their sales people suck. Their tech support sucks. They are the WORST of the major wireless carriers out there.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[TheLink]

Does it happen when they completely turn off the phone?

If it still happens then it's AT&T's fault.

If it doesn't then it could be Apple's fault :).

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Gaygirlie]

People like you are the problem with western society today.

Because I state why I think 3MB data in 10 days is probably a bit much and should be looked into? Wtf?

You purport strong conclusions

I quite clearly said that it's all my personal feelings, not conclusions, and hell, I even clearly stated I don't own an iPhone so I don't know if comparing to my phone even has any meaning. And yet you attack me like I did or said something horribly wrong? Geesh.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

And people are actually surprised by this?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[guspasho]

What updates does the iPhone check for over 3G? Network status shouldn't be included in a data coverage plan, I don't get charged for that if I have a cell phone without a data plan.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[NoOneInParticular]

So... how do you propose that AT&T distinguish user-initiated data from other data?

I propose that they measure the 90 percentile of data usage of an iphone in rest and don't bill for that amount. So in this case, they simply don't bill for the first 3Mb, thereby avoiding a class action lawsuit. Easy, isn't it?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

which a quick google search will bring up:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/06/18/152254/Sleeping-iPhones-Send-Phantom-Data?from=rss

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

My argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, then I don't own that phone.

(And don't float the "but they're all that way" line. There are choices; I may not have perfect ownership of my N900 due to a few closed-source binaries, but it's a fuckton apart from Apple or almost all Android phones.)

Why so many people are so complacent about the erosion of personal ownership of stuff they purchase is beyond me, but this is just one more place where it causes a lot of trouble for a lot of sheeple.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, it is a mechanism for private parties to effectively punish small-scale but large-volume misbehavior by large companies. I don't know of many others.

The intent of class action was to be that mechanism. It hasn't proven to be flawless in practice.

Of course, few things are. It's just that class action law seems to be frequently abused by lawyers specializing in it. All too often, they get the only real money in the settlement, while the affected consumers are left with meaningless restitution like coupons giving discounts on future purchases from the offending party. They don't care about fighting for anything other than the big windfall for themselves. There are also a lot of frivolous class action lawsuits filed, and this could well be one of them.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[praxis]

While I use and love Opera, I'm not deluded into thinking it's a popular browser (on the desktop).

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[nurb432]

"maintenance" activity should be skimmed off the top and included in your plan as uncharged data.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[lwsimon]

It's far more popular than most people realize, especially outside the US. Opera 11 accounts for about 15% of all users in Russia, for instance. Add in Opera Mini, and that jumps to nearly 25%: http://my.opera.com/FataL/blog/2007/11/29/russian-internet-runet-browser-statistics

Now granted, I don't know what percentage of nerds use it - but I suspect it is non-trivial, world-wide.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[lwsimon]

To clarify - current Russian usage of Opera version 9-11 + Opera Mini is at 32.4%, from Jan 2011, per liveinternet.ru: http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/browsers.html?period=month&id=21&id=20&id=19&id=18&id=checked&show=rebuild+graph&per_page=10&report=browsers.html%3Fperiod%3Dmonth

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Sparr0]

3 megabytes in 10 days is six 2kB packets per hour. I don't find that unreasonable at all. My PC generates more ARP traffic than that.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like iphone that has back-end crap, don 't buy iphone that has back-end crap.

Your complaint is like a person buying a diesel car and complaining it can't take normal gas like your mum's car.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[LordLimecat]

Seems to depend on whether they were responsible and complicit in said leakage. If this is indeed "iphone background services", seems rather a stretch to blame AT&T for it.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[nxtw]

Yes, this is annoying.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[tjhart85]

Also, is the phone set to download emails in the background? Update facebook/twitter? The possibilities are pretty much endless depending on what they installed.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[tjhart85]

Bad analogy, this would be like getting a speeding ticket when you had the car turned on in the driveway.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[narcc]

I propose that they measure the 90 percentile of data usage of an iphone in rest and don't bill for that amount.

So you propose that they give away service for free? Should they also do the same for all of the devices they offer? Wouldn't this encourage manufacturers to add even more background data gobbling features?

So in this case, they simply don't bill for the first 3Mb, thereby avoiding a class action lawsuit. Easy, isn't it?

So they give away their service to potentially avoid completely baseless legal action? Here's a better idea: They charge for the services they provide and defend themselves against bullshit lawsuits.

Oh, that's right! That's exactly what they're planning to do.

I wonder how they stay in business... You know, with all that charging their customers for services they provide.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I would have had (at least) one phone with it's battery out (or dead, or both)

Only problem with that is apple makes it almost impossible to remove the battery on the iPhone.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[jamesofur]

It isn't the FAA who has a problem with people using Cell phones in the air it's the FCC :)

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Samizdata]

Buuuuut, you don't have to pay for that ARP traffic, do you?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[praxis]

Popular is a subjective measure, to me 15% is not exactly popular. It's the best browser out there, but doesn't meet my popularity bar. If I walk into an office and 85 of my group uses Linux and 15 use OS X (those numbers are roughly accurate actually, I would not call OS X popular at my company. That's all I was saying.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

What do the other four users feel?

Each other?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

Buuuuut, you don't have to pay for that ARP traffic, do you?

Still, the question is valid. What is considered chargeable data? I mean, if I ping-flood your ass ... or just send a bunch of garbage data to your phone's IP, is that going to run up your bill? Do all the myriad port scanners to which were all continually subject count?

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

They'll probably settle out of court. Offer to give customers refunds. And I'll get a $50 check like I did with the Paypal and CD Companies lawsuits.

Refunds or coupons? I would imagine the settlement would be "$10 off your next iPhone"

Ha ... more likely ten free! MP3 downloads.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

We've experienced this with the iPhone 4. I've had the second generation iPhone which is the primary phone and the iPhone 4 which is on WiFi on all days except on the weekend. iPhone 2 with unlimited data plan didn't go over 200 Mb per month for two and a half years but the iPhone 4 transferred 65 Mb **when the phone was on WiFi**. And the data transfers were at odd hours. And this was with the phone on it's default settings, no apps and all notifications turned off. Sure enough we talked to AT&T about this who just told us to complain to Apple. We went ahead and filed a complaint with FCC.

Yah. Think I'll stick with my G2 and Cyanogenmod. This is one case where two large, historically untrustworthy corporations and a closed source operating system do not a happy mix make.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[ScrewMaster]

A year later, they sent me to collections for $150 for breach of contract. AT&T sent me to collections for a contract I never even signed. It took another two hours and 6 call transfers to clear this up. Do you think I *ever* want to do business with AT&T?

Ha ... I wouldn't. That's why I have an Android device on T-Mobile. Yes, I know that T-Mobile is Deutsche-Telekom in disguise, but frankly they've given me better service that AT&T or Sprint ever did. I had U.S. Cellular for a while, but so far I've managed to avoid Verizon.

Just out of curiosity, did they report you to the credit bureaus? You might want to check that.

Re:AT&T's Fault?

[Samizdata]

Well, this ties back in to my long ongoing complaint about the whole "customer pays" paradigm of cellular. I call you, I pay. You call me, I pay. I initiate data, I pay. You initiate data, I pay.

If you read the Summary

[dwightk]

you have RTFA

Was the real data transfer amount zero, then?

[heneon]

Tfa didnt say how much data was transferred during that period (or was that 2 megs pulled totally from the hat). Not having ever used an iPhone I suppose there is some sort of a counter you can reset to see how much data is transferred. Is the all apps off supposed to stop all activity or is there still some background programs accessing the data network occasionally?

Assisted GPS ?

[Pascal Sartoretti]

It uses data trafic.

BTW I assume that they had turned off e-mail checking, of course.

Re:Assisted GPS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the source article (not just the linked one), you would know that AGPS was disabled. In fact, I would say they did a pretty darn good job of turning off all services.

Re:Assisted GPS ?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the actual complaint:

From "Nature of the action" sec. 2:

"This was discovered by the same independent consulting firm, which purchased an iPhone from an AT&T store, immediately disabled all push notifications and location services, confirmed that no email account was configured on the phone, closed all applications, and let the phone sit untouched for ten days. During this 10-day period, AT&T billed the test account for 35 data transactions totaling 2,292 KB of usage."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/31/AT&T.pdf

Re:Assisted GPS ?

[Shotgun]

I would wonder if they disabled background services like DHCP. That would be something that I would expect Apple to try to completely hide from the user.

Re:Assisted GPS ?

[jeffrey.endres]

35 DHCP transactions of ~100kB each?

Can't wait to see the settlement

[slashqwerty]

I'm eager to see how this gets settled. I'm betting AT&T will offer a discount to any customer that wants to renew their service by signing up for another two year contract. Oh, and the law firm behind this suit will get $30 million.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[Richard_at_work]

And yet again we have someone complaining about the law firms potential payout - they are the ones taking the financial risk here, if you want a better settlement then opt out and do it yourself, but be prepared to pay legal fees along the way.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[SecurityGuy]

Damn straight we complain. Class actions are a scam. The parties harmed by the action get a pittance while the lawyers get a metric ton of cash. You might look at it not as outrage that lawyers get paid for their work, but outrage that this action is being taken on behalf of us poor iPhone owners. It's being taken by lawyers for lawyers.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[Thing 1]

Even worse, the financial settlement that the company ends up paying (mostly to the lawyers) will need to be made up for, which is generally in terms of higher cost to the (remaining) customers. So as an iPhone owner, not only will I get a meager $0.15 for the $2.00 they overcharged me, they'll also need to raise my bill by $1.00 per month in order to pay for it. (Numbers made up, of course...)

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[shoehornjob]

Risk is not the issue here. No law firm with some level of common sense would take on a class action law suit if they didn't think they would get paid in the end. If they claim to represent people who were involved then they need to give the people a bigger slice of the pie. Period.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[LordLimecat]

Then quit your job and become a lawyer; its obviously not that hard to make so much money, clearly all law firms rake in the cash.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they only claim to want to stop the injustice. It's not really practical to compensate 30 million victims for their one dollar damage each but it's clearly useful to penalize the perpetrators $30 million. So I say thank you lawyers and enjoy.

Re:Can't wait to see the settlement

[Uberbah]

I suppose you could see it that way, if you're a gullible boob who likes to fall for corporate progaganda.

You're getting some compensation back from the guilty party with zero effort or risk from you and you're whining about some lawyers making some money? Nevermind that the lawyers do all the work and take all the risk - if they don't win, they don't get paid.

Don't like it - get your own damn lawyer and file your own damn lawsuit.

AT&T's Response

[eldavojohn]

you have RTFA

Well, via Apple Insider I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response:

"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."

It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users.

Re:AT&T's Response

[caution live frogs]

"In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises."

Yep. And the total data usage shown by one of these tools does not match either the total data shown by the other, or the amount shown on my bill. Called customer service about it, and they had no answer. I think I just found out why, thanks to the article posted up top.

B.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm calling B.S. I had an AT&T iphone, and even with full bars and every internet app open it takes WAAAAY longer than 10 days to download 2,292 KB on their network.

-Inigo Carmine

Re:B.S.

[fredrated]

What are you calling b.s. to? If at&t charged for 2,292 KB and according to you that can't be done even with all apps open, then att is an even bigger liar and thief.

Re:B.S.

[TCDown]

I would guess that was a bit tongue in cheek!

Re:B.S.

[gstrickler]

I assume you were trying to make fun of AT&T's data throughput. You missed.

Re:B.S.

[ScrewMaster]

I assume you were trying to make fun of AT&T's data throughput. You missed.

I dunno ... as a happy T-Mobile/Android user, I'd say he was right on the mark.

Should have removed the SIM

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they've been sniffing all frequencies on which the iPhone can exchange data, how can they be sure there haven't been any data transfers? That is why I wouldn't even consider a data plan with per-volume pricing. To all you metered internet fans who fear that unlimited plans will result in congested networks: THIS is what metered internet gets you.

Re:Should have removed the SIM

[ScrewMaster]

Unless they've been sniffing all frequencies on which the iPhone can exchange data, how can they be sure there haven't been any data transfers? That is why I wouldn't even consider a data plan with per-volume pricing. To all you metered internet fans who fear that unlimited plans will result in congested networks: THIS is what metered internet gets you.

Yes, and it's precisely what the carriers want so they can extend their long-term policies of nickel and diming their customers to death into the data world.

The cellular market is a classic example of why many industries are incapable of policing themselves, why laissez faire doesn't work, and why we still need the institution of government. Or would, if it were actually serving the interests of We the People as much as it used to.

Re:off topic, but

[bemymonkey]

Turn D2 on, then off, then on again. Only way I got it to work... D2 off doesn't work at all any more.

To be fair, D2 has been improved massively.

In Other Headlines

[halcyon1234]

"Lawyer leaves iPhone in other pants for a week, gets $20 bill, can't comprehend background services, sues."

Re:In Other Headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA says they turned off background services such as mail checking. But if AT&T and Apple need the iPhone to do extra background stuff, why are they charging the user for it? Also, what data could they possibly need to pull off, or what payload do they need to deliver, that the user should subsidize?

Do a real test

[dchaffey]

If they really want to prove this they'll need to operate some kind of traffic meter on the iPhone itself, and compare that to what is reported by the carrier - but I suspect you'd have to jailbreak the phone to make that work.
And if you're going that far, you should monitor what services are generating the traffic - could just be service bloat on the phone which is no fault of the carrier unless they provide the specific build.

Re:Do a real test

[davidbrit2]

There's such a meter built right in, actually: Settings, General, Usage, Cellular Network Data. Hit Reset when your billing cycle rolls over, and check back in a month.

Re:Do a real test

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. To do a REAL test, they'd need a rogue cell site to connect to in preference over AT&T's gear, and to measure polling for data from the handset that way. If there are no background data requests, he has a case. If there's anything at all, the first Apple guy to mention "background data" in court will be given a nice, fat bonus cheque.

Re:Do a real test

[rudy_wayne]

If they really want to prove this they'll need to operate some kind of traffic meter on the iPhone itself, and compare that to what is reported by the carrier - but I suspect you'd have to jailbreak the phone to make that work.

If an average non-technical user turns off everything they can find (update checking, email checking, etc) and doesn't use the phone and still gets billed for a few meg of data transfer then there's something wrong. If AT&T isn't inflating data transfers, as alleged in the lawsuit, then they should be required to inform customers that their phone does stuff "behind the scenes" and you will be billed for it, even if you aren't using the phone.

Re:Do a real test

[ShadoHawk]

It's there on the phone. In the settings app under general there is a usage button.
It says since my last reset on 2010-06-22 @ 13:10 that I have sent 428MB and Received 4.5GB.

Re:Do a real test

[P. Legba]

In my case, the data counter on the phone disagrees significantly with what the AT&T usage website states.

Re:Do a real test

[I8TheWorm]

Does the average user know to turn off NTP, or even know what NTP is?

Re:Do a real test

[Archangel Michael]

then they should be required to inform customers that their phone does stuff "behind the scenes"

Why? Not that they shouldn't do it, but why should you dictate what they are "required" to do? Just another stupid warning for the sole purpose to belay the lawyers lining up to sue. You have a smart phone, it uses data. Pay the friggin bill OR don't use a smart phone.

I doubt that the phone had all data services turned off. Period. It is part of having a smart phone that it uses data. But the lawyers don't care, you don't care, AT&T is doing nothing wrong here and yet they should be REQUIRED to change because people can't grasp the fact that they own a damn smartphone that uses data.

Reminds me of the warning label on the curling iron .. "Do Not Curl Eyelashes with this Device". Really???

Re:Do a real test

[praxis]

While I agree we don't need a warning label, we should require disclosing data charges made by software installed on the phone that cannot be disabled. Otherwise, next month AT&T can claim that 45GB of data was background traffic I have no business knowing about, that I bought a phone that uses data, they need not tell me how much data their hidden update checker app uses, how to turn it off, or that it even exists, and that because it's a smartphone I am responsible for all charges.

Without disclosure, and with a mindset that "It is part of having a smart phone that uses data" is not sufficient for the user to make the right choice. We need regulations preciecly because otherwise AT&T has no incentive to play nice. Yes, 45GB is excessive, but I bet they can raise the traffic they bill you for based on services they need not disclose to 25% of your usage before it's noticed, and convince all other providers to do the same.

Re:Do a real test

[Samizdata]

Big surprise. My router's bandwidth figures never match those of my ISP's.

Re:Do a real test

[ScrewMaster]

Reminds me of the warning label on the curling iron .. "Do Not Curl Eyelashes with this Device". Really???

I have a blow dryer with a label on the power cord that says (in half-inch-high bold red lettering) "WARN CHILDREN OF THE RISK OF DEATH".

Personally, I think its the adults in our society who need the warnings. The kids seem to handle the tech just fine.

Here's the Court Filing

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/31/AT&T.pdf

More info and PDF

[EuclideanSilence]

Slightly more informative article with a link to a PDF of the complaint: http://www.pcworld.com/article/218381/atandt_accused_of_overbilling_iphone_ipad_users.html

Accident or intentional?

[h00manist]

AT&T is Apple's partner and should be fully aware this happens. If it's a technical issue, there should be warnings and workaround, preventive measures. There is little info on how to prevent extra charges on the phones, for obvious reasons. I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Eraesr]

I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.

Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose

Re:Accident or intentional?

[commodore6502]

On the other hand, ATT could claim they are not responsible for Phones sending data, and the user should have checked into that prior to signing-up. Just like the old Dialup ISPs said they are not responsible for long-distance charges incurred.

Reminds me of this story - Verizon Can't Do Math - The operator quoted "point zero zero two cents per kilobyte" * 35,500 KB == 71 cents
Verizon charged 71 dollars.
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose

I disagree. What would be the point of purposefully making phones that easily dial numbers accidentally? Sure, to rack up some extra calls on the phone bill, but I think the potential impact from bad reviews would make manufacturer/carrier alliances not decide to do such a thing.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Overzeetop]

Extra data, no. Extra charges, yes. I've mentioned elsewhere that I've only come close to the 200MB limit once in 6-7 months of use. I got text messages three times before I hit either 90 or 95% of my usage, notifying me that I was getting close to my limit.

In practice, unless you happen to be in an area with per-MB metered charges(perhaps roaming?), this will affect the very small number of people who are right at their limit each month (190MB+/200 or 1990MB/2000), which if probably a pretty small number. It's still sucks, and they should still own up to the extra data they're using which is non-discretionary.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[peragrin]

I have the old unlimited plan and i routinely get more than 350mb a month. just visiting slashdot, ars, and two other tech news sites. no youtube, and very rarely an app download.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[MaWeiTao]

I've never had a problem accidentally dialing numbers. I haven't had it happen once despite having a variety of phones, clamshell, candybar and sliders.

What I have noticed, however, is that "dumb" phones, at least on AT&T tend to have the media/internet button in an overly prominent position. It's trivial to hit it accidentally and end up on the web. And since data isn't cheap for those phones I can imagine it adding up. So what I've done is go into the settings so that it can't connect to the web.

As for Smartphones, it's inevitable that they're going to be online constantly, and checking for all kinds of updates on a regular basis. I don't know on the iPhone, but with my Android phone I can disable a lot of that functionality. Although, I can't say for certain I can disable it all.

It's my understanding that there is certain communication that takes places between the phone and the network that we're not supposed to be billed for. But otherwise, if the phone is checking for emails, software updates and who knows what else I would expect I'd pay for that data, even if I'm not actually interacting with the phone. If the iPhone doesn't allow you to disable that kind of access, however, I'd see it as a problem. But then that's Apple's problem, not AT&T's.

Not saying AT&T isn't overcharging. It's not like this sort of thing, in one form or another, hasn't happened before.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[arisvega]

Oh yeah they totally do this on purpose

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic, but some of them certainly do; many promotional phones (a.k.a. 'gifts' from some stores) that run a customized version of the OS have some dedicated 'connect' buttons, that are very easy to push, and use dial-up to connect to the net without warning, and with outrageous pricing- even more so if they happen to be pushed while abroad, where roaming surcharges apply.

After the lobbying for effectively banning access to streaming services (as if the providers have always had the right to decide how a customer may use his terminal, which is utter crap; they just aim at streaming video as a seperate 'service') I think this lawsuit is a very good move, may at least bring _some_ leverage.

Furthermore, this should open the subject of investigating commercials and scripting in this context; a webpage without them (i.e. through a flashblock / noscript / adblock combination in the browser) greatly reduces the amount of data transfered. And, to be more meticulous, the customer has to pay for the protocol's error correction data as well, and all that based on some obscure software somewhere that does the counting and the billing.

To put it plainly, you pay dearly for the amount of ad junk there is in a webpage you're loading.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[WPIDalamar]

As of august of last year, they were still doing that. I saw it personally.

http://www.rogue-development.com/blog2/2010/08/still-time-to-teach-your-reps-math-verizon/

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Kneo24]

The wording needs fixed to reflect how they actually bill you. It's very easy think that the two are the same if you aren't paying attention. I almost did at first until I thought about it. To the people you're speaking to over the phone, it may really seem like it's the same thing. Attributing malice to them most likely isn't correct. Now attributing malice to the higher up bean counters, sure, blame them.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[WPIDalamar]

I never assumed malice on the phone rep's part.

I tried to explain to her that point zero zero two cents is not what was written. But she just couldn't wrap her head around it.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Dexy]

The easiest way to do a 100% foolproof test is leave an iPhone turned in in Airplane Mode. At least then you can definitely eliminate the possibility of looking for updates/mail/"rogue" data (I'm looking at you, Yahoo Mail on Windows Phone)

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you moron troll!

I know that Slashdot users are sexy, but shouldn't you get to know him first? Go out on a couple of dates, have dinner, and see if there is chemistry between you, that sort of thing.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[AlamedaStone]

This reminds me of these two pieces of wisdom:

Never attribute to malice what can as easily be explained by incompetence,

and

Sufficient levels of incompetence are indistinguishable from malice.

It doesn't really matter whether operators are incompetent or malicious. It all ends up coming out of your wallet anyway.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[commodore6502]

>>>They could fix it by quoting this in MB. Nobody is going to say $2/mb wrong

That's what Sprint/ VirginMobile does for me. $1 per megabyte, rather than $0.001 per kilobyte. The fact Verizon has never fixed this suggests they WANT confusion at the Cell Rep level, so customers think they are getting a cheap deal (point-zero-zero-1 cents) when they are not.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Jay L]

I've also noticed many phones make it rather easy to accidentally dial numbers.

You should see landlines - they don't even require an "OK" or "call" button. Total scam.

Re:Accident or intentional?

[Cramer]

There's a really big distinction here... you knew when you were dialing a long distance number because you had to enter 1 plus the area code.

(Today, not so much... 7 digit extended area dialing, 10 digit overlays, etc.)

Re:Accident or intentional?

[dgatwood]

Most people don't carry them around in their pockets all day, either.

More "newsyle" fuckup

[halcyon1234]

Slashdot: Stop fucking around with basic HTML elements! The above has an OL in it.  Okay, all you user style people, time for another entry in the "red pen" edition of Slashdot css:

.commentBody ul, .commentBody ul li
{
  list-style: circle !important;
  margin-left:25px !important;
}

.commentBody ol, .commentBody ol li
{
  list-style: decimal !important;
  margin-left:25px !important;
}

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[popo]

Uh.. the OL seems to be working for me. I'm using FF 3.6

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

OL renders correctly, Chromium 8.0.5 Ubuntu 10.10

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[halcyon1234]

FF 3.6.13, using D1 discussion system. Both UL and OL are set to list-style: none.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

dude.. why bother fixing slashdot when even 4chan is more relevant to nerds these days?

this place is dying since it turned from tech to politics in 2001...

slashdot is run by AC oppressing FUD-nazis... AC made this place great 10 years ago..

then AC wasn't needed anymore and it moved on to 4chan...

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[tater86]

I'm seeing an ordered list in firefox 3.6.13 without any css editing.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[joeyblades]

I'm not clear what your beef is?

The OL seems to be rendering acceptably, even in my antiquated IE7 (except for a minor indent issue, which is hardly worth ranting about...).

If you're going to say something is bad, you should at least say why it's bad....

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

OL looks fine in Chrome too.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

FF 3.6.13, using D1 discussion system. Both UL and OL are set to list-style: none.

Then come join us in the land of seven or so years ago, take that plunge, and flip on D2. I know that won't get you into the modern day quite yet, but for someone like you, we have to go one step at a time. Afterward, we'll try to wean you off your precious pet 386 you've been using to browse the internet. You ARE aware it's far cheaper and easier to get a new computer, even a Core2, than it is to find working ISA cards and motherboard parts to replace your aging system, right? And that D2 works quite nicely on computers released in the past seven years? It's true! Unless you're intentionally castrating your OS for some dogmatic reason, of course.

Are you seriously THAT bitter and stubborn about D2 that you're still not going to use it after this many years? Good gravy, man! And here I thought I was an introverted friendless loser. At least I try to keep up with change, so I guess I've got that over a lot of aging nerds...

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

using !important when it's not necessary is poor form as it makes it impossible to override with a later declarations.
If there is some display mode that is turning off ol list styles, that's the culprit and what should be fixed.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, we're glad all you dickeating thundercunts left here too.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[I8TheWorm]

Same configuration here... same result as you.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to clear my browser's Error Console after each Slashdot page load or my computer with 8 Gigs of RAM starts bogging down from all the swapping.

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[Anonymous Coward]

Take some more halcyon.. I think you'll find your browser is turned off..

Re:More "newsyle" fuckup

[alostpacket]

FF4 b10, it seems it doesnt indent as much as it should. Not a big deal, but some people like/and are used to that.

Relevant outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Attorneys say they would file to have the case moved to class-action status, which makes the outcome relevant to all of AT&T's iPhone accounts.

Potential windfall of 18 cents for all AT&T iPhone customers!

Re:Relevant outcome

[Overzeetop]

And $18,000,000 in 40-hour-billiable-days for the lawyers!

Takes less time with a lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

It would probably take longer to talk to the customer service reps to get this sorted out (or waiting to talk to the customer service reps) for all these people.

Passive Data

[Nailer235]

Nothing in the contract, as far as I know, says that you only have to pay for data you purposefully transfer. The phone does all sorts of things in the background, such as checking for updates to software and e-mail, and these are completely normal operations. Leave a computer on for several days and you'll see a similar result.

Re:Passive Data

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought "software update" immediately, but I'm not so sure since iOS devices can be updated through iTunes. I've got an iPod touch which doesn't have a cellular connection, but I think iPhones are the same.

I think Apple really needs to provide a breakdown of what software is using the network, and at least some justification for it.

Re:Passive Data

[Amouth]

you know.. you just gave me an idea - you could have some fun racking up peoples bills by by sending traffic to their devices for no good reason.. you don't exactly have to dos them just start flooding the network

Glad I have an unlimited data plan :-)

[trevc]

and hopefully can keep it when I get my i{hone 5

Re:Glad I have an unlimited data plan :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you live in the UK, where "unlimited" can mean LESS than a competitor's cheapest "limited" package.

That's why it costs $60/mo just to have service

[Overzeetop]

Your basic phone fee should be covering the health and status traffic to your handset. That basic fee covers their fixed infrastructure and handset traffic costs. The advertising for metered data, and the consumer expectation, is that the 200MB (or 2GB) allotment is discretionary, whereas it appears that there may very well be a 5% or greater "overhead" you're getting charged for.

I've come close to my 200MB limit once, when I was on vacation and the hotel wifi was not free. I looked up all the "stuff" the familly was going to do on my phone, used it for maps, and generally spent a lot of time on the web while they rested between events. I didn't go over, but I would have had a bit more cushion if there were actually 10+MB of health/status transfers on top of my discretionary usage. (FWIW, I usually use about 60MB/mo; I use my phone for work so I'm constantly on email and calendars, but rarely stream anything)

Re:That's why it costs $60/mo just to have service

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for reference...
I have a DroidX supplied by my employer. I use it for corporate mail, some Google services (gmail, voice, reader, maps etc) and light duty web browsing like finding gas prices, local restaurants etc. The corporate mail is set for push and periodic updates. I don;t feel like I am using it a lot. I average about 250-300MB a month through the carrier. All day at work and when I am home, it defaults to using wireless.

Excellent! New Business Model.

[fredrated]

Carrier sells phone to customer.
Phone has s**twad of carrier apps that do 'update checking, etc...' to generate automatic traffic.
Profit! Profit! Profit!
As a quasi-ludite I have no cell phone, do you mean to tell me that automatic backround data transmissions and their potential impact on the bill are not stated up front in the contract?

Same thing happened to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is about the iPhone but since I have my iPad data plan with AT&T... I had issues with my iPad. I had it turned OFF one weekend. I turned it back on and within 5 minutes I received an email saying my data plan had maxed out after 2 1/2 weeks into the plan (250MB). So I renewed the plan mid month. I wasn't sure what in the world I could have done to cause this as it'd never happened before. I only have two pages of apps, none had notifications turned on, none had 'allow location' , etc. My email was manual only when I'm in mail. I use the iPad when I'm at work to check email once or twice a day and I am sometimes on Yahoo IM. But rarely. I don't stream vids or play online games, etc. Other than that I use the iPad as an ereader and for Pages. No reason at all to cause such data usage. 2 weeks later I'm told my data is out AGAIN. I do a complete reset of the iPad and within 5 days, I received 4 consecutive emails within an hour, one said my data plan had only 20 MB left, one said 18, one said less than 10 and one said out of data. I called AT&T and they suggested I upgrade to the 2GB plan. I said that I had no new apps on the iPad, had done a complete reset, am doing nothing more than I've done with it since May, so there's NO reason for it to all of a sudden suck so much data. We checked notifications, we checked location services, email and could find nothing to cause this. We even called Apple Care. No one could find a reason. And LO! after my complaint to AT&T, I haven't had that problem again even though it's been almost 6 weeks. Even though we changed none of my settings, as they were already turned off. I find that a bit suspect. To their credit, AT&T was gracious enough to give me one month's free iPad and iPhone services 'for my troubles', which was rather decent of them as the gent on the phone heard how irate I was becoming.

Re:Same thing happened to me.

[P. Legba]

That sounds, to me, like a business strategy.

Re:Same thing happened to me.

[ScrewMaster]

That sounds, to me, like a business strategy.

Well, sure. It's like overbilling in general. Some number of customers won't notice it, some number will notice but won't care ... and some number will call up and bitch. You can avoid legal trouble, often for years if not indefinitely, by keeping the squeaky wheels happy. Throw them a couple of freebies after they finish shouting at the CSR (so they can walk away smirking and feeling smug about how they showed 'em!) and then pocket the extra millions from the other sheep. As a business model, it actually does work, as sleazy, amoral and unethical as it may be.

Where was this test performed?

[OverkillTASF]

How did they manage to turn on their iPhone and get a decent enough signal for this testing? I'm sure it helps that it was probably sitting on a table and not being held^d^d^d^dattenuated by a human hand, but still.

Re:Where was this test performed?

[Overzeetop]

Oh, no, it was held. By an intern. For 10 days straight. At $250/hr. Along with the secretary at $150/hr and a junior partner at $350/hr to verify the test. All told, that's $180,000 in billable time right off the bat.

Re:Where was this test performed?

[OverkillTASF]

Which will be recovered in the class action suit.

Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[scrib]

Wait a minute, lawyers are upset about systematic over-billing?

I'd say this is a "the pot calling the kettle black" moment, but it's more like "tar calling granite black."

I have no doubt that the lawyers will bill AT&T for every minute of those 10 days they "monitored" that iPhone...

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I saw that, I assumed it was a patent infringement case...

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

...but it's more like "tar calling granite black."

What is the color of granite?

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say this is a "the pot calling the kettle black" moment, but it's more like "tar calling granite black.

Geologists would disagree.. Most is grey through to pink, depending on the concentrations of quartz, potassium or plagioclase feldspar, and amphibole, the latter being the dark mineral you're actually thinking of.
 
Oh, and "bitumen". Sorry.
 
CAPTCHA: Knowable

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh.

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Existential Wombat]

More like dog shit calling horse shit smelly.

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[DavidTC]

*whoosh*

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute, lawyers are upset about systematic over-billing?

There have been cases where lawyers have been cited for billing more than 24 hours per day...

http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/2010/08/lawyer-bills-more-than-24-hours-a-day-gets-suspended.html

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[scrib]

From the article:
"Kristin Ann Stahlbush was investigated by the Ohio Bar Association and suspended for two years."
Comical follow-up:
"She states that she completed her two year suspension in just under 8 months."

Re:Lawyers upset by over-billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granite isn't black or even grey, it's very felsic. Perhaps you were looking for diorite or gabbro.

call me crazy....

[Anonymous Coward]

...but the phone shouldn't "phone home" at all. Period. Unless the user does something intentionally to make it do so. Otherwise you have a device made by a company that you bought that can just decide to inflate your monthly bill whenever it feels like it.

Other 20 days?

[a1Neri]

They left it alone for 10 days without any data usage ... what about the other 20 days of the billing cycle?...

Re:Other 20 days?

[Anonymous Cowar]

They played angry birds. AT&T gives you a massive (referencing size here, not price) bill with your data traffic by day (at the second to least granular setting).

Control groups and larger sample size?

[Khoa]

Very bad experimental methodology. The guy needs to set up a control (phone off) as well as using more phones to try toget a better feel of what's causing the 3mb traffic.

Re:Control groups and larger sample size?

[tjhart85]

But AT&T can easily tell if your phone is connecting to their towers. It'd be stupid of them to over bill when the phone has been turned off for ten days, but it'd be "smart" of them to use false numbers when the phone is turned on & the data can't be disputed because of "background data/updates".

Class Action

[shoehornjob]

Attorneys say they would file to have the case moved to class-action status, which makes the outcome relevant to all of AT&T's iPhone accounts.

It's always the same formula: Big company+lawyers+class action= law firm gets rich on billable hours and I get shit. Sure AT&T gets hurt which is a good thing but seriously there needs to be some sort of legislation on exactly how much law firms can charge when there is a class action suit. Then again I may not be affected as I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan. Oh well... Fuck AT&T.

Re:Class Action

[vijayiyer]

No, AT&T "getting hurt" is not a good thing. People will just pay in the form of higher costs. All of our goods and services have liability costs baked into the pricing. We lose much more than the tiny amounts claimed lost by the "victims".

Re:Class Action

[Anonymous Coward]

For people already locked into a contract, they continue paying the same prices. For people at the end of their contract, they can switch providers. AT&T charges based on what the market will pay rather than costs anyways, so I doubt price will increase.

maybe it's like cable arp packets and some cable s

[Joe The Dragon]

maybe it's like cable arp packets and some cable systems count as part of your cap.

The lawyers work for verizon?

[bmwEnthusiast]

And the switching from AT&T to Verizon begins...

Re:The lawyers work for verizon?

[toriver]

Not that many will (until the new phone this summer) - since it involves getting a different phone. Presumably the iPhone 5 will be dual GSM+CDMA when it appears.

Mail Fraud?

[argmanah]

So, if Apple knowingly overbilled their customers and sent out bills to that effect, isn't that mail fraud? All you need is some thugs chasing Tom Cruise around and you could make a movie out of this!

The complaint reads like I wrote it.

[rickb928]

And that's not a compliment to the plaintiff.

The plaintiff makes essentially 4 claims for relief. They read like a tabloid expose, not what I'm used to from lawyers, stating fact and claims. "Rigged gas pump"? Number 3 in particular is a hoot:

"2. It gets worse. Not only does AT&T systematically overbill..."

Sorry, it gets 'worse'? Asking the court to consider any of your claims lesser than others doesn't seem like a recommended strategy. Making one claim 'worse' risks finding the others 'less worse'. Clearly, IANAL, but do I claim that when my car is forced off the road, it get worse when my coffee is spilled? Do I claim anything is 'worse'? Nope. It's ALL bad, and THEIR fault. Pay for it ALL, please, even the coffee. I don't want them settling the coffee dispute first just because it's 'worse'.

Sorry, this does look like amateur hour. He's got an interesting case and all, but it's written up like he was a heck of a hurry to get this filed, or was just so wee-wee'd up he couldn't have someone proof it and recommend some more eloquent and sane language. Even the gas pump analogy is a risk not to be taken in a complaint. At least one judge I've known would read that and snort. And give the plaintiff stink-eye. And she's a fair judge.

And he hired an 'independent consulting firm' to test data charges and metering? Not in that much of a hurry, unless he was beating a media deadline, and the media doesn't sleep any more. Weak.

Or am I just too used to attorneys waxing on ad infinitum?

ps- as a side note, I wonder what data billing would occur if you put your iPhone in a foil envelope for a few days. 'Phantom' data charges? My Android phone can't help it self from checking in despite no email or anything else. It's a feature to check for system updates. I do have settings to avoid data roaming and turn off sync, but I wonder if I can keep it from at least asking for a new version. I'm pretty cynical, and this suit looks like an opportunistic grab on the part of the plaintiff.

Ack. It's already a long day.

NNTP rocks

[Urban Garlic]

Ah, yes, nntp, one of the greats.

Of course, if you've set up your phone to be an NNTP server, you're pretty much asking for it in terms of bandwidth consumption.

Also, I think phones get their TOD from the cellular network, don't they?

Why should this surprise anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical behavior from AT&T.

We have a full time employee at the small company I work for (less than 700 people) dedicated to nothing but billing verification for various AT&T services. We routinely report and recieve credit for thousands of dollars a month in overbilling. Our annual credits dramatically exceed even the HR weighted rate for the FTE.

Why would the mobile data billing be any better?

Lag time

[joeyblades]

If you read the actual complaint there are three claims. One of them is that data services were charged for were data not requested and that seems to be the one that everyone is focused on. Maybe there's background services, maybe not. However, a better explanation is actually that there is only one issue - the last one in the complaint. This complaint is that charges are not always applied at the same time that the usage occurs. I know that this one is true - I've witnessed it myself, was penalized for it, then AT&T forgave the penalty (more on that in a second).

This billing lag could easily explain why data charges were incurred during a period of time when the phone was supposedly inactive.

My daughter recently got an iPhone with the 200MB plan. We were monitoring her data usage regularly and towards the end of the billing cycle we saw that she would go over if she continued with the same consumption. So she stopped using the data apps... she went over anyway and we were billed for $30 instead of the $15 we had budgeted for. After my daughter swore that she had not used the web in the last week, I called AT&T to find out what the deal was. I was finally able to confirm with a tech that indeed, some data activity might not be billed for days after the usage. He told me that he could confirm that my daughter had actually exceeded her limit a day or so before she ceased activity. AT&T was kind enough to drop the extra $15 since their tool had misguided us. I checked and as far as I can tell, AT&T makes no claims as to whether billing for services rendered occurs at the time of rendering.

Why isn't data use on SmartPhones instrumented:

[anegg]

It is too bad that there isn't a set of counters to provide information about data usage on each smart phone. Something one could use to form a basis for decisions about how to manage one's data over the network. Something simple that would collect information about network usage for management purposes.

Maybe someday smartphone vendors will provide such a tool. They could call the set of counters something like a Management Information Base, and they could name the protocol used to access these counters something like the Simple Network Management Protocol. Yeah, that's the ticket. SNMP with a smartphone data usage MIB.

The answer isn't to whine about what a carrier might or might not be doing, or how a test for data usage is flawed. The right start is to get the instrumentation in place so that everyone can know what the actual numbers are, and then use those numbers to verify billing and whatever else needs to be verified. SNMP agents are relatively small bits of code but can provide so much useful data. If smartphones that communication over a network don't have them already, why not?

I Love My Android On US Cellular

[Anonymous Coward]

$30/mo for 5GB data and $0.25/mb after with a $200 cap, or $3/day (~$90/mo) for all you can eat data.

Re:I Love My Android On US Cellular

[ScrewMaster]

$30/mo for 5GB data and $0.25/mb after with a $200 cap, or $3/day (~$90/mo) for all you can eat data.

By way of comparison, my T-Mobile plan gives me 5 Gb for $25/month, with no charge for going over (that's on HSUPA). After that first 5 Gb, they throttle the connection somewhat (back around 3G speeds) but I never have to worry about any overage charges, or suddenly not having a data connection. They have other plans, I understand, but that's the one that works best for me. I also get free voice and data roaming in the U.S., so I really couldn't care less about pretty colored floating maps. I track my usage and I rarely use more than a gig a month so odds are I'll never hit the cap anyway (I have better things to do that watch Youtube all day, although I do tether my laptop to it on occasion. Yes, T-Mobile allows that.) Your mileage may vary.

It would be very difficult for any bunch of lawyers to try and sue T-Mobile in the same way they're trying to nail AT&T. The real problem here is that AT&T is trying to maximize profit by nickel-and-diming its customers in much the same way as early ISPs used to do: I mean, come on ... per kilobyte charges in the 21st century? What is this, a joke? I think T-Mobile is handling this in a much better way than AT&T. You seem to have a substantial budget for cellular usage, but most people don't. What they want is predictability in their billing, what they absolutely do not want are surprises. I know I don't, and that's why I like T-Mobile's approach.

Just for grins, I benchmarked my HTC Vision (i.e. T-Mobile G2) by USB tethering to a laptop and running broadbandreports.com's speed test. I get about 7 mbit/sec in the couple of places I've tested, although supposedly the service goes to 14 mbits/sec. I can live with that.

checking email

[tofubeer]

Did the user also disable the pull checking of email?

A big part of the problem...

[P. Legba]

...seems to be that the data counter built into the phone, accessible from General preferences under Usage, doesn't seem to agree with what the AT&T website reports.

For example, my wife and I just signed up for two $15 data plans and I dropped back from my $30 unlimited plan. I did so after checking the usage on my phone, which had never been reset since I bought the phone at the end of 2009, that said I had used approximately 1.5 GB of cellular data, 1.3G down, 0.2G up. The AT&T website, meanwhile, allows you to check your usage history; and in the same timeframe, AT&T routinely had me going well over 200MB/month, up to over 400 in recent months, well above the 1.5G the phone reports and well above the ~120MB/month average the total suggests. I questioned this, and the AT&T rep said okay, reset it at the beginning of the current period and compare it with the usage when it ends mid-February. Turning off cellular data results in the inaccessibility of visual voicemail, among other things...not sure why that HAS to go over cellular and not whatever happens to be available. It's no telling what else stops working when you take steps to limit your usage.

We're definitely keeping an eye on this situation and on AT&T. I just don't have any idea where their website is getting its data...the counters on my phone really ought to know how many bytes and over which interfaces they're moving. Why shouldn't I trust my phone, AT&T?

Re:A big part of the problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because your phone measures data successfully downloaded. The cell network is measuring data sent to your phone.

Say you're downloading a 10 meg app, and there are a few errors in the connection or you go through a tunnel and the line drops, the download has to resume. The cell network has now sent you 12 or 13 megs of data, counting headers and the botched packets that had to be re-sent. Your phone's counter says you've transferred only the 10 megs for the completed download.

This isn't limited to the iphone, most other phones with onboard data counters aren't quite accurate either.

Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

My data usage with my own iPhone 4 has been very predictable. What about push notifications, did he turn those off? Indeed... did he turn off all data services on the phone, or just shut down all the running apps? Push notifications still work while the app isn't running. Further, the phone keeps logs of its own data usage... Settings->General->Usage... there it is! Cellular Network Data. Did he reset those stats when doing his test and compare with his bill? Reset the phone's data meter at the beginning of the billing cycle and compare with your bill 30 days later and I'm sure they will match.

Despite the poor methodology & sue-happy

[swb]

...nature of the filing, does anyone have complete confidence that any automated billing system is 100% accurate or that the system is designed so that when errors occur, they are always in the favor of the customer?

In a past life, I was responsible for a our Qwest billing (formerly Northwestern Bell). Our customer service record was like a stack of paper 40-50 sheets thick, and we weren't really that big of a company.

This leads me to believe that these systems, especially at older companies, are deeply complex and probably rife with errors, especially given the monthly death march deadlines to get billing out.

There's probably not malice involved, but even if there was how would you know it was malice without some low-level audit that exposed a variable named "$nonsense_charge_to_inflate_profits_and_exec_compensation"?

This also leads me to believe that these systems should be audited by a third-party not answerable to the company being audited and possibly with criminal penalties associated with billing errors that can be proven to be false and intentional.

Math

[rwise2112]

Since when is 2,292 KB 7-14% higher than 0 KB?

Show us packet info.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no network guru but wouldn't showing the source of data resolve all of this? All data packets have identifiers, it would be nice to see what type of data along with the sum of total usage on my month bill.

Precedent...

[hesaigo999ca]

I hope they lose big time, and the judge owning an AT&T cell phone, will throw the book, the kitchen sink, and an aircraft carrier at them for doing this, hopefully it will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for fine that goes towards a fund....as it would be almost impossible for all the clients everywhere to get properly compensated, this would involve way too much accounting and billing, however if the fund was
going towards building hospitals or schools, or something more constructive, at least it would get a big boost!....

The cell co are doing anything they want, it is pretty sick here in canada...i do not know about the states, but i heard that we are even worst off then our southern counter parts.

someone should teach them about how TCP/IP WORKS

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the complaint and they complain that downloading a 50k file resulted in 53k of traffic. It seems likely that they did not account for the overhead(like handshaking,headers,retransmission of dropped packets, etc.) Based on that alone I don't trust that they know what they are talking about.

Shouldn't be relevant to all iPhone users

[DragonWriter]

Unless the court lets them get away with certifying the wrong class, this shouldn't be relevant to all AT&T iPhone users, only those that have had at some point in time covered by the suit a data plan that is not unlimited. AT&T overreporting usage on unlimited plans doesn't have any effect on the people with those plans except to serve as a disincentive to switch to the limited-usage plans that AT&T really wants people to switch to (but not bad enough to drive off people with existing unlimited plans by not letting them renew them.)

Not to blame Apple but...

[Stick32]

Isn't it a known fact that apple uploads usage data late at night? Not to speak to Att's overbilling, but isn't it possible that the phone did actually send/recieve data without user interaction?

Good. Telcos' greed is catching up to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

We can argue all we want about it, but the fact remain: without a data plan, in roaming mode. 1Mbytes is 11$ to 12$. Think about it. This is not trivial money. The fact is that the device is using the CLIENT's bandwidth to operates self supporting function. This uses is clearly significant, even if you do have a data plan.

It's like car maker turning on your car remotely in order to "check it" and use 10 gallons of gas every month to do it.

Don't forget that the iphone itself can wait until there is a WiFi available to do its own stuff.

AT&T Customers Billed By Greedy Lawyers

[SoopahMan]

There. Fixed that title for you.

This is a misinformed lawsuit that will likely go before a tech-unsavvy judge and jury and potentially win. And how will AT&T pay for it? With customer money - that's where businesses get their money, remember?

Another pointless lawsuit in America that makes everything more expensive to make a few lawyers richer.

Re:AT&T Customers Billed By Greedy Lawyers

[PRMan]

If it causes people to switch to other providers because AT&T is too expensive, then it was a success.

Airplane mode a good test

[perpenso]

Agreed. It would be interesting to know if they ran the same test with the data service actually turned off on the phone. Then I'd start to see fault with the carrier.

Airplane mode. It turns everything off, cellular, wifi, etc.

Re:Airplane mode a good test

[edxwelch]

... but then you're not connected to the AT&T network.
Better to just switch off the "cellular data" setting and then *nothing* can connect to the internet, but you still have voice service

Re:Airplane mode a good test

[perpenso]

... but then you're not connected to the AT&T network. Better to just switch off the "cellular data" setting and then *nothing* can connect to the internet, but you still have voice service

Not being connected in any way would be the point of this individual test. Airplane mode gives you a known base where there should be nothing at all. If AT&T claims data traffic that would be quite suspicious, indicating a bug on their side of things. Day 1 airplane mode, day 2 data service turned off, day 3 data service on with no apps running and the phone sitting around unused in standby mode, day 4 apps only in the background and the phone sitting around unused in standby mode, ...

AT&T's Fault

[DragonWriter]

Nothing in the article shows how it couldn't have been the phone itself doing it, not AT&T doing it.

I see what you are doing, using product liability principles to shift responsibility from the data service provider to the merchants in the chain of selling the phone to the customer, starting with the direct seller and back up to the manufacturer.

While that potentially puts a other people on the hook, given AT&T's involvement in that chain, though, that doesn't exactly get AT&T off the hook, since in addition to providing the data plan, they also sell the phones.

relevant to *all* of AT&T's iPhone accounts?

[nurb432]

Its only relevant if you dont have unlimited data....

Apostrophes!

[antdude]

No apostrophes!

It's = It is.

Re:Apostrophes!

[enFi]

Thank you! Scientific rigor and grammatical rigor seem to be decoupled for the OP.