AT&T's Metered Billing Off By Up To 4,700%

jfruhlinger writes "Metered billing for home Internet service may be the way of the future. But shouldn't we have the right to expect that the meters will at least be accurate? As AT&T moves its DSL and fiber customers to plans where they'll have to pay for overages, some users have noticed that the company's assessment of how much data is being used can be wildly inaccurate."

Comments

One more reason to not do metering.

[sethstorm]

It ends up being a power grab, much like the old days were. That, and it has a not-so-nice way of killing innovation.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

It ends up being a power grab, much like the old days were. That, and it has a not-so-nice way of killing innovation.

The issue is largely one of accountability. For example, I have electric and natural gas service at my house. There are meters out back: they're built to government standards, are quite reliable and generally track my usage very well. Occasionally, I get a bill in the mail that has some outrageous numbers on it (I once got an electric bill for some three thousand dollars one month.) Usually that's because the meter reader mistyped something into his computer, or because of some issue with their billing system. Regardless, I still have the meter itself to fall back on, and I can call up the utility and either request a new reading or just give it to them over the phone and have the bill corrected. When I got that big bill, I was asked to go take a manual reading, and to just "tear up that bill, will send you a new one. Sorry for the inconvenience." No problem.

That's not what's going to happen here: AT&T is expecting people to just accept whatever usage they decide to bill for, with no recourse whatsoever if it turns out that they're wrong. And this will happen, with monotonous regularity, and most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is, and how it relates to what they actually do with their computer online, and because Internet access is becoming less and less of a disposable luxury for millions of people.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[sethstorm]

That's not what's going to happen here: AT&T is expecting people to just accept whatever usage they decide to bill for, with no recourse whatsoever if it turns out that they're wrong. And this will happen, with monotonous regularity, and most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is, and how it relates to what they actually do with their computer online, and because Internet access is becoming less and less of a disposable luxury for millions of people.

While there may be ways to do the same with bandwidth, metering bandwidth has no incentive to be accurate. All it has to do is stifle the people who don't have deep pockets.

See any country that has it, and you will likely find that repeated for about every single case.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and it has a not-so-nice way of killing innovation.

Eh?
While i'm against the metering stuff to an extent, this statement is just nuts.
This can provide the money TO innovate.

Yeah, we know that some of these ISPs probably won't bother and this will probably just be purely profit reasons for being added, metering in general isn't an innovation killer.
It was those old days that led to the innovation we have now, dial-up was a huge gain in money for them that allowed us to have broadband and always-on connections, at a flat-rate price.
But now that we are slowly, but surely eating away at the systems with huge bandwidth usage, and additionally large numbers of active connections, they are beginning to show their age.
I know I will end up sounding like someone who works there by saying this, but this WILL allow for network improvements. You just have to pressure the idiots in to it constantly. Force them to have public reports of site improvements, exchange improvements, more bandwidth, everything.
If they are in the public eye, financially, they will have to do something with all that money.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[sethstorm]

Yet every single time metering is done, it ends up stifling people, instead of actually getting improvements. It won't provide the money to innovate at all, unless you count additional ways to nickel-and-dime people.

The huge bandwidth excuse rings hollow when you still have the same problems with the metering in place.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

Eh? While i'm against the metering stuff to an extent, this statement is just nuts. This can provide the money TO innovate.

No, it won't: the big boys have a vested interest in only offering us the minimum service levels they can get away with (they've been petitioning the FCC to lower the definition of "broadband" in the U.S.) and have no particular desire to innovate. They just don't: these are money grubbers whose interest is in pleasing the stockholder first and the customer second (if at all.) AT&T is doing this now because they feel they've sucked enough customers off of Comcast's crappy service and can afford to start putting the screws to us just as that Robertson asshole did.

If they are in the public eye, financially, they will have to do something with all that money.

Sure. But if you think that automatically means network upgrades you are just nuts. They'll bank the money, invest it on the stock market, whatever they think will make them more money.

But I think the GP was referring to innovation on the part of Web and Internet services offered by third-parties, not the ISPs themselves (correct me if I'm wrong.) Take Youtube; it's bandwidth-hungry but incredibly popular: would it be so if people were paying by the megabyte? What other services do we enjoy that use substantial bandwidth that might never have existed if providers were nickel-and-diming us to death?

We need to be moving forward, making bandwidth cheaper and faster. Look, they got nearly a hundred billion dollars in tax breaks to build out a nationwide truly high-speed network ... they took the money and ran. In the meantime, we're stuck with the likes of cable and U-Verse's VDSL.

So no, I don't expect SBC/AT&T, Comcast or any of these outfits to roll their extra profits back into the network.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cpu6502]

>>>meter reader mistyped

Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).

>>>most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is

I hope they're smarter than that. If I received a $200 bill from my ISP, even if I didn't know what a gigabyte was, I'd demand an explanation from their customer service associates.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[__aaqvdr516]

They personally did not get the money to build a nationwide network. That money was put into a fund for under-served communities to request the funds so they could offer projects back to anyone that could build it out for them.

The county I live in was one of those counties. Within the next year or so I'll have an actual ISP in my area (likely WISP for me, I'm too far for the fiber they're running).

Anyways, none of the major carriers are in my area. I know that whoever is the ISP that will be taking over this area will feed directly onto AT&T's backbone though.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

>>>meter reader mistyped

Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).

>>>most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is

I hope they're smarter than that. If I received a $200 bill from my ISP, even if I didn't know what a gigabyte was, I'd demand an explanation from their customer service associates.

This was a few years ago, I know they were still doing manual reads. Now I know my gas meter was upgraded: they still have a meter reader come by but there's a small black box on the front of the house. I think he just walks by and grabs a reading with a handheld of some kind, or maybe it goes over the power line or something, like you said. I don't know if my electric meter was upgraded or not: I haven't any problems since then.

That's not the point though: I was able to instantly correct the mistake because I had an accurate reference for my actual usage. I didn't have to depend upon some remote computer system to provide me with a tally of how many kilowatt-hours I'd used, a machine that is not under my control, and can't be argued with.

And we're not talking about people getting giant bills. What we are talking about is the potential for deliberate, systematic overbilling: small amounts that the subscriber might not even notice but that add up to billions over time. Matter of fact, that's guaranteed to happen. Didn't Verizon get busted for it recently? It's just too tempting: they just shouldn't be allowed to do it unless there are regulatory safeguards in place.

With a fixed bill every month, you immediately notice a rate increase (or an increase in Local, State and Federal fees, although some ISPs have put fake charges there too, so people will think that it's the "guv'mint" that raised their bill.) With metered billing, how will you know if you're being ripped off if there's an extra buck on your bill each month? Far too much potential for fraud here.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes just like wall street, they would never take huge amounts of public money and then give bonuses to people who broke then entire global economy. They would never push release dates back on service upgrades like the media conglomerates do with redbox and netflix because it's providing a legal service that works too well.

Here's the truth of the matter, there's no "bandwidth shortage" like any highway the lanes have a set width, most times that width is underused, at peak times things slow down. They aren't going to fix the highway for our benefit. They don't care about you. They care about stockholders, the ONLY people they are beholden to and the only people they have a legal responsibility to.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Gripp]

the proof of your statements are in the pudding. we [americans] pay much more than most for our internet connections, and are yet about 10years behind most other counties in terms of speed an reliability. this is because they [the carrier decision makers] already do exactly as say.

on the surface i'm sure this pay-as-you go thing looks great for those who don;t use the internet much. but fact of the matter is in the end they'll likely pay the same or more for the same usage. if anything this will make a lot of things on the internet WORSE. imagine getting ready to purchase a software online, only to realize that you'll also have to pay for the extra bandwidth fort he download. or that because you use netflix your internet is going to be more than your cable bill.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

The issue is largely one of accountability. For example, I have electric and natural gas service at my house. There are meters out back: they're built to government standards, are quite reliable and generally track my usage very well.

The difference is that when you use more natural gas, the gas company has to buy more natural gas. When you use more electricity, the power company has to put more coal in their furnaces. When you use more bandwidth, unless the network was already at 100% capacity, it costs the ISP nothing and the capacity you would consume would otherwise go to waste. If the network is at 100% capacity then it needs to be expanded whether there is metered billing or not. That is, unless you set the metered rate so high that it will materially suppress usage -- also known as "destroying innovation" -- in which case everyone will get less service for more money since you're now paying extra usage fees but the ISP no longer needs to expand capacity because metered billing is suppressing usage, so all the extra money goes to profit.

Metered billing is the model of perpetual stagnation. It gives the ISP an incentive to never upgrade because the more scarcity there is, the more they can charge for it. Why on Earth would they make a capital investment to alleviate a supply shortfall, the result of which would be lower prices to customers? They certainly have no real competition to make them do it.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

They personally did not get the money to build a nationwide network.

No, they personally got some 90 billion dollars in tax breaks, took the money, and ran off with it. What they delivered was 1.5 mbit/sec DSL.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

This can provide the money TO innovate.

This can provide money. As in, raise the price of internet access. The thing is though, they already make a mint, even before this. Whether that money goes to upgrades or profit is a different question. And the answer is that it goes to profits -- because hey, when you're making a mint by rationing scarcity, why make a capital outlay to alleviate it?

Moreover, the idea that ISPs need to "innovate" is ridiculous. They don't need "innovation," they need fiber. The idea that they need to do something new or invent new things is pure marketing hogwash. It's code for coming up with new ways to screw the customer instead of installing fiber. I don't want innovation from my ISP. ISP innovation is bad for me. ISP fiber, that's what I want.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cpu6502]

If they can't meter users that Excessively use the internet (i.e. downloading thousands of gigs), then the ISPs will respond by throttling connections to achieve the same goal:

Say 500 GB / 30 days / 12 hours per day average usage / 3600 seconds == 3 Megabit/s throttle

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Billly Gates]

We need more carriers and competition. Where was the government when AT&T bought Tmobile? We need more mesh wifis so we can forgo these a**holes. I remember paying $30 for high speed internet and $45 for phone. Now I am paying $250 for both and expect a bandwidth cap on top of it. Screw these greedy bastards.

Maybe instead of deregulation we should forbid such companies to be traded publicly. It is a conflict of interest as the shareholders and by that I mean Goldman Sachs to not care about anyone but their magical ratios and bonuses by having their companies become predatory at all costs.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

^ THIS. Mod up please.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[DarkVader]

The remote readable electric meters are not everywhere, my meter has analog dials that require reading by a human. I don't believe my utility has any plans to change that anytime soon.

You mostly see them in places where electricity rates vary by time of day, which doesn't happen here.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not to equip modem or routers with meters?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to dispute your point, but that last paragraph made me think about something. Perhaps the price per megabyte needs to be regulated, as well as the method of measuring that usage? I don't usually suggest more regulation (and would welcome an alternative) but I think this would help ensure everyone was on a more level playing field. Rather than competing on some strange formula of price that no one really understands, ISPs would have to compete on quality. Of course I suppose that might just push out options until there was only one player, but we seem to be heading that way anyway.

That brings up another question, though. How do we dispute metering that's strange? You can't actually prove the meter screwed up (most of the time). Unless the reading is truly absurd ("Well sire, you download the internet. All of it. Twice. In one Month.") With natural gas, for example, there are amounts that are reasonable, though a bit extreme, and then there are obvious problems. Frankly, I have no idea if my listed usage last month is correct, but I know enough to know it sounds reasonable for this house. I'm certainly not going to double my usage from one month to the next short of a major cold snap, and that would be well documented since it affects everyone in an area. But it isn't impossible for my internet usage to greatly increase from one month to the next (new game comes out, I watch a lot more hulu, etc. I'm not sure how to deal with that sort of problem.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cpu6502]

>>>they've been petitioning the FCC to lower the definition of "broadband" in the U.S

False. Back in 2009 the FCC definition of broadband was the same as the OECD's definition - 256 kbit/s. They put out a public notice for comment, and Verizon said 768k while Comcast suggested tiers: 768k for "basic" broadband and 12,000k for "next gen" broadband.

In both cases, the corporations requested the definition be moved UPward not downward, so your statement is false...... This is now 2011, and nobody is petitioning for the definition to be lowered from the current 4000 kbit/s. Unless you can provide a citation that it's happening now, in the present?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[lorenlal]

Well, the only thing we can really do about it is:
Write your congress-folks... Start doing it. Tell them to give the carriers a choice:
1) Don't meter.
2) Submit to utility-style regulation...

Make them pick their poison.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

meter reader mistyped

Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).

Yeah, Atlanta did that with their water meters a couple years back. It caused problems that are still in dispute. It looks like somewhere between 5-10% of meters are reporting 10x actual delivery. If it takes 2+ years to resolve disputes under strict government supervision, what will it take when you and ATT differ in your usage claim?

most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is

I hope they're smarter than that. If I received a $200 bill from my ISP, even if I didn't know what a gigabyte was, I'd demand an explanation from their customer service associates.

If the ISP claims I managed to use 2 TB in a month watching Hulu, playing WoW, and hosting a linux kernel torrent, how am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to convince a judge? If Atlanta Water claims my 2 bedroom apartment used enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool every three days, I have a pretty good sense they're wrong. More importantly, a judge/arbitrator will have the immediate sense that they're wrong.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[The Good Reverend]

The deal isn't final, and the FCC will be involved heavily. I still think it'll go through, but at least there will be a review, of sorts.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[dasdrewid]

Really? Our meters were upgraded to eliminate human readers, by sending the data over the phone line (or possibly the electric line - not sure which).

Not everyone has had their meters updated yet. I'd be willing to bet that most people's haven't. My parents just had their meter upgraded to a "smart meter" about 2 months ago, and to get that they had to sign up on a special early adopter list and then pay a few hundred dollars for the meter itself. And I'm not actually sure it transmits the data over the phone line, I think it only records time based usage, as opposed to just total usage, that the meter-reader then downloads with a PDA-like device.

I live in an apartment building, built in the 80s. I guarantee that our electric meters aren't going to be upgraded before I retire (which, at this rate, will be a few years after I die).

Point being, just because something is true for you does not, in fact, make it true for the entire rest of the US and/or world. This is a very important lesson to learn. I urge you to do so.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[hairyfeet]

Except they won't be sticking you for $200 old CPU dude, they'll be sticking you for $2 and you will pay which just gives them an incentive to stick you for $3 next month. think about how many customers AT&T has, now figure up what they'll make if they overcharge 40% by $2 and 60% by $3. Wow what nice profits!

Trust me, I'm stuck on Cox (nice name since they're dicks) that does the metered crap (35Gb a month? WTF?) and they go out of their way to keep you from finding out what you've used. No meters, no gauges, just their word for it. Oh you can complain and they're quick to drop it, but how many don't?

Metering on a service with no government regulation when it comes to meters is a BAD IDEA in capital letters. imagine if you just had to take each gas stations word for it that they gave you a gallon? How many do you think would be shortchanging you? It doesn't take much with a huge client base to clean up my friends, not much at all.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mostly see them in places where electricity rates vary by time of day, which doesn't happen here.

You also see them in places where they don't want to pay meter readers anymore.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

If ISP's weren't given virtual monopolies by the government, one reason they would want to upgrade is to stay competitive. Of course, the free market is evil so that'll never happen.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

False. Back in 2009 the FCC definition of broadband was the same as the OECD's definition - 256 kbit/s.

Dude, I read it on Slashdot, so I presumed it was true.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

>When you use more bandwidth, unless the network was already at 100% capacity, it costs the ISP nothing and the capacity you would consume would otherwise go to waste.

Riiiight.. because the electronics that deliver the service to you consume no electricity at all and the ISP doesn't in turn have to pay for bandwidth connections to other ISP. I hate this common misconception that "once it's built, it's free". Stop it.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

The difference is that when you use more natural gas, the gas company has to buy more natural gas.

Well, that's true, but that just means that the company has a vested interest in accurate billing so they don't lose money. As you point out, ISPs have a vested interest in exactly the opposite, so I agree with you about metered billing.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until people quit being lazy as hell and get wildly angry demanding that the Government do an airstrike on AT&T or call for AT&T's CEO to be jailed for fraud over it they will simply continue to flip the american consumer the bird and tell us "go to hell, haha suckers! too stupid to not complain!" because that is what AT&T is doing to you and everyone else. They dont care at all about the customer.

Maybe if the Tea Party had people htat had an IQ over 80 they would be fighting the good fight instead of the "keep rich people rich" fight.

Tea Party people are fucking idiots.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

Perhaps the price per megabyte needs to be regulated, as well as the method of measuring that usage?

I don't see how that would fix it. The problem is that there is no sensible price. If you set the megabyte price low enough that it doesn't suppress usage then you might as well have flat rate pricing for all the difference it makes. To the extent that you set it higher so that it does suppress usage, you create exactly that amount of disincentive for capacity upgrades -- because who needs more supply if high prices are driving down demand?

Metered billing is, literally, raising prices to reduce demand. That is precisely the opposite of what we want, which is to increase supply and have lower prices.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[tnk1]

I'm usually against increased regulation, but looks to be true that there's no free market way to deal with what appears to be another natural monopoly in place. Personally, I think this should become a public works project now, like power and the sewers. Yes, we'll probably have companies operating the infrastructure, but it needs to be regulated to provide access for everyone and the ability to upgrade it not based on a pricing model, but based on increased demand. It's very true that the backbone providers have little incentive to upgrade when they can charge more for scarcity. The only reason that they will do so is to make sure that they can keep adding a quantity of customers at some minimum bandwidth allocation. Quality, however, means capital improvements without getting more money for their effort.

Free market mechanics break down when you can't assure sufficient competition. The drive for efficiency becomes all consuming, and without the competition, the company is free to look out for itself and not care about the customer above a certain minimum level.

The only real hope for real competition, is something like reliable metropolitan-area wireless access. If you don't need actual physical infrastructure all the way to the house, you have the chance for local providers to compete. If you can hook those local providers up to government-owned fat pipes, which will be driven by voters wanting more shiny, as opposed to corporations wanting more profit, you have a chance. All you then have to do is use anti-trust to prevent the big boys from buying up all the wireless providers.

Of course, whenever you have the government involved, you have your own set of issues (like privacy and waste), but they manage to operate the infrastructure decently for the most part, so I think they could handle unfettered access as a utility, especially on the backbone side of it.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

the electronics that deliver the service to you consume no electricity at all

The electronics consume effectively the same amount of electricity regardless of the transfer rate or number of active connections. To the extent that there is any difference at all, it's negligible.

the ISP doesn't in turn have to pay for bandwidth connections to other ISP

It works the same way for upstream connections. Metered billing is bad whether it's between the ISP and the end user or between the backbone provider and the ISP. The fact that it may exist in one place is no reason to extend it somewhere else; it should be eliminated across the board.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[PopeRatzo]

Well, the only thing we can really do about it is:
Write your congress-folks... Start doing it. Tell them to give the carriers a choice:

You might also mention to your congress-critter that letting AT&T buy T-Mobile is anti-competitive, anti-consumer and violates the spirit of the anti-trust laws that are already on the books.

Congress can still put the brakes on this merger, and it's in our interest to do everything we can to make sure the merger is stopped.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Lumpy]

Stop bringing truth and common sense into this. You are going to hurt the telcos and cable companies that are barely making a dollar. Hell they were only able to give their CEO's a 7 digit bonus this year...

Honestly the only answer is to have the govt declare that internet access is a utility and all ISP's have to follow strict utility rules. They certainly will not do it on their own.

require actual and accurate meters for each customer that must be able to be read from any web browser and as a XML rss feed for the customer.
require electronic notification to the customer when they come within 80% of hitting their cap, if the rate of consumption is so high they will hit the cap in 4 hours then a phone call MUST be made to the customer letting them know, this can be automated.
require that passing a cap DOES NOT incur any charges unless the customer opt-in to a overcharge program and all charges are clearly show and can not be more than 125% of the normal rate, none of this $10.00 per megabyte rape the customer bullshit.
require oversight and extremely harsh penalties to the companies if they break any of the rules. penalty double refund of that months charges to any customer that they violated this on for each month they did. Full Refund of a months charges for every day they do not get back to a customer or address the problem.

Yes we must force these companies to deliver good customer service and obey the regulations. I.E. no more organized crime behavior or stiff penalties apply.

But it will not happen. Not even mild regulation, every single senator and house or representative is a dirty scumbag and will side with the Telcos and cable companies as well as big business way before the American people, and yes this is truth, as I dont see one of them standing there yelling that the crap has to stop. They don't give a rats ass about you unless you make over 7 figures and donated to them heavily.

The rich mans government is doomed the day the minorities discover they can utterly own the government overnight if they just got off their ass and voted.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[GeorgeS]

Build your own "meter" ... Setup a cheap little spare box with 2 nic cards in bridged mode.They will not require a Real IP address so anyone can set this up!! Then just install bandwidthd and Apache2. It may not be perfect but, at least YOU will know about what your usage is and have something to show to back you up.

I've had this setup for years now and Thankfully I've never needed it...sure nice to know what my systems are doing bandwidth wise though!!

Doubt anyone here would need it it but, if someone does need some help with this setup feel free to email me.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Lumpy]

So they shut it off at night?

Get a clue idiot.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[swalve]

You are ridiculous. Besides the fact that increased usage *does* cost them more via increased electricity usage, the "product" being sold isn't "the internet". The product IS the network. The more you use the network, the more stuff they have to buy and maintain.

I know it is hard, but let's try to simplify it for you. Big things behave differently than small things. Data networks don't scale well. You can connect 24 people together with one switch just fine. And you can add a few more switches and it will be just fine. But as the utilization starts to go up, your interconnects start to melt. Now you have to go out and buy all new switches with fiber interconnects. Add more people and you have to tree it out and buy a switch just for the interconnects. And you have to buy bigger and bigger phone lines to connect your plant with the rest of the world. It is impractical, if not impossible, to buy phone lines that are so big that every user can use the network at 100% and not saturate the link. It would sit there 90% unused. So you figure out a good tradeoff. You probably do this yourself: there are 43,200 minutes in a month. Do you pay for 43,200 cell phone minutes? Why not? Your home computer probably has a gigabit network connection. Do you pay for 1000Mbps internet service, just in case you might want to saturate the line? No. Back in the good old days of landlines, did Dad buy a phone line for every occupant that lived in the house? Why not? Everyone might want to talk at the same time!!!

Even big things aren't limitless. The more utilization a network gets, the more it costs to run that network. At an acceptable level anyway. When I download ISOs of an OS, I am not literally costing my ISP money. But over the course of the month, along with all the other users, all our usage costs them what it costs them to keep everything running.

Not to mention, and I know this might be a surprise, different people use different amounts of stuff. So, you kill two birds with one stone: you give people who don't consume as many resources a lower price, and you let the users who do consume a lot of resources pay a higher price. This does two things: it finances the upgrades these leeches force upon you, and it causes them to think twice about downloading every fucking Buffy episode in 4000k resolution.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what's going to happen here: AT&T is expecting people to just accept whatever usage they decide to bill for, with no recourse whatsoever if it turns out that they're wrong. And this will happen, with monotonous regularity, and most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is, and how it relates to what they actually do with their computer online, and because Internet access is becoming less and less of a disposable luxury for millions of people.

DD-WRT's bandwidth logging FTW.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[thomst]

Excerpted from ScrewMaster (602015)'s rant on iLECs and metered Internet usage:

the big boys have a vested interest in only offering us the minimum service levels they can get away with ... and have no particular desire to innovate. They just don't: these are money grubbers whose interest is in pleasing the stockholder first and the customer second (if at all.)

That behavior is far from confined to the telco industry. In fact, it's ubiquitous within the U.S. business sector, and nearly as much so in the rest of the capitalist world. Virtually across the board, this is because they're run by MBAs. MBAs have it hammered into them from admission to matriculation that increasing shareholder value at all costs is not simply their central duty, but indeed their only goal in life (aside from craven self-advancement, that is). And at no time are they ever led to question whether the highest, best good is best served by delivering that increased value over the shortest term possible (otherwise known as the "what have you done for me THIS quarter?" principle). Because, hey, by the time the problems inherent to this relentless short-term focus become apparent, the suits that inflicted them have long since been wooed away to positions of greater power, pay grade, and perks elsewhere, and it will be someone else's responsibility to return the company to record (short-term) profitability. And share price. Temporarily.

Circle of deceit, baby. It's a beautiful thing.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[JavaManJim]

Sounds good, would it be OK to post your schematics and details on construction? I think double checking everything is necessary today.

Thanks,
Jim

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[vk2]

Why a box? Just get a DD-WRT or something similar (that gives bandwidth usage) capable router for ~20$ and you are good to go.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Boomerang Fish]

Realistically, this is beyond the scope of more than a handful of us tech literate users... my power, I can go outside and record numbers off the meter and then compare to my bill... yeah, I have to do some math, but the equipment is there and I don't have to know how it works (though I admit this will still be prey to deliberately munging the meter so it spins just a tad faster... I'll assume that this kind of thing would be discovered over time. As long as I can trust the meter, it exists as a back check).

I can install DDWRT or setup a bridging only firewall to monitor my traffic... my neighbor wouldn't even know what those words mean.

I don't know the solution as I hate to say government regulation is the answer, but it does put us all on a similar playing field...

--
I drank what?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Solandri]

Metered billing is the model of perpetual stagnation. It gives the ISP an incentive to never upgrade because the more scarcity there is, the more they can charge for it. Why on Earth would they make a capital investment to alleviate a supply shortfall, the result of which would be lower prices to customers? They certainly have no real competition to make them do it.

Your last sentence is key. What you're saying is true only if there's inadequate competition. If there's competition, then metered billing is the way to go. Everyone pays based on how much they use. If an ISP's customers want to use more than the ISP can provide, the ISP has a financial incentive to pay to increase its bandwidth. Otherwise they start losing customers to a competitor.

The other question I'd ask is: if not metered billing, then what? We already know a flat fee for unlimited bandwidth is unworkable. Either the ISP has to throttle to effectively share bandwidth and you can nail them for false advertising; or the ISP limits each person's bandwidth to an equal share of the network, resulting in horribly slow speeds per customer while leaving average utilization down between 1%-10%. So if they can't charge you a flat fee, and if they can't charge you based on how much you use, how the heck are they supposed to charge you?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cowboy76Spain]

Build your own "meter" ... Setup a cheap little spare box with 2 nic cards in bridged mode.They will not require a Real IP address so anyone can set this up!! Then just install bandwidthd and Apache2. It may not be perfect but, at least YOU will know about what your usage is and have something to show to back you up.

I've had this setup for years now and Thankfully I've never needed it...sure nice to know what my systems are doing bandwidth wise though!!

Doubt anyone here would need it it but, if someone does need some help with this setup feel free to email me.

And it still won't mean a thing:

• "My router says I did not consume 2TB of data last month" -"I do not care what your router says because the only 'valid' meter is ours, and nobody will take your claim as proof of anything".
• even if they accept your claims, most people won't be able to configure such setup for home.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[RoFLKOPTr]

And I'm not actually sure it transmits the data over the phone line, I think it only records time based usage, as opposed to just total usage, that the meter-reader then downloads with a PDA-like device.

The smart meters I just recently got from PG&E are actually connected to some sort of wireless network. I don't think it's 802.11. It uses some kind of network mesh to transmit hourly meter reads to home base by using a nearby device (usually another meter) as a repeater until it reaches a network access point that's installed on a power pole somewhere.

It's pretty neat, actually. Here's a link.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[RoFLKOPTr]

Of course, the free market is evil so that'll never happen.

Don't ever say "free market is evil because the government gives corporations monopolies" because government-awarded monopoly is the exact opposite of free market.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

We already know a flat fee for unlimited bandwidth is unworkable.

How is it that we know that? The only problem with it is that the ISPs have taken all the money they should have been using to increase capacity and instead used it to buy each other up and line their own pockets. The solution to that is to either bring about competition (e.g. municipal fiber) or to pass legislation requiring them to make upgrades. Metered billing does nothing -- they would still have no competition and no incentive to expand capacity, and any solution that gets them to expand capacity sufficiently would eliminate any use for metered billing.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[dgatwood]

And that's okay. I would be fine if any ISP said that they would throttle my speed if I used too much bandwidth in a month, so long as those limits were spelled out clearly. What I'm not fine with is them spanking me with a huge penalty for something that I may or may not have any control over.

Given that I run servers out of my home, I was considering switching to U-Verse because of the higher upstream bandwidth I could get, but I have since scrapped that plan. I can't afford to find out that one of my websites got slashdotted or was being attacked by a DDOS, and suddenly I have a $500 bandwidth bill. Nor is the alternative—having to disconnect my server for the rest of the month—an acceptable alternative, either. Remember that you can hit the AT&T bandwidth limit in just a couple of days of continuous use at full throttle.

So if I went with U-Verse, I would have no choice but to have a second network connection to switch my server over to if my U-Verse connection was at risk of hitting me with overage charges. The only way to do that is to keep my DSL service, since there is no Cable internet available here. That's a problem; I can't keep DSL if I add U-Verse service. Thus, I can't be a U-Verse customer.

For anybody not on U-Verse, you should do what I did when the first story broke: call, write, or email AT&T. Tell them that you were going to switch to their service, but then you found out about the bandwidth overage charges and you changed your mind. If enough people did this, AT&T would pull their heads out of their asses, but it would take at least a few tens of thousands of people complaining. While you're at it, tell your friends to do the same. This is even better if you can honestly tell them that you have a business-class connection as I do. AT&T needs businesses who run servers to help balance out their bandwidth with other backbone providers. Without servers, they're screwed.

BTW, to the AT&T local wire service tech who put the indoor DSL splitter in my outdoor box and caused me to lose both phone service and DSL for most of the day today due to rain (this makes two spring rainy seasons in a row with loss of local phone service), thanks. I just rewired my house back to the way I had it before your meddling, with the splitter safely indoors. It's no wonder AT&T is begging for every penny they have when they can't even get something as simple as basic phone wiring right.

And I swear if I get a cold from having to redo your incompetent rewiring job outside in the rain today....

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[klui]

We already know a flat fee for unlimited bandwidth is unworkable.

No we don't. Maybe for cable where their medium is inherently shared, but not DSL. Up to the node, everything beyond that is fiber so bandwidth congestion that supposedly exists there is a myth. In the past, the DSL providers have repeatedly said they don't have congestion since it is not a shared pipe like cable. Now U-verse is competing with unicast programs and now they claim there is congestion.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

increased usage *does* cost them more via increased electricity usage

Let's go ahead and measure the actual increased electrical usage caused by increased transfer rates and make that the usage charge then. But when it turns out to be something like one cent per 100GB, we might realize that the cost of metering exceeds the metering charge.

It is impractical, if not impossible, to buy phone lines that are so big that every user can use the network at 100% and not saturate the link. It would sit there 90% unused.

It's a good thing they don't actually have to do that. All they have to do is build enough capacity for the expected usage of actual customers -- which is what they have to do either way. The only thing metering even has the potential to do is to suppress demand by charging artificially high prices -- which is a bad thing, because we like demand for bandwidth. It spurs demand for services, which provides incentive for innovation, creates jobs, etc.

it finances the upgrades

The ISPs already have more than enough money to finance the upgrades. But nobody is forcing them to actually make the upgrades, so they instead use the money to buy each other and line their pockets. Metered billing would provide them with more money, but how would it give them any incentive to make more upgrades? Especially if it causes usage to go down?

it causes them to think twice about downloading every fucking Buffy episode in 4000k resolution.

Which is half the problem. It causes services like Netflix and YouTube to have fewer customers, which stifles innovation and encourages consolidation in that sector.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[JWSmythe]

    You don't even have to go that far. A friend of mine is on his local (part of his state) ISP, which is the only choice there. He was getting gouged for usage that I didn't believe was possible. So we went looking around (Google is your friend), and found a freeware program that graphs his usage. On the next months bill, they tried to gouge him again, so he told them his real usage, so they agreed. They tried that for 3 of the next 6 months, and every time he was able to tell them the right numbers. They finally gave up after that.

    I do my graphing on my router with the Tomato firmware. I haven't needed it, it's just for me to understand why something is slow. Of course, my house has multiple machines, and his (the guy in the previous paragraph) only had one.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a shill? Cripes, AT&T makes Billions of dollars of profit a year, their margins on landlines are above 40%, and I'm supposed to accept that they don't want to build out enough infrastructure to support a family of 4 doing 100% legal internet web use, gaming, and Netflix? Bull crap. At 40%+ profit margins, they can suck it up, build out, and let their profit margin drop to 39%. As a Tier 1 provider, people pay them for access to their network, they never have to pay anyone else for data transfer, so it's all about infrastructure. They sold a bill of goods, but now they don't want to uphold their part of the bargain? Fuck. Them.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[JWSmythe]

    I had that argument with a tier 1 provider that went something like that. It was about 95th percentile utilization. They claimed to measure every 5 minutes at the interface. I told them I had to measure every 2 minutes, because the counters would loop. (hint, they couldn't poll every 5 minutes without running into the same problem).

    It went on for a couple days. I provided my logs showing all the 2 minute samples, and the 95th percentile. I asked them to provide the same for comparison. They couldn't.

    Mysteriously, after that their measurement was dead on. Well, close enough. If they said.6.03GB/s, and I said 6.02GB/s at 95th percentile, it wasn't worth arguing. At that level, they start becoming a lot more cooperative too. :) We had a T1 in one of the offices from another provider, and it was a pain to get anyone with a clue on the phone to troubleshoot a problem.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is impractical, if not impossible, to buy phone lines that are so big that every user can use the network at 100% and not saturate the link. It would sit there 90% unused.

And that's fine.

Until network usage goes up, and it's not sitting there 90% unused. Now it's sitting there 90% used. Now it's time to buy more bandwidth. And that is exactly what they refuse to do.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

people htat had an IQ over 80

hwat?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flat fee for Unlimited usage is perfectly workable. After all, it's worked so far. They are just getting greedy. They don't want to spend the money necessary to upgrade their networks- they'd rather line their pockets with cash instead.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Bandwidth is not free. The fact that they may be operating at less than 100% capacity is not a good reason for them not to charge you to use it.

Take your coal plant for an example: they're rarely operating at 100% capacity. They have to be able produce more than is demanded to prevent brownouts if there are usage spikes and that kind of thing. The fact that they have extra unused capacity does not mean that you're getting screwed over on your per kWh rate.

Same goes for ISPs. It costs money to run a network. The more use, the more load, the more electricity consumption, the more maintenance. They should not be operating at 100% capacity because of use fluctuations; they need overhead. If you want to use that overhead, it should come with a price, because that overhead has value. Why are you outraged at the ISPs but not everyone else? There's excess natural gas capacity, there's excess electricity, and excess other resources that are billed at a rate. Why not set a monthly price and let people use whatever they want? You seem to believe that ISPs don't pay anything to deliver you service - that because it's digital, it's not scarce and is freely created.

You're arguing that any extra capacity should be yours to use for free, and if there's not enough extra capacity the network needs to be upgraded. Do you not see the problem with that? Do you not understand the economical implications of that? I'm not going to claim ISPs are saints, but if I was an ISP, I'd probably do the same thing if I had to deal with users like you.

I mean, what gives you the right to demand that a business gives you what you want, how you want it, and for the price you want? Not that there's anything wrong in _wanting_ that; but you assert that you have the _right_ to that (and they have the right to tell you to piss off and not sell you the service). The fact that they think they can increase prices by doing this - and that's purely conjecture at this point, FUD from people like you - simply indicates that the market isn't in equilibrium as it is currently. Part of the problem with any unlimited-use subscription service is the free-rider problem. Metered usage is the _perfect_ solution to this problem: it forces consumers to think on the margin. If the price drifts up, then the service was being undervalued to begin with, by the very definition that people are willing to pay.

Why do you seem to have this personal problem about other people making a profit, anyway? You talk about ISPs increasing profits as though it's necessarily a bad thing. Yet you also want them to build you new things and require you to pay less for it. Long-term, how does that possibly work?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ciscoguy01]

Internet is now required, just like water or sewer. It needs to be regulated.
Clearly these huge companies would prefer to be able to charge us as much as they would like.
But in most areas you have only one or two broadband providers. One DSL and one Cable, and that's about it.
So no real competition.
If you don't like the prices at this gas station or supermarket you can go to another one.
You can't do that with phone, water, sewer, electricity, gas, or broadband internet.
So yes, there needs to be regulation, there needs to be more competition. We don't have it now.
We are different from our parents and grandparents. Grandma might still not have a computer.
As we all gray in our old age we are going to have the computer and internet, something past generations didn't have.
So there is going to need to be regulation. Like that last generation had regulated water and electricity. We need regulation on our internet service.
It's needed now.
With my satellite DVR I haven't watched live TV in years, but that is getting to the point of being passe.
I can't wait to get rid of it and just download and watch what I want when I want over the internet. This is going to require good speed and it can't be measured usage.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cbeaudry]

I like metered billing.

Have the govt. declare ISP's as utilities. Regulate them accordingly.
Charge a reasonable connect fee per month : 5 to 10$
Then charge a reasonable markup from cost per GB: Say 5 cents ( which would make the markup anywhere form 50 to 200%) if not more.

Then we are in business. Thats what it should be.
No more complaining. We pay for what we use.

1Tb would = approx. 55$ to 60$ a month.

Slightly increase the connect fee for different service speeds.

Anything else, is highway robbery, like it is right now.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Zuriel]

Occasionally, I get a bill in the mail that has some outrageous numbers on it (I once got an electric bill for some three thousand dollars one month.) Usually that's because the meter reader mistyped something into his computer, or because of some issue with their billing system.

You're overlooking the other possibility: the user got a virus or worm that has chewed through a terabyte of usage trying to spread itself or sending spam email without the user doing anything at all. The user says he hasn't used anything like that amount of data, the ISP says the meter is accurate and they're both right.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

The fact that they may be operating at less than 100% capacity is not a good reason for them not to charge you to use it.

Are you serious? That's the exact reason they shouldn't charge you to use it. No one benefits from equipment going idle.

It costs money to run a network. The more use, the more load, the more electricity consumption, the more maintenance.

In other utilities the amount of costs that come with increase utilization are significant. A ton of coal costs a lot of money. In broadband they are trivial -- the amount of extra electricity used because an interface has more packets going through it is totally immaterial, and there are no increased maintenance costs at all. Moreover, replacing a 1Gbps router with a 10Gbps router is a one time cost that neither increases electrical consumption nor maintenance costs -- in fact, it can decrease those costs, because if you replace several 1Gbps routers with half as many 10Gbps routers, you have five times as much capacity with half as much equipment to operate and maintain.

They should not be operating at 100% capacity because of use fluctuations; they need overhead. If you want to use that overhead, it should come with a price, because that overhead has value.

You're confusing value with cost. Air is valuable, that doesn't mean we should have to pay for it -- especially where, as in the case with bandwidth, if it isn't used instantaneously then it goes to waste. You can't save up idle bandwidth in the wee hours of the morning to use later in the day -- either you use it immediately or it's gone.

There's excess natural gas capacity, there's excess electricity, and excess other resources that are billed at a rate. Why not set a monthly price and let people use whatever they want?

Look at your electric bill sometime: That is what they do. You pay a fixed cost based on your service, e.g. $30/month for 100 amp service. If you want 200 amp service then you pay a somewhat higher monthly fee, analogous to wanting a 50Mbps connection instead of 25Mbps. Then you can pretty much use however much electricity you want, but you pay the generating cost for it. With bits there is no generating cost. There is only the infrastructure cost.

You're arguing that any extra capacity should be yours to use for free, and if there's not enough extra capacity the network needs to be upgraded. Do you not see the problem with that?

There is no problem with that. At some level of upgrades the network will have enough capacity to meet demand. The cost of upgrades can then be amortized over many years. Installing point-to-point fiber to the customer premises is a huge, one time cost, after which the cost of last mile upgrades becomes the cost of upgrading terminating equipment, which is epically less expensive. (Think thousands vs. millions.)

The faulty assumption you are making is that the demand for additional bandwidth at zero cost will be infinite. It is not. There is a finite amount of capacity required to operate a network in which anyone can use as much as they want, because there is a finite amount of want. There may be a few users who would use a bottomless amount of bandwidth given the chance, but each of those users is constrained by their individual connection speed. The far larger majority of users will never average more than the amount required to stream HD video, so you build a network capable of that once and you're done.

In addition, connection speed tiers solve much of this problem. If all you do is check email and you want cheap service, pay $30/month for 1Mbps service. Then you can't be a heavy user, because even if you run at 100% 24/7/365, you can't use more than a few hundred gigs a month. Whereas if you want 100Mbps service then you pay $100/month and the extra $70/month goes to making the network capable of handling that.

I me

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[F34nor]

Seems like a painfully simple app to write for you programer types out there. My nokia has a meter but I've never reset it. It should have a field for billing date and update automatically. Also could have a reconciliation function and or link to carrier website listing of you use.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[thsths]

> While there may be ways to do the same with bandwidth, metering bandwidth has no incentive to be accurate.

Mod up - that is exactly the problem. I have yet to find an internet provider that even tries to meter accurately. My current one includes the PPPoE overhead into the metering. That is a line encapsulation forced on me by the ISP - but it is not internet traffic, it will never ever make it onto the internet, and it should not cost me anything. But at least the metering is otherwise accurate, and if I find a difference to my numbers they err on the low side,

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Z00L00K]

And metering of internet traffic also brings up another factor - what if someone targets your site with a DoS attack? That would generate an insane amount of traffic that you may have to pay for.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Vegeta99]

That's not what's going to happen here: AT&T is expecting people to just accept whatever usage they decide to bill for, with no recourse whatsoever if it turns out that they're wrong. And this will happen, with monotonous regularity, and most people will just pay because they have no idea what a gigabyte is, and how it relates to what they actually do with their computer online, and because Internet access is becoming less and less of a disposable luxury for millions of people.

I must disagree with you dear sir. AT&T, at least the cellular part of the abyss, is quite OK with correcting perceived billing errors. I do not find it acceptable to blame AT&T when someone cannot understand why or what for they were billed. However, when a customer DOES understand the bill and finds an error, I've found them quite willing to adjust the bill, for over 10 years.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[jafiwam]

They requested the limit go up to screw with their competitors or to force them to bump up service for their customers without being able to ask for more payment. Suddenly that other ISP has to raise prices, or has to deal with less profit per customer because their "basic" service just cost more.

There was no altruistic motivation there, if you think there is, you are a fool that doesn't understand capitalism.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[GeorgeS]

I'm not suggesting that my way is the only way but, after seeing the "bandwidth" monitoring on my DD-WRT enabled wireless routers( I have several) I wasn't really impressed. They don't track overall usage for very long and they don't track different types of traffic at all. They also don't differentiate between IP's.

Bandwidthd does track usage for up to a year, and months and weeks and days and tracks different types of traffic and tracks by IP address as well as the whole LAN.
It also was a great place to setup a firewall since all traffic on the LAN passes through this box now so I wanted a system with a bit more power and reliability than
a basic Linksys wireless router running on flash ram.

I'm sure there are several other ways to do this too.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[ScrewMaster]

Seems like a painfully simple app to write for you programer types out there. My nokia has a meter but I've never reset it. It should have a field for billing date and update automatically. Also could have a reconciliation function and or link to carrier website listing of you use.

It's not only simple, but a number of third-party firmware offerings for certain models of low-end routers already do this. I run Tomato on my venerable WRT54G: it has bandwidth monitoring and it works reasonably well. The problem isn't that end users can't monitor their usage, it's that the providers won't care if they do. "Oh sure, Mr. Smith, we'll be happy to knock a hundred bucks off your bill because your little toy router says so. Now go away and pay your bill before we turn your happy little ass off."

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[tibit]

Interesting. It looks like the pole-mounted access points do the encryption. I can't wait till someone makes an open-source dongle that could become a mesh member and, um, tweak the data. For the whole neighborhood, no less ;)

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[hairyfeet]

Why bother? All I have to do is say "I contest this" and suddenly it is dropped, just that easy. The point is how many DON'T question if it is for a small amount? I know there have been times when it was just a couple of bucks where frankly it would have taken more than 2 bucks worth of my time so I let it slide. Now multiple that times a huge base...wow that's a lot of money.

And frankly your plan won't work anyway since they won't accept your reading anymore than the electric company would take my word on what the meter says and THAT is the point as we are talking about going to a metered service where there aren't any meters and you are stuck with the "honor system" from the corporation. Does ANYBODY think that will EVER turn out well? The temptation is just too great, especially with the "damn everything but the quarterly reports!" attitude with have in the USA. I predict rampant overcharging if not outright fraud, which of course will cause them to eventually get a fine less than what they took in thus making it all profitable. Welcome to corporate Amerika my friend, please enjoy your stay.

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anthony Mouse]

1Tb would = approx. 55$ to 60$ a month.

That's the problem. If 1Tb is $60/month then 10Gb is $0.60/month. You're wrong if you think that ISPs could afford to operate by allowing a significant chunk of their customers to go from paying $50/month to paying $5.60/month. Especially because most of the people who are currently heavy users would substantially cut their usage if the extra usage was causing them to pay substantially more than they had previously been budgeting for internet service, which means the ISPs wouldn't really be getting any extra money from those people. All they would be doing is losing money from the light users.

So in order to keep the ISPs in business, you would have to set the base connection fee higher. Like say, $45/month. But that's not what the proponents of metered pricing want -- they want to see a huge discount for light users, but the economics don't work out that way. The average monthly fee has to be, say, $50. Now suppose heavy users are 10% of users. Suppose heavy users on average won't pay more than $80/month to remain heavy users -- more than that and they cut usage to reduce their bills. Then the average price paid by the 90% of existing light users must be at least (($50 * 100%) - ($80 * 10%)) / 90% = ~$47/month.

Is that ~$3/month really worth reinforcing the dominance of cable TV and telco IPTV over all other video programming by pricing all of their competitors off the internet?

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cpu6502]

>>>They requested the limit go up to screw with their competitors or to force them to bump up service for their customers

Who is "they"? The FCC? Obama? I think they requested the 256k definition of broadband be pushed-up, and yes I think it was for altruistic reasons. I'm not sure why you say it was not? Or why you think I'm a "fool that doesn't understand capitalism".

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[cpu6502]

If the ISPs are forbidden (by government) to meter users per GB downloaded, or charge overage fees for the high-download users that pass a cap, then the ISPs will respond by throttling connections to achieve the same goal:

Say 250 GB / 30 days / 12 hours per day average usage / 3600 seconds == 1.5 Megabit/s throttle

Re:One more reason to not do metering.

[Anonymous Coward]

The product IS the network

Bullcrap .. the product AT BEST is the connection at some expected throughput rate TOWARD the INTERnet(work)..

You're buying in for a connection at x speed up /x speed down 24/7 .. the fact that you decide not to use 97% of your connection is an added bonus... and because a lot of people don't use all their connection capability theses companies have been able to sit on their laurels for ages and do nothing but collecting your cash and have not been keeping up THEIR BIT OF NETWORK between your access point and the backbone.. now they want you to pay TWICE for the same connection while they use the excuses to show that there are a few heavy bandwith users..

Don't forget that the ISP you connect to is connected to (sometimes another middle vendor) .. ultimately connected to the backbone.. --- Do you think that part is metered as well , or flat rate ?

What do you expect from SBC?

[ScrewMaster]

This is a schlock outfit, no better than Comcast: the AT&T of old is long gone now.

What I'd like for them to do is tell me what kinds of traffic are being counted on my bill (do port scans count? What about all the other crap that floats around the Internet that happens to have my IP in it?) Do they provide monitoring tools that I can use to verify my usage, and compare against what my router tells me I've used? If not, then they can make up anything they want and bill me for it, and knowing AT&T^h^h^h^h SBC that's exactly what they will do.

Now we start to understand why the government used to enforce quality of service standards. The fact that these guys got an exception for data services is just too bad.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[sethstorm]

That's also why AT&T wanted to buy up T-Mobile. Why let customers go to the remaining national carrier for GSM that provides superior service?

Just kill metering for bandwidth due to all the ways it always goes wrong.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Cimexus]

If it's anything like the metering done ubiquitously in many other countries, then yes, all traffic that hits the WAN side of your router is counted, solicited or not.

I'm in Australia on a metered plan. Metering is the norm here for the vast majority of plans - there are a couple of unlimited ones out there but most users don't need that much and choose a cheaper plan with an allowance that suits their usage (metered plans range from as little as a few GB/month, to over 1 TB/month, so only exceptionally heavy downloaders would find an unlimited plan better value).

Anyway, if AT&T is going to meter, they have to do it properly. The (good) ISPs here could probably give them some advice. The ISP I'm with seems to meter very accurately: their figures never vary more than ~0.5% from what my router reports (i.e. maximum of a couple of MB discrepancy every 1 GB, and it's not always in their favour). They provide usage statistics via their website and a number of other tools: downloadable desktop widgets, Android and iOS apps, and of course, email/SMS warnings when you hit 70%, 90% and 100% of your monthly allowance. Additionally, they publish the API for their stats server so anyone can write their own tools to monitor usage if they want. The stats are also fairly timely, generally lagging 30-90 minutes behind the actual usage.

In my experience, only a very negligible amount of my traffic can be attributed to port scans and the like - I get only a very minor amount of unsolicited traffic, generally = 1MB/day, so it's not a big deal. On the odd occasion that something weird happens (like you get DDoSed or something), the ISP can generally see this in their logs and will waive the usage (never happened to me personally though).

What's happening at AT&T sounds very much like what happened here 10-15 years ago when (metered) broadband started becoming common. Many ISPs had significant bugs in their metering systems. Accuracy of the stats was one problem, timeliness was another: some ISPs used to have huge lag times between the actual usage, and the reporting of that usage. Sometimes you'd get only tiny bits of recorded usage for a few days then all of a sudden, it would 'catch up' and you'd get a massive chunk land on one day. That's been ironed out now (at least for the reputable ISPs). At least part of the reason for this is Australia has very strong consumer protection laws, and various independent bodies you can complain to about this kind of issue that have the power to inflict penalties on the ISP for this kind of behaviour.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Osgeld]

what AT&T of old being gone? sorry but I disagree back in 1996 we had worldnet dialup and they pulled this exact same shit. One day I came home to a mad dad who thought I had downloaded the internet cause he got a 300 dialup bill for going over his limit

but dad you signed up for unlimited Internet, have you changed plans? well of course not they just up and decided to start capping bandwidth and showed us what we had used in a month with their metering technology (excel bar graph) which got them another prompt call of "how the fuck do you download 1.8gig on a 28.8 modem with a 4 hour disconnect in under a month genius?"

To me it just sounds just like the good ole days

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[ScrewMaster]

what AT&T of old being gone? sorry but I disagree back in 1996

I said "old". As in, pre-breakup days. 1996 is way after that.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Osgeld]

oh the days when they forced you to buy their overpriced equipment or else expect huge overcharges

my bad

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[ScrewMaster]

oh the days when they forced you to buy their overpriced equipment or else expect huge overcharges

my bad

You're missing the point. At least AT&T was competently run from a technical standpoint, and that was because the government required them to do so.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Osgeld]

http://www.movieweb.com/tv/TEbXhcfhdjEkec/HUOVvPTWha0QSW

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[mfnickster]

"Don't mess with us, because we're all you've got!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dktVJ3qRGS0

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Pharmboy]

Back when they made you lease their equipment, and charged you by the number of phones you had in the house, and when long distance rates were about the same per minute as the minimum wage?

Or maybe the near past, when they couldn't keep a pair of T1s running with even 2 9s of service? AND would switch your long distance plan to someone else, even though you are on a contract?

AT&T has always been a bunch of asshats. They are just fully capable of changing with the times in their asshattery.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Macrat]

That's also why AT&T wanted to buy up T-Mobile. Why let customers go to the remaining national carrier for GSM that provides superior service?

Gotta jack up the prices on T-Moblie customers as well.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[gad_zuki!]

Whats wrong with comcast? I get 250gig per month. Their tools are accurate as far as I can tell. Their prices are competitive with equally fast providers (dont compare grandmas 1.5mbps dsl with my 15/3 line). Since the bitorrent throttling controversy they've been very open about their cap. When I call I get a human and support is good enough.

When I called AT&T about uverse they refused to sell me it without video service until I yelled at them, and then refused to coordinate my DSL shutoff with my uverse install unless I got video service. Their support is abysmal and often just refer me to other clueless departments. When I tell them something is wrong, they pretend to understand, and then send over a clueless tech. "Yes, its a new building so he'll need to put the line in to the demarc and also connect it to the right outlet. The outlets are not wired to the demarc." To them I'm speaking greek. A home DSL install in a new condo shouldn't take 6 days of work.

Comcast comes to my house, installs the line, and leaves. No fuss no muss.

Comcast Business gives me a reliable 22/5 line for $99 a month. That's cheaper than Verizon or ATT's shit business DSL that syncs at maybe 5m/768k if you're lucky. T1s are outdated and borderline useless nowadays. For T1 pricing I get fiber 10/10 or 100/100 to my building in most markets. The only thing these telecoms are good for are legacy services or backup lines.

My only complaint is that I'm on T-mobile and now the awful AT&T empire is going to get me by buying them. I fled AT&T only to be recaptured by them. Americans are just too pro-corporate and anti-consumer. As a nation we need to wake up and start regulating these companies accordingly.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[mesterha]

The old AT&T did a few good things: the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system...

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[JWSmythe]

    I remember when that happened. It was about the same time that they determined "unlimited" was actually connected for 4 hours/day, measured in 1 hour blocks. 120 hours a month wasn't acceptable. My machine would come online hourly, check in with my web server, see if I wanted to do something, and then either email me or disconnect. They would have billed at 720 hours.

    The day the announcement came out was the day I switched providers to a local one. Sure they sucked, but I could still have my machine check in. It wasn't for a few more years until "broadband" was available in my area. Whee! Cablemodem! I can stay online all the time. What a novel idea. :)

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[klui]

We need to get away from the myth that bandwidth is a scarce resource like water or electricity. It is not. http://stopthecap.com/2011/03/15/congestion-pricing-myths-exposed-a-guide-to-the-bandwidth-crisis-at-att-or-anywhere-else/ I don't think we would have caps if the incumbent DSL and cable ISPs have competition or if they are disallowed to provide content. The very fact that you're advocating how to do metering properly indicates the ISPs have been successful in brainwashing lots of people in accepting it.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Pharmboy]

Bell Labs did a lot of good things. The consumer branch of AT&T has always been run with the goal of treating the customer like shit. I wasn't bitching about the engineers, I was bitching about the management. And here in NC, when they bought out Bellsouth, they actually DOWNGRADED the technology that was in use. Ask a tech who works for them. Their uptime now is a joke, while their prices are sky high. They still have a 1980s business model: sales rep who calls every day until you sign the contract, then afterwards, you couldn't locate them with GPS if you wanted to.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[pz]

The ISP I'm with seems to meter very accurately: their figures never vary more than ~0.5% from what my router reports (i.e. maximum of a couple of MB discrepancy every 1 GB, and it's not always in their favour). They provide usage statistics via their website and a number of other tools: downloadable desktop widgets, Android and iOS apps, and of course, email/SMS warnings when you hit 70%, 90% and 100% of your monthly allowance. Additionally, they publish the API for their stats server so anyone can write their own tools to monitor usage if they want. The stats are also fairly timely, generally lagging 30-90 minutes behind the actual usage.

While that would be seemingly the Right Thing to do, I find it amazing that an ISP is that enlightened. Given that credit card bills in the US are at best a week or so behind, a delay measured in minutes is incredible. An API? No frelling way. Accurate to better than one percent? Amazing. Really. Ab-so-lute-ly amazing. SMS alerts when you cross thresholds? It's like they think their customers are valuable or something.

Won't happen in the US.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[drinkypoo]

Nobody calls it the demarc in your house, it's the TNI.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Mana Mana]

one day I came home to a mad dad who thought I had downloaded the internet cause he got a 300 dialup bill for going over his limit

but dad you signed up for unlimited Internet, have you changed plans?

Hol'up. I was probably user number two in Worldnet. How, said the AT&T representative, we haven't begun advertising it yet, it's hours old. I said, The Times, mam, I read the New York Times, it's in the financial pages. Anyway. Not to burst your bubble, but I remember that event, and it's not quite like you say. And I got a bill like that too, I just had to call them and say "gee whiz, I didn't know my own strength, can you roll it back this one lil ole time, please, blink, blink. And so it was.

What happened was WN jacked (raised) the rate for unlimited from $19.99, I think, to ~23, 25, 26.99 or some such. For the old price you got a cap. And if over, well you knowz. You had to opt into the new, higher priced, unlimited plan. FYI. Ring any bells.

They suck anyway. If you remember for the first year or more they charged you monthly, post facto. Then they switched to pre? (:-) facto. So one month you payed $39.98 and you were paying preemptively. But checkit! When I moved years later, yes broadband was a rarity in NYC, non-Manhattan NY, kiddies, I was made to pay for a month into the future. So I told them, let's say, today's the 30th, Mam, disconnect me tomorrow, I will move thus cancel the service. Sure they said, but you owe us one more month. I told the CSR you're nuts, I've been here since day one, literally, you went from pay after eating to pay before eating, and I've already paid for this month. CSR monkey didn't follow my logic, the facts or care. I was too busy to bother fighting. I paid.

But the Worldnet news server rocked! The warez were ill, to be had for the asking. Add this group please, and it was so. They didn't care.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Cimexus]

No, I'm simply saying, if you're going to do it, it needs to be done properly (and fairly). Not that it necessarily needs to be done in the first place.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Cimexus]

Well we have 'bad' ISPs here as well but there are quite a few good ones that are genuine innovators and care a lot about the quality of their network and customer service etc. Since we have such a huge selection of ISPs to choose from (for example, here are the ISPs/plans I can choose in my State). They have to differentiate themselves somehow, much more so than in the US, if they want to attract customers and survive. Some compete on price, others on network quality, customer service, bundled extras etc.

The ISP I'm on (Internode) is not the cheapest, but their network is second to none and they are more customer-focused than most. They are considered in a way a geeks' ISP in that they trial newer technologies earlier than most (first fully native IPv6 residential connections in Australia being one recent example). Previously I was with iiNet who are also top notch IMO.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah well, consumer protections are fairly weak in the States, so we're doomed. The idea is that consumer protections hurt business and keep businesses from doing whatever they please, and businesses need that freedom to create jobs, reinvest money they earned, and importantly, spend money on campaign donations.

So elected officials generally do what they can to let business do what they want.

I have learned from this. I have started my own business and already I am enjoying breaking rules that apply to regular people but not to businesses. For example, I get to enjoy certain tax breaks and special wholesale discounts on merchandise. What it means to be a business as a person is proving interesting.

Re:What do you expect from SBC?

[AmiMoJo]

Having strong consumer protection like that is vital if ISPs are going to meter. I wish our regulator had teeth like that, but OFCOM is totally ineffectual. Basically if you disagree with your ISP here in the UK your options are don't pay and get cut off or just fucking pay. Since I need my net connection I have to pay. At one point ISPs would refuse to give out the codes you needed to change ADSL ISP if your account had problems but at least they stopped them doing that now.

AT&T's fee structure is NBV

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because they're charging you by the naked breast viewed.

Re:AT&T's fee structure is NBV

[ScrewMaster]

It's because they're charging you by the naked breast viewed.

I found I can reduce my bill by only look at the left one.

Re:AT&T's fee structure is NBV

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because they're charging you by the naked breast viewed.

But what do you do if you're a pussy and assman? Only look at one or the other?

Re:AT&T's fee structure is NBV

[Siridar]

You just turn the other cheek.

Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards

[cpu6502]

I can see a 50-state lawsuit coming out of this. Wonder how ATT feels about taking on 50 government all at the same time.

Bastards.
- It reminds me how they tried to charge me extra for my 80s-era 1200 baud modem (i.e. ~1 kbit/s). I was paying for "unlimited phone calls" rather than per-call billing, but they said my 16-hour per day usage was excessive and tried to charge me an extra "data fee". I threw the letter in the trash.

Later-on we got phone company choice, and I switched away from ATT.

Re:Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards

[cpu6502]

P.S. In order to keep my GB usage down, and avoid the wrath of my provider, I look for the "napisyPL" or "ipod" or "videoseed" releases. They are nice-and-small but still VHS quality. And commercial free.

Re:Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. In order to keep my GB usage down, and avoid the wrath of my provider, I look for the "napisyPL" or "ipod" or "videoseed" releases. They are nice-and-small but still VHS quality. And commercial free.

I can see that this really promotes innovation. The third episode of Pioneer One is due any day now; I guess it's HDTV for the rest of the world and "VHS quality" for you 1980s types (thanks to your provider, of course). PS hang on to that Atari 2600 "heavy sixer" - it will be worth something some day.

Re:Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards

[Maestro4k]

I can see a 50-state lawsuit coming out of this. Wonder how ATT feels about taking on 50 government all at the same time.

Highly unlikely, all the telcos (and cablecos) spend a ton of money on lobbying and campaign donations. Pretty much none of our elected officials are willing to mess with them, no matter what party. (The democrats do a bit better, but they're still unwilling to really make the telcos/cablecos accountable.) It would take massive, massive and widespread public outrage to get the state AGs to even consider going after AT&T. So perhaps our best hope is that they do get too greedy and try to rip us off en-masse, then maybe we'll get the required level of outrage for something to actually be done. But don't count on it.

Re:Violates State Bureau(s) of Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the reason you state for this is "In order to keep my GB usage down, and avoid the wrath of my provider". If you had said "Since I use a mobile device with a small screen," or "since I personally don't care about the video quality" or "since the download completes in half the time" it would have been different. The way it is worded above, the reason to download sub-par quality (VHS) episodes is a direct result of metered Internet usage. People like the Pioneer One team innovate by offering high-definition content as opposed to the DVD-quality from a couple of years ago (ST: New Voyages), only to see this effort nullified by some ISPs because people will download the standard-def version just because of the metering, or in other words, people are forced to take steps back (Pioneer One in VHS quality and mp3-stereo) instead of going forward (for instance Pioneer One in FullHD 1080p with 7.1 audio, not unthinkable for around the year 2015).

complain to the state attorney general

[Joe The Dragon]

complain to the state attorney general and make them sue.

Gas and power meters are certified and are at your home and not in some office.

Re:complain to the state attorney general

[nedlohs]

but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.

So clearly certified meters at your home are not a universal method.

Re:complain to the state attorney general

[ScrewMaster]

but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.

So clearly certified meters at your home are not a universal method.

No, but Federally-mandated quality-of-service standards with stiff penalties for failure are. The problem with metered billing is that a. there's no way for the majority of users to know if they're being overbilled (and no, some Web page saying "you've used x percent of your monthly allowance" doesn't count) and b. the fact that these companies simply cannot be trusted. Especially the likes of Comcast or SBC/AT&T. These guys lie before breakfast, just for the practice.

Re:complain to the state attorney general

[mysidia]

but the meter for your time spend making long distance phone calls from you land line isn't. Neither is the meter tracking how much time you spend on a cell phone call.

But they can back up the readings of "long distance phone calls" by producing CDRs of the inter-LATA/Toll calls/Paid feature activations; every individual call made always has to be recorded date, time, duration, calling party, called party, originators billing DN, IDT, CRV, terminators billing DN, ODT, CRV, identification of providers' physical circuits used for the call, Caller ID status, ETC., which can be matched with records kept by the call's terminating provider -- if they lied, they could eventually be caught.

Not that billing errors are impossible.. it's just that as long as your phone line doesn't get crossed with someone else's, there are definitive records to fallback to, which could be reviewed by the carrier to fix it, or subpoena'd by the court.

It's not like electricity where "the number reading" is the only thing that can establish your usage. And it's accurate, unless you can prove something is wrong with its readings.

Re:complain to the state attorney general

[Anonymous Coward]

unless it's one of the public service commission(s), they're owned by the utilities (indirectly).

Michigan

Broadband as a Utility

[nikomen]

The more and more these internet providers try to screw their customers, whether purposefully or inadvertently, the more we move to making broadband a public utility. If companies can't act responsibly, the only other option, in this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.

Re:Broadband as a Utility

[cpu6502]

>>>this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.

Why the feds? Usually it's the Member State government that regulates natural monopolies aka utilities (like electricity, water, natural gas, sewer, etc).

Re:Broadband as a Utility

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is more how the future will be than people think. Look at other "utilities", water/sewer, electricity, and Natural Gas. Water/sewer is run by the municipality. Electricity and Gas have local monopolies on distribution, but you can by source from multiple providers, at least in Illinois you can.

That leaves telecom/broadband. What if fiber to the home was the reality everywhere and the wire from home to CO was maintained by a single utility. You could then have space at the CO where companies could come in and sell you services, like broadband, video, telephone. The other option is to take the broadband all the way to the Internet since everything now is just a packet on the wire. You could have various speed plans on top of basic fiber maintenance, you could go to Skype for phone or got to NBC.com for some TV shows. Why not, it is just an audio or video stream. The fiber utility would be the local monopoly on distribution and then you go to the Internet for your source.

What is all cell towers where LTE (and then the next greatest thing) controlled by one utility, with fiber backhaul to the Internet? You could have complete coverage of the whole country.

Re:Broadband as a Utility

[Bacon Bits]

Because the major laws to bust existing monopolies, such as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (and RICO if fraudulent practices are being performed), are Federal.

Re:Broadband as a Utility

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.

Why the feds? Usually it's the Member State government that regulates natural monopolies aka utilities (like electricity, water, natural gas, sewer, etc).

First, a natural monopoly is one where a single party naturally has control of a resource, like owning the only water source in an area. What you're describing is a government mandated monopoly where, for the sake of reliability and easier regulation the government passes laws creating an artificial monopoly. There's no physical reason we can't have multiple sewer systems and natural gas, water, electricity, etc. distribution networks. It's not really a good idea, but it is the law that prevents it from happening not nature.

Second, right now state governments are so bent over by the corporate players here they are passing laws banning co-ops and local governments from competing with those corporations. The idea that they are likely to regulate the monopoly abuse by these players is fairly laughable. And, since there exist federal laws preventing the abuse of monopolies, it's likely that is what will eventually be used to curb this behavior. Antitrust law is interesting, however, in that many cases begin as private lawsuits or lawsuits by individual states and are then taken over by the feds under the Sherman act.

Re:Broadband as a Utility

[Anonymous Coward]

the only other option, in this semi-monopoly, is to get the feds involved.

The feds are involved they are in ATT's back pocket. No help there.

Of course percentages can be misleading

[dkleinsc]

If the correct charge is $0.01, and I'm instead charged $4.80, that's a 4700% difference but a significantly different matter than, say, getting charged $480 rather than $1. When it comes to people being overcharged, I'd much rather have the absolute figures as our measurement of how much SBC is being a corporate jackass.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[luckymutt]

No, percentages are not misleading. There may be a significantly different *dollar amount* in your example, and you might be able to absorb a $4.79 loss (if you even notice it,) but but you're still being ripped off by 4700%.
Having it as absolute figures might get a handful of individuals to get their bill corrected, but $4.79 multiplied by how many tens of thousands of customers every month adds up to how much in ill-gotten and possibly systematic gains?
If were all ripped off a little at a time, it's not as big of a deal?

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[alostpacket]

I know what you're saying and generally that's a good thing to keep in mind about percentages. But that's not the case here. Specifically the article wasn't about price, it was about bandwidth consumed and the differences were from the 80MB to 4GB range. Also from the second link:

We'll note that AT&T is already facing a lawsuit for allegedly artificially inflating data usage and over billing wireless users.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a 47900% difference. not 4700. Percentages are only misleading if you don't know how to calculate them.

Of course the article was referring to bandwidth usage percentage errors, not dollars. People tend to understand what a dollar is better than a megabyte.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[sjames]

It may hurt more to be charged $480 rather than $1, but it's no more excessive than charging $4.80 instead of $0.01.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

To most people, in the real world, it's much more excessive.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say you used 10 bytes of data, but they round up to the nearest KB. 1024 bytes vs. 10 bytes is a huge percentage difference, but it would be misleading to extrapolate that to saying that if you used 10 GB you'd be charged for 1024 GB.

Re:Of course percentages can be misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to nitpick, but you are off a decimal place. $0.01x4700% = $0.47. That doesn't change the argument that those are ill-gotten gains. Add it up over all the subscribers and you are talking real money.

Metered Internet is not the future

[tkrotchko]

Metered internet is not the future.

As described, it doesn't even make any sense either the reasons why or the implementation.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Auroch]

Metered internet is not the future.

As described, it doesn't even make any sense either the reasons why or the implementation.

Yes, you're correct. Metered internet is the present for everywhere but the USA. And no one is really sure when USA broadband is going to catch up to the rest of the world ...

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[pentadecagon]

Could you elaborate on why the reasons don't make sense? Metered Internet is fair in the sense that you pay for whatever bits hit your wire. If grandma reads email every once in a while, and her neighbor downloads movies all day its only fair if this one pays less than that one. Additionally, we get rid of those "abuse" claims against power users.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[hedwards]

The issue is that metered internet doesn't encourage the ISPs to figure out how to decrease the cost of providing service or provide more bandwidth as they have a get out of jail free card for over promising their capacity. The major problem is that ISPs haven't been investing in their networks up until now, which is why I'm stuck paying $50 a month for 5mbps when Qwest my ISP charges similarly for a 40mbps connection in some other areas.

If it were a competitive market and there were some assurances that the money would be spent providing better service and upgrading the capacity, it might work, but this is the US, so you can pretty much bet that the money will be going to pay for a lavish lifestyle for the executives or increased payout to the shareholders for successfully figuring out how to rip off the customers even more than now.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you're correct. Metered internet is the present for everywhere but the USA. And no one is really sure when USA broadband is going to catch up to the rest of the world ...

It's not present elsewhere. In my country metered internet service was last seen about 10 years ago. As far as I'm aware of none of the neighboring countries has metered internet too. As for the price&speed you will get iptv + phone + 12/1 Mbit/s internet for 30€. In the apartment buildings at the larger cities you will get 100/20 Mbit/s connection for the same money.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Am sorry, you do not represent most of the countries with better broadband then the stuff you get there. Singapore, Korea, Japan, other countries with decent broadband do not meter.

Even the broadband I have used in India wasn't metered.

Are you sure you did not mean that metered internet is present for USA and a few other places(Australia, etc), with everyone else having unmetered broadband?

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I knew metered internet was the norm in Australia and New Zealand, but absolutely nowhere else.

No such thing in Europe or Japan.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[tkrotchko]

It doesn't make sense because they're not metering your internet now; you're forced to pay a fixed fee for some arbitrary amount of bits (related to a monthly allowance, which makes no sense whatsoever), then you're charged arbitrary large fees for overages which are designed to be punitive rather than to reimburse.

The fees at their heart are (a) simply raising prices (b) allow ISPs to avoid improving infrastructure (c) designed to inhibit services (such as Netflix, Hulu, iTMS video store etc) which are beginning to challenge the core business model of the cable companies.

The argument that "bandwidth is not free" is something I usually hear from someone who has a 1995 view of how the internet and ISPs actually work. If you think AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are doing quaint things like buying T-1's and DS-3's to satisfy customer demand, then you need to learn a lot more about how the large providers actually work.

And by the way, Let me know when Grandma can just pay for the bits she uses, because near as I can figure, I've never heard of an ISP reducing prices when they introduce caps.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Ichijo]

The issue is that metered internet doesn't encourage the ISPs to figure out how to decrease the cost of providing service or provide more bandwidth as they have a get out of jail free card for over promising their capacity.

Actually, metered internet encourages ISPs to provide more bandwidth so that their customers can use bandwidth-heavy applications more easily, thereby using more bandwidth and being charged more for it.

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[herojig]

Nepal weighs in: there is metered internet but there is also unlimited (most home user's choose this). The metered market seems limited to students who only own a mobile for connectivity. Metering a home router seems obscene to me...

Re:Metered Internet is not the future

[Anonymous Coward]

You can stick your metered internet up your ***

I've got unlimited download at home, at 120mbit/s
I've got semi-unlimited internet on my phone.. the first 1GB is at the max data rate, anything above is still free but the throughput rate drops.

If you think metered internet makes any sense "because you should pay for what you use" ..you already are doing that with your subscription.. period.. end of story.. your subscription plan is (or should) be based on a certain bandwidth..

If your subscription and bandwidth potential is 1 mbit/s you are paying for the ability to receive a potential of 1*60*60*24*(365/12) = 2 628 000 mbit per month.. just because you don't use that much doesn't mean you're not paying for it..

Because the company can reasonably assume that not everyone all the time uses the maximum throughput they don't need to maximize the backend. because they don't have this they run into trouble if everyone decides to use the full capacity of the promised capacity.

Because there is a small group that does use a lot they claim that they are running into problems.. Don't buy into that bullshit.

The whole comparison to gas/electric/water companies is bullshit.. Its a different kind of goods used..
It's the access to the digital highway you are paying for. you (should) pay to get access to it at a set throughput rate.. NOT THE ROAD.. but THE ACCESS RAMP.. and just because you don't use the access ramp all the time at it's maximum IS YOUR CHOICE
The road between your access ramp and the freeway of the internet (the backbone) is the only bit being maintained by your provider..

Just because most providers are cheapening out and not making the road between all the access ramps and the internet freeway wide enough to be able to convey all the traffic between the access ramp and the freeway - IS NOT YOUR PROBLEM.... They gambled on
the fact that most people wont use 100% of the connection. they widened the access ramps..the fact that THEIR infrastructure is not capable enough DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO PAY FOR IT AGAIN..

They make the onramp wide enough that they start running into problems, the freeway is wide enough.. they just want to CHARGE YOU TWICE to use the road between these points..

wake the fuck up and don't buy into the stories about heavy users and normal consumers.. don't fall into the stories that it's like the other utilities.. because IT'S NOT..

U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[sam1am]

I subscribe to U-Verse and so I went to see how far off they were with my usage.

The U-verse data measurement report is currently under construction. When completed, you will be notified if your usage exceeds the allowance. Until that time, U-verse customers should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes.

Wouldn't it be nice to get enough notice to evaluate if AT&T's product meets my needs? Alas, my router tells me I've used 230 GB over the last month; that's pretty close to their 250GB limit, and if the numbers are 'fuzzy' then all bets are off.

Because U-Verse TV service is IP-delivered, I'd like assurances that they're not including this traffic in any metering - I'm already paying for this content and its delivery on the 'TV' portion of my bill.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[mrzaph0d]

Because U-Verse TV service is IP-delivered, I'd like assurances that they're not including this traffic in any metering - I'm already paying for this content and its delivery on the 'TV' portion of my bill.

Whoa there..if you'll look at your contract, you'll clearly note that you've got unlimited TV content delivery *within reason*. I mean if you're going to have your TV on 24/7, receiving content, that's obviously going to have an impact on the infrastructure. It wouldn't be fair to the other uses of the service if everyone want to just watch as much TV as they can. Maybe we need metered TV...

Sincerely,
AT&T Customer Disservice

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[chichilalescu]

kind of offtopic, but I have to laugh at this. do you realize how stupid it is that TV is eating internet bandwidth? a few years ago I could leave the TV on 24/7, just like the radio, and nobody cared. but now, I would be impacting the infrastructure...

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because U-Verse TV service is IP-delivered, I'd like assurances that they're not including this traffic in any metering - I'm already paying for this content and its delivery on the 'TV' portion of my bill."

I would be willing to bet that AT&T is double-dipping here. Kind of like how you have to pay income taxes on your Social Security distribution income.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[adolf]

I tried to get my usage information for my (internet-only) 12/1.5 U-verse account, and instead saw the following:

Note: Your internet plan provides you with unlimited usage. There are no usage details to display.

*shrug*

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked them about this. TV is included in the amount the router tells you. However, it is not counted towards the cap.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiiiiiiiiiiit a second if they know how many people are 'hogs' why isnt this ready to go already?

This has the earmarks of 'he I have a great idea to get more value out of our system'.

They dont even know what anyone is using right now. How in the hell do they think they can suddenly get it right?

Then there is the matter of bufferbloat that many of these systems have.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[adolf]

Not off-topic at all.

But I have to laugh at this.

Do you realize that with U-Verse, leaving your TV on 24/7 doesn't consume any Internet bandwidth?

Do you realize that it uses multicast, so that n people watching a show only consume n*1 bandwidth? And that it doesn't go over the Internet at all? (It's on AT&T's network, which happens to use IP, but that doesn't mean that the TV show's bandwidth is internetworked in any meaningful and contextually accurate sense.)

There's a million reasons why they should not care how much TV you watch, even if you're sucking down 4 different 1080i HD channels 24/7. And, they don't.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[chichilalescu]

I haven't had a TV for 3 years, and I live in Europe. I doubt we're gonna get one soon, because we're moving to another country that doubles everything on TV and we hate that. so I never learned about the digital TV stuff.
but you say that n people watching a show means n times the content is transfered over the network (so I understand that the data is separately transfered for each user). with analog TV, the station sent out a signal, and that was it. ok, sometimes the signal is strengthened along the way, but if n people watched a show "1 bandwidth" was consumed. and that is funny, because the old technology was much more efficient.
did I misunderstand?

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[adolf]

You misunderstand. It's my fault.

I said n*1, but I misspoke -- that's completely wrong. More like n=1, per program

It's just multicast. The AT&T head-end sends 1 stream per active channel and any number of folks on that node can watch that stream without using any additional bandwidth between the node and the head-end. (There's certainly some overhead in setting these multicast connections up, but I'm ignoring that because it is positively dwarfed by 1080i video...)

Meanwhile, the path from the node to the local head-end is all new fiber, and presumably is not constrained by bandwidth at all. So, yeah: In practical terms, as many folks can watch TV at one time as they want, for as long as they want, for no additional cost on AT&T's part. It's not too far off in terms of efficiency from conventional broadcast, or analog cable TV networks, despite being wrapped inside of IP packets.

Sorry for the confusion. I blame the vodka. =)

And, as I alluded to, U-Verse supports 4 streams per house. When I had their TV service, this meant that I could record 4 things at once while watching a fifth one from the DVR. Even if I kept this habit going 24/7 (which is possible, but difficult to schedule....) it wouldn't really cost them anything.

It worked OK, but between the expense and the horrible quality on my particular TV with standard-def programming, I decided that it wasn't worth paying for anymore. (High-def was very pretty, but that's a different story altogether...)

I get my TV from the local PBS (think BBC, only more limited) affiliate using a simple antenna I built myself, and either buy or torrent whatever else we want to see.

Meanwhile, if you're still listening: What do you mean when you say "moving to another country that doubles everything on TV"? I have no idea what that means, but it sounds like something I'd hate myself.

Re:U-Verse - your guess is as good as mine

[chichilalescu]

ok, got it now. thanks for the clarification.
I realized I used the wrong word: replace "doubling" with "dubbing". I think. let me explain, to be sure: right now I would only be able to watch french speaking channels, where everything is dubbed in french. In a few months I'm probably moving to another country where everything is dubbed.
I prefer subtitles, no matter what the original language is.

How is this different?

[Auroch]

I'm not sure how this differs from the way they measure network usage on a cellphone. Wildly inaccurate, and damn-near-impossible to disprove in court.

Also, as a canadian, I've been living with metered billing for awhile. Given the complaints in the article, I have a hard time taking it seriously. When the difference is measured in gigabytes, but still in single digit percentages, I really can't feel any sympathy. Do you really need to transfer 300 gb in a month?

Then again, we don't have video streaming the same way that the US does. Something about american companies demanding outrageous rates for their licensing fees to out-of-state companies.

Sorry, I guess..

Re:How is this different?

[The Moof]

Do you really need to transfer 300 gb in a month?

Yes. Before i was trying to think of how it was possible as well, then it hit me:

Digital Distribution.

It easily makes these limits attainable. In December, between purchasing on Steam and Xbox's Marketplace, I would've blown way over the 150gb limit set in place (I think at then end, I was around 260). And I'm not even a Netflix subscriber. Since most of my downloading happened overnight/during work hours, I would've still been able to watch movie and using even more bandwidth. Even with their metering display I can tell when Steam automatically updated things because my usage suddenly jumps into the neighborhood of 3-5gb for a single day.

As for accuracy in measuring usage - this a wire, and there's a single point which it leaves my house (router/modem), meaning I can simply monitor all traffic statistics on that interface. Even their modems track these statistics if you poke around in the interface. If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.

Re:How is this different?

[ScrewMaster]

If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.

Sure. But they're not going to care about your router's stats.

Re:How is this different?

[Cimexus]

Thing is, in the countries where metering is standard, there's also a choice of metered plans. So if 300 GB isn't enough for you, then no problems, pay another $5 or $10/month and upgrade to a higher-allowance plan.

For example my current ISP (in Australia, FWIW) has the following ADSL2+ (24 Mbps down/1 Mbps up) plans at the moment.

30 GB
150 GB
250 GB
350 GB
600 GB
1 TB

I'm currently on the 150 GB plan and am lucky to use more than half of that on an average month. But if my usage patterns changed I'd upgrade to the 250 or 350 GB plan, which aren't that much more expensive. (Incidentally, traffic from Steam and quite a few other popular sources is 'free' on my ISP, i.e. not counted towards my usage - as a gamer this makes a huge difference and is one of the reasons I picked this particular ISP).

Anyway, my point is that metered plans are fine provided you have the option to pick a plan that suits your natural usage of the Internet. From what I can tell though, what's happening in the US is that they are starting to meter plans but NOT offering a choice of different plans. They are basically doing a 'one size fits all, and if it doesn't suit your needs, tough luck' approach. Which sucks. :(

Re:How is this different?

[robow]

Another problem here in the US, like said before, we lack choice. Where I live my choices are TW cable or ATT, with those options they can both screw me knowing that the other option is no better.

Re:How is this different?

[hedwards]

I use my internet connection to back up my computers at home. While that doesn't require 300gb every month, it does require a large amount of bandwidth. Also game companies are increasingly turning to digital distribution for games sales and video streaming from Netflix is more and more common. You might not need 300gb every month, but knowing that it's there if you need it is really important.

Re:How is this different?

[Auroch]

As for accuracy in measuring usage - this a wire, and there's a single point which it leaves my house (router/modem), meaning I can simply monitor all traffic statistics on that interface. Even their modems track these statistics if you poke around in the interface. If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.

Although you are correct in theory, that's not how water or electricity use is measured or billed. It's almost like buying a car. Yes, the sticker price is one thing. But that's not the entire cost. Even if you avoid freight and delivery by buying used, you're still paying taxes. And even if you avoid ALL those fees, you still have insurance. And even if you avoid insurance, you've still got gas. And even if you're stealing gas, you're still "paying" with time.

Although the companies in the USA might call it metered billing based on usage, and they may not be clear about what you're being charged for, there is still overhead and the actual "cost" of usage will include more than digital bytes flowing across a cable.

Re:How is this different?

[Auroch]

If your numbers don't match mine, than you're padding the traffic.

Sure. But they're not going to care about your router's stats.

Exactly. I once tried to tell a police officer that I wasn't going as fast as he said I was. I even measured it with my speedometer. Apparently, the people making the rules don't care too much for your opinion if it is different from theirs.

I'd suggest you take them to court, but people have been taking telecoms to court in the USA for decades... and you're still having the same problem - which leads me to believe that it's the system that's broken, not the players. Since you can't change the system... *shrugs*

Re:How is this different?

[jmac_the_man]

Although you are correct in theory, that's not how water or electricity use is measured or billed. It's almost like buying a car. Yes, the sticker price is one thing. But that's not the entire cost. Even if you avoid freight and delivery by buying used, you're still paying taxes. And even if you avoid ALL those fees, you still have insurance. And even if you avoid insurance, you've still got gas. And even if you're stealing gas, you're still "paying" with time. Although the companies in the USA might call it metered billing based on usage, and they may not be clear about what you're being charged for, there is still overhead and the actual "cost" of usage will include more than digital bytes flowing across a cable.

This makes no sense. My electric company has to pay for things that aren't the actual fuel it burns to make the electricity they're selling me. They have infrastructure, billing, the janitor at the power plant, etc. The proper way to account for this is some combination of fixed fees and increasing the cost per kilowatt hour (or in AT&T's case, cost per megabyte.) I can verify that my electric company isn't overbilling me by checking the meter, multiplying that number by the cost per kWh, and then adding in the fixed fees. I should be able to track my internet bill the same way.

Re:How is this different?

[Bman21212]

and is one of the reasons I picked this particular ISP

Wait, you have a choice of different ISPs? Madness!

Re:How is this different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, in the countries where metering is standard, there's also a choice of metered plans. So if 300 GB isn't enough for you, then no problems, pay another $5 or $10/month and upgrade to a higher-allowance plan.

Except if you live in Canada...
Rogers's plans:
2 GB - $28/month
15 GB - $36/month
60 GB - $47/month
80 GB - $60/month
125 GB - $70/month
175 GB - $100/month

The only upside is that there's a cap on how much they can charge you for going over the cap, typically around $50 a month. So you can just add $50 to any of the plans to get unlimited bandwidth, if you don't mind being throttled.

Re:How is this different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in australia people probably use less bandwidth because of your government's porn censoring activities.

Re:How is this different?

[The Moof]

But they're not going to care about your router's stats.

Yea, but as I said, their modems also appear to be tracking this information as well. It'd be interesting to fight them with their own equipment's stats.

Re:How is this different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the post above. Once the infrastructure is in place, the costs of running it don't go up as more people use it, until the network actually, constantly reaches capacity. Metering is a way to maximize profits, pure and simple. Don't be fooled by their "generous" offering of low price options, you get screwed regardless of choice.

Re:How is this different?

[Cimexus]

Yep. Over 30 ISPs actually (though to be fair, many of these are simply resellers of another provider's service - if you eliminate those and just include the ones that actually have their own separate infrastructure, it's around 6 ADSL-based choices and another couple of VDSL-based ones).

Re:How is this different?

[Cimexus]

Wow that sucks. I always thought that Canada, with its proximity to the US (which has the majority of Internet hosts that English speakers would access), would have higher caps and lower prices than Australia. Both are untrue. Not only do our caps go up to 1TB+, but our prices are cheaper than yours for the same sized caps. I get 150 GB for $44.95 (AUD and CAD are worth about the same so conversion not really necessarily).

That's a bit sad when most of our traffic is US-bound and has to go through a handful of (expensive) undersea cables to the other side of the world, and your traffic just has to hop over the land border on one of many, many links...

Re:How is this different?

[Cimexus]

Australia has a slightly unique situation, in that it has mostly English-speakers and most English content is hosted in the US. It's not the internal network capacity that's the problem, it's the capacity on the handful of undersea cables linking us to the US. Metering in Australia has mostly been required to prevent those international links from hitting capacity (the cables as a whole have plenty of capacity, but ISPs obviously only buy a particular amount of capacity, and it's damn expensive). For an ISP to offer unlimited here they'd need to purchase a massive amount of undersea capacity which would be uneconomical for all but the biggest players. In fact, the main well-known ISP who does offer unlimited can only afford to do so because it is a majority owner of the largest undersea cable (referring to TPG and the PPC1 cable to Guam).

This problem doesn't apply to the US so I fully agree with your comments in the US context. There should be no real reason to cap connections in the US - it's simply ISPs being lazy and not wanting to spend money upgrading their network as required (i.e. maximise profits, as you said).

Re:How is this different?

[LanMan04]

(Incidentally, traffic from Steam and quite a few other popular sources is 'free' on my ISP, i.e. not counted towards my usage - as a gamer this makes a huge difference and is one of the reasons I picked this particular ISP).

I guess Net Neutrality is already needed today, not some far-off tomorrow. Le sigh.

AT&T needs to get destroyed

[erroneus]

It should have its incorporation revoked and all top executives and board members barred from ever being in the telecom business again.

These are the same players from the time when the first break up occurred. They did not learn their lesson about abusing their position, building monopoly and being bad for the consumer. They had their chance to straighten up and fly right. They can't be trusted to behave.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[ScrewMaster]

It should have its incorporation revoked and all top executives and board members barred from ever being in the telecom business again.

These are the same players from the time when the first break up occurred. They did not learn their lesson about abusing their position, building monopoly and being bad for the consumer. They had their chance to straighten up and fly right. They can't be trusted to behave.

No they're not. SBC bought the old AT&T, and kept the name AT&T. What you have are the people who operated the worst of the original thirteen Baby Bells now running the show. Which is, I agree, not an improvement. Also, whatever you want to say about the old AT&T, remember that they operated under some very strict regulation, and did provide us, for a very long time, with about the best phone service in the world. Much of the problem we have now is that none of the big ISPs operate under any real regulation anymore, no real service standards apply: they can do pretty much whatever they want with little if any penalty.

But yeah, I think that most of the big players ought to be up on anti-trust charges at some point. What they're doing is not in the consumers' interest at any level.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[DougReed]

um.. no actually they're dumber than that. AT&T went bankrupt, SBC bought them .. Who's SBC??? Then after marketing themselves for a year and impressing nobody. They got this great idea. "HEY WE BOUGHT AT&T!!! EVERYONE'S HEARD OF THEM!!!" So they changed their name with big fanfare. Any CEO that didn't think of that in the first 2 seconds of the acquisition should have been fired on the spot for incompetence. But the whole company is dumber than that.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[Elviswind]

These are the same players from the time when the first break up occurred.

Right . . . the AT&T executives from 1974, when the anti-trust lawsuit that led to AT&T's break-up was filed, are still running the company. C'mon now, John deButts, the chairman and chief executive of AT&T at that time, died in 1986.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[DNS-and-BIND]

What a bunch of bullshit. When AT&T ruled the earth, you couldn't connect anything but a Company Approved Phone [tm] to their lines, otherwise something might explode. Oh, and you can't buy a phone from the store, you have to rent one from the company store. You can have any color you like, as long as it's black.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[hedwards]

Actually, SBC is AT&T, well a portion of the old AT&T after the break up. Similarly Qwest is another remnant of the old AT&T that's changed its name and bought out some of the other portions of the old business. It hasn't quite gotten to the point where it was originally, but at this point it's down to AT&T, Verizon and Qwest primarily controlling the assets that had been the old AT&T.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[russotto]

What a bunch of bullshit. When AT&T ruled the earth, you couldn't connect anything but a Company Approved Phone [tm] to their lines, otherwise something might explode. Oh, and you can't buy a phone from the store, you have to rent one from the company store. You can have any color you like, as long as it's black.

Actually, there were quite a few colors.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[ScrewMaster]

What a bunch of bullshit. When AT&T ruled the earth, you couldn't connect anything but a Company Approved Phone [tm] to their lines, otherwise something might explode. Oh, and you can't buy a phone from the store, you have to rent one from the company store. You can have any color you like, as long as it's black.

I wasn't talking about subscriber level equipment. The service worked, it worked well, and that was what was required of AT&T. How often did your phone service simply not work? Sure, AT&T owned the phones ... but they were built like brick outhouses. Their technicians were generally far more competent and well-trained, the network itself better maintained. "Better" is a relative term. All I know is that nowadays (and I have AT&T U-Verse for my phone service) is that I'm subject to more outages, poor quality phone calls, and other crap than I ever had in the days before the breakup.

Re:AT&T needs to get destroyed

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear God, and Mussolini made the trains run on time, and until Gorbachev the USSR was a world power, and when I was little kids respected their folks, and kids these days are all fat and play violent video games.

Poor quality phone calls are the result of incredibly cheap long distance routed over IP in compressed formats, if you want to go back to the good old days be prepared to go back to paying a dollar fifty a minute to talk to aunt Selma in Tallahassee. You're feeling nostalgia for something that was the result of a monopoly position and high prices.

It's like comparing T1 service to DSL, sure T1 is better, but the cost per GB of bandwidth is more than the difference in quality is worth for most people. Or like people complaining about how air travel used to be glamorous and luxurious. Sure, it did, but it also cost a bloody fortune, and if you didn't have the equivalent of 10 grand in current USD you weren't gonna get to that wedding in NYC without driving 3 days. Just sit back and enjoy the absurd levels of wealth with which you are blessed that we can even be arguing about this on the internet.

Completely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go, slap a meter on it even if the meter isn't accurate.

As to the competition bit, having two choices for net service isn't truly competition. It's a duopoly. You also have to keep in mind the operating mantra of the Bell System for years was that as a natural monopoly subject to fairly strict regulation in exchange for letting LD rates subsidize local services and for a guaranteed minimum of profit. Yet they managed to build a nationwide network that was pretty damned impressive for the day.

The net providers on the other hand don't want to improve their networks, they'd rather screw their customers.

Re:Completely ridiculous

[sethstorm]

The net providers on the other hand don't want to improve their networks, they'd rather screw their customers.

...and metering bandwidth is another way to do it, with a ready-made excuse.

Illegal or not?

[pablo_max]

It is not illegal to offer a metering service without the customer has access to said meter? It was my understanding that such services, like the water company, electric and gas MUST have a meter available for their customer to read as well, not because they are super nice guys, but because US law mandates it.
How is metered internet service different?
If they insist on saying, well the utilities do it this way and that way, and when they insist on acting like utility, should they not also be bound by the same rules?

Re:Illegal or not?

[EmagGeek]

ISPs are only utilities or common carriers when it comes to protection from criminal copyright infringement cases (providing the means of infringement).

They are content providers when it comes to getting protection from biased quality of service from other ISPs.

They get to have it both ways, and any other way they want as well.

Re:Illegal or not?

[PPH]

It's an interesting thought. Once on starts metering (or otherwise measuring) a product, one exposes ones self to the jurisdiction of additional regulatory authorities. Usually at the state level, although sometimes local (county and/or city) inspectors get involved as well.

This is a situation that telcos, ISPs, and cable companies have been trying to avoid. Having to comply with numerous different sets of regulations. Well, welcome to the world of utilities.

One other side effect of this move is that AT&T may have placed themselves into the legal classification of a common carrier. Something else that they have been trying to avoid.

Re:Illegal or not?

[GuldKalle]

Do you have access to the metering service of your phone?

Re:Illegal or not?

[misexistentialist]

Unlike public utilities they would probably just drop the usage fees if you dispute their accuracy (it's not like those bytes cost them anything), and terminate your account. If it is legal for ISPs to deliver somewhat indeterminate data rates, charging somewhat indeterminate billing rates might as well be too.

Consumer law doesn't apply to ISPs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't billing based on inaccurate weights and measures fraud?

Re:Consumer law doesn't apply to ISPs?

[failedlogic]

Someone in another forum suggested that Measurement Canada should get involved to standardize billing for ISPs in Canada. From their website:

Measurement Canada is responsible for ensuring the integrity and accuracy of measurement in the Canadian marketplace. We:

        develop and administer the laws and requirements governing measurement,
        evaluate, approve and certify measuring devices, and
        investigate complaints of suspected inaccurate measurement.
"

I think this is only fair for the consumers. I only hope that if the Canadians don't do this their American counterparts will and vice versa. We should at least be able to expect that we are getting what we are paying for.

What else is new?

[MoeDumb]

AT&T's bills haven't been accurate since they owned long distance service. Same with Ma Bell for local. We've been getting pickpocketed for a century.

Re:What else is new?

[hedwards]

Yes, but thanks to their scale of efficiency, they can pick our pockets in the most efficient manner possible. Imagine if we had to have a dozen companies picking our pockets for that money, now aren't you glad that the government turns a blind eye to the lack of competitive market place?

Re:Updates

[cosm]

//Lulz bandwidth hog FTW!
void CheckForAdobeUpdates() {
while (true) {
InstallNextUpdate();
}
}

One word to say on the topic

[jacobsm]

Auditability.

Re:Updates

[TakeABow]

This, combined with ads can explain higher than expected bandwidth use, but it will not account for a discrepancy between what your router reports and what AT&T reports. The router sees all the traffic. If my internet was being metered, I would be quite outraged if my usage reported by my provider was significantly different than my usages reported by my ddwrt.

Unwanted traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Like someone on the comments section of the article said.. what about if someone is ping flooding you, DDoS'ing, or otherwise sending traffic your way... here's a very true story about a similar situation my friend had with Nextel:

Years ago my friend had Nextel, and I sent him a text bomb (basically I just stuck his cell # into the TO field as many times as I could on a single text message and hit "send". After it sent, I went into the sent messages and just kept hitting "resend".)

So he received around 100 or so messages. I didn't know his nextel plan didn't include texting, and he'd be charge $0.25 per message. That's about $20 bucks out of his pocket FOR NOTHING.

He called Nextel and explained.. and got no where. So he bitched.. still got no where. After 2 hours on the phone trying different people and supervisors bitching about "how can you charge me 25 cents a message for messages A> I don't want, and B> I can't stop/block from coming in?!

Their solution was "well we can block all text messages".. at that point he told them to go f' themselves if they can't run their damn network correctly and understand how you could cause someone you disliked to have a HUGE phone bill, and told them right then and there he was leaving their messed up network. He promptly switched and ported his number.

But it just goes to show they DON'T take those situations into account, or just don't CARE about those situations.. which either way is a very sad thing indeed.

Re:Unwanted traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago my friend had Nextel, and I sent him a text bomb

Wow, if that's how you treat your friends, what do you do to your enemies?

Re:Unwanted traffic

[rahvin112]

Oh don't worry. These metering attempts are open to so many class action lawsuits in the long run it will cost them far more than they ever make. Lawsuits over accuracy, billing discrepancies, paying for incoming traffic, etc. They'll try to implementing it, get sued six ways to Sunday and eventually the whole thing will collapse with costs far exceeding the costs for flat rate service.

I hate these companies so much

[jollyreaper]

Where I live I have two choices, AT&T and Comcast. It's like trying to pick a side to root for on the Ostfront in WWII. Can we root against them both?

I've gone through a six month period of terrible service with the AT&T fuckers. Service keeps dropping out, problem isn't on my end. Their fucking Indians don't have any clue what's going on with the service techs over here, nobody updates the account info properly, nobody gives a damn. And while we're at it, why do I have to type in my phone number for them to route it properly if they're just going to ask me what it is when I get there?

The problem is that there's no fucking free market. There is no competition. There's a duopoly with each choice being craptastic. The next pro-business cheerleader who goes teary-eyed about the marketplace of choice is getting my fist in his gob.

"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."
-- Larry Kudlow, CNBC host and failed human being

Re:I hate these companies so much

[hedwards]

Around here it's Qwest and Comcast, trust me this isn't that much better than what you have. I swear that Qwest isn't giving us the throughput we're paying for.

Re:I hate these companies so much

[FlatEric521]

Even in locations with greater amount of competition the service doesn't get any better. In my location we can choose from AT&T, Comcast, Bright House (Time Warner), and Clear. Even with more choices the service doesn't get any better.

I had a similar experience with AT&T that eventually caused me to leave for Bright House. Their DSLAM suddenly decided it didn't like talking to my DSL modem, and it would just stop responding entirely. The first time it happened, a tech came out, checked my equipment and home wiring and declared them in working order. He then reset the DSLAM port and everything started working for a couple more weeks. Then it failed again. I spent over an hour on hold trying to tell them the problem was on their end. On the same day I got a bill from AT&T wanting $80 for the service visit even though the problem was on their side. I cancelled the next day.

So far Bright House has been fair, but they wanted absurdly low caps in their trials, so I'm not sure how long until they attempt that here, especially if AT&T pulls off their cap. Comcast is a total joke, and though Clear is still an option, their speeds are not going to be what I get now. I'm expecting a day in the future where all services have caps on them, just because these companies won't stop pushing for them.

Re:I hate these companies so much

[ScrewMaster]

Where I live I have two choices, AT&T and Comcast. It's like trying to pick a side to root for on the Ostfront in WWII. Can we root against them both?

It's like the Devil you have, and the Devil you used to have until he got so bad you went with the Devil you have.

Sucks, I know. I'm in the same boat, but I have managed to play them off against each other on occasion. "Oh, you won't fix my problem? Well, I guess I'll have to head on over to [Comcast | AT&T] again. I'd rather not, but I'd rather have service than not."

Re:I hate these companies so much

[Anonymous Coward]

go to dslreports.com, sign up with a local ISP, they may have access to non-ATT ADSL2 infrastructure. at worst they'll fight aT&T on your behalf.

Re:I hate these companies so much

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason we don't have more than two choices is that our government itself is giving these companies exclusive right to provide service in your area.

Re:I hate these companies so much

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that there's no fucking free market. There is no competition. There's a duopoly with each choice being craptastic.

Every telephone company that I sign up with becomes AT&T in the end (with apologies to The Police, and not the ones you cheese it for.) I was just thinking about getting a T-Mobile phone again... sigh. My last phone company was Edge Wireless. Right now I'm using a crapfone because... WTF.

The next pro-business cheerleader who goes teary-eyed about the marketplace of choice is getting my fist in his gob.

Please do something more subtle. Slashdot needs you to be free.

Re:I hate these companies so much

[subreality]

This is why we need municipal fiber. Not service on the fiber - just the physical glass.

The model is simple: the city rents you a pair of strands for a nominal charge per month (about $10). That gets you into a central data center, where it may be cross-connected to your choice of service providers. For example, in Palo Alto, that means PAIX, where there are about 150 ISPs competing for your business, and similar situations exist in several other cities. Try a cheap one! Crappy service? Switch to a classier provider! Want one that runs ATM to get latency guarantees for traditional telephony? Switch to one that does it! Decided you'd rather pay by the bit than by the month? You can! Switching is easy: you sign up with the new place, and when they're ready for you, you or the ISP issue a change request to the data center. They unplug your patch from the old ISP and into the new one, and away you go.

Everyone wins except for the incumbent telcos who are raping you for services because they control the natural monopoly: the physical line.

[Steps back off soapbox]

Going further...

[rmdyer]

This is exactly why someone needs to standardize, as soon as possible, a consumer device for metering your IP. The device should be small (pocket sized), possibly battery operated, has a liquid crystal display, and simply shows the IO flow of IP packets into and out of your home, with totals. The device should be under $10.00 or $20.00 USD. To use the device, you would simply place it in-line between your ISP modem, and your home router. Every month, you would simply read its value from the LCD just like the electric, water, and gas meters outside your homes. It should not slow down your internet traffic, or interfere with it in any way. The reading should be retained through a power loss of the device, such as change-out of an old battery. The device should not be hackable in any way since it should probably just read the IP header content size info and accumulate that.

Home routers, in theory, could possibly perform the function, however there would be wildly varying methods of reading and displaying the data. All older router firmwares would need to be updated, and the metering method used would need standardization.

If enough of these devices get out there, and soon enough, then consumers should be able to push back on this issue. After a while, perhaps, the Time Warners, AT&Ts, and Comcasts of the world will force one version of the meter readers to be "standardized" across the industry. This would be a very lucrative deal for the developer of the meter.

Re:Going further...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's going to calibrate it? How often does it need calibration? Do you count just packets, bytes, or both? Do you count just packets containing payload data or all packets? What happens when some luser connects it between his LAN and router instead of WAN and router? What happens when someone streams data to your system like DOS/DDOS attack?

Metering is a scary, dark path. The best strategy here for all consumers is to reject companies which bill based on metering. And the first step to making that happen is busting up the government-granted monopolies which bind residents to a single carrier.

Re:Going further...

[arkenian]

Home routers, in theory, could possibly perform the function, however there would be wildly varying methods of reading and displaying the data. All older router firmwares would need to be updated, and the metering method used would need standardization.

So, I run dd-wrt, and MY router certainly has this function, and has for a long time. I can see little graphs of my usage back to when I first installed dd-wrt on it. (It makes it easy to tell when I get on a torrent kick 'cuz my upstream jumps through the roof) I don't remember whether my stock-firmware routers stored history or not, but I know that they all told me the in and out numbers since the connection started. Where it gets hard, though, is with the ISPs marking significant quantities of the input "free", and so the router would need to be programmed to learn about the different types of traffic.... which in the end, would probably mean that what I'd want is for the ISP to provide numbers of both "charged" and "free" data, and then for me to compare the totals against my router. (Just like my phone does today). An LCD display that does all this might be nice, but I'm pretty sure (not completely) that it has to be 'downstream' of the modem. And since most modems and routers are combined, the only thing the LCD display could really do is read what the router/modem says....

Re:Going further...

[hairyfeet]

Until then there is some 100% free software that may help if your ISP tries to bone you, it is 100% free, doesn't need an install if you don't want to, will show you hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and keep a nice little log of everything. I have it setting on the little SFF I use as a gateway that way if my ISP tries to claim I blew X I can show them the logs. Just the fact that I had logs to show them was enough to get my ISP to back down when they tried to charge me for 45Gb I didn't use.

Networx is the name of the software and works on all Windows from 2k to 2k8 and 7, 32 and 64 bit. It has some really nice features like network testing tools and you can even have it kill the net if you are about to exceed your quota. Enjoy, although personally I wish this metered bullshit would DIAF already. Oh BTW Linux guys, guess what? Windows updates don't count against the caps but Linux and Mac updates do. Enjoy!

Re:Going further...

[icebraining]

Oh BTW Linux guys, guess what? Windows updates don't count against the caps but Linux and Mac updates do. Enjoy!

For me, it was the opposite. My ISP keeps mirrors of multiple distros, including Debian (the one I use), so not only it was unmetered (I say was, because we moved to unlimited a couple years ago), but it's always faster than the contracted speed (I pay for 10mpbs but could get 25/30mbps from the mirror).

Re:Going further...

[Anonymous Coward]

due to having a problem with my internet, my ISP seems to be unable to configure my router correctly and if i have to let somebody from my ISP come over they will cost me if they say its my fault, i am now running ClearOS between my modem and my home router. this stops any problems that i have and also makes me able to know exactly how much internet i am using.

if you do not mind using a little bit more energy and have a spare computer somewhere, i suggest using it, its very easy to work with/set up and provides some nice possibilities.

also, for those wondering, my internet problems seems to be the TCP upstream buffer on my modem being set too high (thanks to some internet tests and the "bufferbloat" articles on slashdot i was able to find out this is the most likely case), my internet drops every now and then when the buffer fills up but the packets RTT expires. it could also be that the upload speed is guessed too high by the modem.
either way, the ClearOS gateway has its own buffer which means the modem one can never fill up.

killing Netflix

[robow]

Won't metering internet usage be very damaging to companies like Netflix and youtube that rely on people using the internet to do things like watch movies?

My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[bittmann]

If I'm paying for PPPoE and ATM overhead, I'm gonna be pissed.

AT&T must be measuring bits at the DSLAM, if what they're reporting is anywhere close to being accurate. If a 150GB "cap" includes the approx. .5% PPPoE and 10+% ATM overhead, what I'm seeing means that my 150GB cap is in reality closer to 135GB.

Sucks.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, all those port probes and bots scanning / attacking your IP address will increase your costs.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. Mine is off by the same range, both by week and by total time period compared to my ddwrt/tomato router. Looks like overhead is included in the cap.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything that I'm hearing is that you indeed being charged for overhead.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[slyborg]

As far as I can see from looking at my usage data it does include the overhead as part of your usage. Kind of like if UPS required you to ship everything in a cast-iron box and then still charged you an overweight shipping fee by total weight.

The meter also lags by 2-3 days and is incorrectly totaled by the cumulative meter, which rounds each day up to the next megabyte, and also is still confused about the billing period, including several lagged days from the previous period.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[Anonymous Coward]

I have IPCOP running as my gateway. I have not turned on or installed a bandwidth option, I know there is one. I have not gotten the letter from ATT yet either and I need to find the link for usage.

But all this aside. I have noticed with the IPCOP logs that the Linksys WRT54G version 8.0 with frimware version 8.002 does a shitload of multicasting even with it turned off and no one connected to the wireless. The graphics are always at about 70% usage tell me this noise isn't going to be on the ATT logs.

Re:My router's traffic shows 10-15% lower than AT&

[bittmann]

Agree about the lag. The current reporting period is (presumably) 3/1-3/29, but the only way I can get the reported traffic to add up is to include traffic back to 2/27 which (last I checked) came before 3/1. Plus, as of 3/29, AT&T has no detail from 3/25 onward. If that holds true at the end of the month, the reported usage won't help a whole lot.

Pretty tough to manage to "not exceed" 150GB of traffic when (on a 6 megabit connection) you could in theory consume 50GB of traffic in just those 4 missing days. (55+ GB, counting ATM and PPPoE overhead....)

Of course, AT&T doesn't *want* you to be able to manage your own Internet usage, what they want to do is to either scare you into non-utilization, or to charge you extra (note that overages are billed in chunks, as in $10 for each additional .0001 to 50 GB, instead of $1 for each additional .0001 to 5 GB). If you're a "heavy user", best to let you go over by a half-gig and ding you for another $10, eh?

One thing this whole experience has taught me -- no reason to pay for faster Internet access if all that will happen is that you'll hit your caps faster. You folks on 6mbit AT&T DSL -- why not use this change in contract to fall back to 3mbit and save quite a bit each month?

One thing this has done is to convince me to look at Cox again. I left Cox for AT&T when Cox pricing and plans went unrealistic, but now they are starting to offer tiers that compete with AT&T on price while still (at least on paper) beating them on performance. Just need to see what traffic caps are in place...

Back to the shit days

[Anonymous Coward]

This is *clearly* AT&T's move to block competitive online video services. Can't wait for the years of court battles for anti-trust.

Detailed metering is a poor choice for the carrier

[Yoik]

I've worked onthis in the past. Metering Internet usage isn't easy to get right as VZW discovered.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/03/verizon-agrees-to-refund-customers-90-million-for-wrongful-data/

Only raw measurements (bit counts at the interface) can be collected without significant processing. On a multiplexed interface figuring who got what isn't trivial.

I hate the marketing ideas that add cost and complexity to the network to reduce revenue. Metered billing seems very likely to reduce usage so people pay less than they did before. Sure the markups look great, but mailing DVDs is a cheap alternative @~$0.15 or less per gig. Great bandwidth, high latency, negative cool factor.

Fair charges are hard to define. Retries? Port scans or ping storms? Pure noise bad packets. Lots of failure modes cause increased counts. Do we really want to incent the carriers to do bad maintenance?

Disk has gotten cheap and fast, a user who records every bit going across his own interface is in good position to beat up an ISP billing group. I think metering may cost them to do, I suspect it's a loser even on wireless where the delivery costs are higher, as it drives users to find a wifi hotpoint. The only thing it is good for is making full wiretaps cheaper by cost sharing the common equipment.

Is it ever accurate?

[HalAtWork]

Is metered billing ever accurate? It seems like the only reason companies want to do this is to grab more cash than they should actually be getting. The onus is on the customer to check, but many don't know how without referring to the ISP's own utility which would just report the inaccurate data anyway. This makes it seem like a scam.

Router with open firmware

[Anonymous Coward]

I use my ISP's DSL router, but I don't use the built in switch. I have a WRT-54GL with DD-WRT firmware (and actually only use one port from that, connected to my own 1000BaseT switch, to which I connect all the computers on my home lan). DD-WRT tracks every bit by the month, every month. Everything that I download (even wireless connections) get tallied. If there is any question, I can dump records by day, week and month. It doesn't show hour/minute/second use, but if the ISP yelps about how much, I can dump numbers, charts and graphs. Mine doesn't tally the overhead at the DSLAM in the wire office, mine only shows bits I actually got. At least now I can dicker.

And then there's the legitmate traffic

[swordgeek]

...that isn't your fault.

My friend figured that he was getting 2GB of ARP traffic hitting his router every month. If he exceeds his limit, does that get billed for?

Real Life Metering Inaccuracy.

[cluedweasel]

Our local cable internet provider has a 100Gb monthly cap in place. A few months ago, a friend of mine called in a panic because here usual $52 internet bill had come in at over $600. The first thing I did was check the daily breakdown of her usage on the ISP's website. It showed a fairly consistent 16Gb a day of usage. Bear in mind that this is a woman who lives alone, is totally non-technical and has one PC hooked up to a cable modem. No wireless, no laptop, no consoles, nothing. I was showing here the daily usage when she remembered that at the start of the month, she was visiting a relative out of state. Those days still showed the 16Gb a day. I checked the Windows event logs for those days - nothing at all, which fitted pretty well with her insistence that the PC was switched off. So called up the ISP. After getting nowhere with billing, I asked for the tech support people. Was pretty much told that I was lying and she wasn't going to gt out of paying the bill. Their attitude was that their system was foolproof and that there must have been someone in the house using the Internet that weekend she was away. No one else has a key and the house sits on an acre lot on the outskirts of town. Then the support guy told me that the metering was still showing high usage in real time. I pulled the plug on the cable modem and guess what? No change in the metering. Asked him to explain that and was told again that I must be "mistaken". After getting escalated yet again, I finally got them to cancel the overage charge but they still wouldn't accept that there was a problem on their end. My friend is now on a wireless Internet provider now and the software I installed shows a pretty ocnsistent usage of around 6Gb a month.

Headline based off one anecdote, seriously?!

[sco08y]

One guy claims:

AT&T's data appears to be wholely corrupted. Some days, AT&T will under-report my data usage by as much as 91%. (They said I used 92 meg, my firewall says I used 1.1 Gigs.) Some days, AT&T will over-report my data usage by as much as 4700%. (They said I used 3.8 Gig, dd-wrt says I used 80 meg. And no, this day wasn't anywhere near the day they under-reported.)

And another speculates:

Another user in the thread suggests that the discrepancy is because AT&T is measuring usage at the DSLAM, thereby creating unrealistic totals that incorporate PPPoE and ATM overhead

And we're taking that as gospel? AT&T needs to get off their asses and answer the questions, but so far we've got nothing to go on.

The speculation brings up a valid point, though. The government could actually be useful here by working out common overhead amounts for various types of services, or a test suite that the service (or a subscriber) could run. Essentially, if I'm using a cable modem, and I download a one gigabyte file, the meter might internally read 1.1 gb of usage, but would use a known ratio to estimate the actual application layer usage.

Re:Headline based off one anecdote, seriously?!

[ScrewMaster]

And we're taking that as gospel? AT&T needs to get off their asses and answer the questions, but so far we've got nothing to go on.

They also may very well not be using the same methodology in every service region.

Re:Don't do business with AT&T, ever

[ScrewMaster]

I repeat, do not fucking do business with AT&T.

Not unless you like getting both yourself and your wallet fucked in the ass.

AT&T makes Comcrap, Microsoft and Apple look benign.

Hell they're probably even nastier than Exxon-Mobile.

I dunno ... I agree that AT&T/SBC is nothing but a criminal gang in three-piece suits, but the reality is that (so far!) I've had much better service from AT&T than I ever got from Comcast. That sounds like it's changing though. All I have in my area is U-Verse, Comcast and some wireless outfit, so it's not looking good.

Re:Important Things

[PopeRatzo]

I just want to point out that AT&T is one of the names that seem to bring out the organized "first post" trolls. You will see that many of the stories that mention AT&T will be followed by (usually) lengthy strings of racist/obnoxious first posters, followed by high-UID responses, creating long threads of crap comments. The effect on the casual user is just to give up and not take the time to see what earnest commenters have to say. Unless you've got javascript enabled, you won't even be able to collapse these long disruptive comment threads.

I believe that this phenomenon is worth watching, and might indicate the work of the "Reputation Defender" and "New Media Strategies" outfits that employ people specifically to spread positive messages about their clients and disrupt negative messages about their clients.

I sit on the technology advisory committee of a university and I've been on hand for the presentation from one of the many many companies like this that have sprung up recently (not one of the two I mention above). Even though they present themselves in an entirely positive light, promising to be "good net citizens" some of the pointed queries from me and a few other committee members got them to admit that in practice, their ethics are as mutable as those of their clients and they will and have employed less ethically pure tactics. They actually talked about sites like Slashdot and smaller online forums and they promote themselves as being able to derail negative "rockslides" before they can reflect negatively on their clients and end up read more widely. If a company were in the news a lot, say for attempting to buy out one of their major competitors, there would be great motivation to keep the number and viability of negative stories to a minimum.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case here, but it's something that bears watching.

Penalized for advertisements?

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, think its fantastic that I could be penalized for downloading advertisements/junk that I never requested nor wanted to see in the first place.

Granted, its a very, very small portion of a monthly cap and pales in comparison to something along the lines of watching Netflix or downloading games from Steam. However, I am willing to bet that there are a lot of little things that will add up to a lot in the end. Tack on the countless Windows/Mac/Ubuntu updates, service packs, antivirus updates, multiply that by the number of computers in the house, and you have all of those "little things."

DSL modem firmware updates?

[Culture20]

Maybe the ISPs are counting a ton of DSL modem firmware updates that the users aren't aware of?

Rumors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been thinking these were rumors because as of yet I've not received any direct communication from AT&T regarding these caps.
Here's the statement straight from the horses mouth:
http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB409045#fbid=sQ_hbpc_mJt
Of particular note the 150GB cap only allows for 10 hours of HD content. - I'm surprised they didn't lie about that, 10 hours seems approximately correct; so long as you believe the caps will be measured correctly.

I find it hard to believe that I can be billed based on a new plan that I didn't sign up for. Much of AT&T's documentation (current even) still reflects that their internet plans are unlimited. Is there any truth to statements that public (static) IP plans are not subject to incoming traffic caps?

The pros of metered...

[kfsone]

I'll avoid metered internet access for as long as I can, but that said, after all the cons, there are at least two potential pros:

End-users finally get a leg to stand on when spammers argue "it's just an inconvenience", as there is somewhat of a precedence that having your wallet depleted falls beyond the definition of "inconvenient".

It's also an incentive not to let your PC sit there joining the spam/botnet chorus with a virus on your machine.

the way of the future?

[nurb432]

Its the 'way of the past' for those of us that remember it.

And you saw how well it worked for advancement and innovation when you had to worry about every byte that you transferred so you didn't drain you monthly quota, or incur oppressive charges.. Going back will return us to an age of stagnation.

Cool Story Bro time.

[/dev/trash]

Back when I had an ISP that had just been bought by Earthlink, I had been keeping my dialup line connected pretty much all the time. I did build in some 'downtime' randomly so that it didn't appear like I was trying to stay connected.

Anyway the rule was that each connection was billable. So I could log in with my user name twice, but I'd be billed extra. The software they used though was not so good, because if the time between connections was less than 6 or so minutes ( it was random) they billed me extra. I had three months of this crap before I finally left them and went with a much better dialup provider.

Re:Consumer law doesn't apply in USA.

[Anonymous Coward]

TFTFY

Don't forget the spam

[taniwha]

Don't forget you're paying for all the people trying to break into your household - a friend here in NZ noticed he kept going over his paltry 1/2Gb cap - turned out 1/3 of his traffic was from other machines (mostly on the same ISP) trying to break into his.

If you're lucky,

[ronmon]

maybe you'll get this like I did from http://www.myusage.att.com/

"AT&T is not able to capture usage data on all of its customers. Customers whose usage is not available for viewing should not be concerned about their usage patterns for billing purposes. To learn more about how to manage your usage, please visit www.att.com/internet-usage"

It could be outdated equipment in the CO here in Key West or my old Bell South modem (ANT).

Let the lawyer's make money...

[the old rang]

I say, pay the bill...

The class action for theft, false advertising, and 20 other laws broken, counting all the people who would qualify...

I am surprised 10,000 college grads are not leaving the ambulances to chase after this one...

Re:Important Things

[TaoPhoenix]

Yes, the trolls are way beyond the one obligatory FP item that everyone ignores.

In the new redesign, the customizable comment modifiers seem much harder to find. The easiest method seems to be http://slashdot.org/my/comments.
For the longest time I used to have a penalty on 1 sentence comments and left the rest alone, but lately some if the informative comments are coming through at 10 words + a link, and the trolls are writing more.

Now I switched it to penalize the last 40,000 accounts created, enough to knock back the 2-mil-uid crew.

+1 Informative

[PopeRatzo]

The easiest method seems to be http://slashdot.org/my/comments

Thank you.

ATT = T2 Liquid Metal

[foolish_to_be_here]

You can kill T2 by breaking him up into little pieces. ATT either.

I'm from new zealand and

[Anonymous Coward]

250GB a month and $10 for 50GB sounds really cheap...

Re:I'm from new zealand and

[ScrewMaster]

250GB a month and $10 for 50GB sounds really cheap...

Sure it does. For now. But all the big boys are looking towards the future where people will continue to find uses for more and more bandwidth, and they are trying to make a pre-emptive strike. That is, make us afraid to actually use our Internet connections for anything more than email and browsing.

Internet "overages"

[curado]

If it works anything like cellphone overages, no thanks.

well, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. You mean a nice company like ATT over billed its customers by submitting inaccurate and overstated (never he other way, eh?) usage statistics? No way! IT's a joke. You're giving these guys (think about who we're talking about here) a license to print money as needed.

Say....do you think cloud providers might be inclined to cut themselves the same kind of check? The more so that there is no easy, independent way to verify their usage claims?

"Here's your bill. Pay it now or we'll take your company down."

Just reason #548 that cloud computing has a lot more hurdles to get over than anyone pushing it cares to acknowledge.

As someone who works with the poor...

[Benfea]

...particularly regarding energy issues, I can tell you that electric and gas bills are frequently based on estimates in apartment buildings. As you can imagine, some of these estimates are wildly inaccurate. If the meter reader runs into any problems, they just make something up.