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Ask Slashdot: AT&T's Data Usage Definition Proprietary?
stox writes "As many of you know, AT&T has implemented caps on DSL usage. When this was implemented, I started getting emails letting me know my usage as likely to exceed the cap. After consulting their Internet Usage web page, I felt the numbers just weren't right. With the help of Tomato on my router, I started measuring my usage, and ended up with numbers substantially below what AT&T was reporting on a day-to-day basis. Typically around 20-30% less. By the way, this usage is the sum of inbound and outbound. At this point, I decided to contact AT&T support to determine what exactly they were defining as usage, as their web pages never really define it. Boy, did I get a surprise. After several calls, they finally told me they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be proprietary. Yes, you read that right; it's a secret. They left me with the option to contact their executive offices via snail mail. Email was not an option. So, I bring my questions to you, all-knowing Slashdotters: are there any laws that require AT&T to divulge how they are calculating data usage? Should I contact my state's commerce commission or the FCC to attempt to get an answer to this?"
Most likely you don't calculate TCP headers while AT&T rightfully does. That's why you get less bandwidth use.
Granted, contacting them may not actually help you in the short term, but bringing attention to this kind of nonsense is the best way there is to try and put a stop to it. Better yet, find someplace to publish a fully fledged and documented story with relevant emails and the like and THEN start getting some attention to it. This is something there certainly should be standards for, and the government needs a kick in the pants to realize that.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Try the Consumer Protection Bureau. An aimless, foundering government office might get their attention.
I'd sick the FTC and the FCC on them... If they try and bill you for it, I'd take them to small claims court. The judge isn't going to like their answer, I bet. You need to account for all bytes in and ouf, in all packets. Or, you could tell them you are going to dump them for comcast, or sonic or who ever can complete against them.
Welcome to AT&T. Let me see if I can help you get to the right place.
Just say what you are looking for.
Terms of Service
Did you say Enforce Archaic Rules? I thought so. Now tell me how I can help.
Privacy
I'm not sure if I heard that right, did you say Please Let the Government Have Access to All My Data?
Bandwidth Usage
I'm sorry, you are over the limit. Goodbye!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
DSL is based on ATM technology.
And ATM uses 53 Byte cells to transfer data. 48 Byte for the actual data and 5 Byte overhead to indicate things such as the destination.
Now when you want to transfer 50 Bytes of data, you need two atm-cells (vs 1 ethernet packet). This takes 106 Bytes of data on-the-wire.
When one end is measuring the Ethernet side (50 Bytes + ethernet overhead) and the other is measuring the ATM side you will end up with very different numbers.
A web user once found himself in a fix;
His ISP cried "too many bits!"
For while a yottabyte has a septillion,
An ATTbyte, only six.
"A 100 mbit fiber connection with no caps at all is around $100 a month here"
The keyword being "here".
"I think there are about 10 providers in this area competing with DSL, cable and fiber."
I have one cable provider in my area, that's it.
just pay it. they apparently could use the money more than you.
My solution was to leave AT&T for Clear.
This was primarily due to my DSL speed dropping way, way below the
1.5 MBits (which I NEVER got near) I was paying for.
I was also concerned by the, at the time, looming usage limits.
Where is Judge Green when we need him?
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
This idea will spread if corporations can profit it from it. Expect to see "proprietary" metering coming to electricity, gas, water, fuel and anything else that can be metered.
And of course they would treat customers like that. The primary constituency that a corporation is focused on is the shareholders and they are deemed far more important than customers, who come further down the priority list. Customers are still more important than the corporation's rank and file staff though, if that offers any solace.
Government inspectors ensure that gas pumps are properly calibrated. A gallon is a gallon.
The grocer's scale has to meet government standards. A pound is a pound.
A byte should be a byte.
AT&T saying their standard is proprietary is like the butcher arguing that he should be able to put his thumb on the scale when he is weighing your hamburger.
If you think ATT is the only arrogant company that tends to abuse its position as a service provider in a protected market then just try moving north to Canada and you will see what the telcos are really capable of when they essentially run the body which governs them!
The data rates south of the border are 30-40% more competitive and the monthly data plan allotments up here border upon the ridiculous.
There is an investigation currently going on up here into alleged collusion between Bell, Telus and Rogers. It will go no where because we they essentially are in a position to put the thumbscrews on the regulators through their friends in the Conservative party in Ottawa. It was a small news item last month that has very quickly dried up and I seriously doubt the cartel will be held to task for what they are doing.
I'm going to go with this and assume that when the guy said "proprietary" he actually meant "I don't know and nobody I can talk to knows".
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I am no laywer and I am assuming the cap is part of your contract with them, I cannot see how they can keep their definition of bandwidth usage a secret. They are now basically claiming that you are restricted in your usage upto the cap but they refuse to tell you what the cap actually *means*. Without clear understanding of how usage is measured, the number of the cap is meaningless.
So you are subject to provions in a contract that you are not allowed to know. It would surprise me very much if they could hold that up in court...
I had the same problem...once they started charging for exceeding the bandwidth caps I wrote a program to log usage.
I have an old Fedora box with two ethernet cards doing the router work (everything to and from the house goes through this box) and use Etherape to track the usage. A cronjob once a minute makes sure Etherape is always running, and a kill -10 every minute gets it to dump the usage data in XML which I process into a CSV for analysis and charting.
Surprisingly, their monthly usage figures have matched my full month calculations within 1%.
What irritates me is that their monthly totals are not available on their WWW site for a full week after the end of the month, and their current month totals are also delayed a couple of days sometimes wildly inaccurate since they are missing days. Example is the November totals for my account seem to be currently missing 2-5 November, and they haven't posted 12,13 November yet. Hence they show lower usage than what I really used. If this were the end of the month, I might think I can squeeze that extra download in before the end of the month, but I am sure they would figure it out and charge for it.
I hit this issue once when I breached the 150Gb cap with 6 hours remaining. They claim to sell you another 50Gb for $10, but of course that doesn't roll into the next month. That is where I would complain....if they are going to charge by the Gb, they need to accurately report usage during the month.
AT&T just sent me a letter that they are switching me to U-verse with a 250Gb cap. They claim it will be the same price as DSL for the next year, but after that who knows....only other game in town is Comcast which cost even more.
Only one provider must suck big time. But you would think that there would be room for at least two competing against each other. :)
Unless they cooperate on price
I will agree with this....having dealt with AT&T as a vendor, I would say their customer service people probably have no idea who in the company might be able to answer the question, so it easier to just punt and give the "proprietary" answer.
Furthermore, I would guess they know which market the caller is coming from, and whether they are the only provider in the area. If they know you can't vote with your feet, they are much less inclined to make you happy.
Depending on how you measured your bandwidth locally, you might have measured the data sent, not the packets sent. The TCP achieves reliability by sending acknowledgement packets and resending packets when they are lost (which happens quite frequently on the Internet--that's how routers control congestion). So a single packet might easily be resent multiple times, causing AT&T to measure the bytes that went across their network (since that's what costs them) and not the effective amount of communication that you received.
Of course, the cost and quality of bandwidth in the USA is ridiculous compared to other countries, and you're being robbed blind no matter what.
There might all sorts of traffic related to your router that you're not seeing. AT&T is likely metering your connection on their end, both in and out, and consequentially finding more overhead than you do related to signaling, headers, error correction, and so forth. They might additionally be metering ATM traffic or such instead of IP traffic -- aka even more network data.
Methinks the support guy saying it is "proprietary" is a candid way of saying he has no clue of what is being measured - let alone how. Also, it seems conceivable that AT&T might be using different techs depending on the location, and this may very well result in different connections being metered differently or at different levels. This is not to say that they shouldn't be transparent on how they meter you and what they meter exactly. I just doubt your contract entitles you to a full disclosure of how they run their network -- which is indeed proprietary and subject to change without notice.
That is incorrect. Ablock specifically works by blacklisting URL patterns from being requested. I don't know exactly how noscript works, but it's surely going to stop a script from requesting other scripts or ads.
Completely wrong.
Both adblock and noscript prevent the browser from fetching unwanted content.
Only one provider must suck big time. But you would think that there would be room for at least two competing against each other. :)
Unless they cooperate on price
It's funny, but 6 years ago I envied the US for their broadband speeds and pricing. 3 years ago, my canadian broadband surpassed the US in terms of pricing, and speed. At my place down in Florida in Pasco Co., I have the choice of...cable(brighthouse), or dial up. Their offering is 10/1 service@51/mo. I wouldn't say that an aircard or tethering is an option considering both are cost prohibitive even at $51/mo. Up here in Canadaland I now pay $42/mo for 25/1, which will be getting bumped to 50/10 with no cap.
Things are rather broken down in the US in terms of competition right now. And it has to do with over-regulation and crony capitalism protecting incumbents. Something we're very familiar with up here in Canada.
Om, nomnomnom...
"Only one provider must suck big time"
Yup. My max speed is 300KB/s, there is no faster speed available.
No, the pictures and linked crap and not requested and doesn't get sent to you. Using Adblock and Noscript is the only way to browse the web over a dial-up modem. If you were correct, then browsing with a modem would be impossible.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If you aren't going over the limit, don't sweat it. If you are going over the limit and have access to an ISP that offers a business or telecommuter plan with no limits, go ahead and make the switch.
AT&T lost me as a 15+ year ISP customer inherited from Bellsouth because their overage charges at 6 Mbps put my monthly bill within $20 of a Comcast business plan at 22 Mbps and no cap.
We are the 198 proof..
I just want to be sure that people realise that this doesn't actually mean they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be proprietary. It's just a lie because the person being asked doesn't know the answer, doesn't know how to find out and feels that it's the sort of thing that will shut the submitter up.
Just a warning to those who might actually believe them.
something like75% of people have one or two ISP available to them.
usually DSL and Cable. I wish i could get fiber in my new home but I can't and won't be able to for another 15 years minimum.
no competition means no price breaks
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
What an absolutely strange site. The site claims more than 100,000,000 signatures. So I figure I'll see what kinds of petitions attract this kind of attention. Select "browse petitions", then select "popular", finally select "all time".
- Top of the list: "Pay UN Interns a Fair Wage" with 2439 signatures.
- Second in the list: "Remove 2014 Ice Hockey...from Belarus" with 1334 signatures.
- Not far down the list, number 6 has only 33 signatures.
Something, somewhere does not compute...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If AT&T is dispensing a measured quantity of anything, and you feel you are being cheated, make a complaint to the state bureau that deals with this. Look on a gas station pump and you will be able to find them.
I expect they may not be doing this now, but a written complaint and their desire to build their empire may well cause the heavy hand of officialdom to descend on AT&T.
There are studies to do, standards to settle and matters to enforce and little stickers to put on all measuring points. AT&T will quake in their boots, run and hide?
ATM cells in your DSL line have ~10% overhead
each TCP/IP packet has ~2.5% overhead in best case
TCP/IP handhakes(and resets) might add another 2-3%
So 20% overhead in data transfered vs useful data is actually realistic over DSL line
...just stop downloading so much pr0n.
In livestock, you can base the rate "on the hoof," or before slaughtering losses. You buy the steer on the hoof at the measured weight. The only difference is that it is clear, and most people buying livestock for slaughter are aware that a 40%+ loss between hoof and market is common. Still, when you sell to a consumer, what they receive in hand is the actual product weight.
Another analogy would be lumber, which is sold in "nominal" sizes, but for which the actual size is smaller by (most often) 1/2" for framing sizes 2" and over, and 1/4" for thickness of hard or decorative woods and sizes under 2". An addition, some hardwood vendors will charge a 10% surcharge for straightening loss. If you buy a 2x6, you get a 1.5x5.5 board. Even if you wanted to buy a board foot of lumber (thickness (in) x width (ft) x length (ft)), you'll get a "nominal" board foot - the previously mentioned 2x6, 1 foot log, is a BF of lumber, though it's clearly less than 144 cu in of material. The sizes are based on sawmill losses (cutting and planing to size) from a piece of standing timber. Even a "full" or "rough sawn" piece of lumber is less than nominal by the thickness of the sawmill blade (kerf).
The difference here is that it's secret. Which would follow the car insurance company model for what is required to drop you from their policy. You see, they will tell you that you have been dropped, but are not required to tell you what criteria they use to drop you. That's proprietary information / secret, and they won't tell you, though it's theoretically part of the contract you signed for the insurance. I suspect the same is true of US health insurance. Your ranking and whether you qualify for renewal is based on your condition and how much you cost, but I'd be willing to bet that data is never made public.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
[Agent]Hard to go to court if you've already contractually agreed to binding arbitration. [/Agent]
If ATT isn't limiting the actual bytes but rather "excessive usage" as a general, non-numeric term, then they don't have to show you anything. They tell you when you've consumed too much, and you reduce or they drop you. It's very one sided. But then, so are nearly all contracts where there is little or no effective competition.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Pay half the bill and tell them you have a proprietary methodology by which you count money.
If you live in the US (the posting implies that you do) and you can't resolve the issue with AT&T, then I would file a FCC Complaint.
You can even file the complaint online.
That said, 20%, is not a huge difference - is it worth fighting over?
Remember when people used to be concerned that when buying a 10 Gig hard drive, it wasn't really 10 Gigabytes?
(I hope you weren't expecting me to make your decision for you.)
How about dropped packets because of firewall rules?
This is a difficult problem. I think only acknowledged packets should be counted, but that
leaves some protocols uncounted. This is equivalent to the electric company charging you
for transformer loss; they don't - which is why the meter is on your home, not at their office.
This going to be a problem in the future. Comcast has their limits "disabled" for now, and
I'm sure it's because of technical issues like this.
But, in the end, usage caps really are a Load of Nonsense.
CAPTCHA = arboreal
We got ourselves away from AT&T after we took a careful look at the actual speeds we were receiving. Bandwidth to AT&T's internal network is great, but getting anything from the world beyond is very, very slow. Further, there were inexplicable thirty second to ten minute downtimes frequently throughout the day. It's not surprising they're ranked #22 among US broadband ISPs.
The response from AT&T staff has been puzzling. When made aware of the problem, they shrugged it away. It was nearly impossible to get someone coherent (not a question of accent, but of ability to form language; intoxication was suspected in one case) on the phone. This and several other factors convinced us that AT&T intends to exit this market, and anyone who signs up for their service in the meantime is doomed.
The keyword being "here".
You missed the point. If it can be done elsewhere why not where you are? It seems you are being ripped off. Perhaps you should do something about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
excuse me, any contract which stipulates that you have to surrender your rights is illegal. End of.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I'm a long time AT&T customer. I'm going to explain to the OP what his situation really is. He can either accept the reality of it or go on his Don Quixote quest to be a one man army against AT&T.
AT&T no longer wants to support their DSL service. So they do things to make it unpleasant for customers who can now get Uverse but have chosen not to do so. The DSL service drops constantly and I believe this is deliberately done to make people angry enough to abandon it. If you switch to Uverse, you will find that your completely unreliable DSL connection has been replaced magically with a completely reliable Uverse connection. Uverse also has much higher download limits. I've never even come close to using all of mine. The Uverse service is so much better and more reliable than their DSL offering that I would suggest you consider switching if you can. They are going to continue to make it painful for DSL customers who could switch but choose not to.
from the shops and you get half a pound of flour, then that's just because it's their shop. You can't even cry monopoly, there's competition.
Except that would be illegal. Short measures and false advertising are ILLEGAL for a commercial entity selling to customers.
AT&T offer (for example) a 20GB a month cap. If they cap at 14GB, they have broken the law.
If AT&T want to cap at 14GB a month of data, then they can just ADVERTISE a 14GB cap. But they can't advertise a 20GB cap and cap below that. It is false advertising and illegal.
Telco billing platforms are well-known to be shoddy and inaccurate, both because this is a hard problem to get right and because the engineering quality is low. I have personally worked on several that I know gave wildly inaccurate bills to some customerrs (high or low - I referred to this as our "double or quits" feature).
So I am confident that part or all of AT&T's reticence is because they do not want it to be known how low the accuracy and quality of their billing platform is.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
I moved out of Pasco last year, and had FIOS for the last year I was there.
FIOS must have given enough competition for Brighthouse to lower their pricing, because I didn't hear many complaints after I got hooked into FIOS.
Learn something new.
NoScript blocks javascript from running unless it's from a whitelisted domain, so you're right - it'll stop a lot of scripts from downloading ads.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
That's only in Chrome, or at least that's how it was a 1-1.5 years ago.
My guess is that phone personnel you speak with are just instructed to tell you that something is "proprietary" whenever they don't know the answer, don't want to look it up, or don't want to bother someone who does know.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
*cackle*
Yeah, right.
If they can't tell you how they are measuring something or what the limits are and how you can track it, then go to the gas pump and go pay for gas without looking at the meters.
No business can get away with that type of behavior for long. AT&T is an arrogant company, but even they will not be able to get away with this for long. AT&T exists under the law which says "we grant you the right of way for your equipment and our protection if anyone else would seek to interfere with your equipment. But in exchange for this, you must play by our rules."
So yes, the correct answer is to take this up with the government. The PROBLEM is that we just missed an election cycle. It may be the next election cycle before you get any resolution on the matter.
15 years ago AT&T told me their long distance billing rates were, effectively, secret and subject to change without notice, I would be notified on each bill what they had decided to charge and my paying of the bill indicated acceptance of the current terms of contract as most recently amended and posted on their website.
I declined to pay, they sent me to collections over a $40 bill, all quite amusing in the end, but what kind of corporate mentality thinks they are building a business by alienating customers with such utter B.S.?
In part, AT&T's perennial asshattery (and dismal service) has kept me, and my entire family, iPhone free all these years.
Thank you, AT&T.
One of the cardinal rules of contracts is that words are given their ordinary plain meaning. This rule is applied within the context of the transaction. If words have a usual or customary meaning within a particular industry, then that meaning is attributed to the word used. If you want to depart from that rule, you have to provide a definition in the contract.
Hard drive manufacturers got into trouble with this principle when they quietly redefined a megabyte to be equal to 1,000,000 bytes instead of 2^20 bytes like everyone was used to.
If I had AT&T as my service provider, I would be complaining to the Federal Trade Commission alleging this as a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. I would also be complaining to my state's Attorney General alleging a violation of my state's consumer protection laws.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
"a gigabyte is a gigabyte"
Somebody please tell that to the hard disk manufacturers.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What about all the bandwidth you didn't ask to use? Think port knocking, SSH brute force, etc that your router may not be relaying to your home network. It still passes your modem so ATT is counting it as traffic.
That's like me driving a Kia and complaining that it breaks all the time. Switch to a different ISP! Everyone know they're lying, cheating, scam artists with crap support and unfair terms. Give them the boot!
I think you may be asking the wrong questions, instead of saying how do you measure my bandwidth usage, just ask What does the service I'm paying for send in additional overhead to my "good put", how do I get detailed information on that utilization/usage. You don't really care how they measure, you care what they are measuring.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Why not mail the executive office? Stop being lazy and gather all the info on it that you can. Once you hit a wall or have sufficient data, publish your findings.
If they are doing something weird, I bet you could take then small claims court over any overage charges you end up receiving.
Its not what it is, its something else.
They said it was proprietary to get you off the phone -- they straight up don't know the answer and were tired of talking to you. You have no way to measure the transport overhead, but they're clearly counting it. Life goes on.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
any contract which stipulates that you have to surrender your rights is illegal.
The highest court in the land disagrees.
They have ALWAYS used the standard and correct interpretation. Always. One gigabyte is one gigabyte, 1000000000 bytes. From the first hard drives to the current. You don't need to tell them what a gigabyte is.
It's not their fault your operating system doesn't know the difference between 1000 and 1024.
c++;
If it can be done elsewhere why not where you are? It seems you are being ripped off
I think you kind of answered your own question. I don't know where you are, but most places in the US, there is little or no competition among ISPs. It's very common to have only two choices: Cable or DSL, and DSL speeds might top out at 2 Mbps. In many places, even in high population areas, you don't even have that choice.
And the reason is, we're being ripped off. The telecommunications industry has things rigged up with the government so they get nice little monopolies with no regulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
Interesting read on why there is confusion about the meaning of the size of a Gigabyte.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Depends on browser, both are really made for firefox where it does not grab the files at all.
Inbound data + Outbound data (measured in 512K blocks partial blocks counted as full blocks) +1d30% = charged useage (please note the 1d30% accounts for blocked ads and needed ATT profits)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
They won't go "Well, we won't supply you any more" and get a new customer, they'll take you to court for the money.
Well... no. They'll just suspend your account for non-payment until you pay.
And that's part of the problem... the service provider ultimately has the upper hand, since the customer needs that internet connection a lot more then the service provider needs the remaining $7. As such, the reality is that pretty much any customer who tried that kind of stunt will panic and promptly pay up as soon as they realize that their internet has been shut off.
This service provider advantage is also why utility companies (gas, water, electricity, etc.) can so easily get away with charging outrageous "reconnection" fees, just to flip a switch and turn you back if you should happen to miss your payment date for some reason. As such, it's that much more important that the service provider be held accountable for their system of measurement. A "proprietary" system of measurement just doesn't hold water.
AT&T (in my case, U-verse) might have an annoying cap, but it's big enough to not really bother me much. On the other had, my AT&T wireless cap (3 gigabytes) is terrifyingly low, because unlike the former cap, there's a real chance I could go over it and get charged extra in any given month. So I *do* actually care about the details of how they calculate it.
Specifically, is AT&T Wireless billing "chunky"? Suppose I have an Andriod app running in the background that relentlessly polls some remote server every 10 seconds. Or 60 seconds, if it matters. My hypothetical app tries to keep the bandwidth down, and works as follows:
User sends 1-byte command via UDP, then disconnects.
Server looks at the request to discern the sender's IP and port, decides what to send based on the command byte, and sends a one-byte response.
As far as I know, a UDP datagram with a single-byte payload is 33 bytes long (24 bytes for the IP header, 8 bytes for the UDP header, 1 byte for the payload). It's just a hunch, but I suspect that my likelihood of getting billed for exactly 66 bytes of data use is 100% pure fantasy. I'd be shocked if those two datagrams didn't end up getting billed as two 1k chunks of data, or worse.
Are wireless carriers required to file explicit tariffs with state utility regulators disclosing their exact charges, and explain how they calculate any usage-based fees in detail?
Simply called the sales department, told them that I would like to sign up for their cell phone service. After being approved, casually mentioned that I never agreed to data caps, and they removed it from my account no questions asked. Now I stream porn and netflix all day, without even thinking about it. Life is good.
This signature intentionally left blank.
There's a big difference between defending a practice a speculating how AT&T might be doing it's calculations. AvitarX does not seem to be justifing AT&T's ethics.
In Canada fuel sales are volume corrected (to 15C) so regardless of the temperature of the fuel you pay for the same amount.
It gets worse than this.
Your wireless bill is highly dependent on usage, considering the typical 5GB limit. LTE links are going to start using ROHC (RFCs 3095, 5225, etc.) as soon as interoperability and stability is good enough. I know because I'm developing it.
Do you think the wireless vendors will charge you for those 40 bytes of IP/UDP/RTP headers that were compressed down to 1 byte? Damn right they will.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
Since when is an IP header 24 bytes? What IP options would you be using to send a 1 byte UDP message?
I'm surprised the wireless side hasn't had more discussion on what they consider part of your usage. Sounds like we need legislation to require disclosure.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
In many places in the US, this would really be "vote with a moving van."
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
The FCC and the State Commerce Commission is a start. Don't forget your State Utility Board and your State Attorney General too.
Also a lot of newspapers have consumer advocates. Write to them too.
If ATT defines their caps using proprietary methods, least they could do is give you a monitoring tool which uses those methods. Then you'd know if you were getting close to the cap or not. Otherwise it's just their damn secret.
My best guess, after seeing the replies above, is that the site is trying to show me localized results. I am not in the US; if the site is primarily US-oriented, perhaps that is an explanation.
To answer one poster's question above, here's what I see on the home page:
Target - save Thanksgiving (207k sigs)
Nominate Malala for the Nobel Peace Prize (144k sigs)
NCAA: Name...trophy after...Pat Summitt (1800 sigs)
Celina High School... (14k sigs)
FEMA's first responders...benefits (114k sigs)
UNC Board of Governors... (147k sigs)
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410327,00.asp
I completely bungled this link because I googled the wrong magazine. This is the correct link, from /. recently. Sorry about that.
The one in charge of weights and measures. In Washington State, its a division of the Department of Agriculture. They have the authority to inspect and certify any device used for measurements involving commercial transactions. Find out if they have inspected and certified the equipment used by AT&T for billing. In Washington, there should be a little state inspection sticker on it.
Have gnu, will travel.
+1. Anyone I deal with who operates in the free market, if you're late with a bill, they'll gently remind you that payment is due several times before cutting you off and there's never a late fee. The government-granted-monopoly utilities, one day late and it's a 10% late fee. Heck, I was $1 short one month due to some nonsense and they tried to get away with charging me 10% on the entire several hundred dollar bill.
If AT&T is dispensing a measured quantity of anything, and you feel you are being cheated, make a complaint to the state bureau that deals with this. Look on a gas station pump and you will be able to find them.
I expect they may not be doing this now, but a written complaint and their desire to build their empire may well cause the heavy hand of officialdom to descend on AT&T.
There are studies to do, standards to settle and matters to enforce and little stickers to put on all measuring points. AT&T will quake in their boots, run and hide?
Unless you want all of the ISPs to be regulated even more, and have state inspectors drop by every "gas station" monthly to check to see if the measurements are accurate. If they get enough complaints, they may make all sorts of new laws and regulations, and you may not like the results. Best case the cost of business will go up, and the costs will be passed on to you and me.
My ISP has pretty accurate metrics, by my reckoning. This has always been my experience. The industry is largely self-policing because of competition. If you think you're being ripped off, you can usually go elsewhere, and if you complain publicly enough (Like Slashdot, maybe?), they're aware of the possibility to lose other customers. I would appreciate it if you tried to work it out with AT&T yourself and don't get any regulators involved that might eventually impact MY bill.
...this would most likely not be legal. What if the gasoline pumps had a "proprietary" method for billing you? How can their method be anything more than the aggregate of packets sent and received? Are they listening in on what you're doing, ie if you set on web page for too long they count it as "data usage"? Or are they counting things like VoIP as double data. 1 MB of talk time equals 2 MB of web browsing. I just do not get this.
Now I have an idea to patent... Thanks!
*scribbles* Gasoline drip sensor: integrates with pump flow measurement device for a separate billing of gasoline pumped via the existing method, plus a random number-generated multiplier of a base cost, which is a static variable set by the distribution company that uses it, based on the number of gasoline "drips" that fall from the time of 1.) removal of the pump control valve unit from the pump holding orifice, to the time of insertion into the gasoline tank filling point on the vehicle or unit the gasoline is being placed into, or 2.) removal from the gasoline tank filling point on the vehicle or the unit the gasoline is being placed into, to the insertion of the pump control valve unit into the pump holding orifice. Attempts to stop drips with any device or absorbent material or any other method of intervention is equivalent to the base price multiplied by ten.
Device Calculation Model: (price * quantity) = total + (price * random * reported_drips) = greenfriendly_total
-or-
Device Calculation Modem With Disallowed Intervention: total * 10 = kill_the_greenfriendly_cheaters_total
Example: ($3.299 * 10.1231 gal) = $33.40 + ($3.299 * 0.8523 * 4) = $44.65
Example: ($3.299 * 10.1231 gal) = $33.40 + ($3.299 * 3.9264 * 5) = $98.17
Example: ($3.299 * 10.1231 gal) = $33.40 * 10 = $334
I'll be rich with a 0.01% payoff from each transaction in no time flat!
Oh, I have to come up with a design for the drive-off stopping device!
*scribbles* EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse Generator) used to stop......
No mod points, or you'd get +1 Funny. You were joking, right? Playing on the irony in the fact that, for most of us, there is no real competitive marketplace from which to shop Internet service. Right? If not, -1 Flamebait for you, douchebag.
"6 years ago" lines up with when the FCC decision to reclassify ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" following the NCTA v. Brand X ruling started to kick in.
The difference is that "telecommunications services" were required to lease out their lines to independent ISPs, which allowed for competition. "Information services" don't have to and can lock competitors out, creating a nice little mono/duopoly.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
A "proprietary" system of measurement just doesn't hold water.
Yes it does, it holds a proprietary amount of water as a matter of fact; see, it's not just holding water but a measurable amount. Perhaps we should accept the proprietary unit as a new universal unit of measure, companies can advertise how they give you more proprietary units for your dollar and bicker back and forth about who gives the most proprietary units..
I was hoping I'd have access to FIOS this year, but not a chance. My places is on the edge of town in one of the gated communities. Though the ones over on the west side of town apparently do have FIOS now, it'll probably be another two yeas before those of us on the east side see anything.
Maybe I can lean on them when I head back down in a couple of weeks.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sounds about right, I remember how cheap it was to get exceptionally good broadband. Hell, I remember driving through northern ohio and seeing 25/1 for $19/mo back in '05.
Om, nomnomnom...
Actually, I was genuinely unaware that in the US, where small-S socialism is the root of all evil and laissez-faire capitalism will fix everything, that you only get one ISP to choose from and you can choose to like it or lump it.
Sat service is not broadband especially considering Hughes oversells there bandwidth and it is unusable in the evening.
...and Ombudsman, assuming your state has one. I think most states have a utility regulatory agency as well. I think these would be the best places to start with the type of billing issues you're speaking of.
The FCC might not be bad as well, but I don't think they get involved unless there is something about the licensing that was tied to the billing as in that recent issue with 4G spectrum and some companies inability to charge extra for the higher speed as it was a condition of the license to start with.
I do seem to recall something as well about ISPs charging for packets the attempted to deliver, whether they were delivered or not. As the packets never showed up at your end, they wouldn't show in your logs. I'm not saying I agree with it, I am just aware that this is one of the ways they count data to keep your bill as high as possible.
For all I know, they have a method for charging for packets they were expecting from you, but didn't receive. This way they can get you NOT coming or going ;)
Oh, I don't know so much...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
So you have to get the FCC involved to get their attention enough to get to the person who can take care of your problem without having to get the FCC involved?
I'm assuming you didn't previously have this guy's direct number or any way of getting it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Contact your bureau of weights and measures also interstate commerce.
Their contract implies a measured service but not how the service is measured.
Measures are the purvue of weights and measures and I've service crosses state and international boundaries
As a minimum this is perhaps enough to break a contract but an attorney would know.
If there is no alternate service Monopoly money rules come to play.
Do count start and stop bits and also ECC overhead and also give attention to binary and decimal counting tricks.
Research central office equipment, they may be pulling numbers from hardware with "confidential" manuals that
may or may not be under NDA causing your contact to stonewall what should be a transparent contract clause.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
What they're selling you is not very different from a 16 kbps line burstable to 25 Mbps.
What satellite and cellular have in common is the single digit GB per month cap, such that it usually takes months to download a single BD-ROM's worth of data.
I'm in Britain so I don't know US law. But how about: 1) Don't pay the bill. Accuse them of breach of contract and challenge them to prove that you exceeded the cap. 2) Do they have any competitors? Can you not switch to a competitor?