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AT&T Violated Rule Requiring Low Prices For Schools, FCC Says (arstechnica.com)
Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica: AT&T overcharged two Florida school districts for phone service and should have to pay about $170,000 to the U.S. government to settle the allegations, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday. AT&T disputes the charges and will contest the decision. The FCC issued a Notice of Apparently Liability (NAL) to AT&T, an initial step toward enforcing the proposed punishment. The alleged overcharges relate to the FCC's E-Rate program, which funds telecommunications for schools and libraries and is paid for by Americans through surcharges on phone bills. The FCC said AT&T should have to repay $63,760 it improperly received from the FCC in subsidies for phone service provided to Orange and Dixie Counties and pay an additional fine of $106,425. AT&T prices charged to the districts were almost 400 percent higher than they should have been, according to the FCC. AT&T violated the FCC's "lowest corresponding price rule" designed to ensure that schools and libraries "get the best rates available by prohibiting E-Rate service providers from charging them more than the lowest price paid by other similarly situated customers for similar telecommunications services," the FCC said. Instead of charging the lowest available price, "AT&T charged the school districts prices for telephone service that were magnitudes higher than many other customers in Florida," the FCC said. Between 2012 and 2015, the school districts paid "some of the highest prices in the state... for basic telephone services."
but the schools are financed by the state, and we have to take money from the military to afford it, so please dont fuck with them. You are free to fuck the normal people though. Have a great time, your government.
Why doesn't the $170K go directly to the school district? I doubt the FCC has anything to do with ensuring the school districts budgets are compensated.
No sig here...
The old AT&T was broken up into seven smaller companies for very good reasons in the early 80s. Over time, those seven companies have coalesced, and we now have just two left: AT&T and Verizon. It is high time to break them up again lest the monster will arise again.
Do these communication providers have to get caught with their hands in the cookie jar before real action is taken to punish and prevent them from doing this? I'm talking rate regulation, maximum entitled profit, and punitive damages awarded to the state to regulate, and jail time for knowing violators. If you're not sure you're ripping off your customer, give them a better deal.
This is a true tragedy of the commons. You rarely see this kind of nonsense with actual, regulated utilities. Communication is so integral to modern life's success and survival it ought to be equitably regulated to ensure access.
Your posts are certainly crybaby bullshit. How many articles in a row have you spammed with it?
Take your meds and have a nap.
The Ars Technica cross posting is a bit baffling.
I didn't know they'd changed the name to ATampT. That's much better.
I keep wondering why they are still using the expensive T1 lines (I think they are up to a T2 line now) when there are three seprate companies that offer business class broadband service to the school.
How much does E-rate subsidise the T1's down to for it to be a better deal than a 50/50Mbps $157/mo business fiber line?
It's not faster or more reliable so why is it that much cheaper?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Not true at all — any Internet-service provider would do. I use two different ones, actually, with 4 different phone numbers. The total monthly cost is about $7 (of which the biggest single part is the "911 fee"). A single phone system handles all the complexity and can route incoming calls to different accounts to different extensions. A problem solved years ago.
My Internet is, incidentally, through Verizon's FiOS, but Comcast cables are going to our neighbors' house from the same pole, which delivers Verizon's fiber to ours. Should FiOS misbehave, I'll switch to Comcast in a jiffy... I wish there were even more options, but so far we are fine...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Seriously, don't you realize that this has nothing to do with millennials. Boomers along with every other tax-paying member of the school district would have been the ones overtaxed. I would tell you to stop yelling at passers by from your porch rocking-chair but I think you are already off your rocker! Please baby boomers: stop blaming the victims of the idiotic policies that were drafted under your watch with talk of walking uphill both ways in sleet and wrapping your feet in newspapers.
suck
re-elect no one.
If true, then the school principals and techies in the affected school-districts should be fired.
Whoever approved the bills for payments didn't do their job. They should've asked the question: why is my school billed at a higher rate, than I'm paying at home? But they didn't, because it is not their money and their captive "customers" have no other choice anyway... No wonder, the per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupled since 1960-ies — with no improvement in quality to show for it...
That said, $170K seems like small potatoes. It is the sort of money, AT&T may choose to pay (without admitting guilt) just to save money on lawyers. FCC may have a case, or they may be engaged in malicious prosecution — chances are good, we'll never know.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At least they provided the service. Our company has narrowly missed winning the contracts to install Wifi in hundreds of Florida schools. In one county they've let the contract 3x, paid millions each time and still there is no Wifi for the students.
Has this guy ever objected to any action by a telecom company?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
At&t over charged by %400, the fine should be %400 of what they have to repay (about $64,000 * 4)
...is what this economic system is called. Private ownership of industry with total government control and regulation. You fuck over a school district? You will pay fines to the Feds because they say so. When things go south, the Feds just blame all our problems on industry, and continue to fuck things up.
That's right, it goes to the government, and that means more money for cronies.
But here's how E-Rate works, and what AT&T did...
E-Rate money never goes to schools, and was never setup to go to schools, in order to avoid fraud. (Ex: I bid out a project, quote it for a million, get the check, then order something cheaper and pocket the difference.) It goes to vendors, and vendors either charge districts the difference (no school gets 100%, but compensation varies depending on free & reduced lunch rates) or they charge them the full amount then send them a rebate check at the end of the year.
I've been doing this for 12 years, and telephone services (which are being phased out, by the way) rarely if ever are competitively bid. Since telcos are often regional monopolies, you receive the service in your area, still jump through the competitive bid hoops, then award the contract to the local Telco. But the FCC then holds telcos responsible for not milking districts, just because they can. No one in a district knows or cares what phone services are supposed to cost. We just pay the bill. In this case, the FCC is saying that AT&T inflated rates for school districts above what they charged other similarly sized & configured private clients.
Why couldn't the school, or municipal council, act directly? Why did it take 3 years for the federal government to respond? When schools need a law to ensure they get a fair price, there is something wrong with market forces. The fact the carrier committed price-gouging anyway, reveals it thought it wouldn't be punished.
There's a lot of that going on in WI as well. The state's Badgernet circuits ( AT&T is the primary vendor ) pulls $1746/mo for a 10 Mbps circuit ( page 2 of https://det.wi.gov/Documents/DET_RatesFY17final.pdf ). Gotta love how the telco lobbyists pay off the politicians.
Does anyone remember when the government stepped in to break up telecom monopolies? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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