Verizon, AT&T Made $600 Million in Overage Fees Alone in 2016 (dslreports.com)

A new study claims that Verizon and AT&T made $600 million alone in 2016 just on overage fees. And while both telcos unveiled new plans that let you avoid $15 per gigabyte overages in exchange for just being throttled (Verizon's "safety mode" and AT&T's Mobile Share Advantage) the study by Nerd Wallet found that thanks to buried surcharges and other fees, users on these new plans may not save much money. DSLReports adds: That said, the report claims whether or not you save money under these new plans depends on your (or your family's) usage behavior. "If you're on an average-sized plan and your data overages exceed 8GB per year, choosing one of the new plans will save you money, according to NerdWallet and My Data Manager's analysis," says the report. "The individual Verizon Plan will save you money if you have an average plan, even if you never go over your data limit," it continues. "Otherwise, the new Verizon plans and AT&T's Mobile Share Advantage plans won't save you money. In fact, most consumers on legacy plans would be better off sticking to them and paying the occasional overage fee."

Comments

so....let's fine them $12million

[turkeydance]

they'll never notice

Of course

[somenickname]

The options are A) Spend $600 million to upgrade the infrastructure so there is enough bandwidth. B) Gain $600 million by not upgrading the infrastructure and just charge more for people who try to use it. This seems like a pretty easy decision for a business and, as long as all competitors choose option "B", there is no real risk of losing customers.

Re:Of course

[number6x]

The options are A) Spend $600 million to upgrade the infrastructure so there is enough bandwidth.

I think the fact that the telcos are making so much money off of 'overages' proves that the bandwidth is already there and no infrastructure improvement is needed. If the customers were trying to go over the artificial limits imposed by their contracts and were unable to do so because the network infrastructure was so poor that their connections would never have the bandwidth to allow customers to exceed the limits, then we would need infrastructure improvement.

Instead, we see that it is trivially easy for customers to exceed the artificial limits set by the phone providers. The network is more than able to serve up many more gigabytes of data. As things advance, we go beyond 4G networks and 4k video becomes a 'low-res' option, infrastructure will become more taxed and will need updating. For now I think most phone owners could hit their data limits very quickly if they tried. In much of the world the networks have bandwidth to spare.

Re:Of course

[Ungrounded Lightning]

There is no free market when the government 'gets' to license spectrum.

And doubly so then they consider it "competition" when there are TWO suppliers:
  - With ONE supplier (monopoly) the incentive is to charge as much as possible - until you're driving away more in customer revenue from people who do without or with less than you gain from higher prices.
  - With TWO suppliers (duopoly) the market forces lead rational players to adjust prices to divide the market roughly evenly and continue to charge monopolistic prices. Price signals are enough, no forbidden collusion required.
  - With THREE suppliers you're starting to get instability. If the big two make it too hard on the little guy, he may cut prices to try to grab market share, leading to a price war that drives prices down toward cost-of-goods-plus-modest-margin. Or they may manage a balancing act and prices stay high.
  - With FOUR OR MORE suppliers the high-priced equilibrium is almost certain to collapse, and it gets progressively more unstable with more players.

So government communications regulatiory policy - at least in the US - is explicitly encouraging duopoly markets and monopolistic pricing structures.

How much do all the ads on webpages cost?

[Bruinwar]

When we were on vacation to a nice cabin on a lake that had no Internet, I tethered off my phone. Just my wife & I doing normal surfing in the evenings & yes I knew I would go over my 6 gig cap... It occurred to me that I am paying top download the ads on all websites.

While I understand websites aren't free & other than Google, no one is really making much money with these ads. But it appears I will have to go with a adblocker now. Fucking Comcrap starts their cap on us next month. I wonder how much data is being chewed up by advertisements?

BTW fuck them & their throttling plans.

Re:How much do all the ads on webpages cost?

[fahrbot-bot]

When we were on vacation to a nice cabin on a lake that had no Internet, I tethered off my phone. Just my wife & I doing normal surfing in the evenings

You were vacation with your wife, in a cabin by a lake and you both spent the evenings surfing the web? Dude...

Re:Fee Subcription

[jellomizer]

The telephone tax is one example on where a Progressive Tax became a regressive tax over time.
Back when the Tax was enacted Telephone service was only for the rich, however now it has became a necessary tool for operation in society. So the poor people need telephone service too yet they are paying extra taxes on it.

WRONG T-Mobile does not

[SuperKendall]

I left Verizon specifically because of the upsetting and ridiculous extra charges for things like simple use of international data.

T-Mobile really doesn't pull that crap. In fact once I ran out of tethering data allowance (even though I still had data left on the plan) and T-Mobile had no way to pay them more money to increase the tethering allowance... you can bet Verizon would have had $ome way to accomplish that (BTW that tethering portion thing seems to be gone now).

I can also use data roaming internationally with NO FEE WHATSOEVER.

The real test is in the bill though, and mine has stayed the same from month to month despite traveling, some international and some not...

On a side note T-Mobile seems to actually spend money on infrastructure as over time the reception across a number of locations has improved as has the network speed. Still not up to Verizon levels out East but not too bad either.