8,500 Verizon Customers Disconnected Because of 'Substantial' Data Use (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Verizon is disconnecting another 8,500 rural customers from its wireless network, saying that roaming charges have made certain customer accounts unprofitable for the carrier. The 8,500 customers have 19,000 lines and live in 13 states (Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin), a Verizon Wireless spokesperson told Ars today. They received notices of disconnection this month and will lose access to Verizon service on October 17. Verizon said in June that it was only disconnecting "a small group of customers" who were "using vast amounts of data -- some as much as a terabyte or more a month -- outside of our network footprint." But one customer, who contacted Ars this week about being disconnected, said her family never used more than 50GB of data across four lines despite having an "unlimited" data plan. We asked Verizon whether 50GB a month is a normal cut-off point in its disconnections of rural customers, but the company did not provide a specific answer. "These customers live outside of areas where Verizon operates our own network," Verizon said. "Many of the affected consumer lines use a substantial amount of data while roaming on other providers' networks and the roaming costs generated by these lines exceed what these consumers pay us each month. We sent these notices in advance so customers have plenty of time to choose another wireless provider."

Comments

Fraudulent billing by the rural providers?

[Kaenneth]

A small rural provider could easily pump fake data to bill big phone companies for fake usage...

Re:Fraudulent billing by the rural providers?

[Anonymous Coward]

A small rural provider could easily pump fake data to bill big phone companies for fake usage...

It's possible. But, quite honestly, I'd accept "cheap and lying bastards run cell companies and arbitrarily decide they didn't really mean 'unlimited' even though they said so" on face value without the need for someone to be actively doing something like you suggest.

There doesn't need to be some conspiracy to defraud Verizon when Verizon being cheap bastards who rely on you not using data is a 100% plausible thing.

I never feel a need to try to spin reality so that cell companies aren't greedy assholes. It seems like a waste of time and an excess of goodwill to companies that don't deserve it.

Not the solution for roaming issues

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're losing money on average in certain areas due to roaming users, then they should install a tower there.
IMO, so long as we are granting them a nation wide monopoly on the frequencies they use, they should be required to provide service to users nationwide, with roaming to fill in their holes at their expense.

Re:Not the solution for roaming issues

[clonehappy]

It's a lot more complicated than that but yes, I agree with your sentiment. The catch is that the customers they are booting off are actually using Verizon's spectrum. Verizon essentially sublet their own spectrum to some rural carriers in order to build LTE networks in places they didn't want to spend the money to do so. Until just recently, however, they advertised this LTEiRA (LTE in Rural America partnership) coverage as NATIVE Verizon service.

This was marketed as a win-win for Verizon and the other carriers, as Verizon now has coverage in all these rural areas they didn't want to spend money on, and the rural carrier gets access to spectrum that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to utilize. Where things get murky is here: people who live or spend the majority of their time in those coverage areas should technically have service directly from the rural carrier, not Verizon. However, either through falsifying their billing address or just plain ineptitude and/or unscrupulous salesmanship from Verizon, many of these customers had Verizon's own branded service but were permanently roaming on the rural carriers.

The rural carriers were almost assuredly fine with this, as they were probably (definitely?) making more money off of the roaming bills to Verizon for those subscribers than they would have if they actually serviced them directly. I only say probably, as the terms of those agreements are obviously closely held corporate secrets, which the average person will never be privy to, but it's common knowledge in the industry that roaming is charged out the proverbial ass by the rural carriers to the big guys. The customers were obviously fine with this, as they got access to better deals on Verizon than they would from regional and local rural carriers that always have to charge more money for service simply due to economies of scale, they just don't have the subscriber base to offer the same price points as the Big 4.

Again, not excusing Verizon's behavior, but they were the ones losing out in this situation. I say this because up until this point, Verizon has NEVER enforced ANY kind of roaming limits. Not on their CDMA 1X/EVDO roaming, and not on LTE. People have had native Verizon service and permanently roamed on carriers like Bluegrass, Appalachian, US Cellular, and others for literally years and never heard a peep out of Verizon. I'm sure the vast, vast majority of these subscribers never knew there was any problem with what they were doing, and seeing as Verizon signed up many of these customers outside of their service area, they shouldn't be absolved of responsibility here seeing that they were advertising this as part of their standard LTE coverage area.

It sucks, but most of these customers, even ones that weren't using "substantial" amounts of data (some using 1GB a month or less are being kicked off) will just have to bite the bullet and pay the cost of their service to the native local rural carrier and be done with it. But further complicating matters, there are roaming-only networks like Wireless Partners in Maine that don't even sell their own service, they only exist to service Verizon roaming customers, and from what I understand there aren't many other options at least in that specific area. These networks will either have to find a way to sell service natively or take a serious hit to their bottom line.

But all that being said, if Verizon has been granted a license to use spectrum in a given area, they should absolutely be held accountable for providing service there, regardless of whether or not they do it through a third-party or not. The whole situation is complicated, unfortunate for the customers affected, and still smells of simple greed from Verizon but at the end of the day, it's only cell phone service. People will figure it out and life will go on.

One sided

[techdolphin]

If Verizon can arbitrarily dump consumers that are under contract, but have not violated the terms of service, then consumers should be able to dump Verizon early without penalty.

Verizon is not a charity

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is a for profit organization, it does what it has to improve profits.

All the people who derided "government service is always inefficient, and private companies are always efficient" should take a moment to understand what the private companies mean by efficiency. For them efficiency is delivering least possible goods and services for most revenue, maximize profits.

So next time some talking head starts a diatribe on government remember this.

Re:This is Trumps fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment will be deleted but yours won't.