Get Ready for Higher Bills from AT&T
Everybody’s favorite monolith, AT&T, has hinted that they are ready to go down the slippery slope of “Usage Based” billing.
Basically, with your high speed if you use more then what is viewed as your fair share - AT&T will charge you more.
“When AT&T provides broadband service by speed, it will do so in discrete, non-overlapping tiers,” Quinn said in written testimony. “We will strive to provide service within the speed tier purchased by the customer and, if we find that we are not providing service within the ordered speed tier, AT&T will take action either to bring the customer’s service within the ordered tier or give the customer an option to move to a different tier.” [...] n this case AT&T appears to be softly selling the idea of usage-based pricing, which the company last month proclaimed was “inevitable.” Quinn appeared to show his hand when he stated the new system would “clearly identify any limitations on the amount of usage that may apply to a customer’s service plan.”
Nice, hopefully AT&T with this experiment will find far more customer resistance and defection then anticipated and abandon the effort.
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G . H I S C O T T
I founded and operated a regional ISP (Southern California) for nearly 10 years and fought the fight with Pacific Bell…SBC…Southwestern Bell… AT&T.
They reamed us out on circuits and their performance was unbelievably poor. Probably because we were in competition with them.
Now that the market has consolidated back into the RBOCs and all the “mom and pop” shops are gone or nearly gone, they are doing what I knew they would do.
Good luck everybody…. Without a law degree or millions of dollars to retain attorneys, you are all going to be the next victims of the telco steamroller.
Jul 23rd, 2008
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