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Spangler
While the mainstream media and some of AT&T’s apologists tell consumers AT&T’s 2 GB monthly usage limit will impact only a handful of “abusers,” the cable trade press is telling its readers the industry insider’s secret — consumers will blow right through those caps.
Todd Spangler, who is an Internet Overcharging advocate and columnist for Multichannel News, a cable industry trade magazine, writes the implications of AT&T’s usage cap couldn’t be clearer to him.
The new iPhone 4, introduced yesterday to the predictable media crush, provides 10 hours of battery life for playing video, among other features.
But now that AT&T has eliminated its all-you-can-eat plan for smartphones, you will blow through the maximum 3G usage for the entry-level 200 MB plan if you watched just 4 minutes of streaming video per day. That would include commercials.
Even AT&T’s more generous DataPro 2-GB plan would allow just 35 minutes per day of streaming video (assuming you used your iPhone for nothing else), according to the carrier’s online data calculator.
Like a stopped watch, at least he’s right twice a day.
Spangler celebrates the opportunity AT&T’s overcharging scheme provides the cable industry to “grease the skids” for data caps and overpriced consumption billing on cable modem service.
In Spangler’s “Cable companies pay my salary”-world-view, it wasn’t that Time Warner Cable did the wrong thing when it tried to triple broadband pricing — to $150 a month — for the exact same level of service customers previously enjoyed. It was all about its execution.
Spangler characterizes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt as a victim, burned over the company’s failed overcharging experiment in 2009. When one plays with matches, is it any surprise there are consequences?
Consumers will respond to more overcharging schemes the same way they did a year before — with overwhelming condemnation and opposition. It’s hard to convince consumers to pay a higher price for limits on usage while telling shareholders you’ve invested less to expand your network, charged more to access it, all while the costs to provide the service have dropped dramatically. Consumers call that out for what it is: greed.
Make no mistake, consumers hate usage caps and overpriced consumption billing and Time Warner Cable has no justification to introduce either.
http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC ATT Cuts Unlimited Data 6-2-10.flvNormally business-friendly CNBC covers the introduction of the 2 GB usage cap on AT&T smartphone data usage. Then the CNBC anchor got skeptical about AT&T’s claims this was good news for consumers, admitting she hates overcharging schemes that deliver a surprise on the bill at the end of the month. Lance Ulanoff, editor of PC Magazine expressed some doubts himself. (8 minutes)
Other stories of interest:
- Time Warner Cable Backs AT&T’s End of Unlimited: Cable Operator Still Interested in Its Own Overcharging Scheme
- [Updated] Time Warner Cable Offers Their Broadband Network to Cell Phone Companies; ‘Exaflood’ Apparently Doesn’t Apply
- New Apple iPhone Announced, But Should You Buy?
- CNN Mistakes Internet Overcharging for Net Neutrality
- [Updated] AT&T Adds Usage Meter Placeholder on U-verse Accounts
Imagine getting a new car and only being able to drive it 1 mile a day for multiple years
“Imagine getting a new car and only being able to drive it 1 mile a day for multiple years”
That’s a very bad analogy actually because you can drive as many miles as you like as long as you pay for the gas and servicing for the said vehicle. The more you drive the more your monthly cost would be. Much like most things in life.
I guess some feel that internet activity should be different.
the correct analogy would be that you get to drive in your neighborhood for free, but anytime you leave your neighborhood, you would have to pay a toll every 5 miles to drive for the next 5 miles, and then in order to get back home, you have to do the same thing. All this even though you pay taxes that are supposed to go to the upkeep of the roads.
“the correct analogy would be that you get to drive in your neighborhood for free, but anytime you leave your neighborhood, you would have to pay a toll every 5 miles to drive for the next 5 miles, and then in order to get back home, you have to do the same thing. All this even though you pay taxes that are supposed to go to the upkeep of the roads.”
You mean a little like the tolls that I pay every day to go to work, Those Tolls?
And of course the further I drive the more I pay…..just reinforcing the idea that you should pay for what you use.
No. The equivalent of paying a toll starting at the end of your street. Then getting a bill at the end of the month based upon how many miles you drove – NOT paying as you go. Also, not per mile, but groups of miles. You got off just after the arbitrary boundary? Tough, you still pay for the whole 5 miles.
BTW – paying tolls is (for the most part) your choice. There are (mostly) other ways to get there.
Like the tolls on the NY State Thruway that were designed to pay off the construction costs of that highway, but somehow persisted long, long, long after that was done, even as the money is diverted to pay for other things, like a canal system and wherever else the NY State Legislature flushes it.
NY State is the Comcast and Time Warner of government.
The road analogy was part of the propaganda focus groups AT&T held down in Beaumont, if folks recall. Only it fell apart in so many ways:
1) Roadways are a natural monopoly, regulated for the common good. That doesn’t seem to be the case with big telecom. They are unregulated and provide service at prices that are uncommonly bad.
2) Roadways can be worn down physically by the amount of traffic passing on them. Data bits do not vibrate their way down the lines degrading them. The physical infrastructure, barring any squirrel attacks, are not worn from use.
3) Again, the telecom service most comparable to broadband is telephone service. By the time digital switching was universal, costs were dropping dramatically. Most Americans enjoy unlimited flat rate local calling, and for a few dollars more get unlimited long distance as well. That’s because costs to provide that service fell… just like broadband costs continue to drop, as evidenced in the financial reports of the major providers.
4) Pay for what you use isn’t on offer here. To use the road analogy, you are charged a fee for driving 40 miles on the thruway whether you drive that far or not. Anything above 40 miles is charged way above cost. If you don’t drive on the roadway at all, you still pay.
Let’s remember:
Prices up.
Revenues up.
Infrastructure investment down.
Costs to provide service down.
Need to replace lost revenue from landline/cable-TV packages up.
That’s a recipe that cooks up only one thing — Internet Overcharging.
“NY State is the Comcast and Time Warner of government.”
I am confused now, you are comparing Time Warner and Comcast with New York State?
You continually complain on here about Time Warners “excess” profits and now you equate them to a state that is 203 Billion dollars in debt.. I think maybe the state should take a leaf out of the way TWC and Comcast run their businesses and then maybe they they could reduce their debt load and move forward and improve NYS residents lives. If a company was 203 billion in debt it would be out of business.
“To use the road analogy, you are charged a fee for driving 40 miles on the thruway whether you drive that far or not. Anything above 40 miles is charged way above cost. If you don’t drive on the roadway at all, you still pay.”
You are indeed charged a fee to drive 40 miles on the freeway. If you break down on the freeway you can call someone and if needed someone will come out and fix either the road or your car at no charge other than your 40 mile up front subscription. You can call in 24 hours a day and someone will give you directions if you get lost,. If you elect to pay for your 40 mile drive and then don’t use it, that unfortunately is your own decision, the road is there for your use and as in most other services there are no refunds! On the days that you may find traffic congestion you can call and in most cases lanes may be added or some traffic moved to an alternate route to keep your drive time consistent! Unfortunately as in all walks of life their are people who spoil things. Those that speed, weave in and out of traffic and continually drive up and down for the sole purpose of being able to say they did, they slow down traffic and when ask to pay for their actions and continual hogging of the fast lane, complain. They don’t want to take responsibility for their actions and blame the road owners and try and enlist the support of normal responsible drivers.
I like analogies!
I don’t live in a world where people drive up and down on toll roads just to get their money’s worth or feel entitled to weave in and out of traffic just because they paid a fee to use the road. People use their broadband service to get things done, entertain themselves or socialize. Nobody sits at home telling themselves because they have unlimited use they should saturate their connection 24/7 to get their money’s worth.
The people I know don’t want is a coin slot on the side of their computer demanding more money after they already paid good money for the service (which increased in price in 2010 by the way).
As a driver on toll roads, I actually don’t have a problem with people who fly down the fast lane because they ultimately don’t affect me. If I was behind someone going 10 miles under the speed limit, I’d probably jump on it too just to move beyond them. I certainly don’t want someone measuring my time spent in that lane charging me a fee every minute I spend in it, especially if it doesn’t cost any more for people to use that lane than the two adjacent to it.
I’m also still waiting to see a toll road that magically provides me with value-added services like free towing and car repair. The only innovation we’ve seen with the NYS Thruway is E-Z Pass, which lets me pay an increasing toll to travel down the same Thruway I’ve seen for years, only cough it up more quickly. I can do that with auto-bill-pay with the cable company, too.
If Time Warner Cable ran NY State government, they’d increase everyone’s taxes to pay the governor and his top staff tens of millions in bonuses regardless of how the state was performing. They’d pay another bonus just to get them to agree to stay in office while earning that nice salary. Then, they’d ignore rural New York completely while paying lobbyists telling them and the rest of the state it’s all good.
We tried running the federal government as a deregulated business during 2001-2009 and we saw how that worked out.
So far the word I have been hearing from a lot of people, is that the cap is good because they don’t use that much now. However, a few us chimed in and said that, “Yea, that is all well and good now but what about in the future like a few years down the road?”
The future is sooner than many of us think as soon as people start streaming video on their iPhones. Video is a bandwidth piggy and if the iPhone 4 wasn’t designed to showcase that particular feature, you might be right. The only way to avoid the overlimit fee with AT&T is to simply make sure you avoid streaming video over anything other than Wi-Fi.
AT&T made the decision I hadn’t been able to make myself — I am going to skip the iPhone altogether and, when finances permit, consider an Android phone. I’ll have to consider switching to Sprint as well because I refuse to pay the extortion like prices AT&T and Verizon are charging for smartphones with data packages.
Steve Jobs should be extraordinarily upset AT&T will singlehandedly wreck iPhone sales for the increasing number of Americans who are budget-conscious about their mobile service. Charging top dollar pricing for low allowance usage limits practical enough to actually use the phone to your heart’s content is a recipe for eventual failure, no matter how much of a fanboy you are.
For most folks, that will come home to them the first time they exceed their limit and discover an overlimit fee on their bill. Then the “think twice” attitude will begin.
The declines in the incomes for many Americans matched against ongoing increases in pricing for mobile service will inevitably force people away from carriers that charge too much for too little.
Phil, this might also be of interest to you as well if you haven’t seen this.
http://gizmodo.com/5557518/watch-steve-jobs-make-a-video-call
The new iPhone will support 720p out of the box with it’s camera, something else to point out.
Not for video conferencing – only for video taken with the 5mp camera on the opposite side of the phone. EVO does the same thing with and 8mp camera and does video conferencing over 3G/4G/WiFi with no data limits. I’m not sure the iPhone is all that spectacular especially considering AT&T.
Ron to respectfully add to your comment. Who decides where your
neighborhood starts and stops? My second issue with them is they
want to charge everybody much more. If it is $100 for 50 gig then it is fair
to charge somebody $2 for 1 gig. I do not think this is their plan
Somebody BESIDES you that you cannot argue with and there is no recourse except not driving – until they start to charge for walking