SubscribeThe Beaumont Enterprise has an online poll up to accompany its report on the end of AT&T’s Internet Overcharging scheme. The poll is not well-written — I’ll write about that later. In the meantime, let’s deliver a message to Beaumont that usage caps and other overcharging schemes are -not acceptable!-
The poll:
Should companies charge you based on the bandwidth you use?
- Yes. You pay more for larger and faster in everything else.
- No. Volume purchases should yield a discount. <– Vote for this one.
- Hold on while I download this movie.
The first option is nonsense. If you buy unlimited long distance plans from AT&T (assuming they bill you correctly), do you pay more for making 10 vs. 100 calls? No you don’t. The second choice is the one we recommend you choose, even though it’s poorly worded — it assumes you should still be capped, just not as extremely. We’ll have to re-educate them on that. The third option is simply insulting — playing into the stereotype that “heavy downloaders” are simply pilfering movies from the web. That’s garbage. We’ll educate them about that as well.
Thus far, with 75 votes in, the noes have it. Let’s make that overwhelmingly so — here is the link.
It’s also poorly worded because they conflate bandwidth with data usage. Time Warner has always based their charges on bandwidth; they have a Standard tier that provides a certain speed, a Turbo tier that costs more but goes a bit faster, and a Lite tier that is a lot slower but costs less than the Standard tier. What’s new is the addition of an arbitrarily low cap on data transferred. I don’t mind paying more for a faster connection, but I do have an issue with my ISP also charging me for data that they aren’t providing in the first… Read more »
Its a horribly worded poll but its fun to see that despite Phil telling us how to vote 23% still are currently voting the other way!
That is hardly surprising considering the false logic of paying for broadband like water or gas service. Once consumers find out how profitable service is at today’s pricing, they’ll achieve BP-level anger at the overcharging schemes that simply aren’t justified.