Recent Headlines
October 2, 2009
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to […]
October 2, 2009
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to […]
September 27, 2009
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of Hong […]
September 23, 2009
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be […]
September 23, 2009
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw […]
September 22, 2009
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail. [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s] proposal – to codify and enforce some […]
September 21, 2009
In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario […]
September 11, 2009
Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment […]
September 7, 2009
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by […]
September 1, 2009
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good Alberta […]
August 31, 2009
A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling […]
August 27, 2009
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking […]
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Who are the crooks again?
Here is something interesting for our readers. A producer for the Today show called me several weeks ago looking for help on this story. The law firm bringing the suit was not too open about revealing their “independent lab” who did the measurements. We suggested the Today Show do their own tests, something that remains unclear in the above report. While a small part of AT&T’s response is plausible, especially with respect to background tasks and automatic updates, when the company is that stingy with data caps, especially with that 200MB plan, it should be an automatic assumption any consumer… Read more »
Apparently the only “misunderstanding” by consumers was AT&T’s metered billing being assumed to be fair and accurate without anybody watching…
One thing I am curious about is to see if whether or not the iPhone was on Wi-Fi during the same 10 day period where the phone should have been sitting idle. I know iOS runs background tasks that may consume data, such as the receiving of SMS/Text messages, but even iPods when they’re sitting idle hardly consume a thing. I feel as though the news article here is lacking some information. I wouldn’t doubt it though to hear of a company rigging their meters though. It’s the old, traditional Casino style “We want your money!” scam with their slot… Read more »
Ars Technica’s article said this: To confirm the “phantom” data charges, a computer engineer hired by the law firms involved in the case took a brand new iPhone, turned off all push notifications and location services, did not set up any e-mail accounts, and made sure no applications were running. After 10 days of sitting idle, AT&T recorded 35 instances of data use totaling over 2MB. How the test was done We contacted Davis to verify the methodology used by the independent consulting firm whose tests showed the billing discrepancies. He explained how tests were able to determine that AT&T’s… Read more »
The other argument is going to be consumers screaming about web ads and AT&T’s own junk messages, all paid for by users as deducted usage from their allowance. I really do understand the arguments about congestion on wireless networks and there is some evidence to back it up. But providers like AT&T are using that evidence to profiteer with these prices. My guess is they assumed they’d set caps low and then market forces would gradually force them to relax the limits. Only now it appears we’re going to have a nice comfy duopoly between AT&T and Verizon, so those… Read more »
Run DD-WRT on your router and it keeps track of your usage by the day and rolls it up to usage by the month.
How can we set the billing cycle date in DD-WRT to make it’s meter align with AT&T’s billing cycle?
I am not sure you can. DD-WRT in its current implementation relies on calendar months, not billing cycles, to count usage. Also keep in mind I’ve seen a ton of threads from DD-WRT users who report that usage often doesn’t correspond with what AT&T ultimately counts as your usage.
AT&T’s argument is completely negated by the fact that they bought a brand new iPhone and, assumedly, didn’t install any apps other than the ones that come stock on the phone. Considering Apple is very strict when it comes to updates, I highly doubt they’d let apps update in the background without user confirmation to begin with. So, there’s a brand new iPhone with all data-using services turned off (we just have to assume they didn’t miss one) that’s still incurring charges. Well, AT&T, your argument is invalid.