Courtesy 9 to 5 Mac

AT&T has begun sending out warnings to wireless customers deemed to be using too much of their “unlimited data plans” and are now subject to speed throttling that will reduce their wireless Internet experience to one more familiar for dial-up users.

Life in the slow lane is the price AT&T customers pay for being a member of the Top 5% Data User Club.  Running the numbers, that means using more than around 4GB of wireless usage per month.  One customer who managed to rack up 11GB in September, even before the new speed throttle plan took effect Oct. 1, has already found himself in the speed reduction doghouse with a warning message he received Sept. 29.

Although the customer did not reveal what he was doing to achieve 11GB of usage in one month, the two most common ways to run up usage are watching a lot of streamed video or using your phone to tether to other wireless devices, especially laptops.  Some wireless customers are attempting to use their unlimited data plans as a home broadband replacement, especially in rural areas where cable or DSL service is not available.  That’s an option AT&T doesn’t seem to want customers to consider.

In addition to eliminating unlimited use plans for new customers more than a year ago, the company has increasingly cracked down on existing customers grandfathered into unlimited use plans.  In addition to banning third party tethering apps, AT&T is now simply reducing speeds for heavy users to make high bandwidth applications like video and even some forms of streaming audio impossible when residing in the penalty box.

But don’t worry: you can still use your data plan to read e-mail or browse simple web pages.  The company also advises customers can use unlimited amounts of Wi-Fi, whether they provide it or not.

Suddenlink serves portions of these Texas communities

Stop the Cap! has learned Suddenlink will establish usage allowances nearly identical to AT&T for their broadband customers, with a $10 overlimit fee for each 50GB customers manage to exceed their limits.

Suddenlink officials have declined to comment on Stop the Cap!’s report published yesterday.

The usage caps, which will first be implemented on customers in Amarillo, Tex., are as follows:

• 150GB per month for customers subscribing to “lite” tiers of less than 10Mbps, similar to what AT&T limits its DSL customers;
• 250GB per month for 10, 15, or 20Mbps customers, similar to AT&T U-verse;
• 350GB per month for premium-priced 50 or 107Mbps service packages.

Suddenlink says they expect less than 1% of their customers to exceed the monthly limits.  If they do, they will receive warnings three times before the overlimit fee is imposed.

“It could have been worse, but there doesn’t seem to be any justification for these limits other than the fact their biggest competitor in Texas — AT&T — has them,” says Amarillo resident and Stop the Cap! reader Angel.

“It’s another example of what happens when you live in a country that allows broadband duopolies,” Angel says. “Just like with cell phones, as soon as AT&T does something, their competitors follow suit and the customers are stuck paying more and more for less and less service.”

Angel says the first time he is billed an overlimit fee of any kind, he’ll downgrade his broadband service.

“Why pay for premium priced speed tiers when usage caps make them not worth the extra money?”

Suddenlink will introduce an Internet Overcharging scheme beginning with their customers in Amarillo, Tex. Oct. 3rd, according to a company document obtained by Stop the Cap!  But the new usage cap and overlimit fee scheme will not be limited to Texas.  The company’s internal memo notes the new limits will eventually be imposed on customers nationwide, and incredibly, the cable operator claims it will make their Internet service better:

Early next month, October 2011, Suddenlink will notify residential (non-business) Internet customers in Amarillo, Texas, of a new usage allowance plan (AP) that is designed to further enhance their Internet experience.

This allowance plan will be introduced to other residential Internet customers, in other Suddenlink communities, in the following weeks and months.

An introductory letter will be mailed to Suddenlink residential Internet customers, when our allowance plan goes into effect in their community. The introductory letter to Amarillo customers will be mailed on or about October 3, 2011.

In addition to the introductory letter noted above, we will launch a new Web page on or about October 3, 2011, at suddenlink.com/allowanceplan.

This new page will provide additional information about the allowance plan in the form of frequently asked questions (FAQs).

Suddenlink's national service area

On the first instance of exceeding the limit, the customer’s Internet service will be suspended until the customer reads and agrees to a web notification message that includes an understanding that on the fourth instance of going over their usage cap, customers will be billed $10 for every 50GB increment that exceeds their allowance, whether it is by 1MB or 40GB.  That pricing is identical to AT&T’s usage cap overlimit fee.

Amarillo residents already pay $55 a month for 15Mbps standalone broadband service from Suddenlink.

Stop the Cap! reached out twice today to Suddenlink officials to get their reasons for implementing the usage allowance program, what the specific allowances might be, and when the usage caps will reach markets beyond Amarillo.  We have still not heard back from them as we “go to press” but will update the piece if and when we do receive their comments.

Suddenlink’s employees are being trained on how to handle the inevitable complaints when customers discover their bills have suddenly increased.  Their employee FAQ:

Q. I only went over my allowance by 1 gigabyte, but I was still charged $10. I thought I would not be charged $10 until I was 50 gigabytes over my allowance. What happened?

Of the very few customers who go over their monthly allowance, we have found that most go over by a significant amount. Accordingly, to make this process as fair and simple as possible on all customers, we do not start charging until the third time someone goes over the allowance – and, once that happens, we automatically assign additional allowances to the account, in standard 50-gigabyte installments, at a standard price of $10 for each installment.

Customers can use all or some of that additional allowance, depending on their individual situations. What’s more, if they exceed the additional allowance of 50 gigabytes, another 50-gig allowance is automatically applied, again at the standard price of $10.

To help customers manage their Internet accounts, we have provided a way for them to monitor their monthly usage at Suddenlink.net.
• If you’re already registered at Suddenlink.net, log on, go to “My Account,” and then click the link for “My Internet Usage Summary.”
• If you’re not already registered at Suddenlink.net, visit that site, look toward the upper right corner for the log-in box and the link that reads “Don’t have an account? Sign up now!” Follow that link to a set of instructions on how to register your account, and then, when you’re finished, click the link for “My Internet Usage Summary.”

Kent: The days of system upgrades are over.

Finally, we offer some tips at suddenlink.com/allowanceplan, about ways to keep usage within the monthly allowances we’ve established.

Q. Can I have fewer than 50 gigabytes or less than $10.00 applied to my account the next time I go over?

Not at this time. The 50-gigabyte installments and $10 per installment charges have been standardized in all areas where we’ve rolled out this allowance plan, to make the process as fair and simple as possible on all customers.

Q. I don’t recall being notified that this was starting in my area. When did that happen?

We mailed letters announcing this change to all customers in your area several weeks before the allowance plan was put into place. I’m sorry if you missed that letter, but rest assured, very few customers – less than 1 out of every 100 – go over their allowance. And for the very few customers who do go over their allowances, charges are waived the first couple of times.

Q. What gives Suddenlink the right to do this?

We occasionally make changes to our Internet services, consistent with our Residential Services Agreement, which is published on our website. This allowance plan is one of those changes.

If asked: To view our Residential Services Agreement, go to Suddenlink.com, and look for a link near the bottom of the page titled, “Terms & Policies.” Click on that link and then look for another link titled, “Residential Services Agreement.” Click on that link and then scroll down the page until you see the sections related to Internet service, such as Section 46.

Suddenlink’s new Internet Overcharging website is not yet active, so we are unsure exactly what plan limits will be, but Suddenlink has been no stranger to usage caps.  The company introduced a usage meter in several markets in the summer of 2009, and used to claim usage limits were partly to handle traffic loads on a limited number of cable systems that were in the process of upgrading.  Once the upgrades were complete, the caps were supposed to be relaxed or retired.

Then, Suddenlink president and CEO Jerry Kent appeared on CNBC last September to announce that people don’t realize the days of system upgrades are over and it was time to rake in the profits:

“I think one of the things people don’t realize [relates to] the question of capital intensity and having to keep spending to keep up with capacity,” Kent said. “Those days are basically over, and you are seeing significant free cash flow generated from the cable operators as our capital expenditures continue to come down.”

Suddenlink’s journey to usage caps includes all the hallmarks we foretold in an article published on Stop the Cap! in 2009:

1. Establish a foundation for usage caps.  In their 2009 FAQ, Suddenlink conflated broadband usage with electricity: “What is “Internet usage”?  Much like electric usage is measured in kilowatts, and water usage is measured in gallons, Internet usage is measured in gigabytes (GB).”
2. Establish a ‘pulled from the air’ number of gigabytes (which often conveniently later becomes your usage allowance) and then tell subscribers what they can do with that.  In Humboldt County, Calif., in March 2011, Suddenlink began telling “heavy users” what other customers were doing with what the company deemed a more appropriate, average amount of Internet service.  Suddenlink also told customers the Internet service they were providing was for “entertainment only.”
3. Tell customers such tools are actually for their benefit.  See above.
   
4. Lie to customers when a usage meter suddenly shows up or terms and conditions are quietly changed to support an Internet Overcharging scheme.  In 2009, Suddenlink introduced a usage meter but tried to reassure customers, telling them: “Does Suddenlink plan to set a maximum usage allowance for its Internet customers, like other companies are doing? Do you plan to charge extra if a customer’s usage is too high?  Those steps are not part of our current plan. Our only goal at this time is to help the few customers whose usage is well above (two to three times higher than) the typical range to identify the reasons for that high usage and take steps to protect and secure their computers and accounts.”

You used too much. Look what you can do with an "average" amount of usage instead.

Now usage caps will protect and enhance Suddenlink’s profits on Internet service.  Remarkably, Suddenlink put itself in the “predicament” of facing increased customer demand of the Internet through its own marketing.  The company’s website heavily promotes its bandwidth-heavy Suddenlink2GO™ service to “watch TV online anytime, anywhere in the U.S. on any computer for FREE when you subscribe!”

But “free” becomes $10 for every 50GB if you watch too much.

How to Get Unlimited Back: If you are a Suddenlink residential customer who does not want to face restricted-use Internet, you can avoid the limits by switching to Business Class service, which will not have caps.  Unfortunately, pricing information was not immediately available to us.  One customer in Lubbock noted he paid $69 a month for 6Mbps Business Class service and $107 a month for 107Mbps residential service, so expect to pay comparatively more for lower speed service.

1.5Mbps "broadband" is not the cure-all Comcast claims it to be.

When multi-billion dollar Comcast Corporation decided it was the right time to acquire multi-billion dollar NBC-Universal, one of the concessions Comcast made to win federal approval of the deal was to deliver budget-priced Internet service to those too poor to pay the company’s current asking price of $40-60 a month.

Comcast Internet Essentials was the result, and as Comcast rolls its publicity train from city to city, promoting the new package, politicians and cable executives have teamed up to take credit, suggesting the company’s limited-access $9.95 1.5Mbps service will somehow erase the high-tech job deficit, eliminate the digital divide, and will even somehow help America’s broadband speed gap with the rest of the world.

But it will do none of those things for the vast number of income-challenged families who won’t actually qualify for the three year program, either because they already scrape up enough for Comcast service, don’t have children, or manage to miss a payment due date.  In fact, 1.5Mbps budget-priced Internet is a service providers should have been willing to offer all along, to anyone who wants the service.  But it took a colossal-sized merger concession to get Comcast to sort of do the right thing.

I say “sort of” because the terms and conditions that accompany the service resemble the gotcha fine print the banking industry so loves:

The program is only available to households that (i) are located where Comcast offers Internet service; (ii) have at least one child who receives free school lunches through the National School Lunch Program (the “NSLP”) and as confirmed annually while enrolled in the program; (iii) do not have an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment; and (iv) have not subscribed to any Comcast Internet service within the last ninety (90) days (sections 1(i)-(iv) collectively are defined as “Eligibility Criteria”). This program is not available to households that have children who receive reduced price lunches under the NSLP. The program will accept new customers for three (3) full school years, unless extended at the sole election of Comcast. Comcast reserves the right to establish enrollment periods at the beginning of each academic year in which it accepts new customers that may limit the period of time each year in which you have to enroll in the program.

2. In order to confirm your eligibility for the program, Comcast will need to verify that your children receive free school lunches through the NSLP in the initial enrollment year and each subsequent year you are enrolled in the program. In order to confirm eligibility, participants in the program will be required to provide copies of official documents establishing that a child in the household is currently receive free school lunches through the NSLP. Each year you will be required to reconfirm your household’s current eligibility by providing Comcast or its authorized agent with up-to-date documentation. If you fail to provide documentation proving your eligibility in the program, you will be deemed no longer eligible to participate in the program.

3. You will no longer be eligible to participate in the program if (i) you no longer have at least one child living in your household who receives free school lunches under the NSLP; (ii) you fail to maintain your Comcast account in good standing; (iii) Comcast ceases to provide the Covered Service to your location; or (iv) your account opened under the program is closed. A change in address may result in your account being closed, even if you continue to receive Comcast services at a different address. Program participation also may be terminated if the Covered Service is upgraded, altered or changed by you for any reason. If you are no longer eligible for the program, but continue to receive the Covered Service from Comcast, regular rates, and any other applicable terms and conditions will apply to the Covered Service.

No kids in your home?  No discount Internet access for you!  Refuse on principle to accept a government handout to pay for school lunches?  Sorry, you need to buy the full-priced Internet Comcast will happily sell you.  Missed a cable bill payment because you needed to buy medicine this month?  It will cost you your inexpensive access.  Comcast even reserves the right to cancel your discounted service if you choose (or are forced) to move.

Most would-be customers who assume they are eligible because they, like so many others, are income-challenged these days, are thrilled to read and watch news accounts about the discount Internet program for their kids.  But like Santa reneging on Christmas, the excitement turns to disappointment when they discover they are ineligible for one reason or another.

In Baltimore, WBAL-TV got nearly breathless with excitement telling their audience, “Things are looking up for Maryland families — way up. A new effort is under way to help connect 250 families to cyberspace at an affordable price.”

Baltimore is a city of 620,000 people.  Before the Great Recession, 15.4% of families and 19.3% of Baltimore’s residents fell below the poverty line, excellent candidates for inexpensive Internet access.  That’s more than 32,000 people, but Comcast is apparently making room for just 250.

Despite those figures, Comcast’s David Cohen thinks his company’s discount Internet will make all the difference.

“We believe we have a shot to be able to make a real impact on the digital divide with this program,” he told the Baltimore TV station.

He might be right… for 250 families anyway.  Everyone else… pay up or go without.

Terms and conditions apply

WBAL Investigative reporter Jayne Miller got slightly carried away on behalf of Comcast, equating their program with a solution for high-tech jobs and increased Internet speed:

Internet access and speeds have become national issues. The U.S. lags behind other countries in broadband availability, hurting what some believe to be the nation’s ability to compete, said Miller.

In comparison, “China recently graduated over 440,000 engineers, and we in the U.S. graduated 65,000,” said U.S. Rep. “Dutch” Ruppersberger.

I’m sorry to bring people back to reality, but 250 families getting the right to buy up to three years of Internet access at speeds that are half of what the FCC National Broadband Plan defines as actual broadband is not an answer to anything beyond Comcast’s poor public relations in the customer service department.  It’s not going to help America’s broadband speed rating (it will actually hurt it at 1.5Mbps).

WBAL is hardly the only station overdoing their celebrations of Comcast (a prolific advertiser by the way).  I’ve watched reports that suggest Comcast is doing this out of the goodness of their heart, not because they agreed to as a condition of their mega-merger with NBC.  Considering the lawyer-like limitations that are certain to keep many people out of the program and others from downgrading their existing service to something more affordable, charity is hardly a word I would extend to the nation’s largest cable operator who found cause to limit access to even the lowest broadband speeds to protect its bottom line, which it hopes will get much fatter with the acquisition of NBC-Universal.  When the three year program ends, let’s just see how charitable Comcast is about extending it.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KASA Santa Fe Internet Accessibility with Internet Essentials 8-26-11.mp4[/flv]

KASA-TV in Santa Fe talks with their “very good friend at Comcast” about Internet Essentials and the company’s general Internet expansion plans in New Mexico.  The interview resembles an infomercial for Comcast products and services.  (5 minutes)

Hours before the deadline imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Rogers Communications responded Tuesday evening to the CRTC, which demanded Rogers correct malfunctioning speed throttle technology that slowed certain online gaming traffic to a crawl, because is mistook it for peer-to-peer file sharing traffic.

In a four-page letter to the Commission, Rogers essentially rehashed the Commission’s original concerns and then attempted to explain why the company throttles broadband traffic in the first place:

We manage P2P upload traffic because if we did not, this traffic would grow to occupy the capacity available on our network and so impact our customers’ experience. The vast majority of P2P upload traffic is being sourced by non-Rogers customers. Without our traffic management practices, our customers, including online gamers, would experience difficulty uploading traffic. The traffic management we do slows down the upstream delivery of P2P file sharing but does not prevent it. Since P2P file sharing is not as time sensitive as other forms of traffic, we believe managing it has little impact on customer satisfaction.

Remarkably, unthrottled peer-to-peer traffic on other Internet Service Providers in places like the United States does not seem to threaten the viability of those networks, but evidently Rogers is a special case.

Our ITMP policy does not target any customer group or content: it is designed to allow us to manage traffic to maximize our customers’ overall experience. Online gamers, in particular, need a responsive upstream network. In an effort to provide the best service for all of our customers, Rogers’ ITMPs limit only P2P file sharing applications to a maximum of 80kbps of upstream throughput. Our traffic management deploys specialized network appliances to classify traffic and apply our policy where appropriate.

That explains why the Canadian Gaming Organization (CGO) was so upset about Rogers’ throttling technology malfunctions which can slow game traffic to a crawl. But Rogers decided in light of the evidence exposing the gaming traffic throttling problem, the best thing to do was to blame someone else. Getting the right kind of server with the right Keywords can be helpful:

The technology and software in use at Rogers is provided by a leading network equipment vendor: Cisco. This is the same technology that is in place in hundreds of other ISPs worldwide, and Rogers does not believe the problems we have experienced are unique to our network.

Most traffic, such as web browsing or email, can be clearly identified by our Cisco equipment with very little chance of error. In very rare situations, traffic that is not P2P file sharing may be misclassified, such as was the case with World of Warcraft (WoW). Rogers has experienced a small number of cases of gaming traffic being misclassified as P2P file sharing traffic. In these cases, gaming customers have only been affected when running P2P file sharing simultaneously with a misclassified game. The typical game requires less than 80 kbps and so would not be affected even if a misclassification were to occur. It is only when the games are running in conjunction with P2P file sharing that our ITMP would be deployed. This has been confirmed by repeated testing in our lab. We have currently resolved all of these cases.

In other words, if customers shut off the offending peer to peer software, gaming traffic won’t be impacted by the throttle which reduces file sharing speeds to around 80kbps, which is just above dial-up.

Rogers’ “Rube Goldberg” Throttled Traffic Resolution Flow Chart. (All you wanted to do was play your online game in peace.)  Our suggestion for improvement: turn off the broadband traffic throttle and upgrade your network and the problems go away for everyone.

Rogers denies there is a problem worth getting upset about, because in their view, game traffic doesn’t need anything faster than 80kbps anyway.  Rogers’ attitude and response were both hotly contested by CGO co-founder Jason Koblovsky, who says his members are still directly and clearly affected by Rogers’ throttle.

“Rogers is stating here that they are actively dealing with throttling issues, and suspecting throttling when connection problems are being reported to them.  Quite frankly we are seeing quite the opposite,” Koblovsky says.  “They are actively refusing to even acknowledge that throttling might be taking place, and evidence of this has been submitted to the Commission in previous complaints proving what Rogers is claiming with this flowchart is false.  Hopefully the CRTC can read flowcharts and connect the dots.”

Rogers says it will take a two-step approach to make further corrections to reduce the impact of its errant broadband throttle, but did not provide any timeline.

“In the few cases where we have determined there has been a misclassification of an online game, we have used a two-stage solution to fix the problem. In the short term, we whitelist the game manufacturer’s servers. Whitelisting means creating a policy that will not apply ITMPs to packets going to and from a game manufacturer’s servers no matter how the traffic is classified. This can usually be accomplished in a very short period of time. Whitelisting is effective where the game manufacturer’s server can be located. The second stage is a long term solution that involves a software upgrade created by Cisco and deployed on our network that will correct the misclassification. We note that we did not use whitelisting until recently. Using whitelisting allows us to resolve problems much more quickly than was the case with WoW.”

Whitelisting, according to CGO, is not a sufficient solution to the problem because game manufacturers often change or add additional servers that Rogers will not initially be aware of, requiring constant tweaking to keep the whitelist up to date.

CGO co-founder Teresa Murphy added that “World of Warcraft traffic isn’t safe until the final fix from Cisco is applied to all Rogers-controlled Deep Packet Inspection systems.  Until that happens, if Blizzard moves any of their servers (as they did last summer), the whitelist will no longer apply to World of Warcraft traffic, and we’ll be back in this same situation all over again.  We’re also curious as to the current status of the other games users reported to Rogers back in March which were experiencing the same problems as World of Warcraft, but which didn’t get as much user outcry as World of Warcraft garnered.  There has been no update from any Rogers employee regarding these other games, which we find concerning.  Updates were sparse on the World of Warcraft issue before the CRTC complaint went in, but updates to users on the forums became non-existent after Rogers was forced to admit their practices with WoW.”

Rogers also promises to begin testing the top-ten most popular gaming titles on an ongoing basis to make sure game traffic for those applications goes unaffected.  Woe to those who don’t make the top-ten list, however.

CGO calls Rogers’ response wholly inadequate.

“The way the CRTC has put this to Rogers is that the CRTC expects a plan with dates to have this misclassification issue resolved. This just simply hasn’t happened here,” Koblovsky added.  “The CRTC has been pretty clear to Rogers they want no possibility of misclassification here on any programs, games etc.”