While much speculation about this week’s two-day unavailability of the iPhone for those in the Big Apple has often centered on the company running out of capacity, the more likely explanations are far simpler — the regional fulfillment center temporarily ran short after a holiday rush and AT&T wanted to stem the tide of increasing numbers of bottom-feeding eBay resellers doing business in the Tri-State area.

Customers in the New York metropolitan area discovered Saturday they couldn’t order an iPhone from AT&T’s website after entering a New York-area zip code.  Customers were told “we’re sorry, there are no Packages & Deals available at this time — please check back later.”  By Monday afternoon, orders were being processed normally.

The mystery deepened when some blogs began speculating the reason for the order blockade had to do with AT&T’s data capacity in New York City, suggesting the wireless company had reached its limit and halted sales accordingly.  They had the right to speculate if online chats with AT&T sales representatives were to be believed.  The Consumerist found two different explanations during their chats:

Daphne: Welcome to AT&T online Sales support. How may I assist you with placing your order today?

Laura: Hi, I was looking at the iPhone 3Gs and the system tells me that I cannot order one in my ZIP code. My zip code is 11231. (Brooklyn, NY) Is this true? Are iPhones no longer available in New York City?

Daphne: I am happy to be helping you today . Yes, this is correct the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone.

Daphne: You don’t have enough towers to handle the phone.

Laura: Thank you for your help. So the phone is not available to people anywhere in the city?

Daphne: Yes this is correct Laura.

AT&T didn’t help matters with a non-denial denial issued by AT&T spokesman Fletcher Cook, who said only that the phone company periodically “modifies” its distribution channels. He had no comment about why the company resumed sales.

By not denying the capacity narrative that gained popularity earlier this week, it confirmed it in the popular press, including two local television news reports detailing the ‘sales outage.’

[flv width=”596″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WNBC New York iPhone Sales Stopped 12-28-09.flv[/flv]

WNBC-TV reports on the unavailability of the iPhone in New York and AT&T’s ongoing problems with reception, service, and now PR in the Big Apple. (2 minutes)

With that story feeding the greater narrative that people “love the iPhone, hate the network,” AT&T better get on the phone with Luke Wilson and start taping some new ads.

In reality, Cook’s vague statement is something you’d expect from a spokesman who hasn’t been briefed on what really happened and needed to go with something to placate media speculation.  The data capacity theory would only make sense if the company suspended sales across all channels.  Except they didn’t.  Beyond the post-holiday low inventories found by some shoppers, New Yorkers could still find and purchase the iPhone in AT&T retail stores and through third-party retailers.  One could even order the phone from Apple.  Could unofficial ‘over-eager’ customer service representatives be responsible for the volunteered excuses noted above, either of which would ignite a firestorm of bad press for AT&T?

An increasingly annoying problem confronting cell phone companies is the eBay bottom-feeder and other gray market sales of the popular phone.  Both AT&T and Verizon have had growing problems with resellers who purchase a subsidized smartphone, agree to a two year contract, and immediately cancel it and resell the phone.  And they’ve been cashing in.

AT&T sells a new iPhone 3GS with 16 gigabytes of memory for $199.  When a reseller cancels the contract and keeps the phone, they pay a $175 early termination fee.  That means the phone costs them $374.  They then easily modify the phone to work with other cell phone companies and resell it for upwards of $600 or more on eBay, pocketing a nice $226 in profit.  Demand for the iPhone abroad is high, and considering the value of the dollar remains relatively low, Europeans can snap one up at a fire sale price.  Outside of North America, wireless phone companies don’t discount handsets like the iPhone.

Verizon Wireless has tried to deal with this problem by doubling the early termination fee on smartphones to $350.  That nearly eliminates the profit motive to resell affected phones.

[flv width=”600″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WABC New York iPhone Sales 12-28-09.flv[/flv]

WABC-TV New York calls the latest iPhone mess “salt in the wound” for many New York-area AT&T customers.  (1 minute)

Wisconsin residents, in 2007 you were promised more competition, lower prices, and better service from your pay television and broadband provider.  Two years later, two things are certain:

1. The Wisconsin Video Competition Act was didn’t exactly deliver what was promised to consumers by those pushing the legislation, but paid off handsomely for the one company lobbying the hardest for its passage — AT&T.
2. You had a lower bill in 2007 than you now have in 2009.

A new audit released by the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau exposes the truth AT&T’s astroturfing friends never wanted you to know: despite the passage of a new law in December 2007 that promised increased competition and lower rates, the average basic cable rate in Wisconsin actually increased an average of 21 percent over the past two years.

The Bureau analyzed ten providers’ monthly charges for basic and expanded basic service in 17 Wisconsin municipalities at two points in time—July 2007 and July 2009—using data reported to us by the providers. Over this two-year period, charges for basic service increased an average of 21.2 percent, and charges for expanded basic service increased an average of 11.5 percent. The reported data do not suggest that competition has had a substantial effect in reducing either basic or expanded basic video service charges or in slowing their rates of growth during the period we reviewed.

Wisconsin consumers were promised something very different.  So just how did Wisconsin get snookered into passing legislation that was supposed to help consumers, but in reality just helped AT&T?

Dick Armey, chairman of FreedomWorks, an industry-backed astroturf group that heavily promoted the bill, emphatically promised the Competition Act would bring prices down.  On November 19, 2007 Armey wrote:

The Wisconsin Video Competition Act would allow consumers to take advantage of new technologies by streamlining the franchise application process for potential providers. When companies compete to provide service, consumers win through more choices, lower prices and better service.

Unfortunately for consumers, the Video Competition Act was little more than a custom-written giveaway to AT&T.  From the bill’s earliest draft language crafted by lobbyists working with legislative aides, to the big budget sales job employing 15 lobbyists and a major media budget, AT&T ran the show from start to finish according to Madison’s Capital Times newspaper.

TV4US (also known as WeWantChoice.com), an AT&T-supported astroturf group, ran television ads around Wisconsin promoting the bill.  In May 2007 the group sent every state legislator binders filled with what it claimed were the names of their constituents who wanted “an end to the cable monopoly” and competitive choice.  As The Center for Media & Democracy discovered, several people named, including two state lawmakers, didn’t support the bill and hadn’t given permission for their names to be included.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TV4US Ad Wisconsin.mp4[/flv]

TV4US ran this ad across Wisconsin in 2007, promoting “cable competition.”

TV4US’ primary press contact Lizanne Sadlier just also happened to be employed by lobbying firm Fleishman-Hillard, which “has built its reputation by using strategic communications to deliver what its clients value most: meaningful, positive, and measurable impact on the performance of their organizations,” according to a press release from the group.

Fleishman-Hillard and AT&T are well acquainted with each other.  In fact, the PR firm was instrumental in rebranding the phone company as “the new AT&T” after the SBC-AT&T merger.  To this day, AT&T has several company bloggers actually employed by Fleishman-Hillard.

In March of 2007, the Wisconsin Merchants Federation turned up at a state hearing about the Competition Act. This struck several observers as odd, considering the WMF primarily concerns itself with retail store tax policies and strengthening retail theft laws. The WMF seemed well-prepared to articulate the proposed law’s benefits, which included, according to them:

• increased competition in the video entertainment business;
• creation of good-paying jobs;
• bring (literally) hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment to our state.

PR Watch wanted to know exactly what prompted the WMF to not only testify about a non-issue for retail stores, but also who wanted the group to get involved, and who exactly belongs to the WMF.

WMF’s David Storey told PR Watch that his group sees AB 207 / SB 107 as an economic development issue. “Where consumers have choices, not only are the consumers served, but the economy in general is served. The economy is made stronger,” he explained. “And this is all about consumer choice in the video entertainment field.”

Storey said that no particular member had asked WMF to support AB 207 / SB 107, but that he was personally interested in the issue, as the former Deputy Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. Asked for a list of WMF members, Storey responded that one was not available, but that information would hopefully be added to the WMF website in the future.

One thing that is clear is that many of WMF’s partners in lobbying for AB 207 / SB 107 have ties to the telecom industry. The Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups, which is a member of the Wisconsin Video Choice Coalition, has received funding from AT&T and from SBC Wisconsin, which is now part of AT&T. The group also offers “discounts on assistive devices for the telephone such as volume amplifiers from the AT&T Special Needs Center.” Another Wisconsin Video Choice Coalition member, the Wisconsin Technology Council, lists AT&T among its major sponsors. Fellow coalition member Women Impacting Public Policy is a Washington DC based group that receives funding from AT&T and Verizon, among other corporate sponsors.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Press event promoting Wisconsin bill Aug 2007.flv[/flv]

In August 2007, WMF turned up at a press event with other bill supporters to promote the results of a poll conducted by the Mellman Group, which isn’t a respected polling firm but rather a Washington, DC public relations firm that “develops effective communications strategies that lead people to choose our client’s product or service, join their organization, hold their opinion, or vote as we would like.” ^[1] (13 minutes, video begins at ten second mark)

In short, no matter where consumers turned during the push for the Wisconsin Video Competition Act, that big AT&T logo was always somewhere in sight.

Before the legislation was passed, some were warning Wisconsin the dog and pony astroturf show wasn’t actually working for the best interests of Wisconsin consumers, but were instead looking out for the best interests of AT&T.  Charles Uphoff is chair of the Fitchburg Broadband Telecommunications Commission, and wrote this back in 2007:

Lobbyists for telecommunications giant AT&T have been pressuring Wisconsin legislators to pass sweeping changes in the laws regulating cable TV with a million-dollar media campaign and behind the scenes arm-twisting that would make Karl Rove blush.

Under the guise of promoting increased consumer choice, lower cable rates and high-paying union jobs, AT&T is trying to steamroller bills that would prohibit any meaningful regulation of video service rates; eliminate funding for public access, educational and government channels; and effectively guarantee statewide franchises for the telecom giant in perpetuity.

Among the more astonishing features of this dubious legislation is a provision that specifically prohibits the state or local municipalities from reviewing franchise transfers. While initial applicants would have to establish their legal, financial and technical qualifications to obtain a statewide franchise, once granted, statewide franchises can be literally transferred to anyone — even politicians. Video franchise holders wouldn’t even have to inform the affected communities until 10 days after the transfer had been completed.

[…]

So how about the claim being made in the TV ads that cable rates have gone up 246 percent and the “Video Competition Act” would increase choice and save consumer millions? It sure sounds good, but these assertions are, at best, misleading. In the city of Fitchburg, for example, the basic cable rate has risen less than 6 percent over the past 10 years and is currently at $8.19 a month. Admittedly, premium packages have risen much more sharply, largely driven by the cost of content providers like the NFL Network, MTV and ESPN, but AT&T would be facing the same kind of costs if they want to include these offerings.

So if you are expecting whopping decreases in your cable TV bills if this legislation passes, don’t hold your breath. In fact, the ability of municipalities or the state to even regulate basic cable rates would be gone.

What’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t an isolated incident. Wholesale deregulation of the video services industry under the guise of fostering competition is being pushed in legislatures all across the country, backed by big money and conservative ideologues like former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican whose right-wing “think-tank” has been pushing this legislation since before it had a bill number. Weeks before most members of the Wisconsin Legislature had even seen the bill, Armey’s Freedom Works Foundation was trying to line up sponsors. Major contributors to Dick Armey’s cause include AT&T, Verizon and Exxon-Mobile.

Sadly, the recent trend in video services and telecommunications has been toward increasing the concentration of ownership and control of the media, resulting in fewer consumer choices and less competition, not only in terms of price, but also in terms of ideas. The opinions expressed here are strictly my own, but it seems to me that in the arena where competition is most important to our democracy and our future, the competition of ideas, the net effect of these bills will be to decrease competition through the elimination of public access as a vehicle for information, dialogue and discussion of things that matter to our communities.

Despite playing fast and loose with the facts, the astroturf groups, aided by AT&T’s generous campaign contributions to Wisconsin state legislators helped grease the way towards passage of the Video Competition Act, which was signed into law in December 2007.

But rate increases for consumers aren’t the only problem impacting Wisconsin residents.  Collateral damage for those interested in public affairs television programming is now also becoming apparent.

One of the biggest opponents of the statewide video franchising law has been the Wisconsin Association of PEG Channels (WAPC).  “PEG” stands for public access, educational, and government access channels found on virtually every cable system in the country.  These non-profit channels are provided in the public interest to give subscribers access to customer-produced video programming, local government public meetings and hearings, and educational programming from local schools and universities.  They are traditionally financed by the cable system as part of their franchise agreement.  In return for tearing up local streets and yards, systems give something back to the community by making room for these public access channels, and often also provide equipment and training to assist in program production and distribution.

The Video Competition Act was no friend to PEG channels.  By moving to statewide video franchise agreements, local communities no longer had much say over their public access channels, and the bill’s passage quickly provided a convenient opportunity to bury PEG channels, kill their funding, or outright renege on local agreements.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Hunting PEG Channels on U-verse.mp4[/flv]

AT&T’s U-verse doesn’t make it easy for video customers to find PEG channels.  In Wisconsin, the channels are housed on a website that appears on screen on channel 99, the equivalent of TV Channel Siberia for the remote control channel surfer.  From there, consumers have to navigate a series of menus on their remote control to find the right channel.  Mike Ryan, director of West Bend Community Television, discovers just how ponderous this procedure is, even for those dedicated to finding his channel.

In the case of Charter Cable, they’ve managed to go one step further and help destroy one city’s public access channels.

Funding for the Wausau Area Access Channels had been provided in part by the franchise agreement between the City of Wausau and local cable provider Charter Communications. While Wausau Access Channels served the greater Wausau area, only the City of Wausau franchise agreement provided any funding.

When the state passed the Competition Act replacing local franchise agreements with a standard state wide franchise, Wausau PEG support fees were eliminated after a three year sunset. That sunset would occur December 31, 2010. The City of Wausau has not received any PEG support fees from Charter Communication during the three year sunset period.

Apparently unwilling to meet even a three year commitment, Charter Cable’s non-payment led Wausau mayor Jim Tipple to announce Monday that the city would not continue to fund the station in 2010 because of budget constraints.

“We realize this is a tough decision, not only for the city of Wausau but for the entire community,” Tipple said.

The City of Wausau is pursuing legal remedies against Charter. PEG fee revenue had funded 60% of the station’s annual budget of $100,000.

“The City does not want the channels to go dark, but it can no longer fund them alone,” said John Jordan, Wausau Access Coordinator.

“We are stunned to hear about the closure of the Wausau community channels. It is hard to believe that residents of Wausau will no longer be able to see and participate in community television. We warned this could come with the passage of the Video Competition Act. We just didn’t expect it quite this soon,” said Mary Cardona, WAPC Executive Director.

On January 1, 2011, more stations will be in Wausau’s position. On that date, all dedicated PEG fees end as a result of the passage of the Video Competition Act.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAW-WAOW Wausau Public Access Cut 12-21-09.flv[/flv]

WSAW & WAOW-TV, both in Wausau, Wisconsin headlined their newscasts with news that the community’s public access channels were on the chopping block. Loud Volume Alert (4 minutes)

The Cable Consumer Repair Bill (AB606) recently introduced by Representative Gary Hebl (D – Sun Prairie) could resolve serious problems with the Video Competition Act that took effect in January 2008. Since then, cable companies and AT&T have moved community channels to out of the way locations on the line-up, subjected the channels to interference problems, imposed transmission equipment costs, and withdrawn a commitment to provide dedicated revenue for public, education, and government access stations.

Of course, the industry players don’t like it one bit.  “Wired Wisconsin,” a non-profit group claiming to seek cutting edge broadband technology for Wisconsin, who unsurprisingly counts AT&T as a “partner,” thinks Hebl’s bill will gut the Competition Act.

“Even though the VCA was passed less than two years ago, we’ve already seen a great deal of progress under the bill.  It’s generated real competition, helped improve prices, created hundreds of new jobs, spurred millions in investment in infrastructure, improved customer service and expanded consumers’ access to new video providers, services and features all across the state,” said Wired Wisconsin’s executive director Thad Nation.

The state’s audit of cable pricing would seem to belie Nation’s views. That he holds them should come as no surprise.  After all, Nation is the former executive director of TV4US, the AT&T-backed astroturf effort that helped enact the law Nation seeks to defend.

“On balance, the law hasn’t been good for consumers but has been very good for the companies that wanted it. Two years from now, I don’t think you will be able to say that consumers saved a lot of money if any at all,” Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Has the bill brought about any savings for Wisconsin consumers?

“We haven’t seen it. I think the short answer is ‘no,’ ” said Curt Witynski, assistant director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, which represents 582 local governments.

“I think the public relations effort of AT&T and others was remarkable in convincing state legislators that this law would bring about all kinds of competition, and that consumers would benefit from it. But that hasn’t been the case,” Witynski added.

Indeed, with additional rate increases announced this week by AT&T’s U-verse, the much-heralded savings promised by AT&T and its various astroturf elements have become only more elusive for the hard-hit consumer struggling through ongoing economic challenges.  Those challenges aren’t exactly the same for AT&T, which increased its dividend payment to stockholders and has plenty left over to continue astroturfing its way to statewide video franchises in other states it serves.

AT&T last week announced it has increased its quarterly dividend by 2.40% to 42 cents per share, the 26th year the company has increased dividends quarter after quarter.

On February 1st, something else will increase by up to 10 percent: their U-verse rates.

Depending on the package selected, rates will increase $3-5 dollars a month for most cable-TV packages, $5 for many slower speed broadband products, and $5 a month for its unlimited calling package.  New customers will find some savings to offset the increases if they opt for faster broadband products: Max (12 Mbps) and Max Plus (18 Mbps) both decrease $10 per month, to $45 and $55 respectively, and the new 24Mbps Max Turbo service drops from $75 to $65.  Existing customers will not see price increases on broadband service, but they won’t enjoy any price decreases either.

Standard retail pricing as of February 1, 2010 will be: U-Basic- $19/mo., U-family-$54/mo., U-100-$54/mo., U200-$67/mo., U200 Latino-$77/mo., U300-$82/mo., U450-$112/mo.

New U-verse TV customers will now face a one-time service activation fee of $29.

AT&T said that the “modest price adjustments that we’re making are far outweighed by the additional value we’ve added to U-verse TV in the last year alone.”

Customers have expressed mixed reactions to the price increases and decreases on AT&T’s U-verse forums.  A far bigger problem for many of them are the company’s “bait and switch” tactics, alleged by several angry customers.  From rate quotes $30 less than what actually shows up on customer bills to referral rewards that never materialize to rebate nightmares, AT&T customers in several parts of the country report ongoing problems getting what they were promised.

AT&T’s all-new position on Net Neutrality suspiciously sounds like its old position on Net Neutrality.

In a three-page letter addressed to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, James W. Cicconi, AT&T’s senior vice president for external and legislative affairs wrote in glowing terms about the Obama Administration’s efforts to expand broadband service and preserving the “open Internet.”  Those goals are shared by AT&T, according to Cicconi.  But are they?

AT&T has spent millions fighting Net Neutrality policies, calling them unnecessary and harmful to broadband innovation and investment.  Ed Whitacre, Jr., AT&T’s former chairman and CEO infamously kicked off a contentious debate when he declared content producers shouldn’t be allowed to use AT&T’s “pipes for free.”

Little has changed.

Yesterday’s letter to Genachowski brings nothing new to the table from AT&T.  In short, they still feel broad-based Net Neutrality regulations will be harmful to investment.  AT&T wants the FCC’s definition of Net Neutrality to be “flexible enough to accommodate the types of voluntary business agreements that have been permitted for 75 years.”  Flexible, in this instance, means gutting the clear, unambiguous prohibition against fiddling with Internet traffic and inserting loopholes that gut the policy’s effectiveness.  AT&T’s “voluntary agreements” never include consumers.

AT&T wants to provide “value-added” services to content producers who agree to pay more to obtain them.  That typically means additional speed or a guarantee of prioritized service.  Unfortunately, on a finite broadband network, those getting preferential treatment can reduce the quality of service for those who don’t pay.  By trying to refocus the FCC’s attention on obsessing over subjective interpretations of “unreasonable and anti-competitive” content discrimination, AT&T gets a free pass to configure a broadband protection racket and rake in money from content producers afraid to be stuck in the slow lane.

AT&T also continues to complain that such regulations would prevent the company from offering consumers “value-added” broadband services.  As long as those services do not discriminate, providers can freely provide network enhancements like faster speed tiers, “Powerboost” technology which temporarily speeds up connections, and even network management which keeps viruses, malware, and other junk traffic away from subscribers.

Ben Scott at Free Press, a consumer advocacy group, read between AT&T’s latest lines and saw a naked effort to gut Net Neutrality before being enacted:

“After leading a rabid anti-net neutrality lobbying campaign for years, AT&T now submits a letter to the Federal Communications Commission purporting to offer common ground,” Scott said. “What they are proposing would allow them to violate the core principle of Net Neutrality — letting them control the Internet by picking winners and losers in a pay-for-play scheme. That would destroy the free and open Internet, and the FCC should reject this false compromise out of hand.”

“Make no mistake, AT&T opposes Net Neutrality. Their proposed solution is a bait and switch. As bait, they ask to return to a standard of nondiscrimination that was long applied to the telephone network. But they fail to mention that this standard was part of a system of pro-competitive common carriage rules that they have railed against applying to broadband networks for years. They haven’t changed their mind about common carriage. They are simply cherry-picking one piece of the old rules and calling it a compromise. The entire Net Neutrality debate is about the creation of a new system of nondiscrimination that fits broadband networks, not telephone networks –a debate the telephone companies forced by stripping away consumer protection rules from broadband under the Bush administration,” Scott added.

Public Knowledge also called out AT&T in a statement from Gigi Sohn.

AT&T has tried to draw what is an imaginary line among types of discrimination. The company advised the FCC that while ‘unreasonable’ discrimination can be banned, any discrimination caused by ‘voluntary commercial agreements’ is just fine because the parties involved agreed to it. That is nonsense.

As we have said consistently, the Internet has functioned as well as it has because control of the crucial roles at each end of the network. Side deals made by a carrier like AT&T and a content provider or other company take that control out of the hands of the consumer.

Similarly, it is unfortunate that AT&T has resorted to the old tactic of threatening not to invest in its network if the company does not get what it wants in a rulemaking. The growth of the Internet will be driven by consumer demand, not by gimmicks. If the company is truly interested in consumers, it will allow consumers to remain in control.

AT&T Mobility has been sending out their blogger team to try and clean up the damage from CEO Ralph de la Vega’s not-too-subtle hint that the days of unlimited iPhone data plans are numbered:

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misinformation, rumor and pure speculation floating out there during the last day on this topic.

[…]

We carry more smartphone data traffic than any other U.S. provider, with traffic growing 5,000 percent over the past three years. As a result, we are working aggressively and investing heavily in our network to support this tremendous growth. Our $17 – $18 billion CapEx spend for 2009 includes:

• Nearly doubling the wireless spectrum serving 3G customers in hundreds of markets across the country, using high-quality 850 MHz spectrum.  This additional spectrum expands overall network capacity and improves in-building reception.
• Adding about 2,000 new cell sites, expanding service to new cities and improving coverage in other areas.
• Adding about 100,000 new backhaul connections, which add critical capacity between cell sites and the global IP backbone network.  We’re doubling the number of fiber-served cell sites this year.
• Enabling widespread access to our Wi-Fi network – the largest in the country with more than 20,000 hotspots in all 50 states – allowing them to take advantage of the best available AT&T mobile broadband connection.
• Rolling out even faster 3G speeds with deployment of HSPA 7.2 technology, with availability in six markets planned by the end of the year.
• Preparing for field trials of next generation, LTE wireless networks next year, with deployment planning to begin in 2011.  This schedule aligns with industry expectations for when a wide variety of compatible 4G wireless devices should be available.

We have seen very positive results from our efforts thus far.  In one of the most common measures of reliability – dropped calls – AT&T’s national performance is within two-tenths of 1 percent of the highest score among major providers as measured by an independent firm, with only 1.32 percent of calls dropped nationally.

AT&T’s blogger team says it isn’t true that de la Vega is definitively saying he’s “capping” services.

But de la Vega never said in his original statements that he was advocating “capping” service.  He said, “there’s got to be some sort of a pricing scheme that addresses … usage.”  Scheme is right.  That’s code language for consumption or usage-based billing, something the blogger team doesn’t rule out.  A strict usage cap simply says a customer cannot exceed a specified amount.  Most consumption billing schemes monetize data consumption, not with a true pay-for-use system that bills by the megabyte, but rather a fixed monthly price with an allowance and overlimit penalties for exceeding it.  AT&T already uses consumption-based billing for its prepaid and postpaid mobile broadband plans, so extending it to the iPhone isn’t exactly novel.

The iPhone customer has been treated as a profit engine by AT&T since the phone was first introduced.  Compelling customers to purchase a mandatory data plan that was originally priced at $20 and was raised to $30 was the price iPhone customers had to pay for bragging rights.  Should AT&T impose consumption billing, that price may go much higher.

AT&T must believe iPhone users are willing to pay that price or dramatically cut usage.  Either way, AT&T milks the very last nickle out of its exclusivity arrangement that some industry observers believe will expire in the early summer of 2010.  When that happens, AT&T must be quietly pondering what customers will do once they can buy an iPhone from other carriers.

Leafing through January’s issue of Consumer Reports, I find one possible answer in the magazine’s annual survey of America’s best and worst cell phone providers (subscription required for detailed results).  More than 50,000 subscribers rated their wireless carrier, and AT&T turned in dismal ratings, usually ending up at the bottom except in some cities where Sprint achieved that dubious honor.  AT&T’s problems, reported in cities from coast to coast:

• No service where service should exist
• All circuits busy
• Dropped calls
• Static

Results have been so poor, the magazine recommended that those affected should call AT&T and demand credit.  Many customers have gotten at least three months’ worth of service credits valued at more than $200 for doing so.

Logical conclusion: customers love the iPhone but hate the network it is tied to.  With de la Vega’s recent data usage temper tantrum, it’s just one more reason to be annoyed with AT&T.

For customers who entertain the notion of owning an iPhone, but simply refuse to leave their current provider to obtain it, that’s nearly $3,000 left on the table over the life of a two-year contract.  That should concern both Apple and AT&T.  For Apple, it means potentially losing new iPhone customers to impr0ved competing phones, such as those running Google’s Android operating system.  For AT&T, once the Berlin Wall of exclusivity falls and two year contracts expire, years of consumer frustration with their network could lead to a stampede for the exits.