One of Canada’s largest phone companies is willing to admit it is prepared to launch an Internet Overcharging scheme on its broadband customers now, while western Canada’s largest cable company would prefer to wait until after the next election to spring higher prices on consumers.

When Shaw’s president Peter Bissonnette told investors and the media he believes users who use more should pay more, all that needs to be put in place is exactly how much more Shaw customers will pay for already-expensive Internet access.  With Shaw making noises about usage-based billing, Telus felt it was safe enough to dive right into their own usage cap and overlimit fee pricing scheme.

Shawn Hall, a spokesperson for Telus, told CTV News that the phone company was ready to begin overcharging customers as soon as this summer.

Shawn Hall (CTV BC)

“It’s only fair that people pay for how much Internet capacity they use,” Hall told CTV.

Telus doesn’t seem to be too worried about the fact usage-based billing has become a major issue in the upcoming elections.  A review of the pricing scheme by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is due within months, but the phone company isn’t going to wait.

Shaw is being more cautious.  After the pretense of a “listening tour,” and with federal officials breathing down their necks, Shaw wants to wait until the elections are over before moving forward on their own price gouging, according to Openmedia.ca.

As Stop the Cap! has told our readers repeatedly, corporate “listening tours” about Internet Overcharging are about as useful as lipstick on a pig.  Providers don’t actually listen to their customers who are completely against these pricing schemes — and every survey done tells us that represents the majority of customers.  Instead, they only hear what they want to hear, cherry-picking a handful of useful statements in order to make it appear they are responsive to customer needs.

Shaw heavily redacted their own meeting minutes on their website, completely ignoring a large number of customers unalterably opposed to usage-based billing of any kind.  Instead, statements that fit their agenda were repeated in detail, especially those that suggested average users don’t want to pay for heavy users.

Shaw executives discuss with investors how they will stick customers with usage-based billing, despite customers telling them they don’t want these schemes. April 13, 2011. (7 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

It’s like arguing marathon runners should pay extra for the oxygen they consume because others don’t breathe as much.  It’s all a lot of hot air.

Broadband traffic costs providers only a small percentage of the amount they charge customers, and that number is dropping.  Yet providers want to raise prices, restrict usage, and charge punitive fees for those who exceed their arbitrary usage limits.

The power of the duopoly in place across most of western Canada has given providers little to fear from overcharging consumers.

Shaw CEO Bradley Shaw told investors they know few customers will switch providers if usage-based billing is imposed.

“We are of the mind that we still have a tremendous upside in terms of pricing power on our Internet services,” Shaw said.

The fact many Shaw customers have no other choice other than Telus does not escape Shaw’s notice either.

Telus’ Hall even had the nerve to call their Internet Overcharging pro-consumer.

Bissonnette

“It’s going to be really customer friendly,” he said. “You’d be forgiven for the first month you go over. You’d get lots of warning, lots of notice that you were going over with options of moving to other plans.”

Except an unlimited one — that is not available.

Openmedia.ca is trying to hold politicians’ feet to the fire on the issue of Internet Overcharging, demanding answers from every major party in Canada about how they will keep providers from imposing these pricing schemes.

Every major party, with one exception — the Conservative Party of Canada, has answered.  That’s the party currently in power.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has spoken out against usage-based billing, while NDP Leader Jack Layton has promised to ban it outright if elected to power.

Nearly a half-million Canadians have signed a petition opposing usage-based billing, and providers are showing once again they are not open to listening to anyone but their bean counters, intent on extracting as much cash as possible from Canadian customers’ wallets.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CTV British Columbia – Shaw planning to revive metered internet billing critics 4-25-11.flv[/flv]

CTV in British Columbia covers Shaw’s plans to revive metered Internet billing later this year.  (2 minutes)

AT&T has a deal for first responders.

Where cell service is wiped out in a natural disaster (or doesn’t provide adequate coverage even when it does work), the phone company is willing to sell emergency officials their own AT&T mini-cell-tower site — for up to $45,000, not including ongoing monthly service fees.

The Remote Mobility Zone is a briefcase-sized portable cell tower that will typically provide service for a dozen or more concurrent callers over AT&T-licensed spectrum.  The company sells the equipment, but buyers still have to pay a monthly service charge, users must have a qualifying AT&T voice plan, and the data service that comes with it operates at slower-than-3G speeds.

“In the pivotal first minutes of a natural or man-made disaster, AT&T Remote Mobility Zone provides a solution to help maintain critical mobile communications,” said Chris Hill, vice president, Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions.  “With AT&T Remote Mobility Zone, users can set up a cell site in less than 30 minutes.”

That’s much faster than AT&T can fix their own cell sites when they go offline in a disaster.

A consultant to first responders, Jim Davis, tells Stop the Cap! the portable cell tower may sound like a good idea, but will meet resistance because of the “optics” of taxpayers paying for private cell phone company equipment.

“You are effectively asking taxpayers to pay for AT&T cell towers, and that is going to present a political problem in a lot of areas,” Davis tells us.  “What is even harder to justify is the fact AT&T charges monthly service fees from the moment the device ships, whether you use it or not — and the service only works with AT&T GSM cell phones, which is fine as long as fire and EMS rescue services are equipped with those phones, and many are not.”

Davis tells us Sprint/Nextel has a significant portion of the cell-phones-for-emergency personnel-market, especially in the east.

“Sprint aggressively prices their services to this market, and their phones won’t work on AT&T’s cell site.”

Davis says the Remote Mobility Zone is likely to present a better fit in the corporate world, especially in the energy sector.

“This device makes sense if you are hydrofracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania, or drilling for oil in Wyoming, or even on an oil drilling platform,” Davis says.  “Those installations are up and running for longer periods of time and are in relatively narrow spaces, perfect for AT&T’s half-mile service area using this device.”

“AT&T is going to have to market this very carefully, because the company is effectively selling a product to cover gaps that AT&T has created themselves either through inadequate coverage or damaged cell towers they should be responsible for fixing fast enough to negate the need for this product.”

While many AT&T residential customers continue their exodus from the company’s forthcoming Internet Overcharging scheme, there are many rural Americans who have just one choice for broadband service — AT&T DSL.  For them, escaping usage caps is not as easy as calling the local cable company and arranging for new service.

While consumers continue to register their displeasure with AT&T over capping Internet usage at 150GB for DSL or 250GB for U-verse, there appears to be a way to get away from the usage limits while still maintaining your AT&T DSL service — switch to a usage-cap-free business account.

AT&T sells business broadband service to at-home, small, and medium-sized businesses at a substantial discount for the first year — $30 a month for up to 6Mbps.  A one year term commitment is required, but that likely won’t present any problems for customers who don’t have any other option for service.  With an AT&T modem/router already in place, making the change should just require a phone call to AT&T.

The company may offer different pricing and service plans depending on the region where you obtain service.  Former BellSouth customers may get different promotions than former Ameritech customers do.  We also found a few customers who still were able to access AT&T’s “usage measurement tool” on their business accounts, but business customers have not been notified usage caps apply to them, and we suspect that will continue to be the case.  AT&T promotes business class service at $25-30 a month in one offer we found, and service was even available to those who don’t want a business phone line.

After the first year, rates increase substantially, but we’re hopeful AT&T will learn the error of their ways and rescind their unjustified usage limits before the year is up.

Thanks to Wayne in Madison, Wisconsin for capturing these screen shots from AT&T's website.

If you are going to switch to AT&T’s business class service, share your experiences in our comment section to help other readers.

Verizon Communications formally closed its acquisition of Alltel in January 2009, but some former customers are only now feeling the impact as they transition to… AT&T.

That’s right, AT&T.

Although Verizon acquired the bulk of Alltel’s national customer base, the federal government ordered Verizon to sell off its future Alltel customers in communities where the company would likely be the overwhelmingly dominant player.  Verizon sold off most of these orphaned customers, numbering over a million, especially in the Mountain Time Zone, to AT&T.

The transition from Alltel to AT&T would be a bumpy one because the two companies use different wireless technologies, meaning every customer would have to be provided with a new phone.  Alltel’s customers remaining with Verizon didn’t experience this, because both companies use CDMA technology.

AT&T agreed, as part of the deal, to supply every one of its new postpaid/contract Alltel customers with brand new GSM phones (although AT&T was unwilling to provide free advanced smartphones like Apple’s iPhone).  Prepaid customers were less lucky — they only received discounts off new phones.

Stop the Cap! has talked with more than a dozen affected customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan, Utah, Wyoming, Iowa and Colorado about their experiences as they transition to AT&T service.  With AT&T now proposing to merge with T-Mobile, which could also mean some new phones for T-Mobile customers, we wanted to learn what customers thought about being moved from one carrier to another, what their experience was before the transition and after, and whether they intend to stay with AT&T.

Our panel included a young man from Utah who used his phone at home and outside of the state as he performed mission work for the Mormon Church in rural Florida.  We also spoke with a retired couple living in Arizona who chose Alltel because of their unlimited calling circle option to stay in touch with friends and family in Minnesota.  Also participating: a travel agent in Michigan, a realtor in New Mexico, a self-employed contractor in Colorado, a farmer in Iowa, and several others who shared their stories with us in e-mail.  By mutual agreement, we’re keeping their last names private because some have pending disputes with AT&T.

Breaking the News: Alltel Sells Out Their Customers to Verizon

When Karen, a realtor from New Mexico first heard word that Alltel was selling out to Verizon, she wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.  There was considerable confusion in her part of southern New Mexico mostly because the local media does a poor job of covering telecommunications stories.

“In New Mexico, everything in the media is centered around what is going on in Albuquerque and everything else is given little attention, except in the local newspaper,” Karen says.  “But whether you are in Las Cruces or Roswell, the quality of the story depends on the quality of the poorly paid reporter.”

Karen was not worried about the sale at first, because she was aware Verizon had a good reputation for cell phone service.  She had originally selected Alltel because they had good rates and friendly customer service.

“If I ever had a problem with my phone, Alltel would always fix it, even if it was out of warranty,” Karen explains.  “That meant a lot to me because they didn’t have to do that, but it was why I always renewed my contract.”

Heath, who runs a home-based contracting business in southern Colorado, didn’t like what he was hearing from the start.  Neither did Marion and Will, a retired couple living outside of Phoenix.

“We had our dealings with Verizon back in Minnesota when we lived there and we never liked them because they cost too much,” Will says.  “Alltel was a great choice for us because they had a calling circle plan that let you make unlimited calls to certain numbers, and we talked with our daughter back in Minnesota daily using our cell phone.”

Confusion about the deal only got worse when Alltel (and in some cases Verizon) notified our panel members they would not be Verizon customers after all — they were being sold off to another cell phone company.

Alltel -> Verizon -> AT&T -> Frustration

Micah, our reader in Utah first contacted us more than a year ago to express his confusion about why he was not only losing his Alltel account, but now he was somehow ending up as a customer of AT&T, a carrier he definitely wants nothing to do with.

“I figured I could at least live with Verizon because they are everywhere, but as I started performing my mission work for the church in rural central Florida, I learned from my parents I was actually going to end up a customer of AT&T, something I definitely never wanted,” Micah says.  “AT&T is terrible in Utah and worse here — nobody wants AT&T unless you are in Orlando or Daytona Beach.”

Alltel Markets Sold to AT&T (click to enlarge)

“At first we thought, cool, new phones for everyone,” Shanie told Stop the Cap! from her home in Muskegon, Mich. “AT&T has been promising major expansion of service here in western Michigan since they notified us they were taking over for Alltel, but then we started learning the details.”

While Shanie’s family of four would be given four new phones, their choices of new phones were limited, although AT&T called them “comparable.”  Many of AT&T’s smartphones were not covered, even if families already owned smartphones purchased from Alltel.

“We also discovered if you wanted one of these advanced phones, it meant a new two-year contract with AT&T, effectively forcing us to stay with them longer,” Shanie says.

Jed, a farmer outside of Sioux City, Iowa says AT&T did a poor job keeping him informed.  Jed stopped receiving all communication from Alltel (other than a bill) and never heard a word from AT&T.  Instead, one of his neighbors warned him that his Alltel phone was going to quit working by the middle of May.  Jed was upset because the deadline for him to choose a new free phone had passed and he never had the opportunity to make a choice, never having been notified about any of the changes.

“The newspaper might have said something about it, but we don’t get the paper here and nobody has much time to spend watching television,” Jed shared.  “We would have thought AT&T would have notified us, but they apparently forgot we were here.”

Last week, a new phone arrived from AT&T in the mail, unsolicited.

“What a way of doing business — we thought at first it was some sort of fraudulent purchase and we almost didn’t accept it from the driver,” Jed said.

AT&T has been sending out new phones all month to customers across several states, encouraging them to call and activate them on AT&T’s network.  Once customers do that, their old Alltel phones will quit working.  That was a problem for Shanie’s daughter at college in Grand Rapids.  When mom activated her phone, the primary one on the account, her daughter’s Alltel phone stopped working.

“AT&T has you call a toll-free number to activate the phone, but first they require y0u to accept the terms and conditions for doing business with AT&T, which can include contract extensions for some people,” Shanie said.  “I had no idea activating my phone would end service on all of the other Alltel phones on the account.”

Alltel customers in these states had new AT&T phones shipped to them on this schedule.  The second date refers to the service transition cutoff date:

Bailing Out for Alternatives

Jody, a soon-to-be-ex AT&T customer in New Mexico, says there was plenty of fine print to wade through when he prepared for the switch from Alltel, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“AT&T is very tricky about how they handle customers who want to depart Alltel and avoid becoming an AT&T customer,” Jody says.  “You cannot cancel your Alltel contract and avoid an early termination fee, but you can cancel AT&T within 30 days of switching and escape a hefty exit fee.”

Indeed, AT&T’s transition website says Alltel customers who want to switch providers will face an early exit penalty as long as their Alltel phones remain active.  Those who switch and activate their new AT&T phones get a 30 day window to drop AT&T and avoid an ETF:

If, after moving to AT&T service, you choose to discontinue your AT&T service, you will have a 30-day period to opt out of your AT&T contract without an ETF. After that 30-day period, standard AT&T terms apply including any applicable ETF.

Old name, New Company

Jody got his new phone and promptly canceled his AT&T service.  He switched to CellularOne, a company with a legacy name but a very local network.  It has its own cell towers only in northern Arizona and parts of New Mexico.  For everywhere else, it depends on a roaming agreement with… AT&T.

Jody’s CellularOne plan still offers completely unlimited calling, texting, and data for around $80 a month, and that includes AT&T’s nationwide network.

“CellularOne offers a much better deal than AT&T, but you can only choose from three lower end smartphones — no iPhone to be had here,” Jody says.

Heath in Colorado wants out of AT&T as well.

“They drop calls all the time and their network strength is awful in my neighborhood, and I depend on my cell phone and don’t have a landline,” Heath says.  “I don’t know why we had to be stuck with AT&T who apparently de-commissioned Alltel’s towers, which used to deliver a rock solid signal here.”

But not everyone is heading for other carriers.  Sam in Farmington, New Mexico says AT&T is bringing 3G to his community and mobile broadband speeds have been much faster than what Alltel used to deliver.

“AT&T’s data plans are overpriced, but if you can hang onto your existing Alltel plan but use it on AT&T’s network, it’s not so bad,” Sam says.  “Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade to an iPhone and keep Alltel’s plans — you have to pick one of AT&T’s.”

The Future for T-Mobile Customers

Although T-Mobile shares the same GSM network technology AT&T uses, the two companies have different frequency allocations for their respective networks.  T-Mobile customers seeking access to AT&T’s network will probably need new phones to access it. While AT&T claims T-Mobile’s own largely urban network will supplement AT&T’s own coverage, customers may need new equipment for that to be true as well, unless AT&T co-locates their own cell antennas on T-Mobile towers.

Former Alltel customers tell Stop the Cap! AT&T didn’t offer the latest and most popular phones for their swap, and some customers too far away from an AT&T store had to get a new phone without being able to try it.  AT&T allowed customers to exchange phones within 30 days, which helped some of our readers, but most felt the entire idea of being forced to switch to AT&T an inconvenience.  Most were also disturbed that one of the competitors in their area was disappearing, and considering Alltel served largely small cities and rural areas, there was already a lack of choice for most.  In total, three of our readers are staying with AT&T, two left for CellularOne, one chose to switch to a prepaid plan, and the rest went with Verizon after all.  If Alltel were still around, every customer we talked with for this piece would have stayed with them.

Shaw Communications today announced they are boosting speeds on one of their popular broadband tiers — Shaw Extreme, from 15/1Mbps to 25/2.5Mbps.  The current price for the Extreme plan remains the same.  So does the monthly usage limit of 100GB.

Customers appreciate the faster speed, but are not impressed Shaw has continued to limit customers to how much service they can use.

“Now I can hit my 100GB usage cap that much faster,” shares Shaw customer Dan Peek, who lives in Calgary.  “Shaw just completed dozens of listening tours, but they are obviously not listening at all.  What good are the faster speeds when you are effectively limited from using your broadband account to full advantage?”

Shaw claims the new broadband speeds are part of an effort to unveil new Internet packaging anticipated for early summer.

“It’s an exciting time at Shaw as we begin to create a world-class Internet product, giving our customers the ultimate experience in connectivity and entertainment,” said Peter Bissonnette, President, Shaw Communications Inc. “The Shaw Extreme speed upgrade is just the first spark of a whole new world of entertainment and offerings to come. We’re building the network of the future and our customers are at the very heart of it.”

Shaw also plans to introduce new equipment options, including a new box that will allow customers to access files stored on personal computers on their television set.  Shaw’s efforts suggest the company recognizes customers are increasingly interested in accessing multimedia content with their broadband connections.  Unfortunately, the company’s usage caps preclude customers from doing more than dabbling.

“It’s a PR effort made for the Canadian government and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission,” offers Peek.  “This summer they will be in Ottawa promoting their new broadband speeds as evidence the Canadian ISPs are not the backwater players they’ve always been, all while hoping their usage-based billing schemes will get a pass.”

Peek suggests broadband speed is not Canada’s biggest broadband challenge — the usage caps are.

“If you asked most Canadians if they would prefer 10Mbps service with no cap or 20Mbps service with caps starting at 40GB per month, people will take the slower speed,” Peek says.  “Shaw doesn’t seem to understand that basic message.”

Shaw's usage billing shark is still circling western Canada. The company may have increased speeds, but their 100GB usage cap on the Extreme tier remains.

Shaw’s listening tour across western Canada brought “summaries” from company officials that are being criticized by several Shaw customers who were at the meetings.

“I was at one of the Calgary meetings and the “summary” that showed up after the fact was the work of one of Shaw’s marketing hacks,” says Steve, a Stop the Cap! reader.  “The one thing they left out of the summary is the fact we do not want these caps and that they are not justified by the facts.”

Steve claims Shaw left customer demands for the end of usage caps out of their summaries, even though many customers brought up how much they hated usage-based billing and caps.  But there was plenty of room for customers who asked, “why should low usage customers pay for usage,” something Shaw’s customers in fact don’t do.  Another frequent meme from Shaw — “[customers] rejected the idea of subsidizing high bandwidth consumers.”

“That’s Shaw propaganda designed to fix a pre-determined conclusion around their distorted facts,” Steve says.  “The company presented charts and graphs with their world view and asked customers to comment on them in a focus group-like setting.  If you didn’t know those ‘facts’ were actually company ‘positions,’ you end up debating their numbers on their terms.”

Steve thinks Shaw’s version of “fair” is unique to Canada and would never be accepted in the United States.

“When you have media types parroting Shaw’s claim that practically nobody exceeds their usage limits, it quickly allows the cable company to claim heavy users are abusing the system, necessitating the caps,” Steve says.  “Now that Netflix is here, we’re all going to be heavy users now.”

Marie from Burnaby, B.C. confirmed Shaw’s new Extreme speeds were active as of this evening, noting speed test results of 20Mbps downstream and just over 2Mbps upstream once she reset her cable modem.  But she considers it of little value because of the usage cap.

“This will help our family when we’re all sharing the connection after school and at night, but since the 100GB cap remains unchanged, those faster speeds invite more usage, which will also eventually bring a higher bill,” she writes.