AT&T’s support forums are being censored to stop a free and open discussion about the company’s elimination of an unlimited Internet experience.

We received word this morning from Stop the Cap! reader Roger, who tried to post a message including a link back to one of our stories exposing the myth of AT&T’s “congestion problems” to share with the large community of readers angry with AT&T about its Internet Overcharging scheme on its support forum.

“AT&T will not allow people to post links to your website,” Roger writes.  “Both myself and a friend of mine tried on two separate occasions to write messages that quoted from your facts and figures and linked back to them for readers looking for additional information, and AT&T removed them within minutes.”

Stop the Cap! can confirm AT&T is actively engaged in censorship on its support forum when I tried posting a message myself to test the theory, under my real name, including three links to three individual stories, and signed with a link back to our website’s home page.  Sure enough, within the hour, AT&T stripped out the links and implied we “revealed personal information” (about myself in the form of my name, which still appears as my ‘handle’) and were “spamming” the forum — a stretch when the only links were back to the content referenced in the piece.  A few other linked sites, including Broadband Reports, are not suffering the same fate when users link back to their content, at least for now.

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AT&T followed up claiming it does not allow messages that support the work of third-party groups, even if that “support” comes only from links back to content referenced in the forum.

“At least your message remained partially intact,” Roger adds.  “Ours were deleted completely.”

“With AT&T’s heavy handed ‘editors’ at work, no wonder there are concerns about Net Neutrality.  AT&T censors first, asks questions later.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Kelsey Sees Higher Wireless Rates After T-Mobile Deal 3-24-11.flv[/flv]

Getting the mainstream media to cover issues in the telecommunications sphere usually means wading into the “business news” sections of newspapers or watching business cable news channels.  Unfortunately, too often these outlets cater to the whims and preconceived notions of the audience — big business.  In the case of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, Wall Street loves the idea, but consumers do not.  Watch as Free Press’ Joel Kelsey handily deals with the gang at Bloomberg News, who are convinced mergers and acquisitions never result in price increases for consumers.  Has your cell phone bill gone up or down in the last three years?  (4 minutes)

Verizon Wireless wins bragging rights this month as a new study shows fleeing iPhone owners on AT&T’s network were willing to put up money just to get out of their contracts and switch to Verizon. Two of every three departing customers paid AT&T up to $300 to break-up with the carrier and bought new iPhones that work on Verizon’s network.

The study, produced by Mobclix, found reception on AT&T’s network was by far the biggest issue cited by exiting customers, followed by Verizon’s offer of a personal hotspot add-on, and the perception Verizon runs a more robust network.

Mobclix found Verizon’s newest customers may have a point about who runs the stronger network.  Many AT&T customers are accustomed to relying on the company’s broadening Wi-Fi network to cope with 3G reception woes.  At least 53 percent of AT&T customers rely on Wi-Fi regularly for data connectivity.  On Verizon’s network, just 38 percent do.

But predictions of a stampede away from AT&T to Verizon have turned out not to be true, either.  Just 14 percent of America’s iPhone owners are on Verizon’s network.  AT&T serves the rest.

Analysts suspect the reason for this is that AT&T’s worst problems are in certain major metropolitan areas, but the carrier does respectably well providing service in many smaller and medium-sized cities.

Mobclix produced a map which may bear this out.  It shows the largest concentration of Verizon iPhone owners in the cities that are routinely cited as problem areas for AT&T:  San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles.

“Based on our survey findings today, it’s clear that consumers are taking control of their mobile destinies by evaluating carrier criteria such as Wi-Fi usage, reception issues and reputation as part of their decision to remain with their carrier or make a switch,” said Krishna Subramanian, Mobclix co-founder.

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Cope

In another example of providers telling the public (and lawmakers) one thing, while saying something very different to their own shareholders, Bell Canada’s CEO made a remarkable admission about why the company imposes Internet Overcharging schemes on its customers:

“As we see a growth in video usage on the Internet, making sure we’re monetizing that for our shareholders through the bandwidth usage charges,” CEO George Cope told listeners in a financial conference call last autumn.

That is a far cry from the story Mirko Bibic, Bell’s government affairs representative tells to anyone who will listen. Michael Geist, a Canadian syndicated columnist on technology law issues notes Bibic has told a different tale while appearing before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Industry to answer questions on usage based billing held in February.

For Bibic, usage-based billing is about “fairness” and solving alleged congestion issues.

“As for small businesses, which are generally on the same network as residential users, what you have is really a case where the congestion during peak periods is largely a residential phenomenon. It’s in that area that we’ve addressed the usage-based billing issue, and all we’re asking the CRTC for is to follow a fundamental principle of fairness,” Bibic told MPs. “If we asked 97% or 98% of Canadians if they would be prepared to pay more so that the 2% of heaviest users pay less, I’m pretty sure of what the answer would be.”

Bibic

Bibic’s argument has been repeatedly undercut by his own bosses, Geist notes.

In August, Cope told shareholders “our data revenue growth was 3.8% for our Residential Services business, particularly driven through an increase in Internet ARPU of 3.3%. And interesting, almost all that increase now coming from usage based billing as the demand for Internet use explodes through the use of video services, and we’re continuing to see an increase in the revenue per customer.”

By November, Cope was turning Bibic’s bandwidth “fairness and congestion” lemons into lemonade, celebrating data revenue growth of 5 percent, “driven principally by the bandwidth usage revenue being up 83% year-over-year.”

Cope not only decapitates his company’s arguments for usage-based billing, he also shines the light on who they will impact: if providers are to be believed that usage caps will only affect a tiny percentage of customers, how can data revenue be up a whopping 83 percent year-over-year. Are a handful of Canada’s “heavy” broadband users responsible for this growth, or are an increasing number of Canadian consumers finding themselves over the “generous” limits Bell has established because they used their broadband connections to stream movies and television shows.

As Geist notes, “no one should be under the illusion that UBB is anything other than a revenue maximization strategy in a market with limited competition, not one premised on fairness or network congestion.”

AT&T customers using modified phones to share their 3G wireless connection with other devices are complaining about the company’s warning that if they don’t cease tethering their phones, they will be automatically enrolled in the company’s premium $45 a month DataPro for Smartphone Tethering plan next week.

An attorney tells Stop the Cap! if the company does that, his firm will consider filing a class action lawsuit against the company for forcing customers into service plans they did not enroll in themselves.

This controversy comes to those who have been using “jailbroken” phones, modified to restore features blocked at the factory by North American cell phone carriers.  Among the most coveted restored features is turning your phone into a mini Wi-Fi hotspot or allowing the phone to connect directly to other equipment, sharing your 3G connection with other devices, such as a laptop, iPad, or iPod.  While many phones include this capability, most carriers in the United States and Canada disable it for those not enrolled in an extra cost add-on plan covering “tethering.”  AT&T offers two such plans — $45 a month for 4GB of usage, or $25 a month for 2GB.

For several years, some AT&T customers have used tethering as a convenient way to bring connectivity to devices out of reach from Wi-Fi or a home broadband connection.

Jonathan in San Francisco shares with Stop the Cap! he is grandfathered in on an unlimited use data plan from around the time the first smartphones entered the marketplace.

“AT&T even sold me the tethering equipment at the same time they sold me the data plan, which they promised was unlimited,” Jonathan says.  “I don’t buy their subsidized phones — I buy my own unlocked phones at full retail price every few years, and AT&T has allowed me to keep my plan the way it is.”

Until he received a notification message from AT&T claiming his account “may need updating.”

AT&T says customers tethering their phones must pay for both a data plan -and- a tethering plan if they want to use the feature, a condition not part of Jonathan’s plan.

“My plan with AT&T says nothing about an extra tethering plan; it says I have unlimited data — something I do not abuse,” Jonathan says.

He is particularly upset that if he uses his phone as he always has, AT&T will slap a $45 additional monthly fee on his phone bill.

“Even worse, when I called AT&T to complain, they told me my plan is so old, they would automatically ‘upgrade’ my service plan to one that costs more and delivers less, effective Monday,” he tells us.

It turns out some customers on legacy plans cannot easily add the tethering option without abandoning the plans they have carefully held onto for years.

“The lady I spoke with said their computer billing system cannot add the feature to my account because it is so old,” he said.

Janie, one of our readers in Seattle, noticed AT&T “‘graciously’ wants to auto-enroll you in their most expensive tethering plan, not the cheaper $25 one.”

“My cousin is lucky enough to still have their $30 a month plan which provided 5GB a month, but they discontinued it for new customers so they could raise prices,” Janie writes.

Janie is upset because it was an AT&T reseller that charged her $30 extra to enable the feature AT&T now wants her to pay even more to use.

“I have no idea what ‘jailbreaking’ is, or that I was doing anything wrong — I bought the phone from an AT&T authorized retailer and had no idea there was even a problem until I called and they lectured me about ‘stealing’ service,” Janie says.  “The company disgusts me and I have never been accused by anyone of stealing, so I am canceling with them when my contract is up.”

Janie is not the only customer to have had her phone modified by someone representing the company.

We found another customer who paid an employee at an official AT&T store to modify his phone.  The employee told him if he keeps monthly usage under 10GB per month, no red flags would be raised, a statement that some might consider a red flag itself.

Just how AT&T tracks down its tethering customer-underground remains a mystery, but some have speculated usage may have been the major contributing factor.  Not everyone who quietly tethers their AT&T phone has gotten the notification message, while many of those using tethered phones as their only Internet connection have.

“If you are using your tethered AT&T phone on a laptop and running up 25GB of usage, AT&T will notice if they look,” an employee tells us privately.  “AT&T can run an audit on data usage and discover considerable amounts of money being left on the table by customers not enrolled in the appropriate plan.”

One lawyer that has targeted AT&T in the past said his firm is carefully watching to see if AT&T follows through on its auto-enrollment threat.

“We’ve found judges and government officials take a very dim view on automatically enrolling customers in anything that costs money without their direct, informed consent,” the attorney who is not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of his firm tells us.  “We are obviously taking a close look at this.”

AT&T’s e-mail notification text is below the jump.

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