Gary McCallum, a Shaw customer in Edmonton, Alberta, has received word his broadband service is about to get more expensive — a lot more expensive.

“Holy crap, it’s like text messaging [bill shock] all over again when your broadband bill arrives and you are now looking at hundreds of dollars instead of the $40 or $50 you used to pay,” McCallum told CTV News.

McCallum, and other designated “heavy users,” are receiving letters in the mail from Shaw notifying them they have been exceeding the company’s declining usage limits imposed on its broadband service.  If they exceed the limits again, they may be subject to penalty fees of as much as $2 per gigabyte.

“I’m upset about the backdoor tactics,” McCallum complains.  “They keep it secret and then lambaste you later.”

Most Shaw customers will be forced to confine their usage to 60GB per month, the limit on the company’s most popular broadband plan.  If they don’t, after some warning, they’ll pay a stiff fine.  Just 20GB of overlimit usage will more than double the average customer’s broadband bill, currently around $37 a month.

A house full of teenagers watching Netflix or downloading files could cost far more than that.

Company officials deny the potential revenue bonanza is unjustified.

Customers who use more will pay more, admits Terry Medd, vice-president of operations for Shaw Communications in Calgary.

“It’s video over the Internet that’s driving a lot of this cost,” he said. However, most Shaw Internet customers won’t hit their caps, Medd claims, suggesting it should affect fewer than 10 per cent of customers.

“The average user consumed about one-third of what the cap is. In other words, we’ve set the caps at three times the average usage. For the average user, there’s no concern here,” Medd said.

However, Shaw recently reduced their usage caps on virtually all of their Internet plans, making it more likely customers will be snagged by overlimit fees.

Some customers want to know what they will get if they use far less than their plan allowance.

Don McGregor believes Shaw’s plan to charge Internet users for the data they use is fair and equitable, so long as those who use less than the allowance get a break on their bills.

“Shaw should plan on refunding fees for any use of data below the contracted amount,” the Edmonton resident wrote in a letter to the editor published in the Edmonton Journal.  “Since 90 per cent of Shaw’s subscribers use less than the full GB capacity they pay for, I am sure these subscribers’ refund cheques are in the mail.”

Don, like other Canadians, is about to learn Internet Overcharging is never about fairness or saving customers money.  It’s about charging customers more for the same service they used to receive for less, without any improvements.  ISPs will not provide true “usage pricing” for consumers because it would slash revenue from their broadband service.

But western Canadians need not be victims of Shaw’s overcharging.  Telus, which sells landline-based DSL service in British Columbia and Alberta says it has upgraded its facilities to accommodate usage demands and won’t expose customers to overlimit fee bill shock.

Telus offers a way out of Shaw's Money Party hangover

Although Telus’ website does show usage limits, company officials claim they are rarely enforced, and not at the subscriber’s expense.

Telus could make a significant dent in Shaw’s customer base by dropping them altogether, which will save the phone company from these kinds of  silly legal gymnastics in their FAQ:

Why do you call your service unlimited, when my monthly usage is limited?
We refer to TELUS High Speed as being unlimited because you get unlimited hours of monthly access.

If you do not want to play Shaw’s Internet Overcharging game, perhaps spending time with a new Xbox 360 would be better?  Telus is giving them away to qualified new customers signing up for service.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CTV Edmonton Shaw Internet Overcharging 1-7-11.flv[/flv]

CTV News in Edmonton informs Alberta’s Shaw customers their broadband service could get a lot more expensive.  (2 minutes)

Although the cable trade press reports it is business as usual at most of the nation’s largest cable companies, news that several companies are losing more cable-TV subscribers than they are adding is creating concern in boardrooms and on Wall Street.  Although the power of the perennial “rate increase” has kept revenues up, cable operators like Time Warner Cable are beginning to realize they can’t just keep raising rates expecting customers to sit still for it.

For more than 30 years, cable operators have assumed (correctly) that raising rates far in excess of inflation will bring about a lot of grumbling from upset subscribers, but few will actually resort to cutting the cord and going back to free TV (or books).  But as many cable households now routinely pay “triple-play” bills well in excess of $200 a month, that is finally starting to change:

• For many households, the switch to digital TV and an increasing number of sub-channels has proved adequate to meet the needs of many viewers, so long as they receive a decent picture and at least a handful of digital sub-channels;
• Online access to at least some cable programming, movies, and television shows on-demand has solved the problem of having too few viewing options.  If nothing of interest is running on local channels, a quick visit to Netflix or Hulu can satisfy most viewers;
• Many increasingly prefer spending their free time online instead of parked in front of the television;
• The realities of the current economy and tightened middle class budgets make many cable packages simply unaffordable, even if customers wanted them.

Time Warner Cable has recognized the growing strain on their video side of the business and has initiated some strong marketing efforts to hold onto customers who are one rate increase away from canceling.

This fall, the cable company unveiled its $33 per service promotion, charging that price for each component of their triple-play package for a year.  While Time Warner has more aggressively priced individual services in the past for new customers, this one is unique because it is open to existing customers as well.  Customers speaking to Time Warner’s retention agents are being offered this package in an effort to keep customers hooked up to the company’s video, broadband, and phone services.  Currently, many markets also include a free year of Showtime or at least six months of DVR service, and a year of Road Runner Turbo.  In highly competitive markets, informal promotions can bring even lower prices or extra add-ons.

A few weeks ago, the cable company unveiled online video streaming of ESPN Networks for existing cable subscribers, and an online remote DVR-programming application that lets subscribers set up recordings while away from home.

Now the company is further bolstering its video packages:

1. As part of its long term agreement with Disney, ABC and ESPN, this week Time Warner Cable added over 300 hours of new On Demand programming content from ABC, Disney and ESPN. In addition, the company will launch Primetime HD On Demand tomorrow, which will also be available to Digital Cable customers at no additional cost.  The new channel Primetime HD On Demand will carry primetime programming from ABC, NBC and CBS in High Definition. Subscribers will have over 100 hours of the networks’ popular primetime programs including NBC’s 30 Rock and The Office; ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives; and CBS’ Medium and CSI.
2. Time Warner Cable Look Back will bolster the existing “Start Over” feature by archiving up to three days of programming on more than two dozen different networks and cable channels.  Now, if you missed a favorite show that aired the evening before, you can watch it on demand.  As with “Start Over,” Time Warner has disabled fast-forwarding, so no zipping through commercials is allowed.  But the service comes free of charge, and includes an impressive lineup of participating networks including ABC, NBC, Fox Cable Networks, Discovery Networks, and Scripps’ Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, and DIY.
3. HBO Max and Go Max, part of TV Everywhere, will reach more than 50 million Time Warner Cable customers by the end of the month.  These services deliver online on-demand access to movies, series, and specials airing on HBO and Cinemax and will be available to customers paying for the premium channels at no additional charge.  More than 70 million customers will have access by the second quarter of 2011.
4. Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt told investors on a conference call held last week that the cable company is aggressively pursuing renewal agreements with programmers that allow the cable company to begin offering smaller, budget priced packages of cable-TV programming.  While it won’t be the a-la-carte option many consumers crave, cable programming packages could begin to resemble what home satellite dish customers used to receive — a core package of two dozen channels with theme or network-based add-on “programming packs” for additional fees.  For example, customers looking for reality or educational programming might buy a “Home and Garden” package consisting of Food TV, HGTV, The Weather Channel, Discovery and The Learning Channel.  Movie fans might get a package of Encore, AMC, Turner Classic Movies, Fox Movies and MGM.  “We have negotiated some additional flexibility beyond what we had a few years ago that will allow us to begin to offer some smaller packages at lower prices. Probably not all the way where we’d like to be. But we’re moving in the right direction,” Britt told investors.

The cable company’s friendly former owner — Time Warner, Inc.,  has also helped man the barricades against cable’s competitors.  For Netflix and Redbox customers: longer waiting times for access to the latest Time Warner movies are likely.  The current delay of 28 days could be extended, according to CEO Jeff Bewkes.

“So far the 28-day window has clearly been a success versus no delay,” Bewkes told investors. “The question of whether we ought to go longer is very much under scrutiny. It may well be a good idea.”

Even local movie theaters face some potential competition, as Time Warner considers introducing a premium pay-per-view option that would allow cable customers to watch movies currently in theaters at home.  But they’ll pay a heavy price to watch — reportedly between $30-50 per title, and the cable operator will insert anti-recording technology into the signal to prevent digital recordings.

Will these new services ultimately stop the bleeding from departing cable customers?  For most it’s a matter of dollars and sense.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cutting Cable’s Cord 11-9-10.flv[/flv]

The media has gotten aggressive about talking to viewers about how they can get rid of their cable-TV subscription and save plenty.  (10 minutes)

Thomas Clancy Jr., 35, in Long Beach, N.Y., canceled the family’s Cablevision subscription this spring. He said he has been happy with Netflix and other Internet video services since then, even though there isn’t a lot of live sports to be had online.

“The amount of sports that I watched certainly didn’t justify a hundred-dollar-a-month expense for all this stuff. I mean, that’s twelve hundred dollars a year,” Clancy told the Associated Press. “Twelve hundred dollars is … near a vacation.”

Customers like Clancy are comfortable with technology and well-versed on how to hook up Internet video and integrate it with the family’s TV sets.  For customers like him, online video will increasingly be an attractive alternative to high cable TV bills.

For some western New Yorkers, Wegmans' Redbox kiosk is their new "cable company."

For homes with less tech-savvy subscribers who have watched their wages fall over the past decade even as cable rates keep increasing, economic realities driven home by the Great Recession are making the decision for them.

“The price of cable TV has risen to the point where it’s simply not affordable to lots of lower-income homes. And right now there are an awful lot of lower-income homes,” Craig Moffett, a Wall Street analyst who favors the cable industry said. “The evidence suggests that what we’re seeing is a poverty problem rather than a technology phenomenon.”

For these customers, including many in the middle class, each time cable companies like Time Warner increase cable rates, they drop a service or two.

“First it was Showtime, the Movie Channel, and Starz!,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Joanne in Penfield, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. “Then when they raised the rates again on the premium channels, we dropped them all — bye bye HBO and Cinemax.”

“When Time Warner sends us their rate increase notice right after Christmas as they’ve done for years, we’re dropping digital cable and returning our cable boxes,” she writes.  “If they keep it up, we’ll drop cable altogether — something we might have done earlier if we had some competition around here.”

“I don’t care how much they claim it’s a ‘great value,'” Joanne says. “My husband got laid off from his job at Xerox in 2009 and was just let go from his new job at Carestream.  I already work myself and we have three kids, and our health insurance premiums are skyrocketing at the end of the year.  We haven’t had a real raise in five years, so that made the decision for us.”

Joanne now rents movies from Redbox just inside the local Wegmans grocery store and has a $9 monthly subscription with Netflix, mostly for online streaming.

“It’s more than made up for the $40+ a month we used to spend on premium channels with Time Warner,” she said.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WISN Milwaukee Time Warner Cable Offers Start Over For WISN 12 ABC Programs 11-9-10.flv[/flv]

WISN-TV in Milwaukee introduces viewers to Time Warner Cable’s newest on-demand features.  (1 minute)

AT&T's "Fair Deal" website claims the company is fighting for lower programming costs.

Programmers trying to play hardball over fees paid by cable, satellite, and phone company providers occasionally get the ball thrown back at them, which is precisely what happened Friday when Scripps-Howard found their popular networks thrown off of AT&T’s U-verse, even though the companies had agreed on financial terms.

At issue — AT&T wants to distribute programming it pays for over new mediums, ranging from video on demand, online viewing, and even wireless watching through smartphone applications.  If programmers want more money, AT&T argues, they’d better also be willing to deal on how that programming gets watched.

When Scripps’ officials demurred Friday morning, AT&T simply pulled the plug on Food TV, HGTV, the Cooking Channel, as well as lesser-watched Great American Country and DIY Networks.

Scripps’ officials hurried out a statement:

“Let me start by saying this impasse is not about money,” said John Lansing, president of Scripps Networks. “We reached an agreement in principle with AT&T U-verse on the distribution fees we would receive for these networks well in advance of last month’s contract deadline.”

“AT&T U-verse demanded unreasonably broad video rights for emerging media where business models have not even been established,” Lansing said. “Accepting their demands would have restrained our ability to deliver our content to our viewers in new and innovative ways.”

Food Network President Brooke Johnson threw a HissyFit, claiming AT&T yanked the channels while the two sides were still at the negotiating table.

As Friday wore on, both sides defended their respective positions.  Scripps’ saw AT&T’s actions as nothing short of a Pearl Harbor sneak attack.  AT&T claimed Scripps was pulling a flim-flam — trying to stick the phone company with an inferior deal that restricted how they can use the basic cable networks, all at prices higher than their cable competitors were paying.

But when Lansing claimed the dispute was not about money, reality was also yanked from the lineup.  When a cable company or programmer tells you it is not about the money, it is all about the money.

Scripps reactivated their "Keepmynetworks.com" website to fight another programming fee battle

Johnson told the Chicago Tribune AT&T was trying to negotiate for broad usage rights of their programming for services that don’t even exist yet.

“They are asking for broad, unlimited distribution on non-linear platforms that go well beyond emerging media technologies. It’s anticipatory and it’s without a business model,” Johnson said.

Such agreements could end up haunting Scripps if a new money-making distribution scheme evolves that AT&T can use -and- get to keep all of the profits.

Cable companies might also be unhappy if AT&T won concessions they themselves don’t have.

Re-purposing video content into on-demand or portable viewing could evolve into a multi-million dollar business, especially if consumers begin deserting cable TV packages that include dozens of unwatched channels.  Cable cord-cutters could end up watching Food TV shows online, and who benefits financially from that is ultimately the issue here.

A weekend without the networks on U-verse was apparently enough for both sides, who pounded out an agreement announced yesterday evening, restoring the networks.

It was all-smiles for both sides:

Brian Shay, senior vice president of AT&T U-verse, said, “It was important to us on behalf of our customers to come to a positive resolution as quickly as possible. We appreciate everyone’s willingness to make that happen, working diligently over the weekend, so the situation wasn’t prolonged, and we thank our customers for their support and patience while we reached a fair deal.”

From Scripps:

“AT&T U-verse customers, we have been overwhelmed by your loyalty and support of HGTV and our other networks – DIY, Food Network, Cooking Channel and GAC. Your voice has been heard and we are very close to getting our networks back on AT&T U-verse.  We hope to have more good news for you soon.”

Terms of the new agreement were not disclosed, but you can be certain it includes a higher price tag for the bouquet of Scripps’ networks that will eventually appear on future AT&T U-verse bills.  But at least the cable networks avoided the fate of the Hallmark Channel, kicked off U-verse Sept. 1st and is still off as of today.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Cable Customers Lose Channels 11-8-10.flv[/flv]

WDAF-TV in Kansas City covers the weekend loss of Food TV and other cable networks on AT&T U-verse over another programming fee dispute.  (2 minutes)

A firestorm erupted this week on Broadband Reports over news that Shaw Cable was turning its existing “soft” Internet Overcharging scheme into a “hard” system filled with usage limits and overlimit fees.  One of Shaw’s social media representatives tried to throw some water on the fire:

I’ve seen a lot of discussion here about the new policy, and quite a bit of inaccurate or incomplete information and speculation, so I’d just like to set all of this straight.

Essentially, the system works like this: your package includes an allowance for a certain amount of traffic. If you exceed that traffic for one billing cycle, you will receive a notice on your bill advising you of the fact. We also automatically activate your traffic monitor so that you can monitor your usage from that time forward.

Since the bill arrives, of necessity, after your billing cycle ends, we give you a cycle’s grace between the period when you exceeded and when we start charging. That is to say that if you exceed in billing cycle one, you’ll receive your bill part of the way through billing cycle two, and so we won’t start charging for excess traffic until billing cycle three.

As to how much bandwidth will cost, here’s how it works:

If you exceed your monthly traffic allowance, you’ll receive a bill for $1 per GB for Extreme and above, $2 per GB for High Speed and High Speed Lite. Considering how much media, etc, you can obtain in 1 GB, $1 is not expensive.

However, if you plan to exceed by a considerable margin, data packs are also available, and what these do is allow you to increase the traffic allowance by the following amounts:

• $5 for 10 GB
• $20 for 60 GB
• $50 for 250 GB

So this gives you the option to increase your monthly traffic allowance to meet your needs. It’s also considerably less expensive than the standard $1-$2 per GB rate.

The best part about the data packs is that you can apply them at any time up to three days before the end of your billing cycle. So if you discover that you’ve exceeded your included usage allowance, and still have three days to the end of the billing cycle, just give us a call (or chat) and ask that we add the appropriate data pack for you.

[…]I’ve seen some posts here suggesting that this new policy has been financially motivated to avoid upgrading our networks. That’s actually not the case. In fact, just a few weeks ago we increased the included usage for all of our services by 25%, just in time for NetFlix. If you want to think about it in financial terms, just consider how much more bandwidth the network would need to allow a 25% increase for every customer, and how much that kind of network upgrade would cost. It’s pretty clear that our motives are not financial. If they were, increasing the included usage would not be very sensible, would it? It would, after all, considerably reduce the number of customers exceeding their monthly traffic allowance, would it not?

I hope that this clarifies the situation, but if there are any questions, please do feel free to ask.

James – Shaw

Shaw tinkers with their Internet Overcharging scheme

In part, this rebuttal was also directed to Stop the Cap!, because we are actively participating in that discussion.  Shaw’s argument about usage limits and how the company’s implementation of them benefits their customers is familiar to many of our readers who fought off usage caps proposed by Time Warner Cable last year.  Somehow, the same company that sets unjustified limits and penalty prices on already-overpriced broadband service is doing customers a real favor by offering alternative pricing plans for heavier users that reduces war-crime profiteering to pickpocketing.

That’s logic Stalin might have appreciated, but most customers already burdened with high cable and broadband bills won’t.

Our response:

Don’t you just love it when Internet Overchargers always claim their new gotcha fees are never about the money?

“James” from Shaw offers a classic example of what happens when your broadband provider implements a scheme to boost your broadband bill and then claims it’s good news that the company has some options to keep those overlimit fees from stinging too badly.

When Internet Overchargers tell you it’s not about the money, it’s really ALL about the money.

Here's what happens when a third provider ruins a Canadian broadband duopoly

Who knew that an invisible border that makes unlimited Internet possible in Vancouver, Washington makes it impossible in Vancouver, B.C. Using Shaw’s argument, providers south of the border are headed straight for bankruptcy court while companies like Shaw barely hold on with “free usage upgrades” of existing limits.

But of course the financial reports for shareholders Shaw’s social media mavens don’t talk about tell the real story. Shaw enjoys considerable revenue from their broadband division thank you very much, and plans to do even better now that they can achieve ‘revenue enhancers’ from their enforced Internet Overcharging schemes.

That’s another way of saying Shaw’s Wallet Biters are back for more of YOUR money.

Whether it’s 20 cents per gigabyte (at least a 100 percent markup) or $2 (rape and pillage pricing), these schemes are hardly good news for Shaw customers. Indeed, if Shaw was truly concerned about saving their customers something under their cap ‘n tier regime, they’d deliver those “usage paks” to customers automatically instead of forcing them to call the company to add them when they go over the limit. If you remember to ask, Shaw gets extra profits they can take to the bank. If you forget, Shaw throws a Money Party on the extra high everyday overlimit rates.

What Shaw forgets to tell you is the cost to deliver increased usage and bandwidth to customers is ALWAYS dropping, and dropping fast. The price charged to move 10GB of traffic not too long ago moves 100GB today. So it’s hardly rough on Shaw to expand yesterday’s unjustified limit to today’s higher, still unjustified limit.

When one also considers yesterday’s “soft cap” is about to become tomorrow’s budget-busting “hard cap,” few Shaw customers are calling 1-800-FLOWERS to send a thank-you bouquet to Calgary.

Having been to Calgary, I know the people in Alberta and elsewhere across western Canada know a ripoff when they see one. They ask, “why is our broadband so overpriced and usage limited?” They wonder where the CRTC has been. They wonder why countries in Asia and even eastern Europe are now beating the pants off Canadian broadband with faster speeds at lower prices.

The fact is, Shaw pulls these overcharging tricks on their customers because they can. The broadband duopoly in Canada from cable and phone companies deliver punishing usage limits on Canada that are being banished in other countries around the world. Even notorious cappers like Australia and New Zealand are finally ridding themselves of broadband that is always capped, always throttled.

What would be sensible is that Shaw, a multi-billion dollar major player in Canada would plow some of their enormous profits into network capacity upgrades that can accommodate the needs of Canada’s growing knowledge economy, not inhibit its growth. Then, earn additional profits by selling even faster speed tiers and content customers can access over those networks.

Considering even Shaw admits only a small percentage of customers create traffic problem on their networks, it’s not hard to see the company’s new reliance on hard Internet Overcharging is designed to capture new revenue from those hitting their caps, thanks to the increasing number of broadband customers using their fast connections for high bandwidth content.

And hey — bonus: it also discourages those customers from even considering pulling the plug on their cable package to watch everything online.

GCI delivers unlimited downloads of customers' money.

GCI spokesman David Morris either does not know what his own company does to abuse its customers or he openly lied about it in statements to the media:

GCI said it hasn’t yet charged anyone fees for exceeding the data limits (some customers dispute this), but the company began contacting its heaviest data users this summer to move them to new, limited plans. The company is also upgrading Internet speed for its customers this year at no extra cost.

GCI said it hasn’t decided when to enforce the data limits on everyone else. The crackdown might not happen until next year, according to Morris.

Apparently Morris is living in a time warp, because “next year” is this year.

After our article earlier this morning, Stop the Cap! started receiving e-mail from angry GCI customers with bills showing outrageous overlimit fees running into the hundreds of dollars GCI claims they are not charging.

Our reader Steve in Alaska sums it up:

“GCI is a bad actor that abuses its customers with bait and switch broadband, baiting customers with expensive unlimited bundled plans and then switching them to limited plans with unjustified fees,” he writes. “A legal investigation exploring whether this company is violating consumer protection laws is required, especially after misrepresenting the nature of these overcharges in the Alaskan media through its spokesman.”

GCI is apparently iterating the credit card industry’s tricks and traps.

Our reader Scott’s latest broadband bill shows just how abusive GCI pricing can get:

GCI: the Grinch That Stole the Internet (click to enlarge)

Scott was floored by GCI’s Festival of Overcharging, which turned a $55 a month bill for broadband into nearly $200.  It exemplifies everything we’ve warned about over the past two years with these pricing schemes:

Well it finally happened, I got hit with GCI internet bill shock, $196.58 total for my 8Mbps plan with 25GB usage.

My usage prior to this has always been around 15-20GB/mo according to them — just the usual web surfing/e-mail with a little online gaming over the weekends (Eve Online) but not much.

Something ratcheted up my usage to nearly twice that (I did buy one game off Steam for digital delivery), which still would have been perfectly reasonable given the $75.00/mo plan I chose — that’s double what most people pay for unlimited in the lower 48 states. I only moved to this plan because their $135/mo bundle plan wasn’t affordable due to the required overpriced digital phone + taxes.

I tried calling their customer service and just got the company line about how expensive it was to provide their service, and I must have an open Wi-Fi router or “downloaded” too many YouTube videos, iTunes, or other content. He also stressed five or six times lots of customers go over their limits thanks to Netflix streaming and you really can’t use it with GCI Internet service.

To date I’ve never gotten a straight story from them on how this is managed, or from their marketing material which never mentioned overage until recently, or their reps that used to say you’d get a phone call to warn you if you went over their limits. The rep I spoke to most recently claims you’re supposed to call them daily or every other day – or login to a special portal online to monitor usage.

Either way this company has no sense of customer service, nor does it operate in the interest of Alaskan consumers that are cut off from the lower 48 and need reliable and affordable Internet services.

Stop the Cap! recommends making a copy of David Morris’ comments and notifying GCI you are not paying their overage fees because they are “obviously in error,” at least according to the company’s own spokesman.  Then get on the line with the State of Alaska’s Consumer Protection Unit and the Better Business Bureau and demand your overlimit fees be credited or refunded.  We’ve even got the complaint form started for you.  GCI values its A+ Better Business Bureau rating, so chances are very good they’ll take care of you to satisfactorily close the complaint.

GCI’s claims that with Internet usage limits, the company can deliver its customers faster speeds.  But Stop the Cap! argues those speeds are ultimately useless when GCI allows you to use as little as 3 percent of your service before those overlimit fees kick in.

A Broadband Reports reader ran the numbers before speed upgrades made them even worse: