Cable One or Cellular One?

Cable One is unique among America’s top-10 large cable system owners for its nearly incomprehensible broadband usage policies, only fully disclosed to customers after they sign up for service.

The cable company, owned by the owners of the Washington Post, have been tinkering with their broadband pricing and Internet Overcharging schemes as they embark on upgrades to DOCSIS 3 broadband service.  The result: faster broadband service priced like a cell phone plan.

Currently, Cable One controls usage of their customers with a daily usage ration coupled with a speed throttle.  For customers, it means keeping track of usage, time of day, and whether you are in the over-usage doghouse with speeds cut in half.

Stop the Cap! went through the sign-up procedure offered online at the Cable One website, suggesting we were new customers in the Anniston, Alabama area.  While the company is quick to disclose speeds and plan features, it takes some deep wading through an Acceptable Use Policy for new customers to unearth the company’s extensive and complicated limits on broadband usage.  The company doesn’t even like to disclose they are throttling your speeds in half as a punishment.  Instead they refer to them as ‘Standard Speeds’:

Company officials have been telling Cable One customers some of these complicated usage formulas are about to be relaxed as they introduce their new 50Mbps DOCSIS 3 broadband service.  With Cable One delivering service primarily in small cities and rural areas, the arrival of 50Mbps broadband has generated considerable excitement, until customers learned the cable company has decided to market it like a cell phone plan.

Cable One primarily serves small cities and towns in the central and northwestern United States.

“The new 50Mbps plan is downright bizarre here in Fargo, N.D.,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Paul.  “It actually costs less than their 10Mbps plan — I was quoted $45 a month for the broadband-only option, $35 if I signed a two year contract.  That actually saves me money as I currently spend just over $50 a month for their 10Mbps plan.”

But Paul learned the super fast broadband plan comes with some major strings attached.

“It is limited to 50GB of usage per month on what they are calling their ‘data plan,'” Paul shares.  “The customer service representative said it was like ordering a data plan with your wireless phone.”

Currently, the 50GB limit is the only data plan on offer, and the usage cap does not apply to usage overnight from midnight until noon the following day.  But those exceeding it at other times face a $0.50/GB overlimit fee.

Paul also says Cable One appears to be ready to dispense with the complicated speed throttle it uses on its mainstream 3-12Mbps broadband plans.  Cable One traditionally gave customers a daily usage allowance ranging from 1-11GB, after which accounts were subject to throttled speeds for the next 24 hours.

“Customers have complained about the slow speeds, throttles, and usage limits for years, if only because they couldn’t navigate all of them and Cable One’s usage measurement tool is often offline or inaccurate,” Paul writes.

“I first learned about Stop the Cap! when Cable One tried to charge some of our local residents $1,000 for cable equipment lost in a fire,” Paul says.  “Cable One has been so bad my wife was hoping Mediacom… Mediacom, would deliver us from them with a buyout.”

Cable One is an example of a cable company that has gone all out with Internet Overcharging, delivering customers an expensive and speed throttled broadband experience.

“Even though the lower price for the 50Mbps plan looks nice, it’s not if you start going over the limit,” Paul says.  “Sorry, broadband is not cell phone service.”

He is sticking with his current 10/1Mbps service plan.

Cable One representatives argue very few customers exceed any of the company’s plan limits, less than 1 percent exceeding them consistently.

Among the public interest groups that have historically steered clear of the fight against usage caps and usage based billing is Public Knowledge.

Stop the Cap! took them to task more than a year ago for defending the implementation of these unjustified hidden rate hikes and usage limits.  Since then, we welcome the fact the group has increasingly been trending towards the pro-consumer, anti-cap position, but they still have some road to travel.

Public Knowledge, joined by New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing concern over AT&T’s implementation of usage caps and asking for an investigation:

[…] Public Knowledge and New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative urge the Bureau to exercise its statutory authority to fully investigate the nature, purpose, impact of those caps upon consumers. The need to fully understand the nature of broadband caps is made all the more urgent by the recent decision by AT&T to break with past industry practice and convert its data cap into a revenue source.

[…] Caps on broadband usage imposed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can undermine the very goals that the Commission has committed itself to championing. While broadband caps are not inherently problematic, they carry the omnipresent temptation to act in anticompetitive and monopolistic ways. Unless they are clearly and transparently justified to address legitimate network capacity concerns, caps can work directly against the promise of broadband access.

The groups call out AT&T for its usage cap and overlimit fee model, and ponder whether these are more about revenue enhancement than network management.  The answer to that question has been clear for more than two years now: it’s all about the money.

The two groups are to be commended for raising the issue with the FCC, but they are dead wrong about caps not being inherently problematic.  Usage caps have no place in the North American wired broadband market.  Even in Canada, providers like Bell have failed to make a case justifying their implementation.  What began as an argument about congestion has evolved into one about charging heavy users more to invest in upgrades that are simply not happening on a widespread basis.  The specific argument used is tailored to the audience: complaints about congestion to government officials, denials of congestion issues to shareholders coupled with promotion of usage pricing as a revenue enhancer.

If Bell can’t sell the Canadian government on its arguments for usage caps in a country that has a far lower population density and a much larger rural expanse to wire, AT&T certainly isn’t going to have a case in the United States, and they don’t.

The history of these schemes is clear:

1. Providers historically conflate their wireless broadband platforms with wired broadband when arguing for Internet Overcharging schemes.  When regulators agree to arguments that wireless capacity problems justify usage limits, extending those limits to wired broadband gets carried along for the ride.  Dollar-a-holler groups supporting the industry love to use charts showing wireless data growth, and claim a similar problem afflicts wired broadband, even though the costs to cope with congestion are very different on the two platforms.
2. Providers argue one thing while implementing another.  Most make the claim pricing changes allow them to introduce discounted “light user” plans.  But few save because true “pay only for what you use” usage-based billing is not on offer.  Instead, worry-free flat use plans are taken off the menu, replaced with tiered plans that force subscribers to guess their usage.  If they guess too little, a stiff overlimit fee applies.  If they guess too much, they overpay.  Heads AT&T wins, tails you lose.  That’s a clear warning providers are addressing revenue enhancement, not network enhancement.
3. Claims of network congestion backed up with raw data, average usage per user, and the costs to address it are all labeled proprietary business information and are not available for independent inspection.

There are a few other issues:

In the world of broadband data caps, the caps recently implemented by AT&T are particularly aggressive. Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap. In addition to concerns raised by broadband caps generally, such a practice produces a perverse incentive for AT&T to avoid raising its cap even as its own capacity expands.

In North America, only a handful of providers use peak-usage pricing for wired broadband.  Cable One, America’s 10th largest cable operator is among the largest, and they serve fewer than one million customers.  Virtually all providers with usage caps count both upstream and downstream data traffic 24 hours a day against a fixed usage allowance.  The largest — Comcast — does not charge an excessive usage fee.  AT&T does.

Furthermore, it remains unclear why AT&T’s recently announced caps are, at best, equal to those imposed by Comcast over two years ago.  The caps for residential DSL customers are a full 100GB lower than those Comcast saw fit to offer in mid-2008. The lower caps for DSL customers is especially worrying because one of the traditional selling points of DSL networks is that their dedicated circuit design helps to mitigate the impacts of heavy users on the rest of the network. Together, these caps suggest either that AT&T’s current network compares poorly to that of a major competitor circa 2008 or that there are non-network management motivations behind their creation.

AT&T has managed to create the first Internet version of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, combining Comcast's 'tolerated' 250GB cap with AT&T's style of slapping overlimit fees on data plans from their wireless business.

As Stop the Cap! has always argued, usage caps are highly arbitrary.  Providers always believe their usage caps are the best and most fair around, whether it was Frontier’s 5GB usage limit or Comcast’s 250GB limit.

AT&T experimented with usage limits in Reno, Nevada and Beaumont, Texas and found customers loathed them.  Comcast’s customers tolerate the cable company’s 250GB usage cap because it is not strictly enforced — only the top few violators are issued warning letters.  AT&T has established America’s first Internet pricing version of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: getting Comcast’s tolerated usage cap into AT&T’s wireless-side overlimit fee.  The bitter aftertaste arrives in the mail at the end of the month.

Why establish different usage caps for DSL and U-verse?  Marketing, of course.  This is about money, remember?

AT&T DSL delivers far less average revenue per customer than its triple-play U-verse service.  To give U-verse a higher value proposition, AT&T supplies a more generous usage allowance.  Message: upgrade from DSL for a better broadband experience.

Technically, there is no reason to enforce either usage allowance, as AT&T DSL offers a dedicated connection to the central office or D-SLAM, from where fiber traditionally carries the signal to AT&T’s enormous backbone connection.  U-verse delivers fiber to the neighborhood and a much fatter dedicated pipeline into individual subscriber homes to deliver its phone, Internet, and video services.

A usage cap on U-verse makes as much sense as putting a coin meter on the television or charging for every phone call, something AT&T abandoned with their flat rate local and long distance plans.

Before partly granting AT&T’s premise that usage limits are a prophylactic for congestion and then advocate they be administered with oversight, why not demand proof that such pricing and usage schemes are necessary in the first place.  With independent verification of the raw data, providers like AT&T will find that an insurmountable challenge, especially if they have to open their books.

[flv width=”640″ height=”368″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bell’s Arguments for UBB 2-2011.flv[/flv]

Canada’s experience with Usage-Based Billing has all of the hallmarks of the kind of consumer ripoff AT&T wants Americans to endure:

• A provider (Bell), whose spokesman argues for these pricing schemes to address congestion and “fairness,” even as that same spokesman admits there is no congestion problem;
• Would-be competitors being priced out of the marketplace because they lack the infrastructure, access, or fair pricing to compete;
• Big bankers and investors who applaud price gouging and are appalled at government checks and balances.

Watch Mirko Bibic try to rationalize why Bell’s Fibe TV (equivalent to AT&T U-verse) needs Internet Overcharging schemes for broadband, but suffers no capacity issues delivering video and phone calls over the exact same line.  Then watch the company try and spin this pricing as an issue of fairness, even as an investor applauds the company: “I love this policy because I am a shareholder.  That’s all I care about.  If you can suck every last cent out of users, I’m happy for you.”  Finally, watch a company buying wholesale access from Bell let the cat out of the bag — broadband usage costs pennies per gigabyte, not the several dollars many providers want to charge.  (11 minutes)

AT&T Internet Rationing Board - Do More With Less!

Today should be your last day for doing business with AT&T’s DSL and U-verse services.  If you feel strongly about your broadband usage being counted and limited, it’s time to bail out of AT&T’s Internet Overcharging scheme, which took effect earlier today.

From this day forward, AT&T DSL customers are limited to 150GB of usage and U-verse customers top out at 250GB before the overlimit fee kicks in — $10 for every 50GB customers exceed the cap, billed in $10 increments. It’s classic AT&T Math, where $1.01 of usage is rounded up to $10.00.

AT&T certainly got off on the wrong foot on day one.  We’ve received more than a dozen messages today from customers who find AT&T’s usage meter offline, showing this message:

“We’re sorry, but we’re unable to display your Internet usage at this time.”

Do you think AT&T would accept that excuse if you enclosed a note telling AT&T you are unable to pay your Internet bill at this time?

On an ongoing basis, we intend to hold AT&T’s feet to the fire until they rescind this unwarranted overcharging scheme.  While company officials claim it is intended to protect their customers from a handful of “heavy users,” they also argue they have plenty of capacity for everyone.  The company cannot have it both ways.

Therefore, this week’s message to be shared with your friends and family is:

AT&T’s Broadband Network Is Not Good Enough to Handle Your Broadband Needs: Shop Elsewhere

AT&T’s wired broadband network, just like their bottom-rated wireless service, cannot handle their customers’ broadband needs.  The company proved that today by having to introduce a broadband rationing scheme, limiting customer usage.  Despite being America’s largest telephone company ISP, AT&T apparently cannot handle the traffic, telling DSL customers to lay off after 150GB and their “advanced” U-verse network customers to get offline after 250GB of use.  Evidently the company isn’t willing to invest some of their enormous profits to provide an ongoing level of broadband service their customers deserve to get, especially when compared with their closest cousin: Verizon.

“While Verizon is installing fiber optics to many of their customers’ homes and providing unlimited, blazing fast Internet service, AT&T admits through their own actions their network isn’t good enough to provide that same level of service to their customers — so now they are limiting the use of it,” says Phillip Dampier, editor at consumer group Stop the Cap! “If I was an AT&T customer, I’d shop around for an alternative provider that has a network robust enough to actually deliver the service customers pay good money to receive.”

AT&T’s U-verse service was touted to customers as delivering a next generation of broadband and television service that could provide healthy competition to cable television.

“AT&T wants U-verse to compete with the big cable companies, but usage caps tell us they can’t manage to do that,” Dampier says. “If their network is so great, why do they need to slap limits on customers?”

AT&T’s representatives claim the limits are intended to reduce congestion from a handful of heavy users, a claim that does not make sense to Stop the Cap!

“AT&T’s existing terms and conditions allow them to deal with any customers who create problems for other users on their network,” Dampier said. “Instead of expanding capacity or dealing with the so-called ‘handful’ of troublesome users, they have slapped an Internet Overcharging scheme on all of their customers.”

Stop the Cap! points out the irony AT&T has plenty of capacity for hundreds of television channels, but doesn’t have enough capacity to provide a worry-free High Speed Internet experience.

“AT&T’s U-verse has no problems finding space for more shopping channels, foreign language networks, and niche channels, but can’t find their way clear to leave customers’ unlimited Internet accounts alone,” Dampier adds.  “Their priorities are all wrong — giving you channels you didn’t ask for while taking away the service you do want.”

(Source: JVC)

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), a trade association and lobbying group representing many of the nation’s television stations, says claims by wireless carriers of a nationwide spectrum crisis are troubling and counterfactual.  That conclusion comes in a new report issued by the NAB this morning that wants the FCC to keep its hands off UHF broadcast channel spectrum the agency wants to sell off to improve mobile broadband.

The paper, “Solving the Capacity Crunch: Options for Enhancing Data Capacity on Wireless Networks,” written by a former FCC employee, suggests claims by wireless carriers that they will “run out” of frequencies to serve America’s growing interest in wireless services are simply overblown.

Many wireless companies own spectrum they are not using, the report argues, and other licensed users are holding onto spectrum without using it either, hoping to make a killing selling it off at enormous profits in the future.  Besides, the federal government holds the largest amount of underutilized spectrum around — frequencies that could easily be allocated to wireless use without further reducing the size of the UHF broadcast TV band.

Many of the ideas in the NAB report emphasize the need for carriers to deploy innovative technology solutions to increase the efficiency of the spectrum they are already using.  Those ideas include additional cell towers to split traffic loads into smaller regional areas, and improving on network channel-bonding, caching, and intelligent network protocols.

But the NAB report has some obvious weak spots the wireless industry will likely exploit — notably their recommendations that seek a reduction in wireless traffic — ideas that would suggest there is not enough spectrum to handle every user.  Among those recommendations:

• Implementing Internet Overcharging schemes like “fair use” policies and consumption-based pricing to discourage use;
• Migrating voice traffic to Internet Protocol;
• Migrating data traffic to a prolific network of “femtocells” — mini antennas that provide 3G service inside buildings, but deliver that traffic over home or business wired broadband connections;
• Offering wider access to Wi-Fi networks in public areas;
• Encouraging the development of bandwidth sensitive devices and applications.

The National Broadband Plan’s conclusion of a spectrum shortage is based on little more than a wish list by wireless carriers, says the paper. Its author, Uzoma Onyeije, cites contradictory statements by high-ranking corporate officials to show the Plan’s calls for making 500MHz of spectrum available for broadband in ten years is a gross overestimate of the actual need.

“There is no denying that the corporate imperative of mobile wireless carriers is to obtain as much spectrum as they can,” Onyeije wrote. “However, the fact that wireless carriers cannot find a unified voice on the amount and timing of their spectrum needs suggests that this advocacy is more strategic gamesmanship than factual reality.”

The NAB has heavily lobbied Washington officials on the issue of spectrum because their members — broadcast television stations — are facing the loss of up to 120MHz of what’s left of the UHF dial, already shrinking because of earlier reallocations.  The FCC proposal would resize the UHF dial to channels 14-30 — 16 channels.  In crowded television markets like Los Angeles, up to 16 stations would be forced to sign-off the public airwaves for good, because there would be insufficient space to allow them to continue a broadcast signal.  Instead, the FCC proposes they deliver their signal over pay television providers like cable or telco-provided IPTV.  Or they could always stream over the Internet.  But that would mean the decline of free, over the air television in this country.

Considering the millions of dollars many stations are worth, it’s no surprise broadcasters are howling over the proposal.

Onyeije’s report suggests AT&T and Verizon, among others, are grabbing whatever valuable spectrum they can get their hands on.  What they don’t use, they’ll “warehouse” for claimed future use.  By locking up unused spectrum, potential competitors can’t use it.  The proof, Onyeije writes, is found when comparing claims by the wireless industry with the FCC’s own independent research:

AT&T predicts 8-10 times of data growth between 2010 and 2015 and T-Mobile forecasts that data will have 10 times of growth in 5 years. Yet, the Commission’s assessment that 275MHz of spectrum is needed to meet mobile data demand is premised on data growth of 35 times between 2009 and 2014.

The Data Tsunami Debunked

Some providers are sitting on spectrum they already own.

The NAB also takes to task the “evidence” many providers use to claim the zettabyte era is at hand, where a veritable exaflood of data will force America into a widespread data brownout if more capacity isn’t immediately made available.

[…] The [industry claims rely] on suspect data. In arriving at its conclusion, OBI Technical Paper No. 6 relies heavily on forecast data from Cisco that is both wildly optimistic about data growth and unscientific. In a blog entry entitled, Should a Sales Brochure Underlie US Spectrum Policy?, Steven Crowley states that “[t]here is overlap between the people who prepare the forecast and the people responsible for marketing Cisco’s line of core-network hardware to service providers. The forecast is used to help sell that hardware. Put simply, it’s a sales brochure.”

Onyeije takes apart the oft-repeated claim that a data explosion will be unyielding, unrelenting, and will be the wireless industry’s biggest challenge for years to come.  It also speaks to issues about broadband use in general:

In particular, the paper appears to be premised on the highly suspect assumption that the high demand curve for mobile data will not slow. While smartphone growth is significantly increasing now, it will no doubt plateau and slow. It has been widely accepted for decades that the process of technological adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classic normal distribution or “bell curve” where a phase of rapid adoption ends in slowed adoption as the product matures or new technologies emerge.

As recently reported, Cisco now projects that U.S. mobile growth will drop by more than half by 2015. As Dave Burstein, Editor of DSL Prime, explains: “The growth is clearly not exponential.”  Mr. Burstein went on to say “Every CFO and engineer has to plan carefully for the network upgrades needed, but the numbers certainly don’t suggest a ‘crisis.’” Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board similarly explains that “Much of the growth in the demand for bandwidth has come from two parallel forces: a new type of smartphone (epitomized by the iPhone) encourages people to make more use of the mobile Web, and more people are switching from conventional mobile phones to these new smartphones. Once everyone has an iPhone, an Android phone or the equivalent, much of the growth goes away.” AP Technology writer Peter Svensson echoes this concern and explains “AT&T’s own figures indicate that growth is slowing down now that smartphones are already in many hands.” Thus, the assumption that data demand will continue to grow unabated is deeply flawed.

Internet Overcharging is About Rationing and Reducing Use

Although the NAB favors Internet Overcharging to drive down demand for use, Onyeije’s report inadvertently provides additional evidence to the forces that oppose data caps, meters, and speed throttles: they are designed to monetize usage while driving it down at the same time:

While unlimited data plans on mobile phones were once the standard, there is now more focus on using pricing as a network management tool. As AT&T Operations President John Stankey put it, “I don’t think you can have an unlimited model forever with a scarce resource. More people get drunk at an open bar than a cash bar.”  In the past year, AT&T and Virgin Mobile abandoned unlimited data plans. In 2010, T-Mobile announced that it would employ data throttling and slow the download speeds of customers that use more than five GB of data each month. And Bloomberg reported on March 1, 2011 that “Verizon Communications Inc. will stop offering unlimited data plans for Apple Inc.’s iPhone as soon as this summer and switch to a tiered pricing offering that can generate more revenue and hold the heaviest users in check.” Usage-based smartphone data plans substantially reduce per-user data traffic. As a result, data growth is likely to slow over time. And companies, including Cisco, are marketing products to carriers to help make tiered data plans easier to implement and help carriers “increase the monetization of their networks.”

One of America’s largest midwestern cities is being victimized by not one, but two major Internet Service Providers with Internet Overcharging schemes that will limit broadband use by customers.

Charter Communications, which calls St. Louis home, delivers cable service to much of the city, and has lightly enforced arbitrary usage limits on its cable broadband customers since last November.  AT&T, the major telephone provider, plans to limit its DSL and U-verse customers starting in early May.

“Now we get to choose between Charter’s usage cap or AT&T’s,” says Reginald, a Stop the Cap! reader in St. Louis.  “As usual, AT&T is always the bigger ripoff — this company hasn’t done one consumer-friendly thing in at least a decade.”

Reginald is currently a U-verse customer who fled Charter around the time the cable company went bankrupt.

“Charter was, is, and will always be abysmal in providing good service and accurate bills, and I was not about to pay for their business mistakes,” Reginald writes.  “When U-verse became available I told AT&T I was signing up because they were offering unlimited use plans and Charter was playing games with their usage cap.”

When AT&T’s cap is in place, St. Louis residents will get to choose between the lesser of two evils:

Usage Limits

• AT&T DSL Customers:  150GB per month
• AT&T U-verse Customers:  250GB per month
• Charter Lite/Express: 100GB per month
• Charter Plus/Max: 250GB per month
• Charter Ultra 60: 500GB per month

AT&T will deliver three warnings and then a higher bill — $10 for each 50GB of “excess usage.”  Charter sends out occasional warnings, then reserves the right to terminate your service.

“It stinks, and if I had my way I would not do business with any provider who has a usage cap,” Reginald says.  “I would rather pay a few dollars more a month and not have to worry, and I can’t imagine I’ve ever used over 100GB in a month.”

Jess, another St. Louis resident, pulls the plug on AT&T U-verse May 2nd.

“I almost wanted them to charge me an early cancellation fee so I could pound them with their sudden change of terms,” Jess says.  “I am switching back to Charter on May 2nd, the day AT&T starts their crap.  AT&T acted all surprised about why I would possibly ever not do business with them over this issue.”

Jess says she would rather deal with warning letters from Charter than a higher AT&T bill.

“Every penny more AT&T gets from us goes right into their lobbying to screw consumers more, and here are the results for everyone to see,” Jess says.  “If Charter wants to pull their games with me and my family, the next step is to declare war on the politicians who let this stuff happen.”

Bill says AT&T offered him a discount to stay with the company — he is canceling his U-Verse service May 1st.  But he refused, telling AT&T he will not do business with a company that engages in Internet Overcharging.

“I’m not too worried about Charter,” Bill writes Stop the Cap! “If they try and threaten me, I’ll let them cut me off and then we’ll sign up under my wife’s name, and bounce from account to account.”

Your money = Their Money

For all three of our readers, none of whom claim they will exceed the allowance, it’s a matter of principle.

Reginald, Jess, and Bill all feel strongly usage caps and overlimit fees are unjustified, and are more about protecting video packages than “unclogging” providers’ networks.

Bob Zimmermann, an AT&T customer in Richmond Heights, tells the Post-Dispatch he doesn’t like the new limit either. He watches an occasional Internet movie, and sometimes downloads video to his iPad. He doubts he’ll exceed the cap, but he doesn’t want to worry about it.

He is shopping for alternatives.

“I’ll see if I can negotiate a better deal,” he told the newspaper.

Jess wishes him luck finding someone else in St. Louis.  She suggests customers like Zimmermann play AT&T and Charter off each other to get a lower bill, at least temporarily.

“What is most important right now is to tell AT&T you are leaving them because they are abusive, and then sign up with a new customer discount with Charter,” Jess suggests.  “Then if and when Charter cuts you off, go back to AT&T and see if you can get them to waive any fees after the third warning or else you are switching back to Charter.”

Another alternative is to sign up for Charter’s business service, which has no usage cap, but comes at a significantly higher price than residential service.  Their starter package includes unlimited Internet at 16/2Mbps speeds, a domain name, and a business phone line with unlimited long distance and calling features.  It runs a steep $120 a month.

“If Charter didn’t offer a 500GB allowance on their 60Mbps tier, I might consider a business package if I used my connection a lot,” admits Bill.  “Isn’t it ridiculous when someone wants to sell you a super fast package you cannot really use because of usage limits?”

Bill partly blames the state legislature for letting AT&T get abusive with customers.

“AT&T shows up with a lot of cash to dole out in the Missouri legislature and in return they get to abuse customers,” Bill notes.  “You notice Verizon cannot get away with this in the more consumer-protection-friendly northeast.”

Jess says the whole thing is a mess.

“It really shows how the midwest is getting screwed once again — this time for Internet access,” she notes. “There is no Verizon fiber here, and even Google showing up in Kansas City won’t be enough to shame the likes of AT&T.”