GCI, an Alaskan Internet Service Provider, is getting pummeled by angry customers as they continue to learn the company has launched an Internet Overcharging scheme that limits their broadband use.  Some customer claim the company is actively trying to trick those previously enrolled in unlimited plans into limited service tiers with tantalizing “free speed upgrades.”

Stop the Cap! reader Thomas was one of more than a dozen readers who complained to the Anchorage Daily News about the broadband ripoff.

He is outraged by the bait and switch tactics employed by GCI that sold customers on expensive bundled service packages that promised “unlimited Internet” service the company is now trying to take away.

Thomas first learned GCI had slapped limits on his broadband account… from Stop the Cap! GCI never bothered to inform him, or many other customers, about the new usage limits.  After he read our earlier story, he called GCI and learned he was a victim of Internet Overcharging.

GCI’s limits range from 40-100GB on plans ranging in price from $45-105 per month.

GCI, like most Internet Overchargers, tries to blame its customers for the imposed limits.

GCI estimates that 5 percent of its Internet customers are consuming 70 percent of the company’s available bandwidth. These users share a portion of their Internet cable with other GCI customers, and they have been slowing down the other households’ Internet speed, GCI spokesman David Morris told the Anchorage newspaper.

In an effort to prove their contention that usage limits improve service, GCI handed out free speed upgrades along with usage allowances and attempted to conflate the two.

In reality, most broadband slowdowns come from overselling access and being unwilling to invest in appropriate capacity upgrades to meet the growing needs of customers.  For companies like GCI, imposing usage limits to scare users away from high bandwidth services is cheaper and more profitable than meeting customer demand.

“Most of the under-30 crowd that I know use Netflix and Hulu streaming services so we can watch what we want, when we want. Cable TV does not give us the flexibility we want,” Sean Hogan, an Anchorage accountant, told the newspaper.

“I’m getting charged $180 per month and I don’t even want the phone or cable,” said Mike White, an Anchorage customer who upgraded his data-usage plan recently because he was worried about violating GCI’s limits.

GCI claims its new limits allow customers to do many things they had no interest in doing under their old unlimited plans, like sending millions of e-mail messages or browsing tens of thousands of web pages.  To make the limits sound generous, they made a chart:

Of course, these limits ignore the reality customers do most or all of these things, and if they use their high speed connection to download files or watch the increasing amount of video content delivered in High Definition, they’ll blow through some of GCI’s limits with little effort.

Despite GCI’s claims of generosity, its customers think otherwise, and many are moving to curb their usage to avoid potential penalty fees or service termination the company could impose with enforcement of their caps:

Morris said that most of GCI’s customers will discover that their Internet usage is far below the new limits. Depending on the plan, the limits range between 50 and 125 gigabytes per month.

Chris Bruns, an Anchorage father and college student, isn’t so sure. “I’m in the high-30 (gigabyte) range every month,” he said.

GCI’s cheapest substitute for an unlimited plan is 40 gigabytes — the equivalent of downloading and watching 60 movies per month on your computer.

Bruns found out recently — after calling GCI to ask some questions about his family’s Internet speed and usage — that his previously unlimited plan, called Ultimate Xtreme, now had a 40 gigabyte ceiling.

“I was pretty miffed. It came as a surprise,” he said.

“When we signed up, we specifically got the unlimited plan because we knew we used it a lot,” he said.

He said he has since curbed the family’s Internet usage to be on the safe side. He said he and his wife regularly download movies for themselves and cartoons for their two children on Netflix to watch on their computer. Using Netflix is a way to keep the kids from seeing “garbage” on TV, Bruns said.

Ed Sniffen, a consumer-protection attorney in the Alaska Department of Law, may a victim of GCI’s bait and switch broadband himself.

Sniffen said he has had an unlimited-data plan with GCI and didn’t know on Tuesday afternoon whether he received a notice about the new policy. He said anyone who has a concern should contact the Law Department’s consumer-protection office.

The story in the newspaper prompted an enormous response — some 265 comments and counting.  A sampler:

GCI provides terrible service compared to companies in the lower 48 at exorbitant prices. They are a monopoly that needs to be tweaked.

GCI’s Network costs are FIXED. They are raping and pillaging us.

“GCI said it hasn’t yet charged anyone fees for exceeding the data limits…” — GCI lies. Just a few months ago I was charged nearly $100 for exceeding the bandwidth limit. Since then, I’ve upgraded my package to a ridiculous amount of bandwidth (at a ridiculous price) just so I can avoid that problem.

This is crazy. You go anywhere in the lower 48 and almost every Internet provider out there has some sort of unlimited plan, and it doesn’t involve payment with an arm, a leg, a kidney, or a first-born child. GCI needs to get this crap sorted out.

I got an offer to double my Internet speed and usage for a few bucks extra, and free cable (the good package, not the basic cable). Two months later, I still haven’t seen anyone show up to do anything, and I’m still getting charged out the tail end for overage charges. I keep requesting to up my Internet (I have a college student who takes some Internet classes) but they never do it. The only reasons I switched from ACS were because when it rained we had no phone OR internet (they said the problem was with our lines – our landlord at the time needed to fix it, but the contractor said it was ACS’s line problem – THEY needed to fix it.)  If there was another alternative to phone/Internet, I would so be there.

I was out and out LIED to by a GCI Rep. I was told if I changed my plan I would receive higher speeds with NO OTHER CHANGE for the same price. I questioned the GCI rep about this in detail several times before agreeing. The next day I no longer had unlimited downloads. I was LIED to and RIPPED OFF by GCI.

GCI’s statement that they have not charged overlimit charges is incorrect as over ten individuals that I know including myself have been hit with bills ranging from $300 to $2000 for one month of service.

You paid for "lightning fast" speed, but are you actually getting it? Find out!

In areas where limited competition between broadband providers has broken out, consumers are discovering their local providers advertising faster, higher priced tiers of Internet service.  But do you really get the speeds you are paying for?

There are a number of factors that can impact your speed — the quality of the lines to your home, whether you are accessing the Internet through a wireless connection, and how much congestion your provider copes with during peak usage times.  Here are some tips to consider:

If your speeds are simply awful — nearing dial-up at times —  especially when the weather is poor outside, you should first suspect a problem with your connection.  Call your provider and request a line test to determine if there is an obvious fault with the lines running to your home or business.  The usual culprits are cracked cable fittings, worn out insulation, water getting into the wiring, or squirrels that have used your phone or cable line as a toothpick.  If the line test is not definitive, request a service call to check your lines.  Phone cables are especially prone to water damage, often inside terminal boxes located well off your property.  Cable TV lines suffer from corrosion, insulation that has fallen away or cracked, or fittings that need replacement.  If critters have chewed through the outer cable, you will often also see the results on your television with a downright lousy picture.  The biggest problems always seem to appear in the spring and fall during major climate transitions.

If you notice speeds are much slower during the early evening and weekends and you are on a cable connection, your cable company has probably oversold service in your neighborhood and too many users are trying to share the line at the same time.  Cable companies can divide up the traffic by splitting the neighborhood’s connection back to the cable company in half.  The upgrade is usually done at a box or facility somewhere in the neighborhood, not at your home.  If this prime time slowdown occurs on a DSL or fiber connection, chances are the provider doesn’t have a wide enough pipeline to the Internet to accommodate customer demand in that town or city.

A squirrel's favorite chew toy may be your broadband cable or phone line.

Also remember that DSL connections from the phone company are sensitive to the distance between your home and the phone company’s central office.  Don’t pay for higher speed tiers of service if your phone line simply refuses to support those speeds.  Downgrade your service to a speed level you can realistically expect to receive in your home.

If you access the Internet over a wireless connection from a router, a major speed logjam can occur if your Wi-Fi signal faces interference from neighbors sharing the same wireless channel.  Sometimes just running a microwave oven can obliterate certain wireless connections or significantly slow them down.  If your signal strength meter shows poor or fair reception, try reorienting your wireless router.  The higher you can place the router and keep it free of obstructions the better.  Walls, floors, and even metal filing cabinets can degrade wireless signals.  Many wireless routers have two antennas.  Try orienting one antenna vertically and the other horizontally and see if it makes a difference.  Sometimes moving a router across the room can make a significant difference.  You can also try changing wireless channels if you routinely see a large number of neighbors’ Wi-Fi connections all piling on the same channel you use.

The best way to gauge what kind of Internet speeds you are getting is to perform a free speed test at different times of the day.  Your service provider may have its own test website to visit (try Googling the name of your provider, your nearest city and “speed test” in a one sentence search).  Broadband Reports has several different speed tests to try as well.

If you are not getting what you are paying for, be sure to complain and get some money back.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KNXV Phoenix Qwest and Cox may charge your for faster Internet speed, but is your broadband really that fast 8-24-10.flv[/flv]

KNXV-TV in Phoenix explains how to make sure you are getting the Internet speeds you are paying for with some free speed test websites.  (2 minutes)

Bigpond is Telstra's broadband service

Telstra, Australia’s dominant telecommunications company, is openly concerned about the prospect of Australians finally shedding themselves from Internet Overcharging schemes like low usage caps and throttled speed.  But instead of doing away with these profit-boosting schemes themselves, they’ve decided to argue that consumers don’t need the country’s newest 1TB usage allowance plans, calling them publicity gimmicks.

Of course, Telstra doesn’t offer a 1TB plan.

Heath Gibson tries to explain away Telstra’s Internet Overcharging in a company blog post:

A terabyte is a lot of data. One provider claimed it’s enough to download about 200 DVD quality movies and still have quota left over.  Whilst my inner geek is salivating at the possibilities, the analyst in me is questioning just how many people currently need, or could even use, a terabyte of data each and every month.

Gibson

Gibson believes the average Australian is better off plans like Telstra’s 50GB DSL service, running $49.30US per month on a two-year contract.  When all the charges and fees are totaled, Australians will pay Mr. Gibson’s company $2,364.50US for two years of service that slows to 64kbps once your monthly 50GB allotment is used up.

“Terabyte plans will have appeal to a special niche and demand for these plans will no doubt grow over time,” Gibson wrote. “But for now my advice to most people would be to look past the attention grabbing headline, check how big a plan you really need and keep in mind all the other things that go in to making a great ISP.”

Australians have already made that decision and they have been voting with their feet to other providers.  On the same day Gibson was dismissing the competition, Telstra CEO David Thodey was responding to it, recognizing the company has lost significant market share because of high prices and poor customer service.

He told The Advertiser improvements were underway.

“The focus on customer service is something that is innate within Telstra, but our delivery leaves a lot to be desired,” he said.

So is their pricing.  Gibson’s views defending rationed Internet service are similar to the arguments broadband providers in the States use to defend their failure to keep up in the global broadband speed race.  Only instead of dismissing the need for unlimited service, American providers try and convince customers they don’t need the faster speeds they don’t deliver.

Time Warner Cable's offices on Mt. Hope Avenue in Rochester, N.Y.

Bad marks to Time Warner Cable, who left large areas of metropolitan Rochester, N.Y., with barely/non-functional Internet service and non-working “digital phone” service for 10 hours yesterday.

No explanation for the outage has been given, which resulted in inaccessible websites and traffic bouncing back and forth between equipment in western New York.  “Digital phone” customers were unable to reach… anyone. Customer service lines were jammed as the outage began just after 12 noon.

The disruption extended from Monroe County into both Wayne and Ontario counties, where residents in Newark and Canandaigua also reported service problems.

Time Warner Cable’s automated customer service attendant was the Helen Keller of cable outages:

“I’m not seeing an Internet outage in your area,” came her reply — even after a local employee recorded a message telling callers there were problems with phone and Internet service across the Rochester region.

While some websites still worked, many more were unreachable.  Some customers reported slow, but working service in the early evening.  Full service restoration to the area would not happen until 10pm.

Time Warner Cable’s social media representatives took several complaints from local residents about the extended outage, without reminding them they are qualified to receive service credits for the interruption.

Here at Stop the Cap!, we will remind you, and in fact encourage you to request a full day of credit for the phone and Internet service you did not have from the cable company yesterday.  Of course, we represent your interests and they represent theirs, which is why credits come only to those who ask.

Stop the Cap! Presents Your Easy Service Credit Request Menu

Customers can request one day of credit for both phone and Internet service (assuming you have both services, of course).  Make sure you request -both- credits if you are entitled.

Sample Request You Can Cut and Paste:

I am writing to request one day service credit for the phone and Internet outage that occurred in Rochester yesterday, Wednesday Oct. 6th.  We were without service for most of the day.  Please credit my account.

Methods to Obtain Credit:

1. Use Time Warner Cable’s Online Chat system, select Billing Inquiry, and type to a customer service representative.
2. Call (585) 756-5000 or toll free 1-800-756-7956 and speak with a customer service representative.
3. Use the Online E-Mail form, select Billing Inquiry, and send a message requesting credit.

[Update: 2:47pm ET:  A day’s credit was provided just three hours after submitting the request using the e-mail method, so this was as painless as can be.]

Heaney

While Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski continues his indecisive dawdling over whether to enforce Net Neutrality in the United States, the United Kingdom’s two largest Internet Service Providers have openly admitted without such protections they would openly discriminate against content providers’ traffic.  In fact, discriminating against providers based on who paid and who didn’t would be a perfectly normal business practice for any ISP, they declared.

Senior executives of both BT and TalkTalk let the truth spill from their lips at a Westminster eForum on Net Neutrality, something companies like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T surely wish they hadn’t done.

The surprisingly open dialogue was covered in detail by PCPro, and sent on to us by our reader “PreventCAPS”:

Asked specifically if TalkTalk would afford more bandwidth to YouTube than the BBC’s iPlayer if Google was prepared to pay, the company’s executive director of strategy and regulation, Andrew Heaney, argued it would be “perfectly normal business practice to discriminate between them”.

“We would do a deal and look at YouTube and look at the BBC, and decide,” he added.

When asked the same question, BT’s director of group industry policy, Simon Milner, replied: “We absolutely could see a situation when content or app providers may want to pay BT for quality of service above best efforts,” although he added BT had never received such an approach.

TalkTalk’s Heaney declared Net Neutrality a mythical concept, saying they already discriminate against traffic now that they have their foot in the door with “traffic management” policies.

“It’s a myth we have Net Neutrality today – we don’t,” he said. “There are huge levels of discrimination over traffic type. We prioritize voice traffic over our network. We shape peer-to-peer traffic and de-prioritize it during the busy hour.”

If British ISP’s are willing to discriminate against non-paying traffic on its networks, are American ISP’s going to act any differently?