Stop the Cap! has suddenly started receiving a larger number of complaints about AT&T’s Internet Overcharging scheme in the past two weeks, indicating to us the company has started cracking down more forcefully on usage cap “violators.”

Those who purchased AT&T U-verse in an effort to avoid usage caps from their local cable company are particularly upset, because the phone company still markets its U-verse service as being ‘bandwidth-limit-free.’

AT&T advertises its U-verse service to this day as bandwidth limit free.

“We don’t limit your bandwidth to a particular amount,” promises AT&T in prominent language on its website. The fine print says something very different — AT&T limits the amount of usage customers get before being exposed to overlimit fees — 150GB for DSL, 250GB for U-verse. It is part of what the company calls wired “data plans.”

AT&T U-verse has a 250GB usage cap hidden in the fine print.

“It’s false advertising,” counters AT&T customer Don Brown. “Anyone who reads their promise of ‘no bandwidth limitations’ is going to assume that means no limits, but when I questioned company representatives about the promise, they pull out every trick in the book.”

Brown says one customer service representative told him ‘bandwidth limits’ refer to broadband speed — AT&T does not throttle its customers. Another said the ad claim meant that customers could keep paying AT&T additional money for as much usage as they want or need. But Brown believes AT&T knows better than that.

“When I signed up for service, I asked the salesperson who took my order if there were limits and they said there were none, period,” Brown says. “Not a word was spoken about 250GB limits or overlimit fees. I’m not buying their excuses — what wired ISP throttles customer speeds?”

In fact, AT&T itself defines “bandwidth” much the same way Brown does (underlining ours):

The term bandwidth can take on many meanings. In the case of AT&T U-verse products and services, the term bandwidth is commonly used when referring to computer networking and measuring Internet usage.

The amount of Internet usage is displayed in upload and download amounts. This would commonly be known as the amount of bandwidth the User used during a particular time.

Brown also has no access to any usage monitor or measurement tool, and AT&T told him he “can relax” because the company would send warnings when it noticed his usage was coming perilously close to the limit. But that makes planning around monthly usage limits difficult, because he has no idea what his usage is from day to day.

A week ago, he received his first warning in an e-mail message from AT&T, which was the first indication he was living under a usage cap.

“They are in a real hurry to collect more money from me but they don’t have their ducks in a row on an accurate meter I can depend on,” Brown says. “Would the local power, water, or gas company get away with that? I don’t think so.”

Brown decided AT&T’s “dishonesty,” as he puts it, made him cancel his service. He does not trust the phone company to accurately measure anything.

“At least I know the cable company is a pocket-picking crook so I can be on guard for their next move,” Brown says. “AT&T is more like the thief in the night that robs you blind while you are upstairs, asleep in bed.”

Chris Savage discovered AT&T’s “stealthy” 150GB usage cap on his DSL account when he received an e-mail warning of his own. He gets one more, after which AT&T will “bill shock” him with overlimit fees.

You have exceeded 150GB this billing period.

[…] The next time you exceed 150GB you’ll be notified, but not billed. However if you go over your data plan in any subsequent billing period, we’ll provide you with an additional 50GB of data for $10. You’ll be charged $10 for every incremental 50GB of usage beyond your plan.

AT&T DSL service has a sneaky 150GB usage cap in the fine print.

AT&T really isn’t interested in hearing questions or concerns about their “data plan,” telling customers at the bottom of the message:

Please do not reply to this email. This address is automated, unattended and cannot help with questions or requests.

Savage never knew AT&T implemented an Internet Overcharging scheme:

“This e-mail seemed to say to me, ‘We changed the rules on you without telling you and now you’ve broken them, so we’ll let you off this time, but consider yourself warned!'”

Savage has already cut cable’s cord and watches his television shows online, exactly what big phone and cable companies do not want their customers doing.

The bottom line is that 150GB is not enough for people like me who work at home, rely on Netflix for any kind of TV/Movies (since I don’t have cable or any other TV), have gamers in the house and run a website. What this means for me is that, once again I will have to cancel Netflix because watching just one movie or show per day would mean I would reach my cap about 2/3 of the way into the month. And that is if nobody else in the house watches anything on it, plays any online games or downloads anything.

In the end, it appears AT&T won and Netflix lost. Savage reports after going over AT&T’s limit two months in a row, he canceled his Netflix account — the only television service he had. AT&T DSL cannot even support one movie a night and one or two streamed cooking shows here and there without pushing the family over the limit AT&T imposes.

Cox Cable customers in several states have been receiving e-mails announcing the availability of the company’s “Data Usage Meter,” which is generally a precursor to the implementation of an Internet Overcharging scheme.  For at least two families, ignoring that usage meter temporarily shut down their Internet access when they reportedly exceeded their allowance.

Our view of what Internet Overcharging with usage caps really means.

Dear Cox High Speed Internet Customer,

We’d like to take this opportunity to announce the availability of the Data Usage Meter. This new feature provides an easy way to check monthly household high-speed Internet data usage at any time. Monthly data usage is the amount of data that users send, receive, download or upload each month for movies and videos, photos, web surfing, email, gaming, and other files.

Each of our packages has a specific data usage amount. The amount depends on your Cox High Speed Internet package and corresponds to the speeds provided with the package. Our speediest package provides the highest usage amount. You are currently subscribed to the Premier Package which has a monthly data usage amount of 250 Gigabytes (GB). This is equivalent to streaming about 138 standard definition movies, or 83 high definition movies in a month.

The vast majority of our customers do not exceed their usage amount in a month and Cox does not charge you an additional fee if you exceed it. However, if you find that you are exceeding the usage amount for your package, you should check for the following potential causes:

An unsecured wireless home network. If your wireless router does not have security enabled, others outside your home may be using your Internet service. Cox provides a free tool to test the security of your home network. The Home Network Security Check can be accessed by logging into your account via myaccount.cox.net which will place you into Internet Tools. From there, simply select the Home Network tab

A computer virus. If your computer is infected with a virus, it may be transmitting large amounts of data without your knowledge. Cox strongly advocates Internet safety and security. That’s why we offer all of our High Speed Internet customers free security software that will help protect your computers. Cox Security Suite Powered by McAfee® will shield you from many viruses, spam, phishing and spyware. It even comes with parental controls.

To download your copy in just a few minutes, simply visit myaccount.cox.net and select the Security Suite tab in Internet Tools.

If after checking for these problems you find that you are still exceeding the usage amount, you may want to consider upgrading to another package that more closely matches your use of the service. Cox’s top High Speed Internet package includes 400 GB per month.

To view your current data usage, follow these easy steps:
1. Visit myaccount.cox.net
2. Sign in with your primary Cox username and password
3. Select the “Data Usage Allowance” tab on the left bar

The Data Usage Meter shows daily and monthly usage for your account starting with the beginning of your billing period. The monthly view shows the usage by month determined by the date of the end of your billing period. Over time, you will be able to see your household usage over the previous 12 months. The Data Usage Meter is only available to primary account users and secondary user accounts with billing access.

Cox usage caps fly in the face of some of the company's ancillary broadband products, one of which claims to offer "unlimited backups." It's not "unlimited" with a usage cap in place.

Cox customers have been technically under an Internet Overcharging scheme limiting usage for well over a year, but enforcement of those usage caps has traditionally been light, with only the most egregious users occasionally getting phone calls from the cable operator.  Some Cox markets still do not have a functioning usage measurement tool.

But there is growing suspicion that may be about to change.  Some Cox customers in Georgia, Arkansas, and Kansas report Cox is contacting them about Internet usage, and in one case in Georgia, shut off an account after the family exceeded their allowance by just 3GB.

“I was 3GB over my 200GB [allowance] and my Internet was temporarily suspended till I called Cox,” writes Stormside, a customer in Warner Robins, Georgia. “They had a ticket number on me and transferred me to [another] department. I was given the spiel about their policies saying they can suspend or cancel my Internet service if I continue to go over the cap.”

After promising to more closely monitor usage, the account was restored.

Cox says you can send 84 million e-mails with their Ultimate package.

Another customer in Pensacola, Fla. experienced the same thing.

“They disabled my Internet due to the cap, and I had to call to get it back up,” shares Compaq255 on the Cox Forum on Broadband Reports.

The usage caps Cox may increasingly enforce leaves customers with two options:

1. Reduce usage to remain within usage allowances;
2. Upgrade to a faster speed package, with a correspondingly larger allowance.

Stormside intends to do the former, Compaq255 the latter.

“I was going to upgrade to the higher package anyway,” Compaq255 says.

Many Cox customers have no idea the company limits their Internet usage, because the usage allowance is only disclosed in buried fine print contained within the company’s lengthy legalese–Acceptable Use Policy.  For customers like Janet Handshire, a Cox customer in Alma, Ark., the first usage cap disclosure she noticed was in a company e-mail.

“Cox sends e-mail to us all of the time, mostly promoting their various services, but I noticed this one because of all of the text,” says Handshire. “I was surprised to discover we even had a usage cap with Cox, and I am completely uninterested in visiting their usage page all the time to figure out whether I am okay with them or not.”

Handshire says she already pays nearly $200 a month to Cox for their triple play package and can’t believe the company is now becoming stingy over Internet usage.

“I have five boys and a husband in this house,” she says. “I already keep track of all the bills and now I have to start tracking how much everyone around here is using the Internet?  I don’t think so.  They are treating this like it is a limited precious resource.”

“The one thing we’ve learned following the broadband story in this country is Internet access is already a cash cow for these companies, but they keep asking for more,” she says.

Current usage allowances with Cox range from 30GB a month for their “starter” package to 250GB a month for their Premier Package.  An Ultimate package in some areas offers even faster speeds with a 400GB allowance, but it’s not available everywhere.

A snake in the grass?

Cogeco customers trying to avoid usage-based overlimit fees are finding that difficult when the cable company’s online usage measurement tool is offline or misreads their usage.  But the real trouble comes when customers find themselves arguing over wild usage measurements with Cogeco’s customer service representatives, who believe their meter is sacrosanct.

Two Ontario customers report Cogeco’s meter is registering some wild usage numbers this week — measurements those customers say count against their monthly usage allowance, drive them into overlimit fees, or force them to try and convince Cogeco employees they didn’t use as much as the company claims they did.

Take “Jubenvi,” a Cogeco customer in Sarnia.  His efforts to check on his usage through Cogeco’s online measurement tool was an exercise in futility until Monday, when Cogeco claimed he used 36GB of usage the day before.

“Not a chance,” he argues on Broadband Reports‘ Cogeco customer forum.  “No warnings either and [the tool] says I’m at 153 percent [of my allowance].”

That means one thing: overlimit penalty fees of $1/GB + HST.

“Ya, I won’t be paying that,” he declares.

Petawawa customer RJBrake also found last Sunday a “heavy traffic day” for him as well, at least according to Cogeco’s usage meter.

“This is completely stupid,” he shared. “There’s no way I downloaded 14GB in a day.”

Jubenvi called Cogeco to complain and to demand the overlimit charges be waived for usage he never actually used.

That opened the door to a customer service investigation which could send shivers up some customers’ spines.  Cogeco tracks customer usage over several months, and claimed Jubenvi‘s past usage regularly exceeded their arbitrary usage allowance, so it’s a safe bet he downloaded 36GB in a single day.

Unwilling to concede their meter might be inaccurate, a representative issued a one-time “loyal customer courtesy credit.”

Surprise! Nearly 15GB of usage last Sunday, whether you used it or not.

Jubenvi was unimpressed with small favors.

“She [said] that a few times a month, someone in [my] family rents a few movies from iTunes store, [but] never 36GB a day,” Jubenvi explains.  “I [wondered aloud] what if this happens again and [asked] why I didn’t receive any 85% and 100% [usage allowance] warnings.”

Cogeco didn’t have answers for either question, content on placing the blame entirely at the feet of the customer.

“She just goes into how I should upgrade my computer — it could have a virus, [and] make sure I’m not using Netflix,” he says.

Unfortunately, Canadian ISP usage meters are largely unregulated.  A Hamilton customer notes:

The CRTC along with Weights and Measures Canada won’t do anything to help you. I along with others here have already tried to file complaints about Cogeco’s usage meter and they both say that this doesn’t follow under there pervue of duties.

At the moment we are on our own and I don’t see anyone that’s going to help us until an MP or a Court get involved in this situation. I personally think that some time after Oct. 1 when there is no [longer a maximum cap on overlimit fees] for the Ultimate 30 and 50Mbps customers, someone is going to get hacked and get a huge bill and then lawyers and the news media will then find this topic interesting.

Anyone that’s on an Ultimate 30 or 50Mbps account could easily download anywhere from 60GB to over 100GB’s a day. It’s simple. I can grab 1GB worth of data in under 10 minutes on my Ultimate 30 connection so multiply that by 24 hours and you get 72GB.

Andre Vrignaud of Seattle has been benched for a year by Comcast for using too much of its Internet service.

From time to time, we get reports from Comcast customers victimized by the company’s 250GB usage cap.  The nation’s largest cable broadband provider implemented that arbitrary limit back in 2008 after the Federal Communications Commission told the company they could not throttle the speeds of customers using applications like peer-to-peer file sharing software — then pegged as the usual suspect for turning “ordinary” broadband users into “data hogs.”

For at least 18 months, Comcast’s usage cap came with no measurement tools or real explanation most customers could find about what a “gigabyte” was, much less how many of them they “used” that month.  Only last year, Comcast finally rolled out usage measurement tools for customers who bother to find them on their website.  New customers signing up for service never even realize there is a usage cap until a thick brochure of legalize comes with the installer outlining the company’s Acceptable Use Policy.

Still, compared to some of the usage cap battles Stop the Cap! was fighting three years ago, Comcast was the least of our problems.  Frontier’s infamous 5GB usage allowance was the worst we’d ever seen, Cable One’s IRS-like usage policies required an academic to explain them, and Time Warner Cable’s ‘lil experiment in broadband rationing with a 40GB usage cap experiment crashed and burned soon after being announced in the lucky test cities scheduled to endure it.  That doesn’t make Comcast’s cap fair or right, but protecting consumers from these schemes requires triage.

But we remember well Comcast’s promise that it would regularly revisit and adjust its usage cap to reflect the dynamic usage of its customers.  That’s just one more broken promise from a broadband provider with an Internet Overcharging scheme.  In fact, Comcast has not moved its cap one inch since the day it was announced, although they have increased their rates.  The only thing going for the cable giant is that it doesn’t treat “250GB” as a guillotine.  In fact, the cable company only sends the usage police after the top few percent of users that exceed it, issuing a warning not to exceed the cap again during the next six months, or face a year without having the service.

This punitive policy is what Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt loves to rail against.  For him, broadband usage should never be penalized — it should be exploited for all the money the provider can possibly get from customers.  That’s why Britt favors a consumption billing system that starts off with a high monthly price for everyone, than goes much higher the more you use.  Would the neighborhood crack dealer cut you off for using too much?  Of course not.  Feeding your broadband usage habits can mean fat profits, and investors love it.

Andre Vrignaud, a 39-year-old gaming consultant in Seattle, wrote us (and many others) about his own experience with Comcast’s usage ban.  He’s a victim of it, having been warned once about usage and then ultimately told his cable modem was disabled for a year.  For Vrignaud, it was a case of using a cloud storage file backup provider, moving very high resolution images around, and having roommates.  Since Comcast counts upload and download traffic towards its usage limit, it’s not hard to see what can happen to anyone trying to back up today’s supersized hard drives.  What’s especially ironic is that Comcast itself sells online file backup services — which also counts towards your cap.

Comcast’s attitude about its decision to ban Vrignaud from its broadband service for a year was simple enough: it’s a clear cut case of violating their usage caps.  In their view, heavy users slow down broadband service for everyone else in the neighborhood.  So they set a policy that cuts them off when they use too much.

To add insult to injury, broadband-disabled Comcast customers have to call Comcast’s Retentions & Cancellations Department to get the billing stopped on his disabled service.  Vrignaud had to negotiate with a representative whose instinct is to keep you a Comcast customer at all costs, even when the company won’t allow you to be one!

But is Comcast really facing a congestion issue?  Not if you happen to be a business customer at the same address, using the exact same infrastructure that residential customers in the neighborhood use.  Business Class service has no usage limits at all — “congested neighborhood” or not.  And that is where Comcast’s argument simply starts to fall apart.

We’ve been in touch with Vrignaud privately in an effort to help him find a way back to his broadband service.  The alternative is DSL from Qwest/CenturyLink, and unless you live in an area where the phone company has upgraded their networks to support ADSL 2+ or other advanced flavors of DSL, that represents quite a speed downgrade.

Our readers have told us Comcast representatives have several unofficial ways of dealing with heavy users who have gotten their first warning from the company.  Some have told customers to sign up for a second residential account under the name of someone else in the home to allot themselves an additional 250GB of usage.  Others recommend signing up for a business account, which means no usage cap at all.  For those who have been cut off, signing up as a new customer under the name of someone else in the household usually gets you back in the door, albeit facing the same usage cap issue all over again.

The problem Vrignaud encountered is Comcast’s clumsy way of dealing with customers, like himself, who have been sentenced to a year without broadband service (from them).

Vrignaud explored the route we recommended — Business Class service — and found he couldn’t sign up.  Evidently Comcast’s ban is tied to his personal Social Security number, and when he tried to enroll in Business Class service using it, he was stopped dead in his tracks.

Turns out that once Comcast has cut your broadband account for violating their data cap policy you are verboten from being a Comcast customer for 1 year. That’s right:

After being cut off from Comcast’s consumer internet plan due to using too much data, I’m told I’m ineligible to use Comcast’s recommended solution, their business internet plan that allows the unlimited use of data — solely because I made the mistake of actually using “too much” data in the first place.

As the sales rep said in my Google Voicemail message, “what’s interesting is that if you would have started off on the business side of the house, since we don’t have a cap limitations [sic] you would’ve been fine.”

Vrignaud also mentioned he was unsure if Comcast required a business Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) in order to sign up for Business Class service.  In fact, for our readers who have gone this route, it turned out not to be necessary.  They just put their Social Security number in the space reserved for a TIN and had no problems.  Vrignaud would have a problem, however, because his Social Security number is effectively “poisoned” for the year.  He would need to obtain a specific kind of TIN — an Employer Identification Number (EIN) to proceed.  Luckily, it takes less than five minutes to apply for one online and is free.  The number displayed at the end of the process would be the one to use with Comcast.  An alternative suggestion would be to sign up for service under the name of someone else in the household.

For those on Comcast’s bad side, there is more hoop-jumping to get your service back than at the Ringling Bros. circus.

Should all this even be necessary?

Broadband service carries up to a 90% profit margin.

Stop the Cap! thinks not.  While Comcast may have endured last-mile congestion on its shared cable broadband network in days past, the company’s aggressive upgrades to DOCSIS 3 technology makes congestion-based usage limits more of an excuse than a reality.  Comcast is pitching faster broadband speeds than ever, all hampered by the same 250GB usage limit.  While residential and business class customers share the same physical cable lines strung across neighborhoods, one faces a usage cap and the other does not.  It’s simply not credible.  Comcast’s punitive usage cap scheme throws away their own customers and the revenue they bring.

Vrignaud wants the option of getting his service back, perhaps by buying additional usage.  That’s Time Warner Cable’s dream-come-true, and one we are concerned about.  Once broadband usage is limited and monetized, it becomes a commodity that can be priced to earn enormous additional revenue for cable operators, regardless of the actual cost of providing the service.  That’s a dangerous precedent in today’s duopolistic broadband marketplace, because the cost per gigabyte will likely be on the order of a thousand times or more the actual cost, with no competitive pressure to keep that cost down.  That’s how Canada ended up in its Internet Overcharging pickle, where providers call $1.50-$5 per gigabyte “reasonable,” even though it costs them only pennies (and dropping) to deliver.  Some providers are even raising those prices, even as their costs plummet.  That’s not a road we want the cable or telephone industry walking down, or else we’ll find today’s enormous cable TV bills pale in comparison to the outrageous broadband service bills of the future.  Time Warner Cable provided a helpful preview in 2009 when they proposed unlimited 15/1Mbps residential service at the low, low price of $150 a month.

Vrignaud is just one more example of why Internet Overcharging risks America’s broadband future.  It’s an end run around Net Neutrality, its arbitrary, and unjustified.  The rest of the world is racing to discard what they called congestion pricing almost as fast as America’s providers (and their Wall Street cheerleaders) are racing towards Internet Overcharging.  The United States should be following Canada’s lead and hold providers to account for this kind of Internet pricing and force them to prove its warranted, or be rid of it.  With virtually every provider earning enormous profits off Internet service at today’s speed-based pricing, there remains no justification to overcharge customers for their broadband usage.

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.