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.

New Zealand is one of a handful of countries stuck with pervasive Internet Overcharging schemes that limit usage or throttle broadband speeds because of international connectivity limitations.  But as international underseas fiber cables ease traffic congestion, Internet Service Providers are increasingly relaxing usage caps and reducing the level of speed throttling during prime time usage hours.

Now one ISP, Slingshot, has gone all-out, reintroducing an unlimited, flat rate broadband option for New Zealanders who don’t want to worry about how much usage they’ve racked up over the past month.

For roughly $32.50US for the first six months, $65 after that, customers don’t have to watch a usage meter or “gas gauge” or face a wholesale heavy speed throttle when deemed to be using “too much” Internet service.

AT&T warns DSL customers they can watch 10 High Definition movies per month... and use their Internet connection for absolutely nothing else, unless they want to incur an overlimit fee of $10.

AT&T has released a phoney baloney video for their customers purporting to “explain” broadband usage and the company’s completely arbitrary usage limits on DSL and U-verse customers: “A single high-traffic user can utilize the same amount of data capacity as 19 typical households. Lopsided usage patterns can cause congestion at certain points in the network, which can slow Internet speeds and interfere with other customers’ access to and use of the network.”

Too bad these claims are not verified with actual facts.

Meaningless statistics

AT&T’s claim that less than two percent of their customers use 20 percent of available bandwidth is frankly meaningless to the company’s DSL and U-verse hybrid fiber-copper networks.  For years, phone companies made a marketing point that unlike cable broadband’s shared network, their DSL service was never shared with anyone else in a neighborhood.  Therefore, running it at a trickle or full speed ahead should have no impact on any other customer.  The only exception to this rule comes from phone companies that under-invest in their middle mile and backbone networks.  For AT&T, that means trying to serve too many customers on inadequate equipment ranging from a poorly planned network of D-SLAMs, which connect individual customers with a fatter pipeline back to the central office, or an inadequate network between the central office and AT&T’s regional backbones.  Fiber, such as that used by AT&T’s more modern U-verse system, completely solves any capacity issues.  Broadband traffic is only a tiny percentage of the bandwidth consumed by AT&T’s IPTV video service — the one that delivers U-verse TV to your home.  AT&T imposes no viewing limits on customers, of course.

Any actual capacity crunch would only show up during peak usage periods — when AT&T customers of all kinds pile on their broadband connection at the same time. AT&T’s usage cap regime does next to nothing to mitigate that kind of congestion.  Here’s why:

Since AT&T and other broadband companies routinely claim the average use per customer is well under 20GB per month, and only 2 percent of customers are currently deemed “heavy users” by AT&T, that tiny percentage of customers cannot create sufficient drag on AT&T’s DSL network even if they opened up their connections to full speed traffic.  In reality, the 98 percent of “average” users piling on the network during prime time would be the only thing capable of the kind of critical mass needed to create visible congestion.  What uses more capacity?  Two customers using their 7Mbps DSL lines to stream online videos concurrently or 98 customers all using their 7Mbps DSL lines at the same time for virtually any online activity?

The math simply doesn’t add up.

The Congestion Myth

AT&T targets their broadband customers with an unwarranted, arbitrary Internet Overcharging scheme they cannot effectively explain to customers.

As two week’s of hearings this month have demonstrated, Bell Canada’s similar arguments for its usage caps simply come without any evidence of actual congestion.  In fact, company officials modified their position to talk more about peak usage congestion, a problem that cannot be controlled with a usage cap well in excess of the average consumer’s usage.  In fact, only a speed throttle could control network congestion at the times it actually occurred.  AT&T also ignores when its customers are using its network.  Is a heavy user downloading files at 3 in the morning creating a problem for other users?  No.  Are the majority of their average-usage customers all jumping online after school or work creating a problem?  Perhaps, if you believed AT&T even had a congestion problem.

Industry maven Dave Burstein does not, and Burstein talked to two chief technology officers at AT&T who told him wired broadband congestion is a “minimal” problem for the phone company.

Upgrades and Cord-Cutting, Delayed

Two things usage caps can do is help your company delay necessary upgrades to meet customers’ broadband needs, whether they are “heavy users” or not.  AT&T has shown itself historically to be slow to invest, and cheap when it does.  AT&T’s wireless network is bottom-rated by consumers thanks to inadequate network capacity.  The company elected to upgrade on-the-cheap to an IPTV platform that still relies on copper phone lines to deliver service that simply cannot compete in quality and capacity with Verizon’s FiOS fiber to the home network.  But investors love the fact the company counts every penny, even if it means inconveniencing and overcharging customers for their services, usually offered in duopoly or monopoly markets.

AT&T’s usage caps on U-verse are even less credible than those imposed on their DSL service.  U-verse is a fiber to the neighborhood network with near limitless capacity for broadband and video.  In fact, the only “congestion” comes from the copper phone lines that limit how much bandwidth can be supplied to your individual home.  But no matter how much you use, you will not affect your neighbors because your copper phone line is shared with nobody else.  In fact, the biggest chunk of U-verse’s bandwidth is reserved for their video services, which makes arguments about excessive Internet usage on that pipeline un-credible.

What AT&T’s usage cap does assure is that you will not drop that video package from your U-verse service anytime soon.  That lucrative revenue from expensive video packages cannot be forfeit without a fight, and a nice deterrent in the form of an arbitrary usage cap does wonders to keep that cord cutting to a minimum.

Meters That Don’t Measure

One of the worst ongoing problems with Internet Overcharging schemes like AT&T’s is the broken usage meter.  Stop the Cap! has received hundreds of e-mails from AT&T DSL and U-verse customers who report AT&T’s usage meter is either unavailable, broken, or is wildly inaccurate.  With absolutely no independent oversight, and no consistently accurate usage measurement, charging anyone overlimit fees with a broken meter doing the counting is unconscionable.  Yet AT&T may well try.  The company has already been sued by one law firm for what it alleges is an unfair usage meter on the company’s wireless service — a meter that consistently overcounts usage in AT&T’s favor.

AT&T admits they cannot even accurately measure their own customers' usage.

Once getting over the broken meter, customers are directed to a pointless usage-estimator — the ones that tell you about how many tens of thousands of e-mails you can send and receive under AT&T’s cap regime.  In fact, these statistics are irrelevant for the vast majority of customers who never think of sending 10,000 e-mails or exchanging 2,000 pictures or songs.  That’s because customers do not use the Internet to exclusively do those things.  Even with the guestimator, they are left checking a broken usage meter to ponder whether or not they can watch one more show or download another file without incurring a $10 overlimit penalty (or more).  That “generous” limit AT&T touts suddenly doesn’t look so ample when the company gets to the wildly popular activity of streamed video.  AT&T’s own video warns you can only watch 10HD movies a month over your broadband connection — and absolutely nothing else.  No web browsing, e-mail, or photos or music.  Ten movies a month.  Still thinking of dropping your U-verse video subscription now?

Yet AT&T has the nerve to claim, “Our goal is to provide you with the best Internet service possible.”  Really?

Thankfully, not every member of the investor class is thrilled with nickle-and-diming broadband consumers for usage that costs the providing company next to nothing.

The Economist excoriated AT&T for its unwarranted usage limits on its blog earlier this year:

The use of caps allows providers to dish out bandwidth with one hand and take it away with the other. The companies have vastly increased the capacity of various copper, coaxial and fibre lines, but artificially separate out a portion—at least half and often much more—for video which a set-top box or a broadband modem spits out as an apparently distinct service. Cable firms simultaneously push out hundreds of digital channels, while telecoms firms rely on multiple digital streams from live broadcast or cable TV or on-demand pay-per-view. It is as though the water main were divided as it entered the home and a steady, modest stream was made available for showers and at the tap, while most of it was always at the ready for a coin-operated washing machine.

Increasing speed on the internet portion, which would allow consumers to give up on TV subscriptions, is balanced by capping volume. If a consumer does not monitor usage, his internet access can be withdrawn or, in AT&T’s case, overage fees of $10 charged for every additional 50 GB of usage. […] [That] $10 charge applies whether the limit was breached by 1 MB or a smidgen under 50 GB.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT Usage.flv[/flv]

AT&T’s new video on broadband usage is based on facts not in evidence and only adds to consumer confusion about arbitrary Internet Overcharging schemes.  (4 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.”

Remember when Bell’s head of government affairs Mirko Bibic told Parliament usage-based billing was necessary because he didn’t think it fair that all Canadians should pay for “heavy users” of the company’s Internet service?  That was a few months ago.  This is April — time for a rate increase that will jack Bell broadband service rates up an additional $3 a month, effective in May.  That’s a rate increase every customer will pay, and comes with Bell’s everyday Internet Overcharging scheme — usage caps and overlimit fees.

Stop the Cap! reader Alex in Quebec sent a copy of his bill showing Bell’s “Price Update.”  They don’t even want to call it a rate increase.

Bell's notification to customers in Quebec their bills are going up.

“Bell Canada will increase their Internet rates by as much as 15% (for Québec ”Essential” users),” Alex says. “Although $3 may seem like a negligible charge, it especially affects those with budget Internet plans, such as Essential, E Plus, and Performance ‘Fibe’ 6.”

Bell’s website cannot even get the story straight, originally telling customers their overlimit fees would now be rounded to the nearest gigabyte, instead of megabyte.  A Bell spokesperson tells Stop the Cap! that is a typo — they really still mean megabyte.

Bell is one of the few phone companies out there actually increasing their long distance calling rates as well, Alex tells us.  The original announcement came around the same time as the earthquake in Japan, underlining how essential long distance can be during natural disasters.  Many cable companies have waived long distance fees to Japan altogether.  Not Bell.

The rate increases mean customers like ‘Jackorama’ in Hamilton will pay $56.90 for “up to 7Mbps” ‘Performance DSL’ service.  After HST fees, he’ll pay $64.30 just for broadband service, with a 60GB monthly usage limit.  If he exceeds that, he’ll pay even more — $2.50 per gigabyte, or, if he knows he’ll exceed the cap in advance: $5/month for 40 GB, $10/month for 80 GB, or $15/month for 120 GB.

That also assumes Bell can count usage correctly, and there is every indication they cannot.  The company has admitted its usage meter is prone to errors — misreads they are still prepared to bill their customers.