AT&T proceeds with metered billing tests

AT&T's Own Metered Billing Plans Move Forward [Broadband Reports]

Lost in last week's news about Time Warner Cable's metered broadband tests is the news that AT&T is proceeding with its own tests of metered broadband in two trial markets. While opponents of metered broadband launched protests of Time Warner's plans after the company announced the plans to its customers, AT&T instituted service caps, avoiding any public protests because they didn't tell customers about usage-based billing until after they signed up for Internet service.

Even more interesting is the fact that AT&T's "monthly bandwidth usage allowance" tiers are remarkably similar to the sizes proposed by Time Warner Cable, starting at 20 GB. At the same time Time Warner Cable is posting pro-active communications to its customers about metered billing plans and asking customers for their comments, GigaOm reveals that AT&T provides no notice to customers in online marketing materials or terms of service.

As I said in yesterday's post, the controversy that Time Warner encountered on metered broadband was largely due to their transparency and active communications to customers about their plans. Opponents of Time Warner's tests were alerted, prompting a campaign of misinformation against the tests. Ultimately, Time Warner decided to postpone the tests until they've had an opportunity to clear up confusion about metered billing. AT&T is proceeding with their tests, absent any campaign from metered billing opponents.

Double standard anyone?

Comments

[Ben Katz]

Let's not be too quick to complain about possible deception. Insight is currently advertising that they offer access to HD completely FREE unlike satellite and AT&T (the ad specifically names AT&T as charging up to $10 to access HD content).

Insight, however, doesn't let customers know that they do, in fact, charge for access to HD until the person is signed up.

To access HD, you MUST have an HD STB which costs $5 more than the regular STB. Also, the HD tier is $11.95 a month.

AT&T is being sort of deceptive, but so is Insight- just in different ways.

[Sunshine1970]

Soo.. It's good to cap and *not* tell people so there won't be any uprising of us little people because we've already been suckered in? Is that what you're advocating? Not telling customers about tiers before they can make an informed choice is deceptive business practices, and the company should be taken to task for misleading their customers. And it now looks like they will. I've seen a few articles out there now. (stopthecap, gigaOM, NYT)

[Rob Dicken]

I fully expect AT&T to stop the test trials of metered billing. People will complain, AT&T will cease and desist.

Your argument that it's a double standard for Time Warner getting jumped on about metered billing and AT&T not, is ironic in itself. Not telling customers about being billed from a meter on their internet is deceptive and will definitely find bad business practice lawsuits in the mix from consumers and other businesses alike.

Neither company should be billing by metered service. They are not utility companies. They offer a SERVICE! There's a big difference.