dhascall
dhascall
bld522 wrote:That's all well and good, ScottMac. But it doesn't overcome the fact that AT&T alone will be providing its customers with monthly usage data. There will be NO governmental oversight, NO independent means of verifying AT&T's data, and NO avenue to challenge AT&T's data other than to AT&T itself. I won't ask you if you're comfortable with that arrangement. But I'd sure like to know how many bridges you've purchased lately.
Amen brother! Gasoline stations have government standards and weights divisions that check the pumps for accuracy, You have gas and electric utilities that have user readable meters. Grocery stores have scales that are double checked but I do agree that some oversight is not only needed, it should be required.
Somejoe7777 pointed out to me that no one can provide who or what was using your bandwidth without deep packet analysis so I guess that i won't get a report that says "sent a 10 mb email at 8:57," "downloaded a 350Mb audio file at 8:59" and so on but how do/can we trust a company who's main line is "trust us?"
AND who would do this oversight? AT&T would fight any government attempst at hardware monitoring. I could see a small box that sets on top of the RG that has an LCD or LED readout with your usage or maybe a new RG with the display. They won't do that. It might not makethem as much money. Maybe an independent auditor. deloitte? Probably not. We'd get the firm called "Cheatem and How." 
dhascall wrote:
bld522 wrote:That's all well and good, ScottMac. But it doesn't overcome the fact that AT&T alone will be providing its customers with monthly usage data. There will be NO governmental oversight, NO independent means of verifying AT&T's data, and NO avenue to challenge AT&T's data other than to AT&T itself. I won't ask you if you're comfortable with that arrangement. But I'd sure like to know how many bridges you've purchased lately.
Amen brother! Gasoline stations have government standards and weights divisions that check the pumps for accuracy, You have gas and electric utilities that have user readable meters. Grocery stores have scales that are double checked but I do agree that some oversight is not only needed, it should be required.
Somejoe7777 pointed out to me that no one can provide who or what was using your bandwidth without deep packet analysis so I guess that i won't get a report that says "sent a 10 mb email at 8:57," "downloaded a 350Mb audio file at 8:59" and so on but how do/can we trust a company who's main line is "trust us?"
AND who would do this oversight? AT&T would fight any government attempst at hardware monitoring. I could see a small box that sets on top of the RG that has an LCD or LED readout with your usage or maybe a new RG with the display. They won't do that. It might not makethem as much money. Maybe an independent auditor. deloitte? Probably not. We'd get the firm called "Cheatem and How."
Well in all fairness this IS a very heavily regulated industry as it is. If Big Oil was regulated as much as your telco's were the price at the pump would go into a free fall over night. That being said, ATT could argue, yell and scream all it wants, but if the FCC says there going to audit each and every broadband "meter reading". They have no choice but to obey, or risk loosing the network. The telecom act of 1996 taught them that very plainly. That and they almost lost the ability to collect there USF fees back then. I am quite sure they aren't willing to risk that either. Those USF Fee's are billions of dollars in revenue which is earmarked for network build out. They know it and they aren't about to risk loosing it. Getting back to the point. If enough people complain to the FCC, then they will investigate. Usually that alone is enough to make ATT cease and desist. But we shall see.
Escapee wrote:I have a question for the no caps crowd?
If they raise the price on everybody but drop the cap then instead of the heaviest users bearing the burden the lowest users will. Why is that fair.
The way I see it: Adding caps (overage fees) does not make it fairer unless you were to also lower the bill of the lowest users. If you add overage fees it screws the light users and the heavy users. So is it fairer because everybody gets screwed? LOL
What would be fair is starting everyone's bill at $0 and then charging everyone the same per GB fee. But AT&T would never do that because they make the most money now on the lowest users.
But to more completely answer what I think would be fairer than the proposed caps, see my post HERE.
Now to get a little more philosophical: From what I understand, AT&T does not pay per GB transferred. They pay for total bandwidth available, and it costs virtually the same whether it is in use or not. So really, heavy users are not costing any more than light users. The expense comes from upgrading when saturation reaches a point that it slows everyone down. So if you look at it from that perspective, the most appropriate way to pass the cost onto us is the same way: Charge us for how fast it can go, and not by how much we use it (the current method of billing). If you never over-subscribed anything, then we would all be able to transfer at our max speed all the time with no issues to AT&T. I realize oversubscribing network bandwidth is considered normal practice... but I'm just using this example to illustrate that the current billing method with no caps or overage fees makes the most sense when you think about how to pass AT&T's costs onto the customer with some profit built-in.
I am currently paying for 24mbps @ $65/month. I don't believe AT&T is paying nearly that much for 24Mbps when you're talking fiber that can carry multiple Gbps. It's not like they rent a T3 for each of us. So there is profit that could be made if I had my line saturated at full throttle non-stop the entire month. It's just everyone can't do that concurrently because the oversubscription infrastructure falls apart. But if AT&T is appropriately utilizing the funds we are already paying, the upgrading should still be able to happen and AT&T continue to make money. Maybe not the ridiculously high profit margin they are after. I'm sure my $215/mo cell phone bill has more profits in it. But that doesn't make it okay with me to "fix" my Internet bill to make just as much profit for AT&T.
But more than fairness, more than profit or lack thereof, I believe the Internet is the future of many technologies existing, and yet-to-be conceived. Getting more/better/faster/cheaper is how it will grow and thrive. Adding caps and overage fees is moving us backwards. People that are not willing to "stand up to the man" and change carriers or do without to make their voices heard are already returning TVs, canceling online subscriptions, etc. Exactly the opposite of the Internet explosion that is (and should be) happening. The USA invented the Internet, and now we lag behind at least 20 other countries in bandwidth per capita, and with caps and overage fees, we will just fall farther behind. If AT&T had a more Google-like attitude, we'd all have more/better/faster/cheaper RIGHT NOW. 
