[HN Gopher] ISPs complain that listing every fee is too hard, ur...
___________________________________________________________________
ISPs complain that listing every fee is too hard, urge FCC to scrap
new rule
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 145 points
Date : 2023-08-15 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| badrabbit wrote:
| Hear me out: Privatize all ISPs and run them USPS style (gov
| owned, non-gov board operated). Not just email but the internet
| is more vital than USPS, there is a reason it was never made
| fully private. New ISPs should still be allowed like fedex and
| ups are with usps.
|
| You pay thus bill but you also pay them again with your tax money
| with the hefty rural service subsidies they basically rob from
| the government.
|
| Municipal internet is thinking too small, federal internet is
| more like it. Last mile should be 100% gov owned with
| CPE/NID/inside-wiring installed by the gov or competing ISPs but
| owned by the consumer.
|
| The fed gov should just buy out their majority share stock and do
| a hostile takeover and buy the rest of the shares once price
| tanks when people here it will be operated at a loss.
|
| No more outsourced support,etc... because fedgov can't do that.
| And my favorite benefit: they can't sell your info to third
| parties and then have the gov buy it from them once they are
| operated by the fed.
|
| This type of stuff seems crazy but it can happen!
| xnx wrote:
| I don't care about fees as much as I care about competitors (e.g.
| Google Fiber) getting easy access to poles.
| mkl95 wrote:
| In my country, everything seems to be too hard for ISPs. Imho
| governments should impose some SLAs and force them to disclose
| their hidden fees. I honestly believe ISPs and their leaders are
| not just evil but stupid enough that they cannot improve on their
| own.
| spicybright wrote:
| Not stupid. They just know they don't have to improve on their
| own because it costs money with no returns.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, etc should not exist. They are rent-
| seekers.
|
| The people in the US who have the best Internet access are those
| where the service is provided by municipal broadband (eg [1]).
| You will never fix these big national ISPs because they exist
| solely to maximize shareholder profit while providing the least
| service possible at the highest price they can get away with
| while lobbying to change laws to benefit them and lock in their
| monopolies (eg to make municipal broadband illegal).
|
| As an aside, these national ISPs exemplify capitalism. Municipal
| broadband, by definition, follows socialistic principles (where
| the municipality and, by extension, its residents own the means
| of production).
|
| [1]: https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/
| mistrial9 wrote:
| great bravado but not even close to happening..
|
| here in California apparently there are only two companies that
| actually supply internet backbone to residential customers -
| perhaps those are AT&T and Comcast? Every other residential
| Internet service provider in California are resellers of those
| services.
|
| Why is this? there is what is _said_ and then what is _done_ ..
| as others have mentioned, no company securing those regulated
| monopoly positions would ever voluntarily give that up. It is
| very likely that those providers also play-well with whatever
| domestic surveillance is on tap since Clinton. Adding the word
| "socialistic" is simply corking the bottle, it would easily be
| mocked in public media while the backrooms play out.
| NickC25 wrote:
| If they can charge for the fee, they should be by law mandated to
| tell me what it's for, and where it's going.
|
| Sick of these TelCos getting billions in subsidies, not spending
| it on infrastructure as promised (somehow they are allowed to act
| as a for-profit corporation!?), lobbying to get more taxpayer
| money, and then whining when we find out that half the fees on
| the bills they send out are just to pad profits. Greedy bastards,
| the lot of them. Time to cut the crap and just regulate them as
| utilities.
| eli wrote:
| They've been getting away for decades with labeling all sorts
| of their own costs as "taxes" and "fees" to customers. It's
| very misleading and IMHO should be illegal.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Exactly my thought. This problem wouldn't have existed if the
| ISPs didn't for decades advertise a plan for $50 and then
| charge $100 by adding on items like "just because we can fee"
| and "fee for processing your fee".
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know what this means, but local franchise fees are in
| fact taxes.
| eli wrote:
| I just pulled up an old comcast bill and it has: "Federal
| Cost Recovery Fee" and "Universal Service Fund Surcharge
| (State)" and "Utility User's Tax /Business" and "Universal
| Connectivity Charge" and "911 Line Tax (State)"
| tptacek wrote:
| Those are all pass-through fees. They are just taxes.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If I understand what you're saying correctly, I think the
| Junk Fee Prevention Act, which Joe Biden championed in this
| last SOTU address, is being marketed as doing this, more or
| less.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Removing laws that enforce non-competition by municipalities
| would be a fine start.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Banning them from lobbying would also be a welcome change.
| How can a utility with a monopoly on services be allowed to
| buy favorable laws in government?
| mulmen wrote:
| You can't ban lobbying in a representative democracy.
| spicebox wrote:
| Yes you can, even if you don't want to restrict lobbying
| on free speech ground you can place donation caps and
| increase transparency requirements which would both limit
| the power of corporate lobbying
| TylerE wrote:
| They'll just add another layer of rat finkery on top,
| making the whole mess EVEN LESS transparent.
|
| PACs were limited lobbying.
|
| That wasn't good enough...so we got super PACs with
| virtually no oversight what-so-ever.
| mulmen wrote:
| Donation caps and transparency aren't bans. Our system is
| based on representatives acting on behalf of
| constituents. When a constituent contacts their
| representative that's lobbying. Lobbying _is_ the system.
| So you can't _ban_ it.
| spicebox wrote:
| The issue is that lobbying has two different meanings.
| The literal meaning is trying to influence politicians
| but the common usage refers to when companies and special
| interest groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars on
| donations and advertising to get politicians to pass laws
| that benefit them. The first meaning, which is what
| you're talking about, is fine. But the second meaning,
| which is what people mean when they talk about banning
| lobbying, is the opposite of democracy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can end donations entirely, and disqualify candidates
| who accept them. The government can put up a website
| where you can get information about candidates, send
| everyone bundles of information, schedule debates in a
| standard format with clear rules for participation, and
| throw events where candidates can give speeches, and
| distribute those speeches to everybody who wants them.
| You can give everybody a day off to vote.
|
| The reason government is corrupt is because we want it to
| be corrupt. If it weren't corrupt, nobody would pick this
| endless shower of dynastic creeps.
|
| There is no good democratic outcome for $175K a year jobs
| that cost half a billion dollars to apply for.
| spicebox wrote:
| > There is no good democratic outcome for $175K a year
| jobs that cost half a billion dollars to apply for.
|
| I would argue that this is a reason to reform our
| electoral system rather than just resign ourselves to a
| corrupt system. If it didn't cost half a billion dollars
| to become a politician and the pay better reflected the
| job responsibilities (along with other reforms) we'd
| probably see less corruption
| briandear wrote:
| Banning lobbying is banning free speech. Anyone should be
| able to lobby the government.
| derefr wrote:
| Who's this "anyone"? Why are monopolies suddenly people?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why are monopolies suddenly people?
|
| Who else besides people would control a monopoly?
| tarboreus wrote:
| If the people running the monopoly want to lobby the
| government on their own time, uncompensated, that
| certainly sounds fine. It's lobbying on behalf of the
| monopoly that is an issue.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Who 's this "anyone"? Why are monopolies suddenly
| people?_
|
| Corporations have always been legal persons, going back
| to the Middle Ages (guilds, chartered cities,
| universities) and even Ancient Rome:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Corporations are legal entities separate from people.
| They do not have the same rights and responsibilities as
| humans.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| What's amazing is how many people misunderstand this, and
| think the government treats a legal person as a full
| flesh and blood person.
| spicebox wrote:
| Why? What is the benefit to the public good of allowing
| corporations to use their massive resources to shape
| legislation to benefit them at the expense of the general
| public?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Generally industries are much better than random
| politicians at predicting the consequences of rules.
| Obviously it isn't good if the rules being made are
| entirely in the interests of incumbents, but it's also
| bad if the rules don't make sense or ignore the realities
| of some industry or technology. Even ignoring lobbying,
| you see regulators reaching out for comments from
| industry about new rules.
|
| Though perhaps lobbying (as practiced or in general)
| should still be considered inappropriate.
| spicebox wrote:
| > Generally industries are much better than random
| politicians at predicting the consequences of rules
|
| This is true but when people are talking about
| restricting lobbying the kind of lobbying they want to
| restrict isn't companies saying "hey this policy isn't
| good for us". It's companies spending millions of dollars
| on donations and advertising to force politicians to make
| laws that benefit them. It's possible to restrict the
| second kind without impacting the first kind, for example
| by implementing spending limits.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The article linked at the top of this thread is the
| former thing. But maybe that's not relevant.
|
| Aren't the rules on donations made by companies pretty
| restricted in the US? Isn't it normally that companies
| persuade their employees to give to some company pac (as
| a deduction from their paycheck) and that pac then makes
| maximum campaign contributions to various politicians.
| (The limits on both contributions to the pac and to
| campaigns are pretty small. On the order of $5k. It seems
| unlikely to matter much to a politician but maybe they do
| care).
|
| Maybe you're not talking about the US or maybe I'm wrong
| or there is some other mechanism I don't understand
| pessimizer wrote:
| People should be able to say what they want. They
| shouldn't be able to pay politicians for favorable
| treatment. If that's somehow required for free speech, we
| should get rid of free speech.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Lobbying isn't the issue. The corrupt politicians who just
| implement whatever telcos request are.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Quid-pro-quo bribery isn't the issue. The corrupt
| politicians who accept bribes are the issue."
|
| This isn't how we do legal policy. We wouldn't say "all
| bribery laws are gone, we'll just make sure that we don't
| have any politicians that accept bribes some other way."
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Well, you're kind of right. Bribery disguised as lobbying
| is the issue, not lobbying itself.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So instead of regulating lobbying, it would be easier to
| eradicate all potentially corruptible people from the
| planet.
| zakki wrote:
| The politicians corrupted because of the lobbying. How
| can we put them in separate basket?
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| They're not corrupt _because_ of lobbying, they are
| already corrupt and take advantage of lobbying.
|
| There are things that could be done but the people in
| office making the laws are not interested, and the
| population is too apathetic/indoctrinated to make the
| correct choices.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| There were rumors Amazon was entering the space. It would be
| awesome for incumbents to be disrupted and for the system to
| move towards actual competition.
|
| I wish Google was able to achieve this with their GrandCentral
| acquisition, but as usual they Google let their acquisition
| wither away.
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| Please no.
|
| I agree disruption in the space would be great, but don't let
| Amazon enter the ISP space. They have enough money, and power
| over the internet, as is.
|
| I would have to think that would be an antitrust violation
| anyway.
| belval wrote:
| (I work at AWS)
|
| I know this is close to whataboutism so I will try to
| choose my words carefully, but does Amazon really have that
| much power over the Internet? Realistically Amazon does not
| have a large advert network, footing in mobile, operating
| systems or web browsers?
|
| They have some control in the form of AWS/Route 53 but
| that's a far cry from some larger DNS, domain registrar and
| CDN providers.
|
| Not denying that they have a lot of money, but even when
| using that money to try and buy a user base (Alexa or Fire
| Tablet/TV) their success has been pretty limited overall.
| krono wrote:
| Without meaning to imply anything, I do suppose that
| powering much of the western internet does indeed equal
| having much power over the internet.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| There are different forms of power. Pretend you could
| switch off AWS completely tomorrow. How much of the
| internet would disappear?
| thewildginger wrote:
| When you control the most common way to buy and sell
| goods personal goods in the western world, you control a
| lot more than the internet. You control everything else.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Seriously...don't give Bezos any ideas. Amazon in the ISP
| space would be an absolute disaster for consumers.
| crazygringo wrote:
| ISP's are _already_ a disaster for consumers, with their
| totally deceptive pricing and invented fees.
|
| _Any_ new entrant can only increase competition and
| drive down prices.
|
| Amazon as an ISP would be amazing for me. There's only
| one ISP that serves my neighborhood already, so _any_
| additional one would be a godsend.
|
| If it's between no new ISP and a new Amazon ISP, I'll
| take Amazon any day of the week.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, this is backwards.
|
| From the NCTA's Ex Parte filing: they're objecting to reporting
| requirements for pass-through fees from federal, state, and
| local governments. Importantly, none of these are fees ISPs
| "can" charge; they're taxes that public bodies collect through
| the ISP's billing system. In some cases, those "fees" are added
| by statutory mandate; in others, they're a condition of access
| to municipal last-mile infrastructure (as is the case with
| franchise fees).
|
| I generally think most middle-class people aren't taxed enough
| (yell at me somewhere else about this). But these taxes are
| frustrating. They're hidden on ISP bills, so you can't easily
| tell that they represent your local municipality milking you
| for fee revenue. And they're not even consistent; for instance,
| because Comcast runs copper television service, they've got a
| different history with many municipalities and different
| contract stipulations. In other words: your local government
| can tax you specifically for using (or not using) Comcast.
| That's messed up.
|
| It should be the responsibility of public bodies that levy fees
| to make sure that people are made aware of the nature of those
| fees. The ISPs aren't responsible for this stuff, and shouldn't
| be asked to do more work to further conceal decisions our
| elected officials are making for us.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I don't see any fees on my Comcast bill for Internet only. Do
| these other fees come from cable TV?
| luma wrote:
| Somehow it's _really_hard_ to list all the fees ahead of time,
| yet it's still _really_easy_ to list them all when it comes time
| to bill their millions of subscribers each and every month. The
| largest of these companies manage to compute this number more
| than a billion times a year.
|
| Any regulator who takes this line of reasoning seriously is
| immediately suspect.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think this story is not very interesting. In particular:
|
| - Some new regulations were proposed. The regulator asks for
| comments. The industry says they don't like the regulations. That
| is the general story here and so I think it is mostly not
| interesting.
|
| - The headline thing does sound hard. If you can't see why it
| might be hard to figure out from your software and policies
| (built up through decades of mergers) exactly what all the fees
| are, I think you basically have a lack of imagination. Plenty of
| online stores even struggle to show you how much sales tax you'll
| be charged. It is right for industry to state that this is hard
| but that it is hard needn't mean that the regulations shouldn't
| apply. Sometimes new rules are harder to implement than
| regulators expected and their deadlines get pushed back, but I
| think that's basically still normal. I don't think there is
| anything interesting here
|
| - Some other comments made were that consumers would find the
| list of fees confusing. That does sound confusing. (It would be
| even worse if they had to read out such a schedule over the
| phone) I personally think it wouldn't be a particularly good
| outcome of the regulations for consumers to see some long list of
| potential extra fees below the sticker price - they don't know
| the true price before and they don't know the true price
| afterwards. I was not entirely convinced by the argument that
| this is like sales tax. I didn't look at the alternative
| proposals, but plausibly some could be better. For example you
| could require a maximum price inclusive of fees and taxes be
| conspicuously advertised and require that fees may not total
| above this advertised maximum. It seems to me that the right rule
| would require companies to publish some number representing their
| cost where decreasing that number (a) gets them more business on
| the margin and (b) leads to less surprise bills to customers. The
| max-bill number could be decreased by knowing better what fees
| would be charged or by actually reducing the cost of services and
| I think both of those are things the regulator wants
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm with the ISPs on this, at least partway. Some of the fees
| ISPs charge aren't really fees at all, but rather pass-through
| taxes, set by ordinance and mandated into ISP bills through local
| franchise agreements. These aren't ISP fees at all; the ISPs
| don't control them, don't benefit from them, and presumably would
| rather they not exist at all.
|
| Annoyingly, the point of sale for Internet connections isn't
| necessarily the municipality where installation happens, meaning
| that to give a complete record of these fees, ISPs need
| infrastructure to look them up by address. It's not the world's
| hardest IT problem, but it's a cost imposed on them by external
| actors, and those costs all get passed to consumers.
| exabrial wrote:
| Ok I'll be the odd person out and say this is actually sort of
| reasonable. I only know this because I've worked on large batch
| billing systems before. (Yes on a mainframe too. Gen-Z check your
| iWatch for a pulse).
|
| In the US, nearly any given city, un-incorporated area, county,
| region, state, can assess a tax for services. These things are
| like fleas. They're hard to track down and full compliance is
| nearly impossible, and the if-ands-butts when they apply and when
| they come-go is an added challenge, especially if they apply like
| to persons visiting the area.
|
| I'm _guessing_ whats happening is most counties are like "our
| population is X" and you can estimate the tax billed owed on
| that, and that's good enough for government work. Customizing a
| billing system to individualize and print the $0.04 is an
| enormous expense for literally no benefit to the consumer.
|
| Again, just a guess.
|
| Now ISPs, many of them being entrenched monopolies, obviously
| hide behind their finances to rip consumers off. I'm not
| advocating for that. The real problem is a lot of these
| municipalities _invited_ the Comcasts of the world in at steep
| discounts, and now are crying that there is no competition
| (Because nobody else can compete profitably). That is another
| issue, but I don't think printing an extra $0.04 on your bill is
| going to make a lick of difference.
| eli wrote:
| The rule at issue is about "discretionary" fees -- not ones
| imposed by a government.
|
| What's happening in many cases is states or localities are
| requiring _the telco_ to comply with some law (e.g. to have
| functional 911) and the telcos get away with misleading
| customers into thinking their cost of doing business is your
| government tax.
| kibwen wrote:
| That doesn't change the fact that they somehow manage to figure
| out the fees at billing time. If they need my street address in
| order to determine the eventual fees, that's fine. But for them
| to say that it just can't be done is to piss on me and tell me
| that it's raining.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Capitalism is predicated upon consumers being able to make a
| rational purchasing decision. If true costs are hidden, there
| is no way for someone to assess the product before them. Maybe
| the fees are an irrelevant $.04 today, but that could turn into
| a hidden $6.99 tomorrow
| TuringNYC wrote:
| My favorite thing is when Telcos say they cannot tell you how
| much their plan will cost when you sign the contract, but
| magically, they are able to figure it out when you get your first
| bill.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Well is it usage based? There are potentially real reasons they
| might not be able to tell you.
| ender341341 wrote:
| With usage based they can tell you it will be "base cost +
| cost/unit", but some carriers will tell you they can't
| determine the taxes/fees you'll be subject to until you're
| billed.
|
| It likely wouldn't hold up in court very well, but also you'd
| have to be able afford that
| throitallaway wrote:
| This is why I like (for cell plans) prepaid carriers. Their
| prices are all-inclusive.
| [deleted]
| thomas-st wrote:
| A while ago I was helping a friend pick a cell phone plan with
| T-Mobile USA. If you study their plans, the "Essentials" plan
| does not include "taxes and fees", but their "Magenta" plan does.
| When contacting T-Mobile, they could not tell me what the fees
| were even after providing the specific ZIP code. They said I
| would have to sign up for the plan first, and could then see the
| fees on the bill. Even when I told them that the choice of plan
| would depend on the amount of taxes and fees, they were not able
| to tell me and said that I could look at the current cell phone
| bill with the current carrier, and that the taxes and fees should
| be similar.
|
| It is crazy they can't tell you how much you'll be paying before
| signing up.
| tguvot wrote:
| used to work in a company that build and implemented BSS/OSS
| system for major telcos (including the one that you mentioned).
|
| I can totally see that high level pricing for a packages is
| modeled globally and exposed to sales team while taxes are
| implemented only in billing system, because its "zip code"
| specific.
| throitallaway wrote:
| I recently signed up for a business TMobile tablet plan. I had
| the option to choose taxes/fees as included or extra. The plans
| are identical. I have no clue why that's even an option, but
| I'm glad I get to pay a nice round number.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That exists because somewhere out there in the world is a
| category of businesses have to deal with the cost and taxes
| separately for legal or tax reasons. I've run into it before
| and it's incredibly annoying when all you have is a single
| line item on the bill. It's even more fun when you add
| currency conversions on top.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > It is crazy they can't tell you how much you'll be paying
| before signing up.
|
| Even further along the dystopic spectrum: Imagine if it worked
| like health care insurance. Even monthly bills would be only
| guesses subject to arbitrary revision.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Health insurance premiums are set annually. I don't think
| insurance companies can legally change premiums after the
| insurance regular approved them.
| Terr_ wrote:
| "It was recently discovered that your procedure involved a
| duck, however the insurance company will only cover geese,
| so here is the revised bill... Er, an invoice, not the
| animal's."
| gwright wrote:
| My favorite example in this space is college
| tuition/room/board. This seems to be the only example of a
| service in which you have to share all your financial details
| with the vendor and then they will tell you how much it is
| going to cost.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| Many types of loans you can take out, where approval and
| interest are dependent on your credit history and assets,
| and also your tax burden to the government, are kind of
| like that too. Really anything where the amount charged
| varies with your ability to pay.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I've tried to pay a healthcare bill for an operation and a
| followup that had been completed months prior, and they still
| would not tell me how much I owed. I just got sporadic bills
| in the mail and there was a single website where I could
| enter how much I wanted to pay them in total. I waited a
| couple months, walked to the hospital, and asked them for the
| sum. They told me they had no way to know. I paid what I
| thought I owed and then I guess somebody figured it out
| without telling me, so I ended up in collections for a two
| figure sum.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This is just how regulation in the US works. Agencies propose
| rules and affected companies and individuals voice any concerns
| when the rule is opened up for public comment. If they didn't
| voice concerns, we'd have a pretty terrible world where rules are
| handed down by fiat blindly.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| We'll stop getting junk fees when (1) people stop checking out
| carts with higher prices than advertised or (2) total prices are
| required by law, like in Australia.
| mh8h wrote:
| As someone who has dealt with crazy tax codes and different
| regulatory fees in telecoms I can tell you that the systems that
| calculate those bills are very old and clunky. They are built to
| handle billing in batches, and are not suitable to provide
| accurate amounts to be shown on the consumer facing website on
| demand.
|
| Of course they can build something that is suitable. But they are
| a combination of [lazy, greedy, corrupt, under-resourced].
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| That sounds like a technical debt to me.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > ISPs object to a portion of the FCC order that says, "providers
| must list all recurring monthly fees" including "all charges that
| providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated
| by a government." The five trade groups complain that this would
| require ISPs "to display the pass-through of fees imposed by
| federal, state, or local government agencies on the consumer
| broadband label."
|
| OK, so their problem is solely with pass-through 1:1 fees from
| local governments, and the ISPs totally agree that there's no
| problem showing their _own_ fees that aren 't one-to-one pass-
| through amounts, right?... _Riiiight?_
|
| > Comcast said the non-mandatory fees also include pass-through
| of state and local government fees.
|
| Sounds like they're _choosing_ to mix fees [are / aren't] their
| fault together, and then whining that it's "unfair" to make them
| list _any_ of them.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| No, because this article is only focusing on one objection
| here. You'll have to do some googling.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| They should want to show pass through fees. I had no idea there
| were any.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| "Local government fees" are often fees the provider pays for a
| certain level of exclusivity...
|
| They don't want you to see the recurring bribes to the local
| politicians...
| em-bee wrote:
| actually, i don't care that much about a list of all the fees.
| they just need to include them in the listed price. in some
| countries it's even required by law to do it that way.
| chris_wot wrote:
| If they are charging a fee, it means they are doing something.
| Better tell us what that is.
| danuker wrote:
| Ah! Listing it is too hard, but charging it isn't.
| Volundr wrote:
| I'd bet internally their accounting is indeed reporting on
| these separate fees with great accuracy.
| mkl95 wrote:
| To be fair, having a solid finance department and a shoddy-
| everything-else is a pretty common pattern.
| eli wrote:
| Sounds like they need to update their systems. But don't
| worry, they can just add a Fee Reporting Recovery Fee to
| recoup the cost from customers.
| sterwill wrote:
| Google Fiber gets this right. They say my Internet package will
| cost $70 and every month the total I get charged is $70.
| tzs wrote:
| That's how Comcast works here in western Washington.
|
| If you have non-internet service from them (such as TV, phone,
| or home security) there are plenty of fees on your bill which
| makes it more than the advertised price of your package, but if
| you just have internet the bill matches the advertised price.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > if you just have internet the bill matches the advertised
| price.
|
| Until your fixed-rate introductory period ends. After that,
| watch the price creep up month by month. I've even seen very
| low-speed service become more pricey than high-speed service
| (possibly because it's no longer being advertised, so the
| rate doesn't have to look good).
|
| Source: experience with a non-Comcast cable provider.
| tzs wrote:
| > Until your fixed-rate introductory period ends.
|
| If you are on a contract then when the contract ends your
| fixed rate will jump from the contract fixed rate to the
| advertised fixed rate for month to month service.
|
| If you are not on a contract internet is fixed rate at the
| advertised plan rate.
|
| For example if I go to their site and pretend do be someone
| moving to my area and look at their plans for my
| neighborhood my current plan without a 2 year contract is
| $73/month, or $63/month if you go paperless and use use
| autopay. That's the same price I am paying as a long time
| customer on that plan.
|
| With a 2 year contract it is $45/month or $35/month if you
| go paperless and use autopay for years 1 and 2, and then
| goes to up to the prices from the previous paragraph.
|
| It really is that simple. Plan price, minus $10/month for
| paperless and autopay, minus promotional discount if on a
| contract.
|
| When you add TV or voice then you get things that won't
| necessarily be fixed rate. There's a broadcast TV fee and
| if you TV package includes sports channels a regional
| sports fee. If you have voice then there are state fees.
| There are also state taxes on TV and voice.
| Cerium wrote:
| ATT and Sonic fiber too. Both listed a price and charged it (90
| and 50 respectfully).
| bsimpson wrote:
| Also MonkeyBrains in SF: they charge $105 every 3 months.
| delvinj wrote:
| Same with US Internet in Minneapolis. I couldn't be more
| pleased with the service, coming off of 15 years with Comcast.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What kind of speed do you get? is this municipal wifi?
| remexre wrote:
| I'm a happy customer until the end of the month (moving out
| of their service area, sadly); I had symmetric gigabit. No
| IPv6, though.
| sschueller wrote:
| Same here. CHF 777 per year for my 25gbit internet and TV
| service [1] . Any extra fees from interconnects etc are already
| included.
|
| Same goes for sales tax. It must be included in the price of
| the product when displaying the price. No surprises at the cash
| register.
|
| [1] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
| Blammar wrote:
| Now you're making me want to move to Switzerland, even though
| I hate living in the mountains...
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| In Australia all prices are written on the box. Do US quoted
| prices not include tax or something? How many additional fees
| are there?
| supertrope wrote:
| If only I could pay "up to" $65 per month. I downgraded from a
| gigabit plan because it was performing at 600-750 Mbps and only
| when using the ISP's own speed test. The upload wasn't any faster
| than the 500/50 plan. On real world tests like downloading Linux
| ISOs or downloading a 100GB game off Steam or Epic it was only
| 200-350 Mbps. What's the point of a speed tier that only works
| on-net?
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