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Comments on news posted 2011-10-17 12:39:44: For years we've seen story after story about massive consumer wireless bills -- usually due to heavy data consumption. ..


ctgreybeard
Old dogs can learn new tricks
Premium Member
join:2001-11-13
Bethel, CT

ctgreybeard

Premium Member

AT&T has some notifications now

Last month we went to Canada and I got several texts reminding me that international data roaming was expensive. I had already turned that option off on the iPhones and we didn't incur any extra charges.

superfly12
@windstream.net

superfly12

Anon

alerts

that's all great....but they need to lower prices on internation/roaming.....i don't really think the international carriers are charging our carriers that much,our carriers just use it for an excuse to over charge us.....thats IMO

Tomek
Premium Member
join:2002-01-30
Valley Stream, NY

Tomek

Premium Member

Usage for "bad" data?

The problem with wireless products is their very low reliability.

Why meters suck.

I am on hold for 20 minutes, I am next line, my phone looses service. I get billed 20 minutes, but call was useless, need to waste another 20+ minutes to accomplish my goal.

I get spam, mistyped or otherwised unwanted SMS

Ads go against my data usage, I don't want them, I want to "opt-out" of that experience. I am downloading new ROM, 80MB later (~80% done), lost signal. Can't resume, need to retry, I still get billed for that bad data.

Something tells me, metering will never include that.

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList

Premium Member

it's a miracle that they won't include these notification messages in the sms count.

djdanska
Rudie32
Premium Member
join:2001-04-21
San Diego, CA

djdanska to superfly12

Premium Member

to superfly12

Re: alerts

said by superfly12 :

that's all great....but they need to lower prices on internation/roaming.....i don't really think the international carriers are charging our carriers that much,our carriers just use it for an excuse to over charge us.....thats IMO

Oh i agree. It's uber annoying that when i travel overseas, i am paying t-mobile uk $2 a freaking minute when it's owned by the same company as my us mobile carrier! If t-mobile where to have a package where you can roam on other t-mobile networks, it would get a LOT of business from travelers and businesses.
decifal7
join:2007-03-10
Bon Aqua, TN

decifal7

Member

not crazy

Yeah, i'm not crazy about being billed for dropped packets even though I never benefited from them.. Its like pumping gas for your car and just receiving 3/4 of a gallon rather than the whole amount.. It adds up, and its wrong.

But what can you do if you want/need broadband and no landline is available? ATT/Verizon copied each others plans basically and sprint.. Well, if I had a tower in the middle of my house they could compete, but my god.. Signal sucks here..

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to djdanska

Premium Member

to djdanska

Re: alerts

if you have a smartphone, get a data plan for while you are traveling and maybe take your chances with a sip provider.

djdanska
Rudie32
Premium Member
join:2001-04-21
San Diego, CA

djdanska

Premium Member

Oh both my samsung galaxy s 4g and nexus one are sim unlocked and have international 3g (or 4g) support, so i do get a local sim card. But, i also do have wifi calling. I can and do put in my t-mobile sim overseas and make free calls using wifi.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA

Premium Member

Bill Shock

shouldn't exist at all. PERIOD.

Back in the days of AOL, if you didn't have the $25 unlimited plan, they capped your overages at $35. So cap texting overages at $30 or $35, since the unlimited is $20. Cap voice overages at 150% of the unlimited plan. Throttle data by default instead of charging overages, or after a few overage blocks have been used up.

Also, international roaming is an absolute SCAM. There is no reason whatsoever that it should cost 10x or more to use an AT&T phone overseas as it would to use a local SIM. It's one giant internet and network, there is no reason for high roaming charges, or high international charges, since Skype and others have done that for 2.2 cents. If they can do it for that, why can't AT&T do 5 and still make a crapload of money? This is a systemic problem, not a billing problem.

That and cruise ship roaming is insane. The cruise ship operators should eat the cost of the systems, not charge insane overage fees, or insane wifi connection fees. Most of those boats are close enough to land most of the time that they should be able to use masted antennas with ground-based connectivity, not satellite to bring the cost down as well. Connecting a high-speed link over 100 miles or more shouldn't be hard if you've got a 250 foot tower on land, and antennas high up on a large cruise ship, and at that size, you could use tracking directional antennas.

rchandra
Stargate Universe fan
Premium Member
join:2000-11-09
14225-2105
ARRIS ONT1000GJ4
EnGenius EAP1250

1 edit

rchandra to decifal7

Premium Member

to decifal7

Re: not crazy

That's why we would/should need something analogous to the Erie County Bureau of Weights and Measures. They are responsible for making sure that, within a tolerance I'm sure, a gallon of fuel measured by a pump is a gallon. But that's just western New York State. National law would require a national standards/certification agency...NIST perhaps? They certainly have a lot of networking experience as one of they country's prime providers of NTP reference time.
rchandra

rchandra

Premium Member

question the need at all

I for one am glad to see the operators voluntarily implementing something instead of the government putting their grubby little hands into even more private entities. But overall, I don't get it, at least not for the US market (can't speak due to lack of knowledge about non-US carriers).

If you're worried about going through your mobile budget before the end of your billing cycle, the answer to me is extraordinarily simple: get off your postpaid program and use prepaid instead. If you use up your minutes or data, your phone reverts to 9-1-1 and the company's numbers/sites only. You will then be quite aware of when your budget's been blown, because you'll have to add more money to your account. I'm not sure it could get a bunch simpler than that.

@BiggA: not quite sure about that. Telecomms billing, for whatever stupid reasons, are really, really convoluted when crossing international borders, immaterial of the medium (except for maybe Internet).

Bill Neilson
Premium Member
join:2009-07-08
Alexandria, VA

1 recommendation

Bill Neilson

Premium Member

The fact that this has to be a big deal

shows what utter garbage these ISP's really are in terms of how they treat consumers.

If it weren't for the media stories of people being charged thousands (and thus getting on Google/CNN about it), I doubt any ISP would give a rats ass who they screwed.

As Karl stated (and is always the case), there is absolutely zero penalty for AT&T or others if they break this.

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to djdanska

Premium Member

to djdanska

Re: alerts

I will miss the wifi calling when AT&T takes over as well.

kevinds
Premium Member
join:2003-05-01
Calgary, AB

kevinds to ctgreybeard

Premium Member

to ctgreybeard

Re: AT&T has some notifications now

That message would have been from the carrier you connected to.

When I get close to the US bordetr, I just get a text, welcome to AT&T text message, when I connect.

Some of the carriers up here send out a message like that, to tell people to be careful.
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