You realize there's a difference between those that "man" the CSR phones and the people responsible for the IT infrastructure, billing, etc, right?
Of course there is a difference. But only in the individuals I am dealing with. My personal experience with AT&T (~2 years ago) is that they have difficulty communicating very basic information internally. This is things like upgrade eligibility, data plan pricing (between corporate and personal); you know, the stuff you can get pretty easily on the website. Now why would this be for a "telecom" company? This piece of evidence points to a pattern of incompetence that likely goes pretty deep. And, if in fact people are getting these threats from AT&T, and they call to discuss it with them, good luck getting any good information from the rep on the other end of the phone as to how they know this is happening.
As other's have pointed out, it seems like there are a few legal loopholes in what AT&T is trying to do. If they send you a message and you don't call, it's on you and they can do that (in the contract). If they change your terms of service, they have to notify you within 30 days, and you can cancel the rest of your contract. If, however, you call and they can't provide sufficient evidence of what they are accusing you of doing, and they are changing your terms no matter what, you have the right to terminate service. My guess is that they won't want you to do that, unless they have evidence that you are overloading their network. In which case, I think they can change your terms and not let you out of the contract (if someone wants to look that up, great, I don't really care enough to do it).
Someone who has received one of these messages needs to call and see what they say, and then post back. I am really curious about what kind of evidence they give you. It might be something as simple as targeting high-volume users and accusing them of tethering (as others have already mentioned).
Just because the person that answers your call doesn't know what is going on behind the scenes doesn't mean ATT isn't FULLY aware of who is and who is not tethering or what websites you are viewing, etc.
Perhaps, but it took them long enough to figure it out, or at least to take any action on it.
It's one thing to have that information, its another thing to access it and get a report on usage patterns that reliably determines that it us tethering usage. Internet usage can vary widely depending on the user. So it almost requires a human eye to look at it and make that determination. Even then, it can be a hard call.
If people aren't being careful about what they are doing online while tethered (for example, they are doing things their iPhones cannot do natively), it's pretty simple for AT&T to see that kind of activity. But someone who is smart about it can probably get by indefinitely.
I think AT&T is starting to panicking about the people who are leaving to go to Verizon. They need to make sure they are milking every dime they can get out of the iPhone users they still have.
