AT&T Sued Over Alleged Overbilling for iOS Device Data Usage

[SeaFox]

I don't buy it. Got a link?

I'm not interested in looking. Believe me or not, I could care less. This isn't some new revelation is the point. A basic search on Google will bring up lots of discussions on Mac forums and AT&T's own support forums going back for months.

Why dont AT&T's own people know this?

You think companies really tell their support reps everything they need to properly do their jobs? Decisions are made all the time at the management and technical level that effect how things are tabulated for billing and back-end technical functions and large companies rarely see this as information that needs to be imparted to what they consider the lowest tier of their customer-interacting employees.

Does this mean if you restored the phone every evening before this data reconciliation you'd never get billed?

AT&T may only use this method for "micro-transaction" sized data usage, and not things like regular web browsing. So the actual savings may not be much. Also, there's no reason this reporting couldn't also include the date of last phone reset or some other internal counter value or some way that would clue AT&T in to what you're doing. At the very least it would probably keep track of the last time it reported to AT&T the usage in case you were out of network access during a reporting cycle. So a phone that every night had no previous usage transaction record sending listed would be suspicious.

At that point AT&T, as owner of the cell phone network, is perfectly within their legal power to simply shut off internet service to your phone until you stop monkeying around with it. They can just claim your phone is malfunctioning on their network and that "to maintain network integrity and security" they can't let it back on.

 

[jav6454]

Let's see, we've got TCP/IP protocol data, ACK as well. Also, Visual Voicemail consumes data.

This lawsuit will end up thrown away.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

this whole data plan thing is ridiculous anyway.

Yeah, it reminds me of the days when you had to choose plan for your dial-up service, until finally the only choice became unlimited plan. It will happen over time.

 

[RalfTheDog]

I think the solution is transparency in billing. If the current customer tools don't propperly mesure data usage, they need new customer tools.

Now that I think about it, the user tools may measure internet usage while ATT bills for data usage. They may not be the same thing. Internet usage may be a subset of data usage.

 

[ljocampo]

Does anyone know if any non-Apple devices have suffered the same oddities? Everything always seems to happen on the iPhone? Glass breaking. Antenna breaking. Data getting sucked up by NSA/CIA/FBI/GOOGL/insert acronym. Overbilling for data.

Seems particularly odd that nothing bad ever happens on other handsets.

I have a Palm Pre (unlimited data plan) with Verizon and I've been monitoring data transactions at 3 or 4 AM for quite some time now. The problem is it's not me because I turn the phone completely off at night.

Some people on limited plans were getting charged overage too and Verizon had to pay big time for the phantom usage they charge for when people didn't initiate the data usage.

 

[tomccabe]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I can't believe that in 18 pages no one has brought up the fact that Verizon just happens to be releasing the iPhone with a limited time unlimited data plan in like a week.

How much would it really hurt Verizon's bottom line to "start" this suit? Even if it's thrown out in a month, the average web surfer knows nothing about data transfer protocols and doesn't read boards like this one. Regular Joe reads this article in the NY Times and says "well, $&@! at&t, I'm switching/signing up with Verizon."

 

[madmax_2069]

Isnt this why AT&T makes you get a data plan from the get go because the iPhone is constantly sending and receiving data ? plus there is the tcp/ip overhead.

 

[SeaFox]

I think the solution is transparency in billing. If the current customer tools don't propperly mesure data usage, they need new customer tools.

This is the most hilarious post in this thread.

If there's one thing large corporations don't want, it's transparency in billing. They wants the illusion of information and tools that make their customers informed, but not practices that really allow one to accurately double-check their math easily. Otherwise all those little errors that happen and coincidentally are in their favor would get corrected. I know from personal experience the systems they use are so confusing it's hard for even the employees to tell what's really going on.

 

[angrylawyer]

this whole data plan thing is ridiculous anyway.

what's ridiculous is that texts don't count as data. I'm showing 7.2gb of data received over cellular networks, but the 500 bytes it takes for a text costs me an extra $0.25 or $10/month.

Let's see, we've got TCP/IP protocol data, ACK as well. Also, Visual Voicemail consumes data.

This lawsuit will end up thrown away.

To be fair, the user shouldn't be charged for data they aren't initiating. If AT&T has services running that require my phone to send/receive data (voicemail), then that shouldn't be calculated in my usage. It's like when AT&T sends you a text, if you don't have texts, then they don't charge you for it.

 

[firewater101]

Suing over 2,292 KB... lol Money hungry Blood suckers they are

That 2,292 KB can mean an extra $10 overage charge when you actually didnt go over. Multiply that by the millions of subscribers and you are no longer talking about 2,292 KB, you're talking about millions of dollars of fraud. Overage charges are criminal in the first place, it's about time AT&T takes some of its own medicine.

 

[kdarling]

what's ridiculous is that texts don't count as data. I'm showing 7.2gb of data received over cellular networks, but the 500 bytes it takes for a text costs me an extra $0.25 or $10/month

That's because texts are not data.

Please see my post here.

 

[angrylawyer]

That's because texts are not data.

Please see my post here.

So what if we had a chat client installed natively on the phone, something like iChat. With push messaging couldn't we then 'text' using data?

 

[SeaFox]

So what if we had a chat client installed natively on the phone, something like iChat. With push messaging couldn't we then 'text' using data?

Yes. That's why wireless carriers used to add on that extra "messaging charge" if you used IM on your feature phone. Because they knew you were bypassing their SMS service, which brings in lots to revenue to them and yet costs them almost nothing to operate due to the nature of how SMS works.

SMS messaging itself is not an Internet service, so it does not travel via the data connection. It can reach any phone number. If you're chatting on an IM client, then the messages are being transmitted via the Internet. Even if they both allow you to send/receive short text messages you're comparing apples to oranges as far as how the services work.

 

[mgfish23]

MMS aka picture texting uses data.

 

[SeaFox]

MMS aka picture texting uses data.

MMS isn't SMS. It's closer to IM with embedded pictures. An SMS can only hold plain text by nature.

Note: This is also why MMS has not caught on here like it has overseas. SMS runs over regular phone service, so virtually everyone has it since it has no technical requirements above a working phone line and a phone that can display text, which practically all of them can. MMS requires a data plan, which many people don't have, and a phone that can display pictures, which most have but not all. This combined with the lack of cheap/unlimited data plans is why people don't send MMS as often, since few of their friends can use it and want to pay the high per-message charges for it.

 

[ComputersaysNo]

Win7 phone users are experiencing the same problem. Hope this helps to ease the pain a little

(google translate)

Yahoo accused Microsoft on their own responsibility for the sudden data use of some Windows 7 Phone devices.
© AFP

Reg Hardware says that compared to others. Tuesday let Microsoft know that Yahoo Mail is responsible for unexpected high data usage by some users of Windows Phone 7.

Even when not used was in some cases significant data usage visible. This resulted in some of the victims in higher phone bills. Microsoft decided to investigate the matter and be Yahoo Mail as "the guilty".

Synchronization

However, Microsoft stressed that something went wrong with the synchronization between WP7 and Yahoo mail service, but the problem could lie with others. That company is not however agree. "There are no problems with other mobile devices. It has to do with how Microsoft Yahoo Mail lets sync. "

There is now a solution that will be rolled out over the coming weeks.

 

[lPHONE]

this whole data plan thing is ridiculous anyway.

I though minutes were ridiculous from day one.
Just the other day, my 8 year old daughter asked me how many minutes I have on my LAN line and I explained to her that if they could charge us per minute they would, but they can't because it's been free since the beginning of time, as smartphones should be, as data plans should be, as lap dances... Wait, what?

 

[kdarling]

I though minutes were ridiculous from day one.
Just the other day, my 8 year old daughter asked me how many minutes I have on my LAN line and I explained to her that if they could charge us per minute they would, but ... snip

Different type of connection = different billing method.

Phone calls are mostly still what's called circuit-switched. That means you are given dedicated resources (a circuit just for you). As long as you're connected, no one else can use them. Therefore calls are billed by time.

Data connections are usually packet-switched. That means they only use resources when data packets are actually being transferred in either direction. Therefore data is billed by amount (bytes sent/received).

Sometimes people say, well voice is data nowadays so I should be billed that way instead by minutes. Heck no. Can you imagine if you were billed by byte count on a voice call? A noisy background would cost you more. Just listening to a romantic silence would cost more. And you'd have no clue how much you were being charged.

As they say, be careful for what we wish. We might get it

 

[maccompaq]

More reasons to go to Verizon.

 

[PopinFRESH]

Sometimes people say, well voice is data nowadays so I should be billed that way instead by minutes. Heck no. Can you imagine if you were billed by byte count on a voice call? A noisy background would cost you more. Just listening to a romantic silence would cost more. And you'd have no clue how much you were being charged.

As they say, be careful for what we wish. We might get it

I'm sure this is the way the industry is heading.. and not by choice. In the not-so-distant future I believe mobile network operators will function much like land-line providers do now. Everything will be data and if there are tiers, it will likely be for speed, not capacity.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...nt_where_carriers_bid_for_iphone_service.html

Apple will likely change the game again once they get a world mode phone completely work out and unify the design, then they can become their own MVNO as the pat. suggest and have operators around the word bid for the iPhones data usage. The AppleInsider article points out that this could lower prices as network providers battle for the low bid, however they fail to point out that this lower price would not be to the consumer but to Apple as the MVNO provider.

This would be very interesting to see, as then Apple would become one of the largest tel-com companies overnight, and be the only company to have the ability to have a true worldwide coverage so that they can charge a flat rate for service and get the most competitive supply-side pricing no matter where the device is being used.

Apple already has the VoIP frameworks built into iOS (FaceTime makes use of them already). It would not be very difficult for Apple to switch the iOS platform to 100% data use and have a simplified billing option. Again, as you said.. may not be exactly what we wish for....

 

[PopinFRESH]

what's ridiculous is that texts don't count as data. I'm showing 7.2gb of data received over cellular networks, but the 500 bytes it takes for a text costs me an extra $0.25 or $10/month.




To be fair, the user shouldn't be charged for data they aren't initiating. If AT&T has services running that require my phone to send/receive data (voicemail), then that shouldn't be calculated in my usage. It's like when AT&T sends you a text, if you don't have texts, then they don't charge you for it.

So by users not initiating data, like them getting voice mail? the user is USING data with visual voice mail. It's a feature, that uses data. If I tell Words with Friends to send me push notifications when it's my move, I shouldn't be charged because I didn't open Words with Friends? If you don't want to have visual voice mail that uses data you can go to your AT&T store and ask them to give you the data plan with out visual voice mail and use the lame press and hold 1 to dial your basic voice mail box.