Ron Schenone

AT&T Wants To Use Your Broadband Connection To Charge You More

Posted by on Jun 19, 2010 | One Comment

In what is turning out to be a lucrative way for AT&T to bilk its customers out of millions of dollars, its micro cell strategy, Microcell Femtocell service is now being questioned since it appears that consumers will be billed for accessing data through its broadband service that they already pay an ISP for. In essence, the scheme appears to benefit AT&T, and not the customer as AT&T claims.

In a recent article it stated that:

AT&T’s been making the rounds trying to give an explanation for why they made the decision to make their Microcell service an even worse value, but the explanations so far aren’t making sense.

“3G MicroCell is primarily intended to enhance the voice call quality experience in your home,” AT&T’s Seth Bloom tells us. “While it can carry mobile data traffic, that’s not the primary solution it provides,” he says. “Wi-Fi is the optimal solution for home mobile data use. We encourage people to take advantage of Wi-Fi capabilities – that’s why all of our smartphones include Wi-Fi radios, and usage on Wi-Fi doesn’t count against your mobile data usage bucket.”

Bloom goes on to insist that the Microcell “uses our core wireless network just like a call placed while driving down the highway uses the core wireless network.” “The only difference is how that data or call gets there – via a MicroCell connected to a wired broadband connection instead of a cell tower.”

But the real reason why AT&T is doing this could be financial. Even though AT&T has aligned itself with Apple and the iPhone, AT&T’s stock has plunged by an estimated 40%. In the same time frame Apple’s stock has flourished and has increased by an estimated 110%. It seems like the deal has benefited Apple, and AT&T is trying to recoup its losses any way it can. What AT&T is doing is detrimental to the consumer, IMO.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source – DSL Reports

  • Ryan

    AT&T for some reason has been renting out their cell tower networks to middlemen for some time.

    There used to be a company called Centennial that did business around northern Indiana, which simply bought time on AT&T’s network and resold it as their own service for quite a bit more than AT&T plans cost.

    For some reason, AT&T would then decide to not do business as itself in these areas. (Mostly small towns like the one I live in).

    Now they’ve realized that there’s business here, they’re having to buy up all the middlemen in order to absorb the exclusivity contracts they gave them earlier.

    There has to be something I’m not seeing here, but it defies all logic to have done business in this way to begin with based on what I do see.

    The kicker was that everyone that was already on Centennial plans got grandfathered into the high prices until their original contract ends and they sign a new one with AT&T.

    My mom had a family plan with Centennial for a 2 1/2 year contract (Who signs one of those? Really?), and the phones completely sucked.

    This time I decided to go with her to the “AT&T store” to make sure she didn’t walk out of there with expensive phones that were already obsolete that we couldn’t get rid of for 2 1/2 more years. *grin* As bad as AT&T sucks, their plans are cheaper than Centennial’s were (for obvious reasons) and the phones are a lot better.

    Tracfone has better hardware than Centennial did. Imagine keeping one of those flimsy $10 Tracfones going from mid-2007 to last month. Yikes.

    It’s my understanding that even a Tracfone with no minutes will still dial 911, so if I was left to buy phone service on my own plan, I’d just do that. I’m not paying $70 a month so other bill collectors and telemarketers can call me freely. Cell phones just, to me, represent an opportunity to be frustrated wherever you are or to make an ass out of yourself when you forget to turn it off.

    Oh, AT&T 3G sucks hard, it’s slow when the network doesn’t decide to go down for no reason randomly for hours at a time. I can’t see paying hypePhone prices for service this bad.