Comcast Wireless Joins Verizon In Charging You More For HD Video

from the pay,-and-then-pay-some-more dept

One of the more subtle assaults on net neutrality has been the slow but steady introduction of arbitrary, often unnecessary restrictions mobile carriers will then charge you to get around. Sprint, for example, has toyed with plans that throttle all video, music, and games unless you pay extra. Verizon has also banned 4K video from its network unless you pay more for 5G (which isn't widely available). The company also now throttles all video on its "unlimited" data plans, charging consumers even more if they want to view content in HD as the originating service intended.

Comcast has now followed Verizon's lead, and its new wireless service will also now ban HD videoon its unlimited data plans unless you pony up an adidtional $20 per month. The company technically began throttling all video to 480p on its wireless network a week ago, but only just last week announced that users would now be charged more if they actually wanted to watch video in HD:

"Xfinity Mobile's unlimited data plan costs $45 per line per month, but video streams are generally limited to 480p resolution. Comcast yesterday announced a new $20-per-month HD Pass "for an upgrade to HD video resolution on Unlimited lines (720p on phone and 1080p on tablets)." That raises the monthly price to $65."

The problem with these efforts begins with the fact that Americans already pay some of the highest prices for 4G mobile data in the developed world. In exchange, they get mobile 4G broadband service that ranks somewhere around 30th worldwide in terms of speed. Studies also show that US wireless provider video quality is similarly some of the worst in the developed world due to many of the nickel-and-diming, erroneous restrictions being placed on mobile lines.

The other problem with these kinds of plans is one of precedent. Once you open the door to letting giant telecom companies impose arbitrary barriers you'll then have to pay extra to get around, you open the door to all manner of additional, problematic efforts (especially with the recent neutering of FCC authority and net neutrality). Want your games to work as intended? Pay us more. Want your music streaming to be free of arbitrary restrictions? Pay us more. Want to use Netflix instead of a telecom's TV services? Pay us more.

One way to help minimize these issues is to stop mindlessly signing off on competition-eroding megamergers that only act to reduce any incentive to genuinely compete on price. Instead of direct competition, wireless carriers adore saddling their plans with so many bizarre restrictions and caveats that direct pricing comparisons are often impossible for the average user. Frightened by what they don't understand, these users are then incentivized to buy the most expensive plan in order to avoid overage fees or other restrictions. It's a pricing funnel designed with one thing in mind: upselling you to a more expensive plan.

Another answer to this growing problem is for carriers to finally stop marketing clearly limited plans as "unlimited." For fifteen years or so US mobile carriers have marketed "unlimited" data plans with an ocean of very real, very confusing limits. Comcast's unlimited data plan, for example, throttles users back to DSL speeds (1.5Mbps download/750kbps upload) after 20 gigabytes of monthly use. Despite getting government wrist slaps for the better part of 15 years this practice has only accelerated, the number of caveats have grown, and it's a wonder Americans have any idea what kind of connection they're actually buying.

Enter the death of net neutrality rules, which not only prohibited many of the more elaborate, heavy handed nickel-and-diming efforts by mobile carriers, but mandated that wireless carriers be entirely clear about what kind of mobile connection you're buying. Wary of the rules being restored due to the state AG and Mozilla lawsuit against the FCC, many mobile carriers are trying to behave. But should the states and Mozilla lose their bid to restore the rules, this entire problem is going to get exponentially worse in relatively short order.

Filed Under: broadband, net neutrality, streaming, video
Companies: comcast, verizon

Verizon's New 'Unlimited' Data Plans Still Have Very Real, Problematic Limits

from the terrible-precedent dept

Back in 2007, Verizon was forced to strike an agreement with the New York State Attorney General for marketing data plans as "unlimited" when the plans had very clear limits. Twelve years later and it's not clear the company has learned much of anything.

The latest case in point: Verizon this week once again revamped the company's not really "unlimited" data plans, and they once again come with some very real limits. For example the company's entry level "unlimited" plan still bans HD video entirely, throttling everything to 480p, then forcing you to pay extra should you want to view a video stream as its originator intended. But all of the company's plans feature some kind of limits with the goal (always) of upselling you to a more expensive plan should you, you know, actually want unfettered access to the internet and use your device as intended (say as a mobile hotspot):

Verizon has added a new wrinkle to the mix by banning 4K video streaming entirely unless you subscribe to a new Verizon 5G plan (still barely available in most areas) for another additional $10 per month. And again, all of these plans have limits that result in your "unlimited" connection being throttled should you, you know, actually use it. This throttling occurs after 25 GB/mo on Play More Unlimited, 50 GB/mo on Do More Unlimited and 75 GB/mo on Get More Unlimited.

Other mobile carriers like Sprint have similarly experimented with throttling games, video, and music, then charging you more money if you want to bypass these arbitrary restrictions. Again, the entire function of this model is to upsell wireless data customers (who already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world) to even more expensive plans if they just want their damn connection to work. Customers who don't know what a gigabyte is or what these restrictions mean will usually migrate to the more expensive plan "to be safe." It's a pricing funnel designed to scare consumers into paying more.

It's fairly impressive that twelve years after Verizon was dinged for not understanding the definition of unlimited -- and after fifteen years of net neutrality debates -- some people still don't see the terrible precedent these kinds of pricing plans set. Letting ISPs impose arbitrary restrictions, then charge you more money to get around them, isn't a model that's going to be great for innovators over the longer haul. And with the triple punch of regulatory capture at the FCC, the death of net neutrality, and looming consolidation/competition erosion courtesy of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, there's a whole lot more of this sort of thing over the horizon.

Filed Under: data plans, unlimited, wireless
Companies: verizon

After Decades Of Demanding China 'Respect' US Patent Law, Senator Rubio Pushes Law That Says US Can Ignore Huawei Enforcing Patents

from the oh-come-on dept

For well over a decade we've discussed the short-sightedness of the US repeatedly demanding that China "respect" US intellectual property, because China has only turned that around on the US, and used Chinese patents as a way to block American competitors from entering the Chinese market. Things seemed to go up a notch recently, after the US government expanded its attempts to block Huawei from the US market, and Huawei suddenly remembered it owned a shit ton of patents and started demanding Verizon pay on the order of a billion dollars or face patent infringement claims.

As we discussed, Huawei was just following the established playbook of using the US's bizarrely stupid obsession with "patents" against the US itself. Hilariously, Huawei's CEO was just recently quoted as insisting that the company would not "weaponize" its patents, at the same time that it was clear that that's exactly what Huawei is doing. Of course, as we've learned over the years, patents are designed to be weaponized and are frequently used as weapons against innovation.

In response to all of this, rather than recognizing that our over emphasis on patents (and our demands that China "respect" those patents) might be a big part of the problem, Senator Marco Rubio, has submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would literally block Huawei from enforcing its patents in US courts. In a tweet, Rubio defended this blatantly protectionist move:

I tend to agree that patents are frequently used to stifle competition and innovation and to retaliate against others, but it does seem bizarre and (once again) stupidly short-sighted to single out Huawei and other Chinese companies (what the amendment effectively does), and say they cannot enforce their US patents in US courts. The law specifically says that companies from countries on the (laughably arbitrary) USTR "priority watch list" cannot "bring or maintain an action for infringement of a patent," nor "file a complaint" with the ITC or "otherwise obtain any relief under the laws of the US."

So it doesn't take a genius chess player to figure out what is likely to happen next. After literally decades of US politicians and diplomats screaming about how China needs to "respect our patents," and when it finally starts using our own patent system against us, sees the US government seek to flat out exclude China from making use of the US patent system... how long will it take for China to do effectively the same thing in China to again block US companies from operating and competing there.

How can the US possibly go around telling other countries to "respect our patents," when the second a country like China starts using our patent system, Congress pushes a law that flat out excludes them from doing so. Rubio's amendment is just decorating the facade that is the claim that patents are a system for protecting innovation. They are not. They are a protectionist, monopolistic trade practice designed to benefit some at the expense of others. Now that a disfavored company -- Huawei -- is making use of them, suddenly Congress wants to pull that ability out from under them. This is not about "respecting" patents. It's about who gets the power to decide who can innovate. And apparently China is not allowed.

Filed Under: china, marco rubio, ndaa, patents, respect
Companies: huawei, verizon

Huawei Now Using Patent Claims To Demand $1 Billion From Verizon, As The US Tries To Chase Huawei Out Of The US Market

from the patent-trade-wars dept

This one combines a few stories that we've covered a lot over the years, showing how they're intersecting. For some time now we've been covering the US's evidence-free attacks on Huawei, the Chinese telco equipment giant. Basically, for years, there have been stories insisting that Huawei is too closely linked to the Chinese government, leading to fear mongering stories saying that the company should be effectively barred from the US. However, multiple attempts to find security flaws in Huawei's products have failed to show any kind of backdoors, and the fact that US-based Huawei competitors often seem to be making the loudest noises about the Chinese giant should raise some eyebrows.

The other story we've covered a lot is around China and patents. For years and years, US companies (and policymakers) would go on and on about how Chinese companies didn't respect US patents, and demanding that China "must respect our IP." As we've highlighted for years, the Chinese government realized a decade or so ago that since the US kept trying to apply diplomatic pressure to "respect patents," China realized it could just start using patents as an economic weapon. The number of patents granted in China started to shoot up, and (surprise surprise) suddenly in legal disputes, Chinese companies were using patents to block American competitors. And the US couldn't really complain since it was the US that demanded China "respect patents" so much.

Just a few weeks ago, we noted that China was gearing up to respond to Donald Trump's ignorant trade war by using patents against US companies.

Put it all together, and it should be no surprise at all that Huawei is now demanding $1 billion from Verizon for patent infringement.

Verizon is reportedly using equipment through other companies that relies on Huawei patents covering core networking gear, internet of things technology and wireline infrastructure. Verizon and Huawei representatives met last week in New York to talk about whether the gear could infringe on Huawei patents, Reuters said.

"These issues are larger than just Verizon," a Verizon spokesman told Reuters. "Given the broader geopolitical context, any issue involving Huawei has implications for our entire industry and also raises national and international concerns."

The US government walked right into this. For years it's been demonizing Huawei without evidence, while at the same time demanding that China respect patents. So, of course, it opened itself right up to Huawei now claiming patent infringement against US companies. Even better, it's over third party gear. US policymakers can't seem to think more than a single move ahead, because it was fairly obvious how all of this would play out years ago, and yet they walked right into it.

Filed Under: china, patents, surveillance, telco equipment, trade war
Companies: huawei, verizon

Shockingly, Cable TV and Broadband Customer Satisfaction Is Still The Worst In America

from the ill-communication dept

Every few years or so, giant cable and broadband companies like Comcast will proclaim that they've finally seen the light, and will be spending time shoring up their terrible customer service. Like a few years ago, when Comcast proclaimed it had hired a "Customer Experience VP" who would finally make addressing the company's historically terrible customer service a top priority. CEO Brian Roberts also can be found at least once a year claiming that the company is going to finally address the problem by hiring better people, improving support systems, and generally revisiting the company's policies.

But year after year, big cable and broadband companies fail to deliver. Case in point: the latest American Consumer Satisfaction Index was recently released, and ISPs and cable providers continue to see the worst customer satisfaction scores in America. These companies are so bad at what they do, they're routinely bested by even everybody's favorite punching bag: the IRS. When it comes to broadband service on a scale of 100, both Comcast and Charter (Spectrum) continue to see the worst scores in an already terrible sector:

"Internet Service Providers didn’t fare any better than cable companies with the overall industry ratings at the same 62. The only three ISPs with rankings above the average are Verizon FiOS (70), AT&T Internet (69) and Altice (63). At the bottom of the rankings are Frontier (55), MediaCom (56), and Windstream (57). The big cable companies don’t fare well as ISPs – Charter (59) and Comcast (61)."

Things are equally bad on the cable TV front, where despite the rise of competition from streaming providers, incumbent cable ops still can't seem to figure out this whole "treating customers with respect" thing. While most hated industries (airlines) rank in the 70s and more popular brands (Amazon) reach the 80s, cable TV remains struggling in the 50s and 60s:

In the TV sector, the emergence of streaming video has offered consumers some reprieve. Streaming providers like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon routinely rate much higher in customer satisfaction because they give consumers what they've been screaming for for years: lower prices and more flexible channel bundles. Ultimately, cable operators will be forced to actually compete on price, but they're apparently waiting until countless millions of their paying customers have fled to greener pastures before actually seriously overhauling their business models. Still, competition in the TV space is rising either way.

The broadband space is less promising. With no meaningful regulatory oversight and little competition, there's really no incentive to improve customer service or offer a better product in most markets. The focus remains on growth for growth's sake (megamergers) and scale, without scaling customer service in symmetry. The end result should be fairly obvious, given the broadband sector ranks worse than a long list of widely despised sectors like the airline, banking, and insurance industries. That kind of accomplishment requires some serious, sustained elbow grease and the kind of monopoly myopia money simply can't buy.

Filed Under: broadband, cable tv, customer satisfaction
Companies: at&t, charter, comcast, frontier, spectrum, verizon, windstream

US Telcos Are Giving Up On Residential Broadband And Nobody Seems To Have Noticed

from the ill-communication dept

We've noted for a while that US telcos have been making it very clear they no longer really want to be in the residential broadband business. While profitable, it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. And since upgrading aging DSL lines in rural or less affluent urban markets is expensive, these companies have largely decided to freeze most major fiber upgrades. Not only that, many of these companies (Windstream, Frontier, CenturyLink, AT&T, and Verizon) have been refusing to even repair many of the lines already in service.

The problem is that as these companies exit and neglect these underserved markets, cable giants are being left with growing monopolies across huge swaths of the US. Limited competition means less incentive to compete on price, or fix the cable industry's often comical customer service. And while some believe 5G will magically come in and somehow fix this problem, that's not likely to happen for the same reason fiber isn't universally deployed: companies don't want to pay for to connect fiber to the nation's rural and less affluent urban communities.

Aside from the reduction in competition, another problem with telcos just giving up on residential broadband is that many of these networks were heavily taxpayer subsidized. Regulations in many states (which telcom lobbyists have voraciously been assaulting for years) also protect the elderly and poor from having connectivity stripped away. That's not really stopping companies like CenturyLink, which recently quietly froze all network upgrades, and is now signaling that in may leave the residential broadband market almost entirely to focus on more immediately profitable enterprise offerings after acquiring Level 3.

AT&T and Verizon have shifted all of their focus toward wireless and trying to become (however ham-handedly) the next major players in the online video advertising space. Another major telco, Windstream Communications, recently declared bankruptcy after years of network neglect resulted in a flood of customers headed to the exists. There's a similar story playing out at Frontier Communications, which first gobbled up Verizon's unwanted assets in growth for growth's sake, but now is being forced to sell some territories off as it struggles with the massive debt load.

Again, wireless isn't going to fix this because the same rules apply: 5G needs fiber lines carriers don't want to invest in in rural or less affluent broadband markets if the ROI is low. And while many communities have turned toward building their own broadband networks instead, these very same telcos (with the help of the Pai FCC) have lobbied to pass state laws banning towns or cities from building the better broadband these telcos have long refused to.

It's a pretty massive problem with an exponential impact on numerous sectors that tends to get lost in mainstream tech conversations surrounding "big tech" giants. But it's a problem that's not going away and remains hugely important all the same.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, competition, municipal broadband, residential broadband, wireless
Companies: at&t, verizon

AT&T, Verizon Employees Caught Up In DOJ SIM Hijacking Bust

from the ill-communication dept

Wireless carriers are coming under increasing fire for failing to protect their users from the practice of SIM hijacking (aka a port scam). The practice involves posing as a wireless customer, then fooling a wireless carrier to port the victim's cell phone number right out from underneath them, letting the attacker then pose as the customer to potentially devastating effect. Last year, a customer sued T-Mobile for failing to protect his account after a hacker pretending to be him ported out his phone number then stole thousands of dollars worth of cryptocoins.

Subsequent reports have shown how identity thieves use SIM hijacking to do everything from cleaning out bank accounts, to stealing valuable Instagram usernames and selling them for Bitcoin. Reports often showed how these scams were being helped with the willful help of some cellular carrier employees, something wireless carriers haven't (understandably) been particularly keen on talking about.

That was confirmed again last week when the DOJ accused nine people of allegedly being part of a crime ring known as “The Community.” The organizations' specialty was SIM hijacking, which involved having three former employees at AT&T and Verizon steal user identities (and subsequently several million dollars):

"White, according to the feds, helped the criminals steal more than $2 million from several victims by performing 29 fraudulent SIM swaps. White communicated with the criminals via Telegram, according to the document. Jack, who was an associate of White, allegedly performed twelve fraudulent SIM swaps in May of 2018. White allegedly paid Jack $585.25 for his help in the SIM swapping conspiracy, according to the complaint."

The full DOJ announcement provides some interesting reading. In some instances the employees would conduct the SIM swaps themselves. In other instances they'd simply provide enough private account data to the scammers to help them pose as the customer. It's likely there's more such cases waiting in the wings, and critics continue to highlight how cellular carriers have consistently, repeatedly, failed to adequately police fraud perpetrated by their own employees:

“This isn’t social engineering anymore,” Ross, who was SIM swapped last year, said in an online chat. “The story needs to move from ‘the carriers aren’t doing enough to fix the problem’ to ‘the carriers have no control over their tens of thousands of customer service reps and knowingly allowed them to be bribed."

There are some steps users can take, including changing passwords frequently. T-Mobile users can also, for example, call 611 from your cellphone (or 1-800-937-8997), then tell a support staffer that you want to create a “port validation” passcode. Still, like the SS7 exploit that has been in the wild for years, it's pretty clear that wireless carriers might want to spend a little less time on mindless mergers and consolidation, killing net neutrality, and raising rates, and a little more time protecting their customers from security threats.

Filed Under: doj, sim hijacking
Companies: at&t, verizon

All Four Major Wireless Carriers Hit With Lawsuits Over Sharing, Selling Location Data

from the somebody's-watching-you dept

We've noted repeatedly that if you're upset about Facebook's privacy scandals, you should be equally concerned about the wireless industry's ongoing location data scandals. Not only were the major carriers caught selling your location data to any nitwit with a checkbook, they were even found to be selling your E-911 location data, which provides even more granular detail about your data than GPS provides. This data was then found to have been widely abused from everybody from law enforcement to randos pretending to be law enforcement.

Throughout all this, the Ajit Pai FCC has done absolutely nothing to seriously police the problem. Meaning that while carriers have promised to stop collecting and selling this data, nobody has bothered to force carriers to actually confirm this. Given telecom's history when it comes to consumer privacy, somebody might just want to double check their math (and ask what happened to all that data already collected and sold over the last decade).

Compounding carrier problems, all four major wireless carriers last week were hit with a class action lawsuit (correctly) noting the carriers had violated Section 222 of the Federal Communications Act by selling consumer proprietary network information (CPNI) data:

"Through its negligent and deliberate acts, including inexplicable failures to follow its own Privacy Policy, T-Mobile permitted access to Plaintiffs and Class Members’ CPI and CPNI,” the complaint against T-Mobile reads, referring to “confidential proprietary information” and “customer proprietary network information,” the latter of which includes location data."

It's likely that the sale of 911 data is where carriers are in the most hot water, since that's their most obvious infraction of the law. It's of course worth pointing out that wireless carriers (and fixed-line ISPs, frankly) have been hoovering up and selling location, clickstream, and a vast ocean of other user data for decades with very few (any?) Congressional lawmakers much caring about it. It's another example of how Facebook's cavalier treatment of user data (and government apathy toward meaningful solutions) isn't just some errant exception -- it's the norm.

Back in 2016, the previous FCC uncharacteristically tried to impose some pretty basic rules that would have gone a long way in preventing these location data scandals by requiring that carriers be more transparent about what data is collected and who it's sold to. It also required consumers opt in to more sensitive (read: financial, location) data. But telecom lobbyists quickly convinced Congress to obliterate those rules in 2017 using the Congressional Review Act before they could even take effect.

Two years later finds the sector swimming in scandal, and everybody has a dumb look on their faces utterly perplexed as to how we got to this point.

Filed Under: class action, fcc, lawsuit, privacy, section 222, telcos
Companies: at&t, sprint, t-mobile, verizon