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AT&T raises most customers' fees by $1.23, adding $800M revenue
- black6 8y ago> After a costly acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T may have found a new source of revenue. Is charging more fees really a new source of revenue? It’s not exactly rocket surgery...
- softrock 8y agoIt would be more tolerable if they offered good service. I am moving to a city with one of the largest universities in the US and the fastest internet AT&T even offers is 12 Mbit/s down and 0.5 up.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoup to 12Mbps. You won't actually get that.
- aerotwelve 8y agoThe lower prices due to increased competition are on their way, America! Just wait a little bit longer for the consolidation synergy and those massive corporate tax cuts to really kick in.
- gnicholas 8y agoI just switched from Verizon to Comcast (xfinity mobile). I now pay no monthly line fee, and just $12 per gig. If I go above 3gb, they charge me $45 for the month and I get unlimited access (throttled after 20gb). Much lower price, and same Verizon network. They used to require you to buy the device from them, but now it’s BYOD also. And unlike many carriers, they don’t charge setup or device upgrade fees. It seems that competition is here already.
- hedora 8y agoThat may actually be cheaper than tracfone. I pay ~ 12.50/month/line for more minutes + texts than I use (they roll over...), and 500MB of data. Additional data is $10/GB. You can choose between the big three networks (at&t, verizon, sprint), and they support BYOP.
- paul7986 8y agoHuh so $12 per gig times 3 and then when you go over its an additional $45... so $86 a month for unlimited data? Im on a ATT family plan I pay $50 for unlimited data. Xfinity doesn't sound like a deal to me and it's Comcast(uggh, yuck and i worked for them for too long hearing customers yell at me because Comcast give no craps about customers).
- gnicholas 8y agoNope, if you go over it’s just $45 — not an additional $45. AT&T offers unlimited for $50? I’m seeing “$70 and up” on their website. There’s no line access fee or anything?
- tedmiston 8y agoThat $50 number is misleading or not inclusive of fees. My grandfathered original iPhone unlimited plan is ~$80–100/line total bill cost all in for unlimited data on a handful of lines.
- paul7986 8y agoI’m in a family plan... get your family and or a group of friends into one account and you’ll save a good amount. We have Direct TV now as well which I don’t think any of us use.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rshlo 8y agoIn Israel you can get unlimited minutes + text + 30GB data for $10 a month. If you want to include around 200-300 minutes to call out of the country you can get to $13 dollar. The premium packages cost $30 and include calls + data when abroad. All that on an LTE network.
- wezen 8y ago/s?
- carbocation 8y agoA browser plugin that expands "/s" to "synergy."
- milkytron 8y agos/lower/higher/ s/increased/decreased/
- briandear 8y agoOh good grief, have you ever paid a French phone bill?
- zdragnar 8y agoI pay $30 / month for my phone bill. That's it. I don't use a lot of cell data, but I have more than enough for some light streaming, GPS, price checking, etc. When I'm not at home or the office (on wifi). Oh, and there's no arbitrary limitation on tethering either. Yes, competition is delightful, but sometimes you actually have to try.
- megy 8y agoI pay $10 / month for the same. And when I was in the UK, I paid less than $30 a month for unlimited data. You don't know what competition is.
- zdragnar 8y agoIn this case, the differentiator between my current option and the lower cost ones is the level of cell service living out in the sticks (aka 45 minutes out of the metro area). More would be nice, but rural life typically has fewer options. That is really changing though, on all fronts, as technology does.
- camel_gopher 8y agoTrickle up
- king_nothing 8y agoMoney and kompromat trickles-up; indentured servitude and grotesque inequality trickles-down. If we had any spare guillotines, those tend to trickle-up at some point too. US.mil could do the world a solid and leave some proverbial “grenade pins on the officer’s [eg POTUS] pillow” to show how the people disapprove of their dangerous “leadership” and convince them to make better decisions. Usually, the mil shouldn’t get involved in civilian leadership matters, but having a used-car salesman run a country was clearly a bad hire in need of addressing.
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's actually clever.
- awalton 8y agoMust be nice being in an industry where you can basically print money by levying completely arbitrary fees and nobody is willing to stop you (i.e. because you've already used those fees to pay off politicians in both political parties in all of the legislatures in the land).
- harryh 8y agoAren't we talking about fees for cell phone service here? It's a robust market with quite a few major competitors. What does paying off politicians have to do with anything?
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago5 cents have been deposited into your account.
- Retric 8y agoBeing able to advertise price X while billing price Y after locking someone into a 2 year contract.
- lev99 8y agoAre 2 year contracts still common in cell phone plans? I've used att for years and never was presented with the option of signing a contract like that.
- JoshGlazebrook 8y agoTechnically they are gone. But now the popular option are device payment plans spread out over 2 years so it’s essentially a contract as if you were to cancel your device the remaining amount is due immediately. Another gotcha are how they discount $200 off a phone. The bill credits are applied over those 24 months so if you cancel early you don’t end up getting the full $200 off the total price.
- harryh 8y ago
- crazy_monkey 8y agoTime to drop AT&T... (oh wait,... that was a long time ago...)
- pcurve 8y ago"This is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and interconnection between carriers" I'd hate to have corporate communication job for telecom, healthcare, finance, and pharma industry.
- azinman2 8y ago“This is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and interconnection between carriers." That’s literally what the main monthly fee is for. Covers all costs of providing service.
- graedus 8y ago"Oh, it's standard? Well ok then."
- asafira 8y ago"First, thank you for being a loyal customer for [X] years!"
- jhall1468 8y agoThis is the way it works now. With hotels in Vegas you often pay more in resort fee's than the actual hotel price. Cell phones will start raising prices via the admin fee rather than the monthly bill, airlines do it via the "fuel surcharge". The goal is to make the consumer think they are paying less then they are with the added bonus of making it extremely difficult to compare prices.
- cm2012 8y agoI've seen this called a Confusopoly.
- simplecomplex 8y agoOtherwise known as fraud.
- JJMcJ 8y agoRental cars also - especially if you have to buy liability insurance. Has gone from a waiver for first $500 or $1000, rest was covered, to unlimited liability to the customer.
- 8y ago
- everdev 8y agoThat's $6.5M revenue per $0.01 fee increase.
- icedchai 8y agoGlad I'm an AT&T shareholder, but sorry I'm an AT&T customer.
- BigOlBooty22 8y agoI can only imagine the conversation that went into this decision: Raising revenue is as easy as “1,2,3”. Brilliant! We’ll raise everyone’s fees by $1.23
- achille 8y ago> The change is estimated to impact about 85 percent of AT&T's 64.5 million postpaid phone lines in service, making for about $800 million in additional annual revenue. 85% * 64.5 million * $1.23 = 67 million Where did the other 733 million come from? Edit: Ah monthly fee; Annual revenue.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dokein 8y agoAnnual revenue, monthly fee.
- zenbob 8y ago$67 million a month * 12 = $804 million. I am assuming it is a monthly increase.
- benjaminjackman 8y agois it monthly? because then the math works: >>> 0.85 * 64.5 * $1.23 * 12 $809.22
- doitforthememes 8y agothere are 12 months in a year. 67*12 = 804
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- compsciphd 8y agojust switch to t-mobile. no taxes / hidden fees added to the advertised subscription price.
- salmon30salmon 8y agoDon't forget though, T-Mobile was one of the first carriers to use zero rating as a marketing ploy (with Netflix IIRC) which is exactly the kind of shady practices that net neutrality was supposed to defend against. But everyone thought T-Mobile was great for being an "un-carrier". Really they are just as hostile to net neutrality as all the others
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThey don't provide zero-rating for their prepaid accounts so you can remain "pure".
- jklinger410 8y agoCrazy that they would institute this just after it was revealed that many of their buildings are hosting NSA spy ops.
- zepto 8y agoWho paid any attention to that? And how is this going to do anyhjng except pick a few million pockets successfully?
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoIt was all the rage on Slashdot. You didn't get the memo?
- jklinger410 8y agoI suppose that's the bet that the AT&T execs are making, isn't it?
- tunap 8y agoPrism has been common knowledge since the outing of closet 641 A, ~15 years ago. Even the MSM ran the stories... and most people still couldn't give a shit.
- hedora 8y agoThe existence of the AT&T spy buildings were public knowledge years before the Snowden leaks happened. Maybe the renewed publicity around it was a not-so-subtle reminder that they know exactly who the regulators and congress (and everyone else) are sleeping with.
- jklinger410 8y agoDid they name the locations before? I really can't remember.
- hedora 8y agoSimplest solution: Switch to a much cheaper prepaid plan. If everyone did it, industry-wide revenue would tank, the stocks would tank, and a cornucopia of slime bags would be fired. If you are under contract, contact their legal department about the unexpected rate increase. When they reply, threaten small claims court / arbitration. Simply paying a lawyer to call your bluff will mean they lose money on hiking your rates.
- dzonga 8y agothat's a fuck you fee!! because we can, what you gonna do about it!!
- paxy 8y agoSo, a company can just advertise any low price and add on a bunch of arbitrary "fees" to pad their numbers? Sounds perfectly sane.
- jtlienwis 8y agoThis is the result of AT&T's massive debt and the corruption of US politicians. AT&T is able to bribe the state and local governments to prevent any broadband competition and has gone far into debt to gobble up competition.