UK: Switch Your ISP in "One Touch"

UK Broadband providers should work harder now on customer satisfaction, as unhappy subscribers may switch their provider in "One Touch".

Ofcom announced that "Earlier this summer the process of switching between providers who use the Openreach telecoms network - such as BT, EE, Sky and TalkTalk - became simpler and smoother.

A new 'one touch' process now places the responsibility for the broadband or landline switch entirely in the hands of the company to which the customer is moving .. Under the new system, consumers no longer need to cancel their contract with their old provider. Instead, the whole switching process is handled by their new supplier on their behalf.

Once the switching process is under way, the consumer receives written confirmation from both the old and new provider. If the consumer changes their mind, they can cancel the switch".

See "Easier broadband switching" - here.

[Israel]: ISP to Compensate Customers for P2P Traffic Shaping

Two years after a class action lawsuit was filed, judge Ester Shtemer, from the Lod District court, ruled against 012 Smile (subsidiary of Partner Israel), one of Israel largest ISPs for its traffic shaping policy (see the full decision below, Hebrew).

The plaintiff claimed that the 012 did not provide an appropriate speed to its subscribers, when P2P file sharing programs were used, and asked for a compensation of over NIS70M (~$20M).

012 Smile said that they are not committed to provide any specific speed, and they use traffic management policies to prevent P2P program to takeover all available bandwidth, as file sharing is different from interactive web browsing. 012 admitted that file sharing users were discriminated, that they over-subscribe their infrastructure. However, they did not participate in the Glasnost (see "Glasnost: These ISPs are Shaping Traffic!" - here) tests that were presented as evidence by the plaintiff.

[Related post: "Israel: Carriers Must Disclose Broadband CIR" - here and "[Israel] ISPs Respond to the CIR Regulation - What do they Promise?" - here]

012 Smile CEO, Uri Wertman (left the company earlier this year), testified that they have 500,020 subscribers; an estimated 25% were using P2P file sharing applications, and 45% of them were discriminated - a total of 56,252 customers were affected.

The result?

• Smile 012 will provide 9 months of free speed upgrade to each customer asking for it (worth $2/month)
  
• 012 smile will deploy a control system that will ensure that the network will provide 98% of the accumulated demand (95% at peak hours) of all customers. 

[ABI]: 123M Fixed LTE Connections by 2019

Yet again analysts are expecting mobile access technology to be an alternative to residential broadband access and replace cable or DSL.

Already 4 years ago, 8.5% of UK households said they are using mobile service at home, as their only access service (here). Other expected it to fail - see "Analysys Mason: Mobile Broadband will Fail as an Alternative to Fixed Broadband" - here) but shortly after saw the light with LTE "Analysys Mason: Will LTE be a Threat to Fixed Broadband Providers?" - here.

3 years later, LTE is seen again as an alternative, mainly to cover for lack of a fixed infrastructure. I wonder what would be the cost of 300 GB quota service with LTE.

A new report by Jake Saunders [pictured], VP and 4G practice director, ABI Research finds that "1.26 billion households do not have DSL, cable, or fiber-optic broadband. Fixed and mobile telcos are looking to LTE to make the connection .. By the end of 2014, ABI Research anticipates there will be 14.5 million residential and commercial premises with fixed LTE broadband access. By 2019, that figure should grow to 123 million .. the shipment numbers for residential LTE gateways and commercial LTE fixed wireless terminals to grow from 9.3 million in 2014 to nearly 44 million in 2019"

See "LTE Reinvigorates the Broadband Wireless Access Marketplace" - here.

UK: How do ISPs Implement Network Based Parental Control Service?

Ofcom has "published a report for Government outlining measures the UK's largest internet service providers have put in place to help parents protect children from harmful content online. This follows an agreement between the Government and BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, the four largest fixed line internet service providers (ISPs), announced in July 2013 [see "UK to Enforce Opt Out Network Based Web Filtering on All ISPs" - here]. Each ISP committed to offer new customers 'family-friendly network-level filtering' by the end of December 2013 [see "UK ISPs for Safer Internet" - here]" 

"The report finds that the four ISPs now have a network level family friendly filtering service .. There are a number of filtering categories common to all four ISPs. Suicide and self-harm, pornography, file sharing, crime, drugs, violence and hate are covered by each provider's classification systems .. All of the ISPs offer some additional services alongside the network family-friendly filters, some including internet security services aimed at protecting the subscriber from issues like viruses or malware. All offer device level filtering or security software for installation on individual computers

All of the ISPs have commissioned third parties to perform the categorisation of 

internet content and services: 

• BT and Virgin employ Nominum
• Sky uses Symantec 
• TalkTalk uses Huawei [see "Huawei's SIG: Policy Enforcement and URL Filtering" - here], although Symantec was also initially involved.

The filtering solutions rely on two basic technologies:

• Filtering by Uniform Resource Locator (URL) blocking: the filtering of sites or services based on their web address – either addresses covering whole websites (http://www.example.com) or individual sections or pages on those sites (http://www.example.com/adultpictures). This involves the ISP checking some or all of the URLs which an opted-in subscriber requests against the list of sites or pages to be blocked. If there is a match, the subscriber request is not fulfilled – typically a page with the message “this site is blocked because it is classified as…” may be delivered instead.

• Filtering by Domain Name System (DNS) alteration: the DNS translates domain names (“www.example.com” into IP addresses “192.0.32.10”), to allow a subscriber’s content request to be correctly directed – this is the first stage in requesting a website or service. When used for filtering, the ISP’s DNS server will not provide the IP address for domains on the list; it may instead direct the subscriber request to an information page with “this site is blocked because it is classified as…”.

Each of Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk has adopted a slightly different version of URL blocking; Sky’s filtering system is exclusively based on its DNS servers. The use of URL blocking allows a more granular classification of online content and services: Sky’s system will always block whole domains, while BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk can target specific parts of a domain.

See "Ofcom publishes report on internet safety measures" - here.

UK: ISPs will Alert Subscribers on Copyright Infringement

The UK has a new plan for reducing copyright infringement, as probably the older plans did not work - UK Culture Minister Vaizey:'SPs have their role to play to help consumers find legitimate content'"- here and "[UK]: Major ISPs Asked to Build 'Downloaders Database'" - here:

 "Representatives from the UK's creative industries and major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have come together with the support of government to launch Creative Content UK, a ground-breaking new partnership that will boost consumer awareness of the wide array of legitimate online content services and help reduce online copyright infringement.

Creative Content UK will comprise two key components. 

• The first, which will launch before Spring 2015, will be a major multi-media education awareness campaign, led by content creators and part-funded by government, that aims to create wider appreciation of the value and benefits of entertainment content and copyright. 

• The second component is a subscriber alerts programme that will be co-managed and co-funded by ISPs and content creators and due to begin at a later date. Participating ISPs will alert and advise subscribers when their accounts are believed to have been used to infringe copyright. Account holders will receive an alert from their ISP, advising them unlawful filesharing may have taken place on their connection and offering advice on where to find legitimate sources of entertainment content.

.. Creative Content UK founding partners include the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), and the four main internet service providers: BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, with the prospect of other ISPs joining at a later stage .. The campaign will aim to inform and encourage consumers - ranging from the next generation of digital users to 'silver-surfers' – about the huge range of entertainment content that is available from legal and licensed sources; giving them greater confidence when buying and using content online and providing additional guidance about internet safety.

John Petter [pictured], CEO, BT Consumer, said: “BT is very pleased to be able to support this important announcement today. The UK has a world-leading creative sector which plays a vital role in promoting the nation’s economic prosperity. BT is committed to supporting the creative industries by helping to tackle the problem of online piracy while ensuring the best possible experience for its customers. That’s why we’ve worked very hard with rights-holders and other leading ISPs to develop a voluntary programme based on consumer education and awareness which promotes the use of legal online content.”

See "UK Creative Industries and ISPs Partner in Major New Initiative to Promote Legal Online Entertainment" - here.

EU Courts can Order ISPs to Block Copyright Infringement Sites

The EU's Advocate General’s Opinion says that ".. Member States are to ensure that copyright holders or holders of related rights are able to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe their rights .. It is already established that internet providers can in principle be regarded as intermediaries and therefore as persons against which such injunctions, which are aimed at bringing to an end infringements already committed and at preventing further infringements, can be granted. In practice, the operators of illegal websites and the internet providers which make them available online are frequently based outside Europe or conceal their identity, making it difficult to pursue them before the courts".

"In his Opinion today, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón [pictured] takes the view that the internet provider of the user of a website which infringes copyright is also to be regarded as an intermediary whose services are used by a third party – that is the operator of the website - to infringe copyright and therefore also as a person against whom an injunction can be granted. That is apparent from the wording, context, spirit and purpose of the provision of EU law".

See also "There is always another Way to Download" - here.

See "According to Advocate General Cruz Villalón an internet provider can be required to block access by its customers to a website which infringes copyright" - here.

Gigaom Bandwidth Caps Watch (8 out of 15 ISPs on the Black List)

Stacey Higginbotham ("Over 60% of US Broadband Subscribers have Data Caps" - here)  [pictured] explains that "We’re not fans of ISPs capping broadband here at Gigaom, so we’re keeping a close eye on how those caps evolve and who they affect. Check out our updated list on who’s capping your broadband .. In most cases, the companies implementing caps maintain that 99 or 98 percent of their users don’t go over them and have median usages that range between 12 and 18 GB per month. So here are the top broadband providers in the U.S. and their caps. Last year we included a column for exceptions to the cap, but this year there aren’t any, so we took that column out". 

ISPs with no caps: TWC, Verizon, Cablevision, Frontier, Windstream, Fairpoint and Cincinnati Bell. 4 ISPs have overage costs - Comcast (see "Comcast Response to Recent Claims: Higher Base Cap w/Tiered Plans or Overage Fees" - here), AT&T, Suddenlink and MediaCom.

See the full table - "Want to know if your ISP is capping data? Check our updated chart" - here.

Netflix Ranks US ISPs: Fiber Leads, "cable shows better than DSL"

Based on "Our 30 million members view over 1 billion hours of Netflix per month" Netflix finds that "Google Fiber is now the most consistently fast ISP in America .. Broadly, cable shows better than DSL. AT&T U-verse, which is a hybrid fiber-DSL service, shows quite poorly compared to Verizon Fios, which is pure fiber". See full ranking below.

On the same time, "Netflix Aims For Net Neutrality In 2013" (here). What started as the CEO complaining in a blog (see "Netflix CEO: 'Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles'" - here) is now a $1M lobbying campaign.

See "November ISP Rankings for the USA" - here.

UK Government: No Need ("appetite") for Network Based Parental Control

I am following the UK government activity on network based web filtering service (parental control) for over two years now, starting with "UK: Public Pressure on ISPs to Enforce Parental Control" -  here through "UK Government Wants "Opt Out" Parental Control" - here, "UK Government Pushes ISPs (Again) to Provide Better Parental Control" - here to "UK: Top 4 ISPs Committed for Opt-In Parental Control" - here (see the chart below for the latter).

The last step was a public consultation - "Between 28 June and 6 September 2012, the ministers from the Department for Education and the Home Office who co-chaired the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) Executive Board consulted UKCCIS members and the wider public on their views on parental controls. - see "Parental internet controls consultation .. Over 3500 individuals and organisations replied to the consultation and gave a wide range of views" - here.

The result - the UK government response is: 

• "There was no great appetite among parents for the introduction of default filtering of the internet by their ISP: only 35 percent of the parents who responded favoured that approach"

• "The Government has therefore been working with all parts of the information and communication industries through UKCCIS to promote the approach recommended by Reg Bailey, “that the internet industry should ensure that  customers must make an active choice over what sort of content they want to allow their children to access … those providing content which is age restricted, whether by law or company policy, should seek robust means of age verification as well as making it easy for parents to block underage access”.

See "The Government’s Response to the Consultation on Parental Internet Controls" - here. 

UK: Broadband ISPs (except Sky) Still Limit P2P; Some Prioritize VoIP!

 
Thomas Newton (pictured) reports to recombu on the "Fair Use Policies - FUP’s - of the UK’s main ISPs and seen how they stack up against each other" as "Knowing what the traffic management policy of an ISP entails is as important as doing your homework on things like the monthly usage cap, the cost of line rental, customer service and bundled services like digital TV or phone plans".

The article covers BT Broadband, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Everything Everywhere Broadband (see also "UK: ISPs Publish New Voluntary Code on Broadband Traffic Management" - here). 
 
"Sky Broadband is perhaps unique among the UK’s major ISPs in that it doesn't apply any kind of traffic management at all" - but everybody else still limit P2P file sharing (here) - although P2P's share of total traffic is lower now as streaming traffic increases; Netflix alone has now 1M subscribers in the UK - (here). 

 

TalkTlak and EE Broadband prioritize some traffic - such as VoIP (both), gaming (EE) and even Web browsing (TalkTalk).
See "Traffic Management, FUP’s and Throttling: EE throttles P2P, speeds up gaming" - here.

[Globes]: Israeli ISPs will have to Advertise Minimum Broadband Speeds

Gad Peretz reports to Globes that the Israeli Ministry of Communications is going to add another level of transparency on ISP services.

ISPs will have to advertise, using the same font size they publish their "up-to" speeds, the minimum (committed) speed provided to the subscriber - both for downloads and uploads. 

There are no details on how these speeds are measured, including which services or severs will be used as a benchmark (see "UK: Transparency for Unlimited and "up-to" Service Speeds" - here)

See here (Hebrew).

FCC: Cablevision has "improved remarkably in a flight to quality"

The FCC released the " ..results of its ongoing, nationwide performance study of residential wireline broadband service in its second “Measuring Broadband America” report .. broadband providers’ promises of performance are more accurate. In the time period measured for the August 2011 Report, the average broadband provider delivered 87 percent of advertised download speed during times when bandwidth demand was at its peak. During the time period measured for the July 2012 Report, that number rose to 96 percent. FCC analysis indicates that the improvements of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in meeting their advertised speeds were largely driven by improvements in network performance, and not downward adjustments to the speed tiers offered". 

The charts below show "Average Peak Period and 24-Hour Sustained Download Speeds as a Percentage of Advertised" to this year's report and last year (see "FCC: "Most ISPs delivered actual download speeds within 20% of advertised speeds" - here).

Looks like Cablevision took last year's report seriously! Leaping from the last place with ~50% of   Advertised to the first one this year with ~120%.

See "FCC releases second “measuring broadband America” report; nationwide test of wireline broadband service reveals improved broadband performance" - here.

Bell Canada and Rogers are still on the World's Top Throttlers List

  

MLabs, a project "funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation" (see "Syracuse University Research on Deep Packet Inspection" - here), published updated information on ISPs found to be throttling data, through DPI, for BitTorrent files sharing traffic.

".. we show the 10 or 11 ISPs who had the highest percentage of tests that yielded a positive result; that is, a result indicating that DPI was used to throttle or block BitTorrent. If an ISP’s result on the chart is 93%, for example, it means that 93 percent of the tests their users conducted using Glasnost produced a result that shows that the BitTorrent application was singled out and manipulated by the ISP using deep packet inspection technology. The chart shows the two-letter country code and the name of the network operator".

Among the the top 10 throttlers for the first quarter of 2012 are two Canadian operators, who said recently they will stop throttling P2P traffic on March 2012 - will we see them the next time?

• Bell Canada - see "Bell Canada will Stop Shape "diminishing" P2P Traffic on March 2012" - here 
• Rogers - see "Rogers Stops DPI/Traffic Management" - here.

See " The world’s top bittorrent manipulators" - here.

Sandvine: How Popular was Megaupload?

    

Matt Tooley, VP of Professional Services, Sandvine, published in the company's blog some statistics on the activity of Megaupload, the filesharing (or backup, if you wish) site that was shut down recently (you can see exactly when in the chart below). 

According to Sandvine, Megaupload - "counts for roughly 1% of total traffic on fixed access networks in North America. Also involved in the shutdown were Megaupload’s affiliate sites, which included MegaVideo, MegaPix, MegaLive, and MegaBox"

As many ISPs consider the traffic to these storage sites the same way they were treating P2P file-sharing traffic (i.e. using DPI/throttling to control it). Sandvine was following the traffic in recent years - "The table below shows the combined usage of Megaupload and MegaVideo on fixed access networks in several regions from our Fall 2011 study" 

There are many other options for file-sharing - so this traffic will soon go to other sites. Sorry for those who were really using the service for backup! 

See "Megaupload Gets Shut Down" - here.

What Happened when TelstraClear Removed Data Caps?

During the recent weekend, TelstraClear [New Zealand] let its broadband customers to enjoy unlimited service ("unmetered").

This was announced on November 28 (here) saying that "TelstraClear is letting kiwis surf the web, watch video and email to their heart’s content all the first weekend in December. From 6pm on Friday 2 December until midnight on Sunday 4 December, data used by TelstraClear residential broadband customers will be free." 

Well, the weekend is over, and Truenet, a "company dedicated to the accurate measurement and reporting of broadband measurement" shared with the public the results:

"TrueNet analysed the impact on our TelstraClear probes, both Cable & ADSL. The impact was clearly evident, but of little concern, even though TelstraClear National speeds reduced by almost 40% for ADSL customers and 64% for Cable customers .. The charts shows that TelstraClear Cable speeds reduced to almost exactly the same as TelstraClear ADSL speeds. This is what we would expect, ie the speed has reduced to the available capacity, with both technologies having equal access to capacity and thus having equal speeds".

".. TrueNet's interpretation is that TelstraClear's experiment with unlimited broadband was a success with average speeds ranging from 3.3Mb/s to 7Mb/s with a limited number of outages".

TelstraClear was very happy to adopt the above statement. In a press release (here) the ISP said that "Customers used two and a half times more data overall than the previous weekend. Total usage was 359 terabytes (TB), 216 more than the weekend before, and enough to completely fill 216 large computer hard drives".

Steve Jackson (pictured), TelstraClear head of consumer markets, said that "We expected customers to take advantage of this opportunity and were upfront from the start .. We made substantial increases in our national and international capacity before the weekend, and put further capacity in place when the demand exceeded this .. We acknowledge that some customers were unhappy with their internet experience, just as we note that many have reported they didn’t mind slower speeds because they were able to use far more data than they otherwise would"

Research Claims: Net Neutrality Increases the Incentive to Expand Infrastructure Capacity

       
The main debate over Net Neutrality is whether or not ISPs will be allowed to prioritized and/or discriminate content. Current US rules (which will become effective next week) do not allow "unreasonable discrimination: fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic" (here).

Many carriers said they should charge either the content owners ("they are using our network for free") or subscribers (by offering a premium service) in order to allow future investments in network infrastructure (and increase revenues).

One example - Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabe said (October 2010, here): "The mismatch between investments and revenue is set to compromise the economic sustainability of the current business model for telecom companies". See more quotes from French Government, Telefonica, DT, Orange(FT),  Verizon and Telekom Austria.

A research by H. Kenneth Cheng, H. Kenneth Cheng, University of Florida - Warrington College of Business Administration, Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay University of Florida - Warrington College of Business Administration and Hong Guo (pictured), University of Notre Dame analyzes whether the above ideas are economically-justified, and allowing ISPs to charge content provider for content prioritization will incentivize them to invest in expanding their network infrastructure, as they say, or not.

The conclusion: "we find that the incentive to expand infrastructure capacity for the broadband service provider and its optimal capacity choice under net neutrality are higher than those under the no net neutrality regime except in some specific cases. Under net neutrality, the broadband service provider always invests in broadband infrastructure at the socially optimal level, but either under- or over-invests in infrastructure capacity in the absence of net neutrality"

See "The Debate on Net Neutrality: A Policy Perspective" - here.

Yet Another ISP Transparency Guide

  
It seems that many regulators see that network neutrality is being focused on ISP transparency, rather than the full package of "all traffic being treated equally".

After UK's BCAP recommended ISPs how to to advertize services (here), BEREC (the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications) published a draft document on ISP transparency.

See "BEREC Guidelines on Net Neutrality and Transparency: Best practices and recommended approaches" - here.

• "We stress that transparency regarding net neutrality is a key pre-condition of the end users’ ability to choose the quality of the service that best fits their needs and also should reduce the assymetry of information existing between providers and end users, fostering proactive behaviour by Internet Service Providers (ISPs)”
    

• First of all, we believe that a fully effective transparency policy should fulfill all of the following characteristics: accessibility, understandabilty, meaningfulness, comparability and accuracy .. BEREC has identified two approaches - a direct and an indirect one. With a direct approach, ISPs make information transparent to end users directly, while in an indirect approach, third parties (such as comparison websites) play a crucial role in making the information understandable for end users. A direct approach is legally required by the Framework. An indirect approach, on the other hand, is not compulsory, but it complements a direct approach
    
• BEREC finds that providers should clearly explain any general limitations, as well as any consequences of exceeding such limits. In this regards, explicit conditions such as data caps and download limits seem preferable to fair use policies Information on traffic management techniques, applied either on types of traffic or content, should be provided to end users along with information on about how these techniques may affect the end users’ access service.
   
• Application agnostic and application specific traffic management techniques should be clearly distinguished

Report Concludes: The "Open Internet" is Good for All

  

A new report from Plum Consulting on the "Open Internet" concludes:

"The open internet has and continues to generate substantial benefits. Yet the principles of the open internet face challenges with evidence of discrimination against internet-based applications in Europe particularly on mobile. We also conclude that the policy challenge of maintaining the open internet and promoting demand for advanced applications and networks is recognised, but has yet to be resolved .. The ‘net neutrality’ policy debate has been clouded by a number of misconceptions about the internet value chain, the incentives of the various players, and the costs involved. There can be no doubt that demand for internet content and applications is good, not bad. Demand incentivises investment in advanced network access, contributing to the realisation of EU Digital Agenda goals and the UK and other national Government’s broadband ambitions"

While the report promotes the "Open Internet" (access to all lawful data and applications), which is not surprising considering the clients who commissioned it (The BBC, Blinkbox, Channel 4, Skype and Yahoo!), "We do not include in our definition of the open internet a requirement that all data are necessarily given equal priority, an additional concept that is often included in definitions of “net neutrality”. There are circumstances in which traffic management for legal or technical reasons is beneficial, provided the approach is not discriminatory".
 

See "The open internet - a platform for growth" - here.

UK: Transparency for Unlimited and "up-to" Service Speeds

    

UK's BCAP (Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice) published a set of guidelines to " bring clarity to advertisers and consumers on the use of "unlimited" and "up to" speed claims in telecommunicatons and broadband ads".

Ofcom, the UK regulator, follows this aspect of ISP services closely (see "Ofcom – The Difference between Theoretical and Real Life Broadband Speeds" - here and "Ofcom: ADSL Actual Download Speed is Only a Third of Advertized Speed - here) and it seems that the UK code of "self-regulation" does not work here and strict guidelines or regulation is needed.

BCAP states that:

• Unlimited should be used if "The user incurs no additional charge or suspension of service as a consequence of exceeding a usage threshold associated with a ‘fair usage policy’ (FUP), a traffic management policy or similar; and Limitations that do affect the speed or usage of the service are moderate only and are clearly explained in the advertisement"
   
• Speed Claims - "If a maximum speed claim is made, advertisers should be able to demonstrate that the speed is achievable for at least 10% of customers' Advertisers should also include in the ad appropriate, additional information to accompany a maximum speed claim to ensure the average consumer is not misled.  Where relevant, this includes information that bears out that a significant proportion of subscribers receive a speed that falls considerably short of what consumers might reasonably expect the service to offer"

See "Changes in advertising of 'unlimited' and broadband speed claims" - here; Unlimited guide - here and Speed Claim guide - here.

[Guest post]: AT&T and T-Mobile Merger – Good or Bad?

By Laura Backes*, DSL Service Providers

No one really saw it coming… it was supposed to go off without a hitch. However the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile hit a huge snag when the Department of Justice turned around and filed suit proclaiming that the merger would dramatically lessen the competition in the mobile industry. But what does it mean, really, for what is arguably the most important factor in this whole acquisition – the consumer - if the two companies are permitted to unite? As with everything major like this, there are a lot of hot-headed opinions floating around supporting both side of the merger, making valid points in favor of and against the subscriber.

Pros:

1.      Expanded coverage for AT&T users: AT&T is notorious for dropped calls, to an annoying degree. The merger with T-Mobile would expand coverage and provide a more solid foundation so that this would be less of an issue
  

2.      Increased and faster service: Both AT&T and T-Mobile users would like see an improvement in service. Considering AT&T is too bogged down right now to accumulate their users and a merge with T-Mobile would give them some breathing room. As for T-Mobile users, the union with AT&T should alleviate the in-home service issue and decrease roaming issues
 

3.      Rollover Minutes: At the moment, T-Mobile users suffer from the “use it or lose it” plan, meaning that if they don’t use up their monthly minutes they are unable to utilize them the next month. AT&T, on the other hand, allows you minutes to roll over for 12 months. The merger will allow for the elimination of wasting unused minutes, which is a definite benefit for T-Mobile users.

Cons:

1.      Fewer Choices: With T-Mobile being absorbed by AT&T, consumer’s choices will end up being limited. Thus far, T-Mobile has been on the up and up with innovation and experimentation in the marketplace. But a merger with AT&T will likely limit this
 

2.      Job Reduction: With any big merger there will always be a need to “trim the fat” so to speak. Because two companies will downsize (or upgrade, however you want to look at it) into one, there will be an inevitable overlap of jobs, meaning that someone’s gotta go!

3.      Price increases: AT&T is more expensive than T-Mobile, plain and simple. It’s unlikely that prices will go down after the two companies blend together… and for T-Mobile subscribers this means a price increase.

So will the consumers be better off or worse off if the merger manages to push through? Right now, it looks as though AT&T customers will come out the breadwinners and T-Mobile customers will be the ones to suffer. For now, all we can do is wait to see how the suit plays out and hope that everyone will benefit from the outcome.

________________

*Laura Backes has been writing for DSL Service Providers since April of 2010 and has really enjoyed getting to know more about Internet service providers and the various roles that ISP’s play in the lives of the average person.