Verizon Settles Probe Into Data Plans...

I guess that Unlimited will have to mean "Unlimited" now. All the major Internet carriers have a "cap" set, you will not know what it is until you reach it. Comcast is about 500gig a month and Verizon is much much less than that.

NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a penalty and reimburse users who were disconnected for "excessive" use of a cellular broadband service that was marketed as allowing "unlimited" use, New York's state attorney general announced Tuesday.

A nine-month investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office found that Verizon Wireless disconnected 13,000 subscribers for exceeding an undisclosed monthly usage cap.
Under the settlement, Verizon Wireless will reimburse the terminated subscribers for the cost of the laptop cards or laptop-connected cell phones they bought to use the service. The company put the cost at around $1 million. It will also pay $150,000 in penalties and costs to the state.
The prosecutor's office said the company voluntarily stopped disconnecting customers based on their data usage in April.

Verizon's user agreement for the BroadbandAccess plan prohibits continuous streaming of audio or video and peer-to-peer file sharing, all of which generate heavy traffic.

It also reserves the right to disconnect or slow down traffic for anyone using too much data, but since this spring, the cap has been explicit rather than undisclosed: 5 gigabytes of data per month.

The agreement says the plan is only to be used for Web surfing, e-mail and corporate intranet access, activities that are unlikely to generate 5 gigabytes of traffic in a month.

"We are pleased to have cooperated with the New York Attorney General and to have voluntarily reached this agreement," said Howard Waterman, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless. "When this was brought to our attention, we understood that advertising for our NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess services could provide more clarity."

The company will be contacting affected customers for reimbursement.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.

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Senators want probe on content blocking...

I figured that Comcast and Verizon would get their asses in a sling from their actions. I did several posts a few weeks ago about these issues.


By DIBYA SARKAR, AP Business Writer
WASHINGTON - Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones.

Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the incidents involving several companies, including Comcast Corp., Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., have raised serious concerns over the companies' "power to discriminate against content."

They want the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal regulation is needed.

"The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers 'a solution in search of a problem,'" they said in a letter to Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, the committee's chairman.

A committee spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter.
An Associated Press report on Oct. 19 detailed how Comcast Corp. was interfering with file sharing by some of its Internet subscribers. The AP found instances in some areas of the country where traffic was blocked or delayed significantly.

Comcast — the nation's No. 2 Internet provider — has acknowledged "delaying" some subscriber Internet data, but said the delays are temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users.

Verizon Wireless in late September denied a request by Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, to use its mobile network for a sign-up text messaging program.

The company reversed course just a day later, calling it a mistake and an "isolated incident."
AT&T reportedly changed a service agreement that previously included language permitting the company to cancel accounts of Internet users who disparage the company.

Several lawmakers, including Dorgan, earlier this year introduced so-called legislation promoting "Net neutrality," which is the principle that all Internet traffic be treated equally by carriers.

Equal treatment of traffic is long-standing practice on the Internet. The legislation is a response to suggestions by phone companies that they would like charge Web sites extra for preferential treatment of their traffic.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Britain-based Vodafone Group PLC.


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Verizon Wireless... Bunkgrades!!

Well folks, we decided to go totally wireless in our home. We are going to turn of the home phone in a few days to save money. We all have cell phones and now all have local Richmond numbers. It is also time to upgrade our cells...

SO this morning at 8.30am, after I got home from work, we went to the Verizon Wireless store. We got our numbers changed and we were looking at new cells. We thought that when it was time for us to change phones out that we had a $100 credit per phone...WRONG!!!! We are on a family plan. Only the main phone gets the $100 credit and the other people have to pay $FULL$ PRICE for their "new" phone. That really sucked a big one!! Here we all had found new, better, bigger, stronger, faster cells and what a letdown...

They got you by the balls on this one. The fam plan will save money, but not on hardware costs. So choose wisely when trying to decide on what plan to get when making that decision.

This was the phone that I was going to get. It is the LG VX8600.

Wewill see what happens...

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