Kyle Brady: Blog » AT&T

Making Net Neutrality Policy [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:05:45 +0000

Net Neutrality policy, or, rather, the need for such policy, is not a new topic, yet it has only just reached the halls of Congress for consideration, and brought with it the usual slew of idiocy and incompetence that can only be found in a group of people trying to legislate on an arena of life they barely understand, let alone participate in.

At it’s heart, Net Neutrality is about unfettered, unrestricted, and unbiased access to the Internet, but as is typical with such a broad concept, there are many variations and definitions. The most idealistic and effective interpretation of Net Neutrality is one that prevents Internet Service Providers from filtering, shaping, or blocking traffic based on type, source, or size, as well as preventing discrimination by ISPs that may have conflicting interests.

An effective example is to examine Comcast’s holdings and behaviors: they are, at the heart, a cable network with television subscribers and have ample interest in seeing on demand media via the Internet (such as Hulu) fail to achieve mass market success - they also have VoIP telephone offerings, which competes with services such as Skype. In the case of Comcast, it would be in their best interest to prevent, augment, or charge an extra fee for the use of services over its network that competes with their offerings, but this is highly unethical and they have yet to officially implement such policy – although it is inevitable and is rumored to currently be the talk of their executives. Furthermore, Comcast has expressed interest in so-called “bandwidth caps” that would put arbitrary limits on the amount of data a user can send and receive over their broadband connection within a given time period, which is a not-so-clever approach to decimating their high bandwidth service rivals.

Companies such as Comcast already participate heavily, and illegally, in a practice known as “traffic shaping”, by which certain types of traffic are either severely impeded or prevented entirely for reasons that are not publicly admitted to – experiments have proven peer-to-peer traffic to be one of the triggers of this behavior, and using “too much bandwidth” in an arbitrary time period, a policy stated nowhere, is another trigger known for AT&T.

These are the reasons why Net Neutrality is important, but weak policy passed with a Net Neutrality label, either by the FCC or Congress, is not enough. Republicans have already, predictably, come out in force against regulating ISPs, along with their fellow corrupt politicians throughout Congress that are more interested in their own pockets than the betterment of America or its people – John McCain, an admitted technophobe and Internet-avoider, has even introduced legislation that would prevent the federal government from even getting involved in this issue.

It is critical to the future of America, most especially a digital one, that Internet Service Providers come to be regarded as the next utility company, rather than as a service that citizens can choose to participate in. If only a single lesson can be learned from the financial mess of the last two years, it is this: markets cannot, and will not, regulate themselves when there are ever greater profits to be had at the expense of their customers/beneficiaries. The lack of regulation on the broadband market so far has resulted in a situation that is quickly approaching chaos, with a variety of plans and machinations to provide ever-less services for ever-greater prices.

The inevitable argument in Congress will be whether the networks have the ability to support unadulterated traffic, and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. This, however, will be hard to express to those who are technologically illiterate by trade or ignorant by choice. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that digitally-minded citizens across America make their voices heard on this issue: if a customer has ever experienced less-than-advertised speeds, long-term disconnected service, traffic filtering/shaping/blocking, or been the recipient of other such nefarious activities, both the FCC and Congress need to know.

An America that has bandwidth caps, approved traffic types, and networks that don’t communicate with each other is not a country that can continue to grow and compete on a global, or digital, scale. Technological illiterate Senators such as John McCain should be excluded, by whatever means possible, from the process, along with those Senators that have indicated their loyalties lie with those finance their campaigns, such as Diane Feinstein. This issue, much like true healthcare reform, is one that can only be accomplished through brute force and political strength of will – there will be no bipartisanship, and it is likely that anyone within Congress that considers themselves a conservative, regardless of party, will oppose such legislation as well.

In light of Congress' known stagnation and distinct lack of progressive interests, perhaps the FCC should pass their legislation first, however weakened, to set the tone and discussion for future Congressional legislation – if there is policy in place that provides the foundation of true Net Neutrality, it would be considerably more difficult for detractors to argue against the mere existence of such legislation.

Julius Genachowski, it is time to prove that you are capable of achieving what you claim to believe in - America is waiting.

AT&T’s Local Monopoly Continues Unabated [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:05:54 +0000

I’ve already written extensively about how bad AT&T’s Internet Service is (background: [1] [2], offsite: [1] [2]), but new developments have prompted me to add to the already-epic saga…

After the blocking of 4chan by AT&T earlier this summer and their continued filtering/throttling of my traffic, I decided it was time to find a new ISP. I’d had Comcast before and left for reasons of ethics and principle, and I wasn’t going back. Verizon and other major providers are not available in the South Bay area for some reason – so I went hunting for local providers that probably wouldn’t have the legal departments necessary for the corporate doublespeak of filtering/throttling customers.

But a problem came up pretty quickly: while there are a number of local ISPs for the South Bay, none of them were feasible. The only company that uses ADSL for residential purposes is north of San Francisco (too far), and the rest, both cable and DSL, were more than happy to offer their services, so long as I had an AT&T phone account.

So, just to clarify: if I wanted internet service that wasn’t from AT&T (who I currently have ADSL with, no phone number necessary), I’d have to get phone service (at $14.95/mth) with the very same company I’m trying to leave. Either that or become a customer of Comcast again, for $33/mth that would double after a few months to $66/mth – more than I pay now for “Elite PRO DSL” ($45/mth) and with worse speeds.

I was pretty angry, and set out to find out why I had to have AT&T phone service to have plans with these local ISPs – even those that were providing “cable” or “fusion” network connections. The answer was pretty simple, and I didn’t have to do much digging: AT&T owns almost all of the phone lines in the South Bay area. They don’t rent them, monitor them, or manage them, but own them, and for consumer traffic to cross their lines they require a phone service account.

There’s a number of issues with this, but the first that comes to mind is pretty basic: why is Verizon nowhere to be found within the Bay Area? Their FiOS program is exploding to the point that they’re giving up the landline phone service business, and yet the company that is known for providing the fastest, best, most reliable next-generation broadband services cannot be found within Silicon Valley. How is that a good business decision? As a company, Verizon would stand to easily make millions from the countless rich nerds that populate the Bay Area who would love to have fiber-to-the-home. But even if Verizon seems to think it’s in their best interest to ignore Silicon Valley, where is Time Warner? Or Earthlink? Or even Covad, with a residential offering? These large companies are the kinds of corporate behemoths that would force AT&T to make concessions, so consumers wouldn’t have to have dual accounts.

The second major issue is pretty obvious as well: why does AT&T own all the phone lines in the Bay Area? This is obviously not something that’s going to benefit the general public, and doesn’t seem like the sort of power governments (local, state, and federal) would want to give to a breakup child of the Bell monopoly. In many areas, phone lines are owned by the state, and companies rent or “pay to manage” these lines – the only time a line is owned by a company is when it’s long-haul or a line to a residence. But California chose, in all its magnificence, to let AT&T own the phone lines and essentially stifle local competition.

Finally, the other, and most important, issue is one of monopoly. The sort of de facto local monopoly that AT&T has on DSL and landline phone service in the South Bay is not a unique case, similar to how Comcast is the only provider of cable. All across the country, consumers have no choice when they want DSL, phone, or cable service, and instead have to use the only offering available – this results in higher prices, corporate indifference, and unnecessary corporate growth. At a minimum, there should be two major offerings for all services in any given urban/suburban area, which the FCC seems to realize with the cap of Comcast’s nationwide customer base.

But, somehow, they have ignored the local monopolies that develop either out of coincidence, intent, or collusion - even while customers continue to be ignored, lied to, and overall screwed. Does anyone really wonder why both AT&T and Comcast feel that they can lie to the FCC - about numerous issues, on varied occasions - and get away with it? When you have a large customer base that will never significantly shrink, you can depend on certain levels of income year after year – certainly more than enough to pay for litigation and the FCC’s fines.

I’m disgusted that I’ve been put in such a corner, but I truly have no choice. Comcast is the one true Antichrist, so I will not be their customer again – and yet AT&T is the Antichrist’s First Disciple. When faced with the choice of a $15/mth phone line plus $40/mth internet service, or $45/mth internet service, which option does a poor college student take? The least expensive one, of course.

Which in this case means I’m continuing to support the very company that hates my existence, proven by the double-billing, lying, traffic filtering, and overall poor customer service I’ve received since I became their customer two years ago.

What a load of crap.

The Fall of AT&T Began on 7/26/2009 [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:05:07 +0000

On Sunday, July 26th, 2009, AT&T made a grave miscalculation in their attempt to garner ever more customers to their internet-related plans (DSL, ADSL, U-verse, etc.) , as they moved from merely traffic-shaping and lying about their packages to actually blocking sections of the internet. The target, in this instance, was a highly visited dark corner of the nerd world known as 4chan, specifically the portions of the site dependent on the “img” subdomain such as the /b/ image board. - at a time when the FCC is moving towards further telco regulation in the vein of Net Neutrality.

The quickest way to explain /b/ is this: “a mostly-anonymous, no-archives message board with only light moderation that ranges from intelligent topics to highly NSFW imagery, while managing to spawn most Internet ‘memes’ and serve as an organizational method for the anti-Scientology movement known as ‘Anonymous’ and other such truth-minded endeavors”. The caveat to the prior statement is that the activity on /b/ is occasionally legally questionable, and usually ethically murky at best – unless the /b/rothers are targeting lying salesmen, cat killers, or being otherwise noble.

AT&T has apparently admitted to blocking traffic to “portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, which is easily tested by comparison of a user’s connection+response to the results of a site like downforeveryoneorjustme – the question is no longer “are they really?”, but “why?” and “what happens next?”. The “why” will probably never be satisfactorily answered, since there are entire legions of people and organizations that would love to see /b/ blocked, and would pay for it to happen, but the current excuse is that DDoS attacks were originating from AT&T’s internet services – obviously it’s a better solution to block the endpoint of an attack than to deal with the hassle of monitoring your own customers for highly illegal and destructive activities.

The “what happens next?” is a considerably easier question to answer: the estimated 1.5 million people who call themselves /b/tards or /b/rothers will be very angry, if they aren’t already. Anon already has a considerable history of viciously taking down anyone that opposes it or its interests, and blocking access to their most beloved of websites qualifies as an opposition of interest. AT&T can expect many lost customers, even if this issue is “resolved” quickly, complaints to the FCC, and any number of other attacks on both the company’s integrity and profits.

However, the supporters of AT&T's ethically ambiguous behavior are already beginning to make their voices heard, such as Bill Belew of the “Christian Worldview Examiner”. These people are the same that have always lauded the shutdown of 4chan or the arrest of "moot" (the owner/administrator) as a solution to their problems – free speech is free speech, and Net Neutrality has no caveats. Censorship in any form, whether it’s traffic-shaping or an outright ban, is not only uncalled for, but illegal. Especially in America.

Regardless of the reasons for AT&T's banning of portions of 4chan to their customers, the important point is that they took such an action, and not whether such sites should exist - it is not the place of network administrators to decide what is and is not appropriate, if anyone at all. Many individuals and organizations, usually religious in nature, don’t like the numerous porn sites that exist across the Internet, but until now they have merely had to bite their tongues. Banning any data endpoint, for any reason, sets a dangerous precedent, especially in the lobby- and interest-driven society of the modern world.

7/26/2009 could mark a turning point in the life of AT&T, when the future looks back on history, as the day that the shady practices of an ethically challenged company finally caught up with them: traffic filtering, site banning, and lying about service packages can only continue for so long before the FCC, along with the bill-paying public, takes a stand.

Update (7/27/2009 12:50pm PST): AT&T has made an official statement that the blocking of 4chan was due to a DDoS - which could very easily be a lie. However, it doesn't matter for "why" - the blocking of access to content is the exact definition of censorship, and that doesn't change the nature of this offense. The block has also apparently been removed.

GigaOm, you disappoint me by yet again siding with the people that pay your bills.

Update (7/27/2009 1:20pm PST): 'moot' has weighed in that some of their hardware caused AT&T to think there was a DDoS going on, and that AT&T had a "disproportionate response". While I'm inclined to believe this account of the story, AT&T's reaction was still shady at best, not to mention ethically questionable.

AT&T and Their ADSL Package- Continuing to Screw Me [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:51:42 +0000

For a quick history, see my post regarding AT&T and .torrent files. It's from a year ago, but not a whole lot has changed since then... Also, you can skip to the takeaway points of this, rather than reading the entire, rather lengthy, piece.

I changed apartments a few months ago, and in doing so I had to transfer my AT&T ADSL service from the old location to the new one... I haven't written about it until now, because I didn't have good enough reason to, but they screwed it up. Big time. And as of writing this, months later, the issues aren't fully resolved.

Oh, and they still filter my traffic too.

The Great Escape

To make a long story short, I requested them to transfer my service from Location A (old and then-current apartment) to Location B (new apartment) by Date C (about a week and a half from when I called). Within 24 hours, my modem mysteriously broke (killswitch?), and after calling in again to receive a new modem (free only by agreeing to a verbal contract of a year of service), I discovered that my transfer request has "disappeared" from their system. We created a new account request for Location B, active once again on Date C, with the modem to be received within 48 hours at Location B.

The modem didn't show at the new apartment, and it still wasn't there a week later. Having been without service for at least a week (in either location), I called after I received a bill. As it turns out, they misspelled my address and didn't include an apartment number, so it had been sitting in the closest UPS facility for the last 7 days. UPS had told AT&T to contact me to pick it up, so they sent a note to my address (not calling me once) - which I never received, because they didn't address it properly. The people at UPS said this is a regular event from AT&T.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Now having a modem, and managing to avoid any other idiotic issues when connecting to my service at the new apartment, I was content. However, a month and a half later (two weeks ago) I received two bills: each for a different account, totaling $130.

I spent two hours on the phone with the Billing Department, listening in as they spoke to different departments for my benefit. Apparently what had happened was that I had two accounts for the same service, in the same location, one of which was the "missing" account from the original transfer request.

While on the phone, they asked for one account to be closed, but not physically disconnected, via the Disconnect Dept., since I still had an active and valid account at the same address. They credited a payment from the false account to the true account, and placed a "billing changes pending" marker on the account - supposedly filing a bunch of notes for future reference along the way. I spoke to a supervisor, non-outsourced, who promised to call back within 48hrs. with an update on how much was being deducted from my account balance based on false accounts, lack of service, etc.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Less than 24hrs. later, I had no service, and had instead a blinking red status light on my month-old DSL modem - at 10am. Someone had come out from the Disconnect Dept., and disconnected me, despite being told not to.

Before doing any normal-life things like eating breakfast, making coffee, or showering, I called AT&T and spoke to the Line Dept., bypassing Tech Support completely, briefly explaining the situation. After asking the agent to look at the notes on my account, he enlightened me to the fact that no notes existed whatsoever.

Despite AT&T causing my problems, by being absolutely retarded, the earliest they could come out was the following Monday... I was calling on a Thursday morning. My request for escalation was processed, and I received a robot-call telling me it was denied 5 minutes later, no explanation.

Fight Club

My internet was reconnected by a very helpful field contractor, who gave me his cellphone so I "don't have to wait for AT&T to schedule a call whenever they feel like it", and I was again content. But further consultation with the Billing Dept. has shown that they also have no notes on my account, nor any reference to a supervisor callback that I never received - and they won't discuss my billing issues with me since I have an account change pending.

The very change that was placed on my account to prevent late fees being assessed while things were straightened out.

Romeo and Juliet

In the last 3 months, I've been without service a minimum of 2.5 weeks, none of which has been credited to me, and they claim that I actually had service during these periods. My connection is highly spotty, sometimes reconnecting multiple times within the span of a minute, but my hardware is all brand new, so it's not a local issue.

I pay $45/mth for "ADSL Pro Elite", purporting to have 6.0Mbps downstream - which I demonstrably don't have anything close to. They still filter my traffic in terms of torrent files and other file downloads, taking over an hour to download a single standard-definition TV episode (of, say, South Park) or needing to wait a few minutes to build a buffer when watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Hulu. I still get penalized if they feel I used enough bandwidth for an arbitrary time period, such as slowing my connection to a crawl if I even dare to watch a streaming Netflix movie, resulting in picture quality that I could produce in my bathtub with a handful of crayons - with similar audio.

Count Dracula

At this point, I don't have many options: AT&T refuses to acknowledge that most of these events that have even occurred, they "lose" account notes that may have not existed in the first place, and generally screw me over in the use of their service. Comcast, being the only local cable provider, is not an acceptable replacement, for obvious reasons. Verizon doesn't provide service in my area, let alone FiOS, and none of the other major telcos don't either. I can't even use a Verizon satellite-card connection, because it wouldn't support having a home network like I do.

I'm painted into a corner. Paying too much for a service that doesn't deliver, to a company that lies, without options to go elsewhere.

What I really need is someone like Covad to provide solid, dependable, and quality service, downgraded in both specifications and price to a consumer level. If there ever was a reason for the Federal government to be involved in net neutrality and the internal network operations of the telcos, and not just "let the free market sort it out" (because total free reign has worked so well elsewhere!), this is one.

Maybe the real question is: who wants to form a telco startup?

p.s. Yes, it was worth the time it took to write this epic saga of lies, deceit, and backstabbing by AT&T. I feel slightly better now.

--- --- ---

Update (5/11/2009 9:30pm PST): I received a notice/bill/warning from a bill collecting agency today for part of the payment that is disputed and AT&T was supposed to be looking into... even though I've kept my account current monthly, while the other fees are "investigated" (or not... who knows, maybe they lost those records too). The saga continues.

AT&T Not “Traffic Shaping”? Right. [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:22:31 +0000

Take a look at these screenshots.

Screen 1: downloading a torrent for tonight's Scrubs. The source doesn't matter, since there are both legal and illegal sources for this kind of content. Download speed, via test, is 661Kbps, and the torrent is at a crawl. Web pages and uploading things via SSH to a server take forever.

Screen 2: all torrents now paused. Download speed, via test is 2.2Mbps. Everything is fast and quick.

This has been happening over the last week, maybe week and a half. Never a problem before, but if I have a torrent active, even a simple thing like using SSH via command line becomes difficult and very "laggy".

What the hell? I left Comcast because they sucked at life (bad customer service, traffic shaping, lies, etc.), and now AT&T is starting to do something that's highly decried as a "major no-no" in the public eye?

Great. Thanks, assholes.

----------------------------

Edit: just for the record, I'm on "AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Pro". It's a DSL dryloop plan.

Update (4/24/08 1AM PST): I called AT&T, got forwarded to a nonsense number, and then called back. There was no record of me calling, no trouble tickets. Because that's not suspicious.

Update (4/24/08 1:40AM PST): "Call back tomorrow when our Line Department is open, it's probably an issue with your line." Got a ticket number this time, but the SOB Manager wouldn't give me his full name ("Chris" was definitely not part of it, that's for sure) or a direct number to that department. We'll see what happens in a few hours.

Update (4/30/08 2:00PM PST): I sent off a few emails to different departments at AT&T, linking to this with a "this is bullshit, fix it or I'm leaving your service immediately" message. In every case, I either got "this isn't our department's problem" or "we have determined this not to be an issue" in response. I haven't called back yet, because I wanted to see what would happen... the results? My bandwidth is not being capped as much as before, since I now get about 60% of the promised speed if a torrent is involved.

This obviously didn't just happen on it's own, but I find it interesting nonetheless. However, it's not completely fixed yet, so I'm not giving up on this issue... I wonder what department fixed this, and why they did if it wasn't "an issue" or their "problem"...

Update (9/23/08 7:30pm PST): I stopped downloading things for the last two months or so, in the hope that whatever they've flagged my account with disappears. It didn't.

I'm still dealing with bandwidth caps when torrents are connected, and getting the run-around from anyone who bothers to talk with me about it from on high. And yet, they claim to be "down" with P2P.

I'm calling "shenanigans" on this one.