Tag: section 201

Ars Technica reported a few months ago that the practice of slamming still lives on. Slamming involves the deceptive switching of a customer’s voice carrier. It is one of those minor protections spelled out in Title II of the Communications Act.

By the way, the specific rule is covered in section 201 ( “any such charge, practice, classification, or regulation that is unjust or unreasonable is declared to be unlawful” ) and is one of the six sections that will be applied to cable broadband providers in the FCC’s novel third way approach.

So it is disturbing to read that AT&T was caught slamming customers in Illinois. On Friday, the FCC granted a complaint against AT&T for switching a customer of Unitel Communications without first receiving authorization.Continue reading

You can sense where the Internet may be heading by looking at the bandwidth policy platforms that core infrastructure vendors are offering to carriers.

With equipment from Tekelec, a major networking equipment player, cable companies can monitor and allocate bandwidth dynamically, as well as grant special deals to subscribers.

For example, a video web site could temporarily allow downloads to not count against a customer’s data limits as set by the cable ISP. Or the web site of a content provider could purchase better QoS—lower latency or more bandwidth—between its servers and subscribers’ endpoint devices.

Tekelec’s Camiant Policy Management platform would handle all this.

There’s nothing inherently illegal with allowing carriers to price discriminate based on volume, service, or even time of day.Continue reading

Tag: section 201

AT&T Charged with Slamming

Deal of the Day in 2015: “No Data Limits btwn 8-9 PM”