Verizon Flirts With DSL Usage Caps in Virginia With the company's focus now primarily on wireless and slinging ads to Millennials, Verizon's long-neglected DSL customers were already feeling unwanted in the wake of frozen FiOS fiber upgrades. In many areas, Verizon has simply refused to upgrade or repair lines, and frequently hits these users with annoying price hikes on slow DSL speeds that cost Verizon very little to actually deliver. The goal quite literally is to drive these unwanted customers to cable competitors or the company's own wireless service (often sold by those same cable competitors).

Now these unwanted Verizon DSL customers may have another reason to leave: potential usage caps. Users in our forums recently discovered that Verizon has begun conducting a new "trial" in Virginia. As part of this trial, customers on DSL lines at speeds of 500 kbps to 1.5 Mbps are now informed "usage" is limited to 150 gigabytes. Users on DSL speeds between 1.5 Mbps and 3 Mbps are now told those lines only feature 250 GB of "usage." This new trial doesn't appear to have been formally announced anywhere, and the company's website doesn't tell these users what happens when users consume their new monthly allotments. As we've long noted, there's no economic or technical reason to impose usage caps on well-managed fixed-line networks. The limits don't actually help manage congestion, and flat-rate broadband (thanks largely to limited competition) is perfectly profitable. In many instances, caps and overage fees are only applied as another way to raise rates on captive customers, while also allowing ISPs to cash in (or punish) customers that are fleeing from an ISP's cable TV services to streaming video. When approached for comment by DSLReports, Verizon tried to claim these stated usage limits aren't really caps because they're not being enforced (yet), and the company has no plan to impose overage fees (for now). "We're not applying data caps, overage fees or any sort of restrictions on DSL customers,"

-Verizon, after its website informed users of "usage" limits "We're not applying data caps, overage fees or any sort of restrictions on DSL customers," Verizon claims. "There is a small trial in Virginia of displaying data usage in customer billing. It affects less than 2,000 homes over three remote terminals. But while the customers are shown data allowances of 150-250 GB, none of them are charged if they exceed those amounts." "We're not applying data caps, overage fees or any sort of restrictions on DSL customers," Verizon claims. "There is a small trial in Virginia of displaying data usage in customer billing. It affects less than 2,000 homes over three remote terminals. But while the customers are shown data allowances of 150-250 GB, none of them are charged if they exceed those amounts." The company added that users in our forums from markets outside of Virginia (like New York and New Jersey) weren't supposed to see the limits. "While the trial is only in the small subset of Virginia, a system error recently caused customers in other parts of the country to see it in the online ordering system," Verizon states. "That error has been corrected." The company offered the same explanation to Stop the Cap, insisting that "we don’t have data caps or overage charges" despite their website now clearly informing these Virginia users they face "usage" restrictions dependent on connection speed. When pressed, Verizon doubled down. "We've never had a way for these customers to see their usage," a company spokesman added, stating this is "just a very small trial with that." "Lots of cable companies display broadband data usage to customers even though they don't impose data caps. I'm afraid this isn't as exciting as you think," the spokesperson argued. Verizon's explanation doesn't hold much water. While it's true that "lots of cable companies display broadband data usage," that traditionally only comes ahead of efforts to impose hard caps and overage fees. And the only time these companies back off that idea is when public backlash (or competition) forces them to. And if Verizon's goal is simply to educate DSL users about data consumption, why not just provide a usage meter ? Why inform them via the Verizon website that their lines now face "usage" limits of 150 GB or 250 GB per month? Verizon didn't answer that question. There's simply no legitimate reason to be applying such restrictions on slow DSL speeds that cost Verizon an arguable pittance to deliver. Given that the majority of DSL users don't really eat much data, the idea that Verizon was simply worried that these users needed additional help understanding their consumption habits seems flimsy. A more likely explanation is that Verizon was just caught flat-footed experimenting with unnecessary and arbitrary DSL limits either to (eventually) glean some additional revenue off the back of uncompetitive markets, or annoy these unwanted customers as part of a long-standing effort by to drive them off of DSL lines the company routinely refuses to upgrade and would like to be rid of. Whether Verizon's being disingenuous here is going to be something worth keeping an eye on.







News Jump WISPs Get CBRS Range As Great As Six Miles At 100 Mbps Speeds; Windstream Officially Exits Bankruptcy; + more news Charter Relaunches Free 60-day Internet And Wi-Fi Offer; NCTA: FCC Should Stick With 25/3 Speed Threshold; + more news Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 54 comments

brad152

join:2006-07-27

Chicago, IL ·AT&T U-Verse

·WOW Internet and..

25 recommendations brad152 Member 3.1-7Mbps? I always forget how piss poor DSL is in Verizon land.



I always wonder what had happened if Ivan had stuck on board and had them 100% FTTH like he wanted to do, Yes you have to spend money to make money longterm.. and that man understood that.



Once Ivan took off, verizon was just not the same internally anymore and that's when *I* left the company. shmerl

join:2013-10-21 14 recommendations shmerl Member You don't need any trials to measure usage. You just measure it, transparently to the user, and there is no need to associate it with billing in any way. Verizon just want to be nasty, following such thugs as Comcast and AT&T. mist668

join:2011-02-15

Middleburg, PA 11 recommendations mist668 Member Uhmm I thought the 3/768 for $60 some a month was naturally capped by being expensive and slow as hell. en103

join:2011-05-02 10 recommendations en103 Member New for Verizon but.... Not new in general. AT&T has had, and still does have usage caps on its xDSL service. Legacy ADSL ~= 150GB, Uverse is higher.

Partially I believe that some of this was to promote bundling (bundled services have no caps) and the other part was to 'train' end users on its fixed wireless, which comes with the same cap as ADSL.

Economist

The economy, stupid

Premium Member

join:2015-07-10

united state 8 recommendations Economist Premium Member Just more reason to... ...go with DSLExtreme or any other reseller.



Why tolerate caps levied by ILECs?

TIGERON

join:2008-03-11

Boston, MA 6 recommendations TIGERON Member I don't understand Verizon or AT&T or now CenturyLink To the CEOs of the companies above: If you don't want these copper networks, Sonic, TDS, Consolidated, Cincinnati Bell, DSL Extreme, Windstream and Toast can take them off your hands. Give it to these companies if you giants don't want them anymore.

Anon6499c

@charter.com 6 recommendations Anon6499c Anon does it matter? 1 Mbps running 24/7 would uses barley 300 GB a month. So doubt anyone would use 150 GB. 7 Mbps running 24/7 would use 2.2 TB so perhaps you could use more than 250 GB. Of course I doubt you get 7 Mbps very often anyway considering how shoddy they keep their DSL network.

srtdodge05

Premium Member

join:2011-10-16

Ypsilanti, MI 4 recommendations srtdodge05 Premium Member New York and New Jersey saw limits on their dashboard on the Verizon website



»www.cnet.com/news/verizo ··· facebook Customers in New York and New Jersey saw limits on their dashboard on the Verizon website. The company's high-speed internet plan showed a data limit of 150GB, while its high-speed internet enhanced plan had a limit of 250GB, according to a Thursday report by consumer group Stop the Cap. Existing customers in sections of upstate New York and New Jersey who were looking to change or upgrade their current DSL package could see the data limits. p51d007

Naa-P51d Mustang

join:2002-06-07

Springfield, MO 2 recommendations p51d007 Member Could someone on 1.5 DSL Even download enough per month, to reach that cap?