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If You're Going To Meter Broadband, Shouldn't You At Least Make Sure The Meters Work?
from the it's-the-little-things dept
One of the things that's left out of the discussion about all these attempts to move to "metered billing" for broadband is the massive overhead increases it will put on broadband providers. In the past, with straight flat-rate plans, there wasn't much to monitor or adjust by the company (and fewer customer disputes over how much was used). But, as soon as you add in the meters, all that goes out the window -- and I'd bet the expense greatly outweighs any supposed "benefit" to the cable company.
Take, for example, Canadian cable provider Cogeco, who apparently has started offering metered billing, but whose "meters" apparently don't work. Customers are reporting very inaccurate readings on the tool provided by Cogeco for customers to watch their own bandwidth, and they're receiving usage emails from the company that don't match up with what the online tool says at all. So, now Cogeco's going to have a bunch of folks complaining, and will need to spend more time fixing its meter tool. Good decision, huh?
