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Comcast, AT&T try to kill new requirements to be transparent about their shitty pricing
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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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A few years back I worked for a regional Internet service provider in the northeast US. One day a guy who did finance and regulatory work for us asked me how many of our customer point to point links with A and Z locations in different states were either dedicated to voice traffic or carried more than x percent voice traffic.
After asking a few thought provoking questions like if the percentage was based on traffic measurements or link capacity and how we would make that calculation on a circuit with asymmetrical speeds, I explained that it would be nearly impossible for us to tell unless the customer declared it to us.
He then told me that there was some new federal tax on interstate circuits carrying voice traffic and that if we couldn't tell if a customer circuit was carrying voice traffic or not, that we would just need to start charging them all the tax no matter what. It might even apply to regular Internet services where the edge router and customer site were in different states.
And that is the story of how the ISP that I worked for added yet another fee to all of its customers.
Cool, so list it so your customers can complain they're getting charged for some weird tax.
This isn't pertinent, it's just some anecdotal whataboutism about a tax you (presumably) disagree with.
Whether the tax was valid or not I have no input on. Taxes are created for many reasons but our method of assessing it on customers who should not have been paying it was wrong.
Fair enough, perhaps I've misinterpreted the intent of your comment. I don't see how it adds to a constructive conversation one way or the other on the issue at hand; maybe you just intended to highlight the absurdity of an ISP's fee structure.
I was highlighing the absurdity of the fee structure.
To expand on what I said in my second comment, the tax was probably created by the government to serve a relevant purpose that I don't know about. I trust that there is a reason for the tax. The fact that it was being applied inappropriately to customers was the absurd part. It's like an electric vehicle being taxed for highway tailpipe emissions.
Okay, I understand better now; thank you for clarifying :)