Providers running amok. Ex-Regulators taking job offers with them?: [9th Jun 2011]

AT&T are to be forced to refund $1 billion in incorrectly collected taxes. It has been found that the company violated the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which bans taxing Internet access by collecting taxes on smartphone plans, laptop connection cards and other prepay data devices which help people connect to the Internet. AT&T have agreed to stop charging the taxes and must now contact all those concerned and start the refund process. The result has come from a recent class action lawsuit which AT&T hope to bar their customers from participating in due to a clause in their contract.

AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega has stated that he is not happy about their record when it comes to customer satisfaction and that the company takes satisfaction surveys very seriously. The recent American Customer Satisfaction survey ranked AT&T with a score of just 66 which is the worst they have had since 2006. Verizon managed to score 72. The CEO continued that the company has seen unparalleled growth and pointed out that their Q1 earnings were well above average. He was speaking to the Wall Street Journal.

The US Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force report has suggested that companies need to adopt Internet security standards but has not called for any actual regulation on the matter. The report says that the government should encourage industry led efforts without actually taking the lead. The department estimates that there were 55,000 new viruses entering the Internet every day and that Internet threats doubled between 2009 and 2010.

200 Verizon customers have been charged as much as $400 even when they have already paid their bill in full. It seems that the money has been taken from incorrect bank accounts and put towards other subscribers accounts. This incident is added to other recent mistakes in the Verizon billing process. 133,000 customers were charged an incorrect late fee and other customers have been charged $2 a month for years for no service.

It has emerged that Clearwire has increased its number of subscribers this year by simply doing away with credit checks. The company has stated that it hopes to have 9 million customers by the end of this year, up from the 6 million the currently have. Sales people who work for the company have reported that they are simply required to take a drivers licenses and utility bills as proof of ability to pay from their customers. They say that their overall subscriber numbers jumped as soon as this policy was put in place.

It has emerged that the FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker had asked for permission from the general counsel about the ethics of joining Comcast as their head of lobbying for the NBC move. It has also been noted that she voted in favor of the NBC takeover by Comcast just four months before this permission was sought. It has been announced this month that she will be making the move to Comcast/NBC. The public group Free Press has asked that the matter was looked into and that there seems to be a revolving door policy between government departments and larger corporations. Ms Baker has claimed that she was approached about the job after her initial vote and that she had removed herself from the voting process after the job entered the negotiation stage.