Update on Frontier download cap
A reader writes, apropos of the Frontier download cap we mentioned earlier:
Someone at Frontier who works at the NOC (Network Operations Center) told me the following about Frontier’s DSL cap. I have a pretty high certainty that this person is an honest broker. Here’s what that person said:
The cap is not in effect. Frontier “jumped the gun” on implementing it. Currently, there is no per-user usage monitoring at Frontier. Frontier is re-evaluating the policy, and when a cap is instituted, it will be much higher.
The cap policy was not communicated to Frontier employees, and it is likely that mis-information was going out because of the lack of management communication.
If you have a technical question for Frontier, call technical support between the hours of 8 a.m. and midnight on a weekday to reach Rochester-based tech support. After midnight and on weekends, tech support is answered by a call center in Texas that probably won’t be very helpful.
If you have a question about, or want to cancel your contract, call customer support during the day. Customer support is not manned after 6 p.m.
Someone at Frontier who works at the NOC (Network Operations Center) told me the following about Frontier’s DSL cap. I have a pretty high certainty that this person is an honest broker. Here’s what that person said:The cap is not in effect. Frontier “jumped the gun” on implementing it. Currently, there is no per-user usage monitoring at Frontier. Frontier is re-evaluating the policy, and when a cap is instituted, it will be much higher.
The cap policy was not communicated to Frontier employees, and it is likely that mis-information was going out because of the lack of management communication.
If you have a technical question for Frontier, call technical support between the hours of 8 a.m. and midnight on a weekday to reach Rochester-based tech support. After midnight and on weekends, tech support is answered by a call center in Texas that probably won’t be very helpful.
If you have a question about, or want to cancel your contract, call customer support during the day. Customer support is not manned after 6 p.m.
Why should I believe an un-sourced quote? You can click the link at DFE and go right to the Frontier terms of service page where the 5GB limit is clearly and unambiguously stated.
So that particular link seems to make everything said by this un-sourced quote just pure misinformation. Frontier put the policy in writing and on the web. It is not “mis-information was going out because of the lack of management communication”, it is information put on the Frontier website by someone who presumably had the authorization to do so.
Doesn’t this mean that the reason customer service people were giving out bad info was that Frontier mgmt dropped the ball? Makes sense to me, and I don’t see how it’s a positive statement about Frontier.
I agree with the rest of what you said, though. 5 GB is the policy until Frontier takes it down, no matter what anyone at Frontier says.
Rotten, with all due respect, I know you are a smart guy, but I think you are getting “spun” on this one.
Let’s take it step by step … “The cap policy was not communicated to Frontier employees”, yet someone apparently with authority to change the terms of service on the website put a specific download limit there. How did this happen if the policy was “not communicated to Frontier employees”? Putting a specific limit is the exact opposite of a policy “not communicated”.
“…mis-information was going out because of the lack of management communication” — once again, mis-information cannot go out if there is a lack of communication. Mis-information goes out when there is a communcation and the communicator gets it wrong. (Imagine sitting at your desk, there has been a lack of communication from management, so you get the idea that there is a 5GB cap…)
Back to the reader who sent something to Exile: this has all the hallmarks of a hoax or someone trying to disguise the facts. No attributable source. Nevertheless, we are told that source, whoever it is, is reliable. Parts of sentences mean the exact opposite of the rest of the sentence (as I described above). Sentences repeated for effect. Conclusion: someone is trying hard to blunt the impact of people finding out about this 5GB cap.
I shall continue to believe the 5GB cap exists until Frontier publicly announces otherwise, or changes the terms of service page.
As I said, the 5GB cap is real.
What the Frontier person is telling us, IMO, is that the line employees didn’t get the message from management, they got it from their customers. Which is even more damning for Frontier.
Paige — the reason I posted this is that I think it indicates that it may be possible to fight this.
Also, the source is very reliable.
The source may be reliable to you, but it is not reliable to me. It is third hand anonymous information. It is written like “spin”. I can’t put any faith in that, regardless of your say-so.
I have my own sources at Frontier in both management and their NOC. This is part-spin, part-truth, but what it really says is that they bungled just about all of this.
I am internal documents in front of me that say, without any question, a 5GB usage cap is on the way. As I addressed in an article on stopthecap.com this afternoon, they have already laid out precisely how this cap will be rolled out. What they have done in the last day or so is some serious damage control, including pulling the amateur hour language from the website about the cap announcement, trying to hide the terms and conditions with the opt out clause, and BS their customers into thinking they are just “thinking about” a cap.
The people in the NOC only get what is passed down to them from management. Most of the technical people at Frontier were caught completely off-guard by this initial announcement. But make no mistake, they do what they are told to do. They do not have a direct line into management’s thinking.
Additionally, the cap WAS communicated in an e-mail message to Frontier employees. I have a copy of it sitting in front of me, as part of a cheerleading effort by Frontier’s CEO. It specifically states the company will be imposing a usage cap, because if they didn’t, the service would become “unprofitable” according to them.
Keep an eye on stopthecap.com because I am constantly getting document dumps from Frontier’s own employees about what is going on over there, and a series of reports are forthcoming about a great deal of this.
I am also trying to find a way to allow sources to anonymously post the actual documents in a way that keeps them safe from legal retribution, because I don’t want anyone to simply take my word for it.
Stay tuned.
Thanks, Phil. I knew you’d be on top of this. Great website, too.
Apologies for this typo: “I am internal documents in front of me that say,” should have read “I HAVE internal documents….” I regret the proofread error.
No problem. You did a nice summary of what’s going on.
[...] Provide by Frontier. Wonder if there is a download cap? [...]
I wonder what effect the annoucement from Comcast of a 250GB/mo limit will have. (Thats 50 times higher than Frontier’s 5GB limit.)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080828-its-official-comcast-starts-250gb-bandwidth-caps-october-1.html