AT&T has filed an advice letter that eliminates tariffs on data circuits in California. Instead of tariffs, sample rates would be published in a guidebook. This change has gone into effects in other states. While it is possible to see this as yet another AT&T anti-consumer move, the truth is more complex. Guidebook pricing started on July 15, 2009 for CSME and Opt-e-man. Their tariff sheets have been withdrawn. |
| It is perhaps important that none of the rate elements nor their prices changed in the conversion from tariff to guidebook. There is now a maximum Opt-e-man CIR (600 Mb/s) than can be assigned to a circuit between two networks paid by different customers. |
| Whether they are guidebooks or tariffs, these published rates continue to exceed what customers pay on private contracts -- even for the same term. CPUC rules require that contracts for tariffed services be files with the commission, posted and the web and mailed to interested parties. Contracts for guidebook services are not similarly posted, so there will be less information going forward. |
| The new Guidebooks are on-line. Extracted from part 6, section 9: |
| July 15, 2009 CSME |
| July 15, 2009 Opt-e-man |
| This is the situation in California. In some states, Gigaman has been detariffed and in now in the guidebook for that state. That will probably happen in California at some point. The thoughtful reader is reminded that rate sheets rate sheets ripped from AT&T web pages and copied here may have been superseded. |
| A collection of important advice letters contains lots of examples of how much telecom services under contract actually cost. Data services contracts are sorted by type: Gigaman, Opt-e-man, DS-3, etc. There are contracts that show lease rates for telephone pole attachment. The template for a master contract is included. There is a sample of a realignment of a LATA boundry. |
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