• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 14, 2010

The Internet service provider Frontier has informed some broadband subscribers that they could be disconnected unless they agree to new $99-a-month rates. The reason? Those subscribers previously consumed more bandwidth than the company deemed reasonable.

"A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period," Frontier states in an email sent to some Minnesota consumers and obtained by Stop the Cap. "We realize there are times when our customers use the internet for services such as video and music downloads, however your specific usage has consistently exceeded 100GB over a 30 day period."

The letter goes on to inform recipients that their service might be disconnected within 15 days unless they agree to a new $99 monthly fee. Some customers who allegedly exceeded 250GB a month will have to pay $249 a month for service in the future.

While some other ISPs have imposed bandwidth caps, Frontier appears to have imposed new rates without first warning users. As of this afternoon, Frontier's acceptable use policy specifically states that the company "has made no decision about potential charges for monthly usage in excess of 5GB."

A Frontier spokesperson says that the company is only trying to prevent some exceptionally heavy bandwidth users from degrading service for others on the network. She also says that people who received the letters were given an option of decreasing their bandwidth consumption or switching to a different, higher-priced plan.

Needless to say, Frontier's plans aren't going over well with broadband advocates. Free Press research director S. Derek Turner had some choice words about the new pricing: "While there may be a place for discussing reasonable usage-based billing, the scheme Frontier is testing is completely divorced from the underlying economics," he said in a statement. "Even worse than their price-gouging is Frontier's assertion that a mere 5 gigabytes per month is a 'reasonable' amount of usage when just last month the National Broadband Plan reported that average Internet users with a fixed connection consume 9 gigabytes of data per month."

Frontier's letters could well trigger regulatory or judicial scrutiny, especially given the seeming disconnect between the company's acceptable use policy and its recent actions.

Of course, the underlying problem is the lack of competition. If consumers had more options for broadband providers, a company that threatened to disconnect its customers, or charge $99 or $250 a month for broadband service, might quickly find itself dealing with more pressing problems than public criticism.