AT&T threatens to disconnect subscribers who criticize the company
AT&T has rolled out new Terms of Service for its DSL service that leave plenty of room for interpretation. From our reading of it, in concert with several others, what we see is a ToS that attempts to give AT&T the right …
Context & Ripple Effects
AT&T's new DSL Terms of Service landed on October 1, 2007 with language broad enough that Ars Technica and others read it as reserving the carrier the right to terminate service over subscriber criticism — dslreports.com ran the same reading the same day under the banner of censoring customers' negative opinions. The clause matters because it converts a utility-like subscription into a contract where the provider's tolerance for speech becomes a service condition.
First-order effects
- DSL subscribers now face a written termination threat tied to what they say about AT&T publicly, making criticism of the company a contractual risk rather than just a commercial one.
Second-order effects
- Rival ISPs gain an easy differentiator — advertising terms that explicitly protect customer speech — while consumer-advocacy pressure shifts from network quality complaints toward contract-language scrutiny across the broadband market.
Third-order effects
- If major carriers treat ToS drafting as a tool for managing customer behavior and liability, broadband contracts become a quiet governance layer over how subscribers use and discuss the network — territory regulators would eventually have to address.
The trend: Broadband carriers are using contract terms, not just pricing or network policy, to control subscriber behavior — a pattern that puts ToS language on the path to regulatory attention.