Up here in Canada, TELUS did the exact same tactic with its landline customers. I called them to complain but they explained that the fee was to maintain their infrastructure, even though I wasn't using it (I never use long-distance).
I asked them to put a block on my landline so that no long-distance calls could be made. That somehow placated them enough to remove the maintenance fee from my account. Within 6 months, I moved to another provider. I don't like being charged for not using services so I vote with my wallet.
Is there any chance AT&T will allow customers to do the same as I did?
> … Within 6 months, I moved to another provider ….
>
> Is there any chance AT&T will allow customers to do the same as I did?
The first quoted sentence illustrated why the answer to the second is often 'no'. In my market, and I think many others, there is no alternative to AT&T for DSL (I don't know about landline service; I don't have it), so they don't feel any need to keep us happy.
It's the governments, generally, who grant them the monopoly in the first place.
Though if you look at the history of anti-trust and telcos in the US, it was the anti-competitive practices of AT&T (as early as 1917), which resulted in anti-trust actions being taken against them. At the time it was setting inter-connect fees to other carriers sufficiently high that the competitors were forced out of the market.
Now, why does this suddenly remind me of various "carriage fees" proposed by contemporary broadband providers....
I asked them to put a block on my landline so that no long-distance calls could be made. That somehow placated them enough to remove the maintenance fee from my account. Within 6 months, I moved to another provider. I don't like being charged for not using services so I vote with my wallet.
Is there any chance AT&T will allow customers to do the same as I did?