AT&T has quietly jacked up the company's arbitrary "administrative fee" on wireless customer bills to $1.99 from 76 cents, BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk noticed on Wednesday. With 64.5 million regular monthly customers likely to pay the fee, AT&T's change nets the company an additional $1 billion annually for doing absolutely nothing differently. Such fees are routinely used by ISPs to help them falsely advertise one lower rate, then hit users with a higher rate once their bill actually comes due.

AT&T, in a statement, pretends this is just business as usual (and in the sense that misleading consumers is usual, they're right).

This is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and interconnection between carriers," the company says of the errant charge.

But things like "cell site maintenance" and "interconnection" are just a part of doing business, and should be included in the above-the-line price. This practice of false advertising and covertly jacking up rates via bogus fees is now standard operating procedure in the telecom sector, and you'd be hard pressed to find a regulator or politician from either party that has historically given much of a damn.
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