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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

It seems that automatic billing is something that cloud providers invented. For example, home Internet providers or mobile providers usually use prepaid plans, where they simply stop the service once you ran out of money (but you can connect your card account if you trust them). So you cannot get charged arbitrary amount for home Internet, and for mobile unless you travel.

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Landline phone companies were always usage-based billing where you could run up huge bills by, say, making an international phone call for an hour.

Yep. In 1995 my parents bought me my first PC after years of begging. We lived in a very rural area with no local dial-up provider. I eventually was able to connect and was having a blast on message boards until my parents got a $350 phone bill, which is $750 in 2024 dollars. Turns out I had been using a long-distance number.

Is that true? All of my Internet and mobile telephone service is post-paid with automatic billing. I know one can get prepaid plans from some providers, but how are you arriving at "usually"?

It means in your country people trust companies more than in mine. We use pre-paid system and optionally you can connect a card account for automatic billing (but the company cannot charge a card if there is no money left).

> So you cannot get charged arbitrary amount for home Internet

Comcast (mostly) disagrees, you have a 1.2 TB data cap and "After that, blocks of 50 GB will automatically be added to your account for an additional fee of $10 each plus tax." They do have a limit of $100 on these charges per month at least.

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