I believe the FCCs issue with Verizon here is that it is singling out Unlimited plan users, thus punishing those users alone to try to get them to change their habits or their plans.
I think if Verizon were to say that they were going to throttle all of the top 5% of data users in a congested area the FCC would be fine with that. That is not what Verizon is doing though, they are only going to throttle the top 5% of data users if they have unlimited plans.
Exactly. And that is also the same approach that AT&T and Verizon took back in 2011, and the commission under Genachowski did nothing. They forced users to the higher plan by penalizing the top 5%, without any data supporting what the top 5% was. If the top 5% increased their throttled bandwidth, and everyone else increased as well, then the 5% would have moved higher than the 3Gb that AT&T began throttling at. What AT&T began doing, is blanket throtting ALL their unlimited customers, in a bid to force them to move to the plans with overages. And the FCC did nothing. Now, unlimited plans are throttled on 4G/LTE with AT&T at 2.5gb, and still no letters to Randal Stephenson at AT&T. Why?
If you choose to eat at a restaurant that markets an all-you-can-eat buffet and you pay their advertised price per plate... Would it be fair if the manager makes you eat off a smaller plate than the other patrons because you eat more than the average person? Or, if you order the all-you-can-eat BBQ rib platter, would it be fair if the manager instructs the waitress to take twice as long to replenish your plate as the other customers because you are eating more than the average... Is it fair to put into place barriers for the sole purpose of discouraging users from getting all they can from a service for which they are paying and were marketed?
Actually, if you've ever been to a buffet:
1) Do not take more than you are going to eat, you will be charged for any uneaten food
2) Get a new plate every time (do not bring plates back to the buffet table)
If you go to all-you-can-eat where you are served , like a sushi place, it's usually a time-limited window of maybe 2 hours, and the portions are pretty tiny. Again you are also charged for any uneaten food.
No doggybag/leftovers are allowed to be removed from the premises as well.
1) Do not take more than you are going to eat, you will be charged for any uneaten food
But not charged extra, so I’m not sure of your point.
You’re not wrong about the beginning, though. The intelligent argument for food in this situation is “Take all you want, but eat all you take.”
2) Get a new plate every time (do not bring plates back to the buffet table)
I have to buy a new computer every time I go to a new website?
If you go to all-you-can-eat where you are served , like a sushi place, it's usually a time-limited window of maybe 2 hours, and the portions are pretty tiny.
Are they? I always talk myself out of ordering sushi because they bring you so much food…
Assuming here you are old enough to have bills but how do you pay for gas and electricity? Every place I know about it is based on usage. So why not have this utility be usage based? In a very real sense that is what an Internet provider is, instead of a pipe of water or gas it supplies data that you consume.
This is where your analogies fall flat on their face.
Yes, we pay more if we use more gas or electricity, but that is because these are utilities with a usage cost. In other words for each liter of gas that I use in my home the gas company has to buy that liter. For each kilowatt of electricity that I use the electric company has to buy coal, oil, gas, etc.
This is not the case with the internet. If I download a song it doesn't cost the ISP anything per bit. The ISPs have a fixed cost. They will pay a fixed cost to lay the lines. They will pay a fixed cost to buy the routers and switches and equipment. Once they have paid for that equipment it doesn't cost them any more money to serve us data.
Now, if you want to look at where the utilities and ISP are similar look at the electric company. They have a "bandwidth" problem just like the ISPs. They handle this by incentiving people to use energy during non-peak hours. The phone companies did/do the same thing.
The ISPs can complain all that they want to about congestion and bandwidth, but the reality is that their policies do nothing to actually solve the problem. For instance, I could download a 1GB movie during the middle of the night and have less of an impact on bandwidth then grandma downloading a 6MB email full of family photos during peak evening hours. However, the ISP's policy doesn't address this issue. It wants to call the 1GB middle of the night downloader a hog and charge him more money despite the fact that he had less impact on actual bandwidth congestion than Granny.
The ISP's policies are not geared toward addressing a bandwidth problem. They are designed to make them profits. The whole spiel about bandwidth hogs slowing down other people, while not necessarily untrue, isn't the whole story, and is a strawman to distract from the reality that their policies don't solve what they say is the issue.
Just because it contradicts your view doesn't mean the analogy doesn't work.
But broadly, I agree; car analogies rarely work. Analogies in general aren't great for any close inspection.
I'll second the point on analogies being a terrible vehicle (no pun intended ... ok, maybe a little pun ) for carrying on meaningful discourse.
---
That said, just for fun, and not to weigh in on the discussion in any way, I thought I'd just see if I could play with a car-related analogy to fit a little better:
Verizon sells a car tire replacement program, they replace your tires as soon as they wear out, but you have to use the tires they make, and the tires last exactly 10,000 miles - no matter how fast you drive.
Verizon currently offers new customer two plan options:
- With plan "A", 10$ per month lets you drive up to 1000 miles per month. If you dive more, it's 1$ per 10 miles.
- Plan "B" costs 15$ per month, and you can drive up to 2000 miles per month. It's also 1$ per 15 miles over the limit.
However, Verizon at one time offered a plan that let you drive unlimited miles per month for 17$/mo., with no excess milage charges ever, and no other restrictions. They no longer offer this plan to new customers, but still have "grandfathered" customers whom they do not wish to lose to competitors, so they remain on this plan.
What Verizon is saying is that now that they have more customers than they can reliably manufacture tires for so, if (and only if) you have the 'unlimited' plan for 17$ per month, and if your mileage each month is greater than a certain percentage of the other drivers on the plans, then you have to limit your driving speed (which implicitly limits the number of miles you can drive), so they don't have to invest in building out their tire-manufacturing capacity.
The carriers created the problem themselves. I realize that when the iPhone came on the market it was only available from AT&T; however, when Verizon got it too, they implemented the same system: IPHONE USERS WERE REQUIRED TO PURCHASE UNLIMITED DATA PLANS. WE HAD NO CHOICE! Now that smartphones are ubiquitous they want to meter usage. The system is always geared to them. They have taken our money. Use it to create more infrastructure not just for top salaries and bonuses. Unfortunately, they haven't pissed off the right senator yet.
It contradicts the discussion entirely. Number of vehicles is the only meaningful analogy, not the wideness of them! My stars.
I think mine was perfectly meaningful, but fine, have it your way - people are prevented from driving more cars than other people by the laws of physics. You cannot physically drive more than one car at once.
How on earth you think that is more meaningful or proves your point I have no idea. You must mean something else, but you'll have to spell it out I'm afraid.
If you choose to eat at a restaurant that markets an all-you-can-eat buffet and you pay their advertised price per plate... Would it be fair if the manager makes you eat off a smaller plate than the other patrons because you eat more than the average person? Or, if you order the all-you-can-eat BBQ rib platter, would it be fair if the manager instructs the waitress to take twice as long to replenish your plate as the other customers because you are eating more than the average... Is it fair to put into place barriers for the sole purpose of discouraging users from getting all they can from a service for which they are paying and were marketed?
No, no and no are the answers you're expecting. Please post my prize to London.
It's been echoed year after year, that Verizon and AT&T have been simply sitting on unused spectrum that could be leveraged to clear congestion. They simply don't want to use it. They want their cake and they want to eat it as well.
They have no excuse. Use it, lose it, or suck it up and start either building additional capacity or cranking up that R&D. America needs another Bell Labs to kick the industry where it hurts.
What's the point of having a cake and not eating it?
Not buying Verizon's position on this. This is seller's regret: they now regret that they sold unlimited data plans and have grandfathered them.
The problem with throttling is that it makes the task you're trying to accomplish impossible. If they throttle you while you're streaming music, the music hiccups or stops playing. It's not just that if you send an email, it takes four seconds instead of two seconds, which would be acceptable.
If Verizon gets away with this you know that AT&T will do the same thing. And I am never willingly giving up my unlimited data plan - it's not that I actually use all that much data each month - it's that I don't want to worry or have to monitor how much I am using to avoid overage charges.
And if either company stops grandfathering people and forces them to switch to another plan, it opens the door for consumers to switch companies when their contracts expire. I stick with AT&T primarily to keep the unlimited data plan.
What happens if you're grandfathered when you're already a grandfather? Does that make you a Great Grandfather?
Not buying Verizon's position on this. This is seller's regret: they now regret that they sold unlimited data plans and have grandfathered them.
The problem with throttling is that it makes the task you're trying to accomplish impossible. If they throttle you while you're streaming music, the music hiccups or stops playing. It's not just that if you send an email, it takes four seconds instead of two seconds, which would be acceptable.
If Verizon gets away with this you know that AT&T will do the same thing. And I am never willingly giving up my unlimited data plan - it's not that I actually use all that much data each month - it's that I don't want to worry or have to monitor how much I am using to avoid overage charges.
And if either company stops grandfathering people and forces them to switch to another plan, it opens the door for consumers to switch companies when their contracts expire. I stick with AT&T primarily to keep the unlimited data plan.
Verizon doesn’t grandfather data plans. If you want to keep your unlimited data you have to buy a phone at the unsubsidized price. Anyone buying a subsidized phone has to pick a tiered plan. Anyone with unlimited data is now out of contract.
Dont be ridiculous. Reducing speed is like giving someone dial-up internet speed when they paid for high speed internet.
These customers paid for unlimited HIGH SPEED DATA. PERIOD. These carriers pocketed BILLIONS by signing up millions of people to these plans. They should have thought about possible problems BEFORE they offered these plans. But no, they want their cake and eat it also. They should have put limits lets say 200GB a month. That would probably cover 99.9% of their unlimited users. But they were greedy and wanted to attract that final 0.01% of users.
Grow up? What if they don't have WiFi at home? Why should they sacrifice for the phone company? We always hear 'buyer beware'. This time it should be 'seller beware'. If you are going to say UNLIMITED HIGH SPEED DATA you better back it up or don't advertise it as such.
So stop with the corporate BS.
JUST. STOP. IT.
Verizon agreed to the contract and now they have to stick with it. PERIOD. You think Verizon will let you out of the contract if it doesn't benefit them? HELL NO. If you lose your job you think they give a sheet? Hell no. They will demand payment and say you signed a contract. So why is it that Verizon can break the contract without consequence?
Again if the carriers don't want to give unlimited data then offer a lower rate as an alternative. They are not doing that. They want to charge the same HIGH PRICES but give LESS SERVICE. Can you not see the motivation here? All Verizon wants to do is make more money.
Again, anyone that still has unlimited data with Verizon is no longer under contract. Any previously agreed upon stipulations can become null and void.
It's my understanding that all these unlimited plans are grandfathered plans that are well outside of the period where a new phone is being paid off. I don't believe Verizon offer an Unlimited plan any more.
And since no one is locked in, the slippery slope falls over. Verizon can't force their customers to tolerate a breach of contract, the customer can at the very least change their contract, or leave Verizon if they want.
All those people have chosen not to sign a new contract, so the terms of the old contract are still in effect. Buying a phone at full retail is the only way to keep the unlimited data plan.
All those people have chosen not to sign a new contract, so the terms of the old contract are still in effect. Buying a phone at full retail is the only way to keep the unlimited data plan.
Every term except the term I hope. i.e. for the first 2 years (or whatever) you're committed to the contract, but after that it becomes a rolling contract with a month notice period. So there's no significant lock in, and therefore no slippery slope.
Comments
Beerstalker wrote:
I believe the FCCs issue with Verizon here is that it is singling out Unlimited plan users, thus punishing those users alone to try to get them to change their habits or their plans.
I think if Verizon were to say that they were going to throttle all of the top 5% of data users in a congested area the FCC would be fine with that. That is not what Verizon is doing though, they are only going to throttle the top 5% of data users if they have unlimited plans.
Exactly. And that is also the same approach that AT&T and Verizon took back in 2011, and the commission under Genachowski did nothing. They forced users to the higher plan by penalizing the top 5%, without any data supporting what the top 5% was. If the top 5% increased their throttled bandwidth, and everyone else increased as well, then the 5% would have moved higher than the 3Gb that AT&T began throttling at. What AT&T began doing, is blanket throtting ALL their unlimited customers, in a bid to force them to move to the plans with overages. And the FCC did nothing. Now, unlimited plans are throttled on 4G/LTE with AT&T at 2.5gb, and still no letters to Randal Stephenson at AT&T. Why?
Actually, if you've ever been to a buffet:
1) Do not take more than you are going to eat, you will be charged for any uneaten food
2) Get a new plate every time (do not bring plates back to the buffet table)
If you go to all-you-can-eat where you are served , like a sushi place, it's usually a time-limited window of maybe 2 hours, and the portions are pretty tiny. Again you are also charged for any uneaten food.
No doggybag/leftovers are allowed to be removed from the premises as well.
But not charged extra, so I’m not sure of your point.
You’re not wrong about the beginning, though. The intelligent argument for food in this situation is “Take all you want, but eat all you take.”
I have to buy a new computer every time I go to a new website?
Are they? I always talk myself out of ordering sushi because they bring you so much food…
Assuming here you are old enough to have bills but how do you pay for gas and electricity? Every place I know about it is based on usage. So why not have this utility be usage based? In a very real sense that is what an Internet provider is, instead of a pipe of water or gas it supplies data that you consume.
This is where your analogies fall flat on their face.
Yes, we pay more if we use more gas or electricity, but that is because these are utilities with a usage cost. In other words for each liter of gas that I use in my home the gas company has to buy that liter. For each kilowatt of electricity that I use the electric company has to buy coal, oil, gas, etc.
This is not the case with the internet. If I download a song it doesn't cost the ISP anything per bit. The ISPs have a fixed cost. They will pay a fixed cost to lay the lines. They will pay a fixed cost to buy the routers and switches and equipment. Once they have paid for that equipment it doesn't cost them any more money to serve us data.
Now, if you want to look at where the utilities and ISP are similar look at the electric company. They have a "bandwidth" problem just like the ISPs. They handle this by incentiving people to use energy during non-peak hours. The phone companies did/do the same thing.
The ISPs can complain all that they want to about congestion and bandwidth, but the reality is that their policies do nothing to actually solve the problem. For instance, I could download a 1GB movie during the middle of the night and have less of an impact on bandwidth then grandma downloading a 6MB email full of family photos during peak evening hours. However, the ISP's policy doesn't address this issue. It wants to call the 1GB middle of the night downloader a hog and charge him more money despite the fact that he had less impact on actual bandwidth congestion than Granny.
The ISP's policies are not geared toward addressing a bandwidth problem. They are designed to make them profits. The whole spiel about bandwidth hogs slowing down other people, while not necessarily untrue, isn't the whole story, and is a strawman to distract from the reality that their policies don't solve what they say is the issue.
Just because it contradicts your view doesn't mean the analogy doesn't work.
But broadly, I agree; car analogies rarely work. Analogies in general aren't great for any close inspection.
I'll second the point on analogies being a terrible vehicle (no pun intended ... ok, maybe a little pun
) for carrying on meaningful discourse.
---
That said, just for fun, and not to weigh in on the discussion in any way, I thought I'd just see if I could play with a car-related analogy to fit a little better:
Verizon sells a car tire replacement program, they replace your tires as soon as they wear out, but you have to use the tires they make, and the tires last exactly 10,000 miles - no matter how fast you drive.
Verizon currently offers new customer two plan options:
- With plan "A", 10$ per month lets you drive up to 1000 miles per month. If you dive more, it's 1$ per 10 miles.
- Plan "B" costs 15$ per month, and you can drive up to 2000 miles per month. It's also 1$ per 15 miles over the limit.
However, Verizon at one time offered a plan that let you drive unlimited miles per month for 17$/mo., with no excess milage charges ever, and no other restrictions. They no longer offer this plan to new customers, but still have "grandfathered" customers whom they do not wish to lose to competitors, so they remain on this plan.
What Verizon is saying is that now that they have more customers than they can reliably manufacture tires for so, if (and only if) you have the 'unlimited' plan for 17$ per month, and if your mileage each month is greater than a certain percentage of the other drivers on the plans, then you have to limit your driving speed (which implicitly limits the number of miles you can drive), so they don't have to invest in building out their tire-manufacturing capacity.
What do we think?
(Fixed 2 typos
)
Always get the freshly made spicy tuna hand roll. You won't regret it.
No, they just make up some bogus fees and hope no one notices...
It contradicts the discussion entirely. Number of vehicles is the only meaningful analogy, not the wideness of them! My stars.
I think mine was perfectly meaningful, but fine, have it your way - people are prevented from driving more cars than other people by the laws of physics. You cannot physically drive more than one car at once.
How on earth you think that is more meaningful or proves your point I have no idea. You must mean something else, but you'll have to spell it out I'm afraid.
If you choose to eat at a restaurant that markets an all-you-can-eat buffet and you pay their advertised price per plate... Would it be fair if the manager makes you eat off a smaller plate than the other patrons because you eat more than the average person? Or, if you order the all-you-can-eat BBQ rib platter, would it be fair if the manager instructs the waitress to take twice as long to replenish your plate as the other customers because you are eating more than the average... Is it fair to put into place barriers for the sole purpose of discouraging users from getting all they can from a service for which they are paying and were marketed?
No, no and no are the answers you're expecting. Please post my prize to London.
It's been echoed year after year, that Verizon and AT&T have been simply sitting on unused spectrum that could be leveraged to clear congestion. They simply don't want to use it. They want their cake and they want to eat it as well.
They have no excuse. Use it, lose it, or suck it up and start either building additional capacity or cranking up that R&D. America needs another Bell Labs to kick the industry where it hurts.
What's the point of having a cake and not eating it?
Not buying Verizon's position on this. This is seller's regret: they now regret that they sold unlimited data plans and have grandfathered them.
The problem with throttling is that it makes the task you're trying to accomplish impossible. If they throttle you while you're streaming music, the music hiccups or stops playing. It's not just that if you send an email, it takes four seconds instead of two seconds, which would be acceptable.
If Verizon gets away with this you know that AT&T will do the same thing. And I am never willingly giving up my unlimited data plan - it's not that I actually use all that much data each month - it's that I don't want to worry or have to monitor how much I am using to avoid overage charges.
And if either company stops grandfathering people and forces them to switch to another plan, it opens the door for consumers to switch companies when their contracts expire. I stick with AT&T primarily to keep the unlimited data plan.
What happens if you're grandfathered when you're already a grandfather? Does that make you a Great Grandfather?
Verizon doesn’t grandfather data plans. If you want to keep your unlimited data you have to buy a phone at the unsubsidized price. Anyone buying a subsidized phone has to pick a tiered plan. Anyone with unlimited data is now out of contract.
Again, anyone that still has unlimited data with Verizon is no longer under contract. Any previously agreed upon stipulations can become null and void.
All those people have chosen not to sign a new contract, so the terms of the old contract are still in effect. Buying a phone at full retail is the only way to keep the unlimited data plan.
All those people have chosen not to sign a new contract, so the terms of the old contract are still in effect. Buying a phone at full retail is the only way to keep the unlimited data plan.
Every term except the term I hope. i.e. for the first 2 years (or whatever) you're committed to the contract, but after that it becomes a rolling contract with a month notice period. So there's no significant lock in, and therefore no slippery slope.