Net Neutrality is a diaper load which basically amounted to a handout for heavy bandwidth users. Happily, it's going away.
Pure, unfiltered, nonsense. NN is what prevents bozos like Verizon from doing exactly this -- judging which of your own data they value or devalue, and then screwing with it. As a consumer I don't want that. The ISP is a dumb pipe, and should leave my bits alone. They should be no different than a utility company -- a utility company doesn't throttle power to air conditioners or whatever, they just sell you the power.
This is their job. If they don't like selling you the pipe, they can either upgrade their inadequate infrastructure, or charge more, or quit and go home.
Bad analogy. Utilities do exactly throttle usage at times from major plants and many have implemented "peak demand" plans where you have to pay more if your usage exceeds a certain amount. Here's from Tuscon Power describing one of their plans:
"If you use a lot of power at any one time during peak usage periods, your energy costs could increase under our Peak Demand plan. That’s true even if your hourly demand reaches a high level only once during a billing cycle. The Demand Charge reflects the cost of resources and facilities TEP must build and maintain to satisfy even occasional needs."
And from Pacific Gas and Electric describing one of their programs:
"PG&E will notify you (by email address and a text messaging device you designate) of the required load reduction (five to 15 percent) and give you the start and end times of the event, "
People may not like it, but the ability to throttle very heavy users protects the network and the rest of us. For example, a friend of mine decided to forego paying for internet usage with the idea that she could simply use her "unlimited" data plan and tether her phone to her laptop and surf and stream all day. Understandably, Verizon put a cap on tethering usage and overall usage, not that it was shut off, but that after a certain usage level it was subject to being throttled down if there was other demand on the towers in her area.
Net Neutrality is a diaper load which basically amounted to a handout for heavy bandwidth users. Happily, it's going away.
It seems to me that you're conflating a problem created by "unlimited data" with net neutrality. All data has a cost, it's just that in their haste to attract subscribers, ISPs have promised more bandwidth than they are capable of delivering.
I'd prefer that the FCC leave the laws as they are, but that ISPs would charge for every gig of data from every customer. That would more appropriately eliminate "a handout for heavy bandwidth users."
IMO, the answer is very obvious. The FCC should leave a minimal footprint and let real competition sort out what kinds of pricing and offerings survive after market forces winnow out the losers.
Saying free market will solve the issue through competition is just intellectually lazy. The eventual outcome of free market followed out far enough is only one of three outcomes: monopoly, commodification or obsolescence. All three are undesirable outcomes that have proven across history to result in a completely dysfunctional market. "The FCC should leave a minimal footprint" comment is just so you can conveniently disregard the end result of free market while simultaneously claiming to support it and the benefits that would be realized in the time it takes for it to come to it's eventual conclusion.
Simply put, you either have regulation and thus not a free market; or you have zero regulation and get all that comes with a free market. If you are a short sighted opportunist and don't care about the future mess that likely others will have to clean up due to your ideology, then ... rah rah rah free market, however I'd like to believe that most people would sacrifice short term gains for an outcome that can work long term.
Now to be fair you can have a regulated market that functions well due to good regulations, on the other hand you can have a poorly functioning market the doesn't work due to poor regulations. The difference is a regulated market at least has a chance to be successful, whereas free market does not.
I hope this does not come across as a personal attack, I have nothing against you and in fact enjoy your frequent commenting. It is the free market is the solution to everything that pisses me off (hear it a lot more now that Trump was elected).
Folks complaining about being throttled to 10Mps.... I would be happy. We only get 6Mps. Lousy enforcement of bandwidth to EVERYONE. I hate the companies that file it out as they please.
Net Neutrality is a diaper load which basically amounted to a handout for heavy bandwidth users. Happily, it's going away.
Pure, unfiltered, nonsense. NN is what prevents bozos like Verizon from doing exactly this -- judging which of your own data they value or devalue, and then screwing with it. As a consumer I don't want that. The ISP is a dumb pipe, and should leave my bits alone. They should be no different than a utility company -- a utility company doesn't throttle power to air conditioners or whatever, they just sell you the power.
This is their job. If they don't like selling you the pipe, they can either upgrade their inadequate infrastructure, or charge more, or quit and go home.
Bad analogy. Utilities do exactly throttle usage at times from major plants and many have implemented "peak demand" plans where you have to pay more if your usage exceeds a certain amount. Here's from Tuscon Power describing one of their plans:
"If you use a lot of power at any one time during peak usage periods, your energy costs could increase under our Peak Demand plan. That’s true even if your hourly demand reaches a high level only once during a billing cycle. The Demand Charge reflects the cost of resources and facilities TEP must build and maintain to satisfy even occasional needs."
And from Pacific Gas and Electric describing one of their programs:
"PG&E will notify you (by email address and a text messaging device you designate) of the required load reduction (five to 15 percent) and give you the start and end times of the event, "
People may not like it, but the ability to throttle very heavy users protects the network and the rest of us. For example, a friend of mine decided to forego paying for internet usage with the idea that she could simply use her "unlimited" data plan and tether her phone to her laptop and surf and stream all day. Understandably, Verizon put a cap on tethering usage and overall usage, not that it was shut off, but that after a certain usage level it was subject to being throttled down if there was other demand on the towers in her area.
Right... Protect the rest of us. Then, don't fucking offer it and then do a bait and switch and whine about it huh. Nobody forced them to offer fraudulent or misleading contracts. The reason they can do so is because they're barely regulated despite running monopolies.
They can throttle locally to balance out things on a tower, but when talking about whole neighborhoods, the usage patterns is not unknown of bursty in a way that requires throttling unless you oversold your network to make a quick buck. They simply offered more than their network could carry; they are responsible. Nobody should bail those monopolistic liars out. That's like offering electricity for next to nothing and then wondering why people have heated swimming pools in the dead of winter.
They're just like Airlines overselling seats and then dragging people off planes.
The kind of throttling your talking about is not the kind those sacks of crap are selling though. They're not saying you'll pay nothing if you download torrents in the middle of the night, no sir, that's not what they're doing at all.
They're cutting in normal immovable services and undoubtably will start offering people to pay to get "untrottled Nextflix" that their network can already support.
They basically have open ended contracts that they can change at will while utilities are regulated to death in how and when they can charge for things (at least they are around here).
They fact, is they don't want the regulation or oversight that comes from being an utility, and comparing their shit to utilities is desingenious when they're fighting tooth and nail not to be considered as one.
And once again the Canadians (and the rest of the world) laugh at America ...
But curioously everyone emulates American culture and all seem to want to move here. Must be the food.
"Everyone" from poorer nations and mostly because people move to places where there are already communities in place to support them (so it is self sustaining); and mainly because of its high population the numbers are high.
More people proportionally move to Canada (a bit more than 2.5 the US rate ) and Australia (3 times the US rate per capita).
Net Neutrality is a diaper load which basically amounted to a handout for heavy bandwidth users. Happily, it's going away.
Pure, unfiltered, nonsense. NN is what prevents bozos like Verizon from doing exactly this -- judging which of your own data they value or devalue, and then screwing with it. As a consumer I don't want that. The ISP is a dumb pipe, and should leave my bits alone. They should be no different than a utility company -- a utility company doesn't throttle power to air conditioners or whatever, they just sell you the power.
This is their job. If they don't like selling you the pipe, they can either upgrade their inadequate infrastructure, or charge more, or quit and go home.
This is the best example why experts are fighting for the net neutrality. Many people don't even understand what it is and why is it important. Now they can clearly see this and predict the internet without net neutrality. Now all Verizon users' can do is to use a VPN like Ivacy and fight for the net neutrality.
Net Neutrality is a diaper load which basically amounted to a handout for heavy bandwidth users. Happily, it's going away.
Pure, unfiltered, nonsense. NN is what prevents bozos like Verizon from doing exactly this -- judging which of your own data they value or devalue, and then screwing with it. As a consumer I don't want that. The ISP is a dumb pipe, and should leave my bits alone. They should be no different than a utility company -- a utility company doesn't throttle power to air conditioners or whatever, they just sell you the power.
This is their job. If they don't like selling you the pipe, they can either upgrade their inadequate infrastructure, or charge more, or quit and go home.
Wrong on the power companies. Although it's not often they have reduced power during heavy usage times to save the grid from going down completely. The pipes may be dumb but they're expensive to install and maintain.
Comments
Bad analogy. Utilities do exactly throttle usage at times from major plants and many have implemented "peak demand" plans where you have to pay more if your usage exceeds a certain amount. Here's from Tuscon Power describing one of their plans:
"If you use a lot of power at any one time during peak usage periods, your energy costs could increase under our Peak Demand plan. That’s true even if your hourly demand reaches a high level only once during a billing cycle. The Demand Charge reflects the cost of resources and facilities TEP must build and maintain to satisfy even occasional needs."
And from Pacific Gas and Electric describing one of their programs:
"PG&E will notify you (by email address and a text messaging device you designate) of the required load reduction (five to 15 percent) and give you the start and end times of the event, "
People may not like it, but the ability to throttle very heavy users protects the network and the rest of us. For example, a friend of mine decided to forego paying for internet usage with the idea that she could simply use her "unlimited" data plan and tether her phone to her laptop and surf and stream all day. Understandably, Verizon put a cap on tethering usage and overall usage, not that it was shut off, but that after a certain usage level it was subject to being throttled down if there was other demand on the towers in her area.
Simply put, you either have regulation and thus not a free market; or you have zero regulation and get all that comes with a free market. If you are a short sighted opportunist and don't care about the future mess that likely others will have to clean up due to your ideology, then ... rah rah rah free market, however I'd like to believe that most people would sacrifice short term gains for an outcome that can work long term.
Now to be fair you can have a regulated market that functions well due to good regulations, on the other hand you can have a poorly functioning market the doesn't work due to poor regulations. The difference is a regulated market at least has a chance to be successful, whereas free market does not.
I hope this does not come across as a personal attack, I have nothing against you and in fact enjoy your frequent commenting. It is the free market is the solution to everything that pisses me off (hear it a lot more now that Trump was elected).
Nobody forced them to offer fraudulent or misleading contracts. The reason they can do so is because they're barely regulated despite running monopolies.
They can throttle locally to balance out things on a tower, but when talking about whole neighborhoods, the usage patterns is not unknown of bursty in a way that requires throttling unless you oversold your network to make a quick buck. They simply offered more than their network could carry; they are responsible. Nobody should bail those monopolistic liars out. That's like offering electricity for next to nothing and then wondering why people have heated swimming pools in the dead of winter.
They're just like Airlines overselling seats and then dragging people off planes.
The kind of throttling your talking about is not the kind those sacks of crap are selling though.
They're not saying you'll pay nothing if you download torrents in the middle of the night, no sir, that's not what they're doing at all.
They're cutting in normal immovable services and undoubtably will start offering people to pay to get "untrottled Nextflix" that their network can already support.
They basically have open ended contracts that they can change at will while utilities are regulated to death in how and when they can charge for things (at least they are around here).
They fact, is they don't want the regulation or oversight that comes from being an utility, and comparing their shit to utilities is desingenious when they're fighting tooth and nail not to be considered as one.
More people proportionally move to Canada (a bit more than 2.5 the US rate ) and Australia (3 times the US rate per capita).