Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords (AKA DOOOOOM)
Renegade:
That is just ripe for abuse. And when you get down to it, the providers want to make money. That's their business.
-wraith808 (January 16, 2014, 04:08 PM)
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New mobile phone plans? Want to talk to your spouse without paying a $1 per minute? Just get the extended spouse plan for +$20 per month. Got kids? Talk to them for under $5 a minute for only +$30 per month. etc. etc.
This is not going to end well.
Deozaan:
There was a post about this on The Verge, but the real beauty was in the comments:
There's a great discussion/argument between AntarcticOutpost and (eventually) Joao Sousa starting about here:
You can’t have everyone in the world simultaneously streaming Netflix, just as you can’t have everyone in the world simultaneoudly charging their electric car.
--- End quote ---
Actually, yes you can, and yes you can. Here’s why:
For this scenario, I’m going to use Pandora as the example of the content producer. Donno why, probably just because I feel like it.
So you and Pandora are on opposite sides of the street. You and Pandora are both already paying for your electricity, plumbing, etc. everything you need to make sure you can run at optimal efficiency. Now you want to connect to each other. Here is where your ISP comes in. You want to connect to Pandora, yes, and consume their content, but the flow is not one way. For every request there is an ack. Pandora also wants to connect to you.
So Pandora, obviously, being a big company and all that, wants to buy a corporate grade bandwidth pipe, with Gigabits of bandwidth. They pay the monthly fee for that, and with that money the ISP upgrades their infrastructure to connect them up to their network. But that’s just one half of the equation. You also pay for your own, somewhat lesser of course, connection to that network. Let’s imagine the comparison between these bandwidths:
Pandora You
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So of course, whatever bottleneck occurs is because you haven’t paid enough for more bandwidth.
Now imagine suddenly that 5 more people want to connect up to Pandora. So the ISP uses their monthly fees to hook up the requisite routers and switches to make sure that they can all connect up to Pandora. But, whoops, now Pandora does not have enough bandwidth to provide them all with full-speed service for every customer (assuming every customer uses the maximum bandwidth). That’s actually Pandora’s problem. They need to pay more for more bandwidth.
Obviously things change as we move away from simple “across the street” analogies. However, the principle does not change. Every person pays to hook up to each other via their monthly ISP fee. This fee goes into expanding the infrastructure such that it can support at the very least that bandwidth connection to the rest of the network, if not more.
Want to see some proof that what I’m talking about is not actually happening? Try looking at the massive profit margins that these ISPs are generating. I’m not the first to point this out either. Further proof? The fact that when Google Fiber comes into town with Gigabit bandwidth, suddenly and almost instantaneously, competing ISPs are capable of transmitting at up to 3x the speed they were currently providing for no additional cost to the consumer.
The evidence is overwhelming. Data caps don’t make sense. ISPs are creating an artificial scarcity of bandwidth and then attempting to commoditize the flow of data to justify their lack of infrastructure investment.-http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/6/5280566/att-sponsored-data-bad-for-the-internet-the-economy-and-you#208181167
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There's some back and forth and more explanation and debate. I thought it was a good discussion.
And that bit near the end where he mentioned suddenly transmitting 3x the speed for no additional cost? I recently experienced that myself. I was paying $50/mo to my Cable company for 5 Mbps down and 0.5 Mbps upload speeds. For years it's been those speeds and those prices, and that the only rate/plan they offered. Just last Fall a DSL provider in the area installed some fiber cables and offered me a deal of about 15Mbps down & 1Mbps upload speeds for about $40/mo for the first sixth months, at which time it would go up to somewhere in the $60s I think.
So I called my Cable company and asked them to suspend my account (vacation hold) for 3 months so I could test out the new ISP without cancelling my current one. And after a month I felt satisfied with the speeds and reliability of my new ISP, so I called the Cable company to cancel my account. They told me I could get 50Mbps download speeds for $50/mo or I could get 15 Mbps download speeds (which is what the competing ISP offered) for only $35/mo (which was a.
So how come they could suddenly provide me with 3x the speed for $15 less, or 10x the speed for the same price I'd been paying them for years just because a new ISP came into town?
olamoree:
Hey Guys, this is some very serious stuff! You are on the verge of having your lifeblood altered for pay. The ISP's got Tom Wheeler installed as Chairman of the FCC and he is doing his job... selling the public out to his cronies and ex cronies at OUR expense. He is proposing a Fast Lane (the corporate ISP buddies) and a Slow Lane (for the rest of the lame jerks that take it lying down). But all is not yet lost if you get up off your butt and send that important email. Altho the FCC, Tom and two Democrats voted 3-2 to sell out, they also decided to allow four months of "lets hear it from the public" and for EVERYONE that has an internet connection, they need to send that letter. It will have worldwide consequences if we don't speak up. Tom Wheeler answered one of my letters and said that he was all for "Open Internet" and would fight for it... but he DIDN'T mention Net Neutrality which is whats at stake. You can compose your comments on this site... https://dearfcc.org/ and you have about 115 days left to comment... so why not send them 10-20 comments? The action that you should be looking forward to is that Internet Service be passed to Title II services such as telephone, telegraph, etc. that CANNOT be pieced out to ISP's that want to chop up the market to fill their pockets. And I am not only talking about US residents who will be affected... but the whole world! If Ver/ATT/Comc control the internet in the US, anytime you or me in a foreign country resolves a URL that has anything to do with passing thru the USA, it will be split... into the Fast Land and the Slow Lane... where do you want to be? Wouldn't it seem reasonable that the internet should be neutral? Neutral in its equal treatment of all users and not MORE equal for some. So guys, get involved and don't just read the pessimistic blogs of the "lay down and take it" folks that think that the guvment will just tell you what to do... remember, your taxes pay those bums wages and you have every right to demand what you want the internet to be! So plz decide to sent your comments to the FCC right away. Thanks.
mouser:
I submitted using the dearfcc page, as recommended by olamoree :up:
Renegade:
Dear FCC,
Thank you for taking the time to ignore me.
F**k you,
Renegade
I think that's probably about as productive as it will ever get. The same assholes that had their asses handed to them over SOPA only brought it back with a different acronym. They'll continue until they have worn down any resistance and gotten what they want.
There is no "democracy". There is no "justice". There is only "just us" - and you and I are not a part of "us".
Bend over and learn to like it. Or at least get used to it. We don't have a choice. Our voice means NOTHING. They don't care. We are nothing but cattle to be milked & slaughtered.
This is a feature of the system - it is not a bug.
Now... repeat after me... MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Old McDonald had a farm...
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