Net Neutrality is about not fiddling with data that doesn't concern you as it passes through your tubes. An ISP is entitled to bundle whatever services it wants. Many ISPs include free antivirus and online backup subscriptions to their customers. A Flickr account is no different. This is due, in part to the theory that you have a choice of ISPs.
Net Neutality would be violated if Verison then said that Flickr would load faster than Picasa or you could upload pictures faster.
Large ISPs and internets should be nothing more than glorified utilities, like electric companies. They should be severely restricted and regulated: conflation with content providers in any sense is an incontrovertible conflict of interest in my opinion.
Again, this issue of denying content to people because of geographic location or ISP is bullshite, but it's a separate issue. If you can find where it say a content provider should be stopped from IP discrimination in the NN text, we could sort this out.
Edit: Actually, it's only bullshit if such a deal is exclusive. If they put up a pay-wall and sign deals and an ISP uses it's money to buy that as a feature for it's service, then that's just like bundling any other service and should be free to fuck themselves, provided they give others the chance to pay for it as well.
Basically, it's separate problems layered one on top of the other.
If you can find where it say a content provider should be stopped from IP discrimination in the NN text, we could sort this out.
What the fuck people. It doesn't say. The law is fucked up. It should say, but it doesn't. Morality and justice are not equivalent to whatever law happens to be on the books. This is bullshit, plain and simple.
As long as you agree Net Nutrality =\= IP Discrimination, we can all agree that IP Discrimination is also bollocks and should be legislated.
Also, Rym might know if this is possible: If we were to set up ISPs in two different countries, could they share IP address blocks? Wait.. that wouldn't work, the content providers would just block both blocks.
How would you feel if Verizon Wireless bought all their customers free phone sex. You pay for it, indirectly, whether you want it or not. Or likewise, if Google Voice was free for AT&T; customers, but cost money for T-Mobile customers. We have laws against those things. The phone system is a utility. All carriers just connect the calls, that's it. They can't do anything else at all. They can't give preferential treatment to any phone number over any other in any way. That's how the ISP should be.
Have you never heard of bundling services?
You say we have laws against bundling Scott? Please cite the law or STFU.
How do you define preferential treatment for phone calls? Under my current cell phone contract I can call any other cell phone in the US for no per minute fee. I have unlimited calls to other cell phones no matter what network they are on. However, I only have 450 minutes per month for calling land lines. Oh no! Sprint is fucking me by not treating my phone calls equally! Call Scott, call Scott, Call the DPUC!
For $20 more per month I can have unlimited calling to ALL US phone numbers (cell and land line). In no way is Sprint degrading my calls when I call out of network they are simply billing me for it. Same thing with ISPs that bundle services.
Do you know why ISPs bundle services? Competition. While there is not a lot of competition in the ISP market (telco, cable or cell in most areas that have competition) there is competition and companies bundle in extra stuff to try and get customers to pick them.
How do you define preferential treatment for phone calls?
Traditional phone metrics are obsolete, and the entire pricing model is stupid. It's legacy technology, and as the back-end networks become more and more entirely IP-based, there will be less and less justification for any pricing that is not just "data used."
On carriers not being able to give preferential treatment to some numbers but not others:
Free in-network calling.
I actually disagree with this practice. We don't have free in-network web site visiting, now do we? It's a bad precedent, and probably shouldn't be allowed.
I would go so far as to say that neither phone companies nor ISPs should be able to charge for anything but data used and possibly tiers of bandwidth available. They should, by law, be agnostic to what the data actually are.
Everything should be metered, but metered at a fair rate. Look at a service like Amazon S3, it uses fair metering. You pay $0.15 per Gigabyte of transfer. I'll gladly pay a rate like that instead of a flat rate to Time Warner.
On carriers not being able to give preferential treatment to some numbers but not others:
Free in-network calling.
I actually disagree with this practice. We don't have free in-network web site visiting, now do we? It's a bad precedent, and probably shouldn't be allowed.
I would go so far as to say that neither phone companies nor ISPs should be able to charge for anything but data used and possibly tiers of bandwidth available. They should, by law, be agnostic to what the data actually are.
I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't be able to, just countering the assertion that they can't provide preferential treatment to their own customers.
I would go so far as to say that neither phone companies nor ISPs should be able to charge for anything but data used and possibly tiers of bandwidth available. They should, by law, be agnostic to what the data actually are.
... phone companies charge absurdly inflated prices for "texts" which are in actuality tiny, tiny, easy-to-transfer ok-to-defer payloads of simple data. They rely on public ignorance of the technical reality of texting in order to sell "unlimited texting" plans to people who already pay for data.
This is a serious problem that, sadly, only technical people care about, but it will affect everyone if we continue to go down the road we're on.
... phone companies charge absurdly inflated prices for "texts" which are in actuality tiny, tiny, easy-to-transfer ok-to-defer payloads of simple data. They rely on public ignorance of the technical reality of texting in order to sell "unlimited texting" plans to people who already pay for data.
This is a serious problem that, sadly, only technical people care about, but it will affect everyone if we continue to go down the road we're on.
That is because they want you to sign up for the unlimited texting plan.
That is because they want you to sign up for the unlimited texting plan.
Because they use their pseudo-monopoly power to collectively overprice tiny data transactions by calling them something different. It's a racket plain and simple, preying on the lack of understanding in the general population.
That is because they want you to sign up for the unlimited texting plan.
They're morons. Let's say they chage $10 a month for unlimited texting. There are a lot of people who pay for it, and a lot who don't. Now, let's say they just give everyone unlimited texting by default, but raise all plans by $5, $8, $10, or even $15. Now nobody can complain that they're charging a ludicrous amount of money for text messages, which don't actually have any cost on the back end. Yet, they'll make more money because everyone is paying, and maybe even paying more.
That is because they want you to sign up for the unlimited texting plan.
they're charging a ludicrous amount of money for text messages, which don't actually have any cost on the back end.
This is one thing that gets right up my nose about texting plans with every carrier. Texting essentially uses no extra bandwidth and generates no extra traffic because it makes use of what would be dead air in the signaling paths needed to control the voice traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic exists. They're charging out the wazoo because the average consumer is ignorant and the company can get away with it. If everyone knew about this then there'd either be a massive uproar (mainly amongst the geeky types), or there'd be a resounding "meh" (because the average consumer doesn't care how much they pay so long as they can send someone a text that says "OMG WTF R U doin? lolololol!!!1!")
That is because they want you to sign up for the unlimited texting plan.
They're morons. Let's say they chage $10 a month for unlimited texting. There are a lot of people who pay for it, and a lot who don't. Now, let's say they just give everyone unlimited texting by default, but raise all plans by $5, $8, $10, or even $15. Now nobody can complain that they're charging a ludicrous amount of money for text messages, which don't actually have any cost on the back end. Yet, they'll make more money because everyone is paying, and maybe even paying more.
So you would have the non-texters subsidize the texters?
Why not just only offer a total unlimited plan for $200 a month? Is that what you want???
So you would have the non-texters subsidize the texters? Why not just only offer a total unlimited plan for $200 a month? Is that what you want???
Howabout just including texting for free, no matter what the package, and then giving us real metered options for voice and data instead of the "you either over-pay for a huge bucket that you're never going to use all of every month or you buy this piddly little amount and then we ass-rape you with the barbed-wire strap-on for your overages" method they use now?
So you would have the non-texters subsidize the texters?
Why not just only offer a total unlimited plan for $200 a month? Is that what you want???
I'm not saying what I want. I'm saying what phone companies should do if they want to make more bank and remain evil. It's not a subsidization of texting, because texting doesn't cost anything. You can't subsidize air. Right now because they specifically itemize texting on the bill, people can rightfully complain that they should have unlimited texting, and not have to pay that item because texting has effectively no actual cost. If they were smart, they would just change their billing to remove the texting itemization, and just give unlimited free texting to all customers. However, that would decrease revenues. Therefore, to be evil and maintain the same amount of income, they should raise existing items on the bill, like phone and data price, by $X. They could make the same, or even more, money, but nobody would be able to complain about them being evil and overcharging for texts. Really, I don't understand why phone companies itemize anything. Itemization just opens them up to criticism.
If I made a non-evil phone company, I would have 8 plans. Metered voice, metered data, unlimited voice, unlimited data, metered both, unlimited both, metered voice + unlimited data, unlimited voice + metered data. The only items you would see on your bill would be voice, data, and then the ones required by law. I also wouldn't manipulate those taxes and fees and such. I would legitimately keep them at the minimum required by law, and explain if they changed.
Also my metering rates would actually be fair. If you chose metered voice, and you used the same number of minutes as an average unlimited voice user, your bill would be pretty damn close to the unlimited voice price. We would just round it off to the nearest cent per minute, and adjust it annually, if necessary, for the sake of simplicity. The same for data using cents per gigabyte.
Comments
Net Neutality would be violated if Verison then said that Flickr would load faster than Picasa or you could upload pictures faster.
Edit: Actually, it's only bullshit if such a deal is exclusive. If they put up a pay-wall and sign deals and an ISP uses it's money to buy that as a feature for it's service, then that's just like bundling any other service and should be free to fuck themselves, provided they give others the chance to pay for it as well.
Basically, it's separate problems layered one on top of the other.
Also, Rym might know if this is possible: If we were to set up ISPs in two different countries, could they share IP address blocks?
Wait.. that wouldn't work, the content providers would just block both blocks.
You say we have laws against bundling Scott? Please cite the law or STFU.
How do you define preferential treatment for phone calls? Under my current cell phone contract I can call any other cell phone in the US for no per minute fee. I have unlimited calls to other cell phones no matter what network they are on. However, I only have 450 minutes per month for calling land lines. Oh no! Sprint is fucking me by not treating my phone calls equally! Call Scott, call Scott, Call the DPUC!
For $20 more per month I can have unlimited calling to ALL US phone numbers (cell and land line). In no way is Sprint degrading my calls when I call out of network they are simply billing me for it. Same thing with ISPs that bundle services.
Do you know why ISPs bundle services? Competition. While there is not a lot of competition in the ISP market (telco, cable or cell in most areas that have competition) there is competition and companies bundle in extra stuff to try and get customers to pick them.
Please cite the law that applies.
Free in-network calling.
I would go so far as to say that neither phone companies nor ISPs should be able to charge for anything but data used and possibly tiers of bandwidth available. They should, by law, be agnostic to what the data actually are.
This is a serious problem that, sadly, only technical people care about, but it will affect everyone if we continue to go down the road we're on.
TPG's ADSL2+ plans
Why not just only offer a total unlimited plan for $200 a month? Is that what you want???
If I made a non-evil phone company, I would have 8 plans. Metered voice, metered data, unlimited voice, unlimited data, metered both, unlimited both, metered voice + unlimited data, unlimited voice + metered data. The only items you would see on your bill would be voice, data, and then the ones required by law. I also wouldn't manipulate those taxes and fees and such. I would legitimately keep them at the minimum required by law, and explain if they changed.
Also my metering rates would actually be fair. If you chose metered voice, and you used the same number of minutes as an average unlimited voice user, your bill would be pretty damn close to the unlimited voice price. We would just round it off to the nearest cent per minute, and adjust it annually, if necessary, for the sake of simplicity. The same for data using cents per gigabyte.