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Verizon CEO Says "We Will Hunt Heavy Users Down"
Zerocool3001 writes "In an interview with WSJ editor Alan Murray,Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg talks about how the FCC's broadband access studies are wrong (and the US is definitely 'number one, not even close'), how he had someone else stand in line for him Saturday to pick up his iPad, and how Verizon will soon hunt down, throttle and/or charge high-bandwidth users on its network."
Pay out the nose for our high speed internet! but if you dare use that speed we will lock you up.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Throttle them around their necks if they don't have the funds to pay?
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Verizon will soon hunt down
"The Most Dangerous Game hunt down" or the boring old e-mail notification? Because if it's the former, I might start seeding large sets of prime numbers labeled as "Natalie Portman sex tape" through my noisy neighbor's unsecured wifi network connected to his Verizon FIOS.
My work here is dung.
I rather think not, but it would be cool!!
If they don’t want people to use the bandwidth they’re given, they shouldn’t advertise that they offer that much bandwidth.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
That is unacceptable!!
Now would you like to buy a bigger bandwidth package that we won't let you use? How about switching to FIOS, the best bandwidth in the country outside of a T3... that we still don't want you to use.
Now that they are finished deploying fiber, they have to spend their time doing something, right?
I'm against big government just as much as anybody, but it's high time to realize that we can no longer trust our critical communications infrastructure to these clowns.
morons who were arguing it was better to let companies 'regulate themselves' ?
now the people will be 'hunted down, throttled/charged' for the service they have ALREADY PAID FOR, in full.
Read radical news here
Of course Seidenberg isn't gonna stand in line. Businessmen do this kind of thing all the time, and I can't fathom how that's news.
then pay for it.
my gas, water, electric are metered.
so what if i pay by the gigabyte?
This is it, people! The end of the internet as we own it! After the ruling yesterday anyway... oh and also that combined with the fact that earlier this year we took a step towards corporate personhood, allowing corporations to participate in the political and legal process.
Say goodbye to the free and open internet. Say hello to the tiered-pricing model, and the metered-usage model. These companies don't care about the users. They care about the bottom-line and profits. The free market won't help here, because obviously they're going to strong-arm any competition.
Welcome to the Digital dark age. The US, the pioneer of the internet, will end up as a backwater province of the intarwebs.
Maybe I'm being cynical and alarmist. Oh well.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
really out of touch.
Yeah, we got more fibre laying around, but the consumer cost is higher, and the speed is lowest. And that's what the FCC is talking about. The speed the consumer has, not total fibre that's just lying around, or how much Verizon uses.
And then he compares it to cell phones. wtf?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is about Verizon Communications, not Verizon Wireless...
"Finally, if you're a high-bandwidth user of Verizon's smartphone data services, the company will soon hunt you down and throttle you."
This comes to mind:
http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/3567/homeruchokingubartad.jpg
What a P/R master though! So customer friendly. And all this time, I thought when I buy "unlimited" service, I didn't expect unlimited bandwidth (physical impossibility) but I do expect unlimited access... how stupid of me.
I use Sprint. With Sprint, if you are on 4G network, you can use Unlimited. I have 5gb limit on 3G networks. Where I Live, I get 4G connection. Just the way sprint is doing. I am renewing my contract with them.
Verizon: Do you hear me now, motherfuckers?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Owning the iPad seems to accrue more and more douchebag bonuspoints, these days.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"We're so far ahead of everyone else, it's "not even close."
Wiki article -- "List of countries by number of broadband Internet users" (and yes I realize % wise, we have more, but if you look at it that way, South Korea and Canada have than us..
Although he is right on some of the issues, he is swinging and missing on some of the key issues. The FCC has to regulate somehow, if he as a better method that doesn't just poll in a way Verizon will come out #1 I'm sure they'd listen. But trying to regulate data usage isn't gonna fly for anyone Ivan. We've got to try to be better, so many people don't even have broadband...
~Mekkah
I wonder if this guy realizes how much of a dickhead he sounds like.
Of course, he means in terms of letting telecom companies get away with high price/low quality service that makes their bottom lines nice and big.
Time to get Conan the aggressive regulator in the public interest on their asses. Crush their profits, drive their executives before you, and hear the lamentations of their board members.
Well, I was gonna get FIOS.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The basic story here is the same with insurance company representatives commenting about the state of US healthcare...
It's all about finding a very small selected slice of data that shows "We're #1 in the world!!!1!!ONE!", in this case about internet access (thanks to legacy phone modems), then pretend that misrepresented data represents the entire market.
But the bullshit only starts there - the REAL problem, it is asserted, are the people who "exploit" the service provided to them, in order to actually ask that full service advertised be provided to them. You know, like insurance customers who actually get sick and need financial support promised to them - those folks, and people who watch too many videos are the REAL problem with the system!
So, serving the interests of the real valued customer, the stockholder, they proclaim a holy jihad against the users of their service who don't give them good enough return in terms of contracted usage of service. Same scam, different sector.
Ryan Fenton
I........HATE.........YOU........Verizon!!!!!! Google, please save us!
That guy's head is so far up his own ass that I dare say he hasn't seen the light of day since 1492. Perhaps the intelligence of his statements explains why Verizon is doing so *ahem* swell *cough* in the civilized world.
Europe and Asia are indeed ahead of the US in certain regards, this is measurable and also something I have simply noticed traveling in Europe, the US and the Middle East.
Lastly he seems to be a clean cut Republican / Tea Party demagogue. Calling such idiots "colourful" is not the adjective I'd pick.
Another thing I don't understand, why doesn't the government subsidize some of the initial costs of fiber or broadband deployment and give the initial company an exclusive say, 5 year monopoly on it then allow others to bid on it and promote options / competitiveness. But hey, that's just me thinking out loud..
~Mekkah
What the fuck does "heavy user" mean? Turns out the article mentions it.
He specified and said that the company would throttle the ones using smartphones past their bandwidth limit. Yeah, that's why I don't use a smartphone for that shit. It's spelled out in the contract for a reason. Turns out he's not making some ridiculous claim or stating that the company'll start throttling home based networks.
Crazy that.
Even if you limit yourself to continent-sized federations, the Russian Federation is still 2 Mbit/s ahead (9.8 mbit/s) of the States of the Union (7.8 Mbit/s).
So that puts us at #2, just ahead of the EU (6.9 Mbps), Canada, Australia, China, and Brazil (2.5 Mbit/s).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
for these bastards to come up against their own users, after the court screwed up the internet in favor of comcast. arguably, it didnt even take a day. which further signifies that they were laying in wait to attack their own users in this fashion. after all, they have nothing to fear for, since they are monopolizing entire swaths of entire states without giving any choice to anyone.
enjoy 'deregulation'. a world in which the insignificant user has to fend for himself/herself against the megacorporation.
Read radical news here
He has a point. Some of those broadband studies compare apples to oranges. Yea, Korean networks may be faster, but then US is not Korea. Different scale, different usage patterns etc. It's like comparing Ethernet wired building to satellite linked regional office network.
This CEO is smarter and harder working than you as evidenced by the fact that he makes more money than you. You think you know better than your betters? If there was anything wrong with what he said, the magic of the Free Market would have prevented him from saying it! If you want the nannystate to do everything for you, move to a communist country like Canada or Europe with all the other collectivist socialists!!!!!!11!1!1oneone [/conservative]
Download every version of Ubuntu (or your preferred legal DVD image), every day. Keep the client open a full day, remove the files and start over. Use your connections to the limit "helping others get free and open source software".
\m/
On the one hand, he is touting the usage of things like smartphones and what not in comparison with Europe and hailing it as evidence of how great our system is.
On the other hand, in the very next breath is telling the same people how this must be stopped!
The funniest thing is, his remedy will result in exactly the same thing he ridicules about Europe (multiple phones).
I mean, am I the only one that see the huge incongruity in his statements?
ON a side note, most people don't have multiple phones, they have one phone with multiple SIM cards and swap them out as they go. Someone that ignorant about his own industry should be fired.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
First Murdock displays his love for it, now the CEO of Verizon not only says he wanted one, but send one of his minions to pick it up for him. If someone were trying to paint the iPad in a bad light, couldn't get it better than this.
Now what, someone using the iPad to kick puppies and stomp kittens?
When the big guys (AT&T and Verizon) killed the Northpoints and the Rhythms of the world, because they froze them out of co-lo arrangements, and made access to CO's as difficult and as painful as possible, and used lobbyists to push for legal changes and litigated like hell.
And in 2005, when MCI and Verizon merged, and the NY PSC said "ok, well at least allow naked DSL to our citizens:, you know all Seidenberg did was extend and pretend, just wait out the 30-day memory of the American press and public, then just set about killing competition again. (Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165700989)
Verizon and FIOS will give it to you sideways, and you will smile and like it. Because, you didn't do anything to fight the mergers, call your congressperson, get out there and stop market consolidation when it was clearly headed this way in 2005. Maybe you were too busy playing Everquest, but all I know is that the efforts I put to write letters were up against an onslaught of Verizon lobbyists and attorneys. And guess who won?
After health care, the teabaggers would go apeshit if the US-DOJ Antitrust stepped in and forced another set of breakups in telecom. But, in truth, it's what needs to happen to get back options as a consumer. Read it and weep.
n Japan, where everybody looks at Japan as being so far ahead, they may have faster speeds, but we have higher utilization of people using the Internet.
What we we utilizing these people that are using the internet for?
Assuming he meant to say "we have more people using the internet..." wouldn't that make sense, seeing as how we have almost triple their population?
Yes. Verizon has put more fiber in from Boston to Washington than all the Western European countries combined
Imagine that, Western European countries haven't put as much fiber in from Boston to Washington... who'da thunk it?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Pwnin' an iPad: 1000 douchebag bonus points.
Pwnin' a PS3: 1,500 douchebag bonus points.
Pwnin' a Global Warming Politician: priceless.
For that heavy monthly flow, you want the SuperMaxiPad.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
Essentially, using what you legitimately pay for will be seen as a contract violation to them, when legally you are in the right. Sadly, almost all people don't have the funds to take them to court, so that is how they will get away with it.
that he's referring to smartphone data services? At least it would direct the discussion appropriately for the people who didn't read the article
"We're so far ahead of everyone else, it's "not even close."
Oh wait...
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
When I read the article just now, I noticed something people are not realizing. They are wanting to shut down any cell phone broadband usage. I have a Verizon cell phone, rarely use the mobile web, tho I do have it available. I've been watching the plans due to the fact that my contract comes up in the next year. I find it strange that they offer phones with internet capability, but don't want you to use them......
(btw, first time posting, didn't want to bother with an account at this time.)
Essentially, what he is saying about the US is that the area we excel have absolutely nothing to do with the technology involved.
Technoli
Then they will start bundling web sites and offer a standard tier, enhanced tier, digital plus package, HD package, sports package, etc.
Where have I seen this business model before?
They'd better start throttling their heavy users now, or they will face criticism later on once everyone figures out how bad it is for you. It will be like fast food all over again.
Interesting read. I still don't consider the US #1 in broadband. I do defend it when people compare it to the faster much smaller in terms of sq mileage and people countries. I'm sure Verizon goes many steps further to qualify their self claim of #1.
I had a Comcast rep come to my door just last week asking/begging me to come back to Comcast/xfinty. One of the many reasons why I switched was the cap Comcast was enforcing where I hadn't heard about Verizon's until now. My usage while not torrent heavy it is still active and I work from home 3 days a week so I would be concerned on any limitation. I have a 20/20 package and that seemed to floor him. "20 up?" he asked.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
I guess aren't..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wrote that post under the misunderstanding that he was talking about FIOS users. Please mod it down!
What's funny is just a day or two ago I was complaining about how Slashdot encourages knee-jerk reactions. I'm a hypocrite! :D
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
hmf
Bandwidth and usage are two different things.
So you have the ability to use up your allotment faster, big deal, if they have it in their contract that they may restrict your access if you exceed a published cap then I cannot see how anyone has a problem.
Before chiming back, "its not there", post it as well.
No, I am not with Verizon, then again I don't believe in paying any phone company that wants me on a contract.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So I assume they're also going to hunt down, speed-boost and/or pay LOW-bandwidth users.
In other words, anyone using more than 5 GB a month is a high end user. Way to go, Verizon.
I think when you start using phrases like "hunt down" in reference to your customers, you miiight be doing something wrong...
I have a glandular problem and big bones...
And talk about unsporting, its not like we can run away fast or anything... They should be targeting thin clients (pun?), at least then they might have a bit of a chase.
They SHOULD be charging heavy users to cover the incremental costs, particularly those whose usage is contributing to congestion or making you pay to avoid it.
If you want to keep your network to 150% of usage 99% of the time because you have to rent pipes on a short-term basis when yours are full, you need to charge people at least in part by their usage.
This may mean size-of-pipe fees like we have now, per-TB fees like they have in some countries, time-of-day sensitive fees some cellular plans, destination-sensitive fees where "stays on our network" is free or cheaper than "leaves our network" traffic, QOS-related fees, where "bulk bits" are cheaper than bits that have latency and other special quality requirements.
Some of these, such as destination-sensitive fees, run contrary to the principles of an open Internet. Others, such as QOS-related fees, can be net-neutrality-compatible if it is the customer, not the carrier, determining the QOS he's paying for.
As a "simple" plan for home users, I would charge a "minimum" of say $20 month which would get you round-the-clock usage that was more than enough for 3/4 of my home customers, plus unlimited "off peak" data for bulk downloads of things like movies and such. If I wanted to be evil^H^H^H^Hnon-net-neutral I would offer round-the-clock free data transport for movies hosted on my server, especially those either you pay for or that someone else paid me to put there. Anything beyond that would be $X/month for Y TB, where X is the monthly minimum and Y is the amount you get to start with. If you want to run your super-fiber-line at full throttle 24/7 fine, just be ready to pay for it.
Also, with this kind of plan, the distinction between "residential" and "home based business" can dissolve - I would allow businesses to run at home without having to hide the fact they were businesses or admit it and pay a higher rate. They could run servers, subject to upload speed limits and standard no-spamming/nothing-illegal rules, etc. I would offer business-friendly add-on services such as static IPs or IP blocks and reserved-bandwidth to those businesses and non-business customers who wanted them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well ... so much for finally ordering FiOS service, maybe I won't now.
Moronic, sell FiOS but hunt you down (and what? kiss me on the lips?) if you actually USE it.
be0wulfe
shoot themselves in the foot while entire swaths of america feeds off their hands for internet. as if they have a choice to choose any other provider.
Read radical news here
They basically don't like the cultural and technological exponentiation that results from available, accessible, easy expanded intercommunication. The Dark Ages and Serfdom - for the serfs - suits them fine.
Wherever they win, society bogs down. And regresses.
It's AOL and ... ( who were the other guys ? ) all, over again. Plus bit players. In the days of 150-300baud BBS and cache email-thru-internet. I do painfully - and gratefully - remember. The megacorps wanted to carve cyberia up into their private little feifs. And make the serfs pay up and shut up. Load up their driver software and "your computer was belong to thems".
May these avaricious, ungenerous, envious miserable litlle souls have the same laconic, laughable, shrivelling demise as those other megacorp sayso wannabes. And omnitropic tecgnostic society do its thing. Amen.
I have not and will not be getting a cell phone until this cock blocking and dick slapping stops. Seriously, fuck this shit. Right now, it's definitely not the situation where companies are trying to attract customers or vying for them, and that's not a situation I want to be in.
I don't believe the FCC was acting without prompting and complaints. Those prompts and complaints come from the people who issue them. The FCC then decides whether or not there is merit to the issues raised and then decides whether or not to take action. If I'm wrong, I'd certainly be interested in how the FCC decided to take notice of the broadband situation in the U.S.
I like pay-by-the-byte but before it can be successful, customers need to know their to-date usage and their current usage rate, and they need to be able to throttle themselves. This means not just the ability to tune a dial manually, but the ability to put it on autopilot and say in advance
I do not want to pay more than $X this month, when my usage approaches the limit, throttle me so I have enough bandwidth to download X MB a day for the rest of the month.
"Sorry kids, the computer says you've watched enough streaming video today, wait until tomorrow."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Damn you Weekly Shnen Jump, stop giving a crap about Verizon and release more manga.
Already there are 20+ people decrying that line. The summary is super-misleading. Seems to me that if you have enough time to write one of those screeds about it, you ought to spend 60 seconds to at least scan the article first. Here's what it really said:
Finally, if you're a high-bandwidth user of Verizon's smartphone data services, the company will soon hunt you down and throttle you. (The company has long had a maximum transfer limit on monthly data plans.)
OK? They never sold their wireless plans as unlimited, unlike their fiber internet product. Verizon is pretty douchey, but at least not that way.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So, he dodges the question about the performance of the connections and crows about how much demand there is for broadband here (as if he created it). Then he brags about how much fiber they have for transit but ignores the question of the last mile entirely.
He also seems to be unaware that in Europe, you don't carry one phone for each cellular account you have, just the sim cards.
He also agreed that they have been extremely profitable over the last 10 years. Some would say outrageously profitable. We know that in capitalism that only happens when competition is weak.
The fact that he doesn't even have an inkling that he's practically defining the state of affairs that should trigger government regulation, either direct, or indirect through effects on the market is just the cherry on top.
Heres the actual link to to the interview. Its worth reading
http://www.cfr.org/publication/21840/conversation_with_ivan_seidenberg.html?breadcrumb=%2Fpublication%2Fby_type%2Ftranscript
My mom in Salzburg Austria has faster Internet than me and pays less for it. She's not even on the fastest plan while I am on the fastest Bellsouth/AT&T has to offer.
Oh, yeah and they pay 12 Euro for their cell phone (1000 minutes of OUTGOING calls - INCOMING minutes are included).
Seidenberg should get his head out of a.. and/or start to travel a little bit.
NOT GOOD
No, that's not how they'll get away with it. (Well, partly.) Mostly, they'll get away with it because they've carefully written their contracts so that it is a violation—or at least so that they are perfectly within their rights to throttle you or charge you extra if you so much as look at them funny.
In other words, they will make quite certain that all this is completely legal. Don't like it? Maybe all that deregulation wasn't such a great idea after all... *glares at the nearest Republican*
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
In the expert opinion of a random guy on the internet Europe has more fiber than the Boston-Washington corridor.
Morpheus, God of Dreams.
That's nonsense. Any networking technology that's not point-to-point involves many nodes sharing limited bandwidth. One of the goals of packet switching is precisely to allow nodes that use some shared bandwidth intermittently to get full bandwidth during their use.
Suppose you have 10 nodes sharing a 100Mbps network, and each of these nodes only talks about 5% of the time. What way would you prefer the bandwidth to be shared?
Are you adequate?
Well, that's another company to add to my growing list of, "Too stupid to give money to."
Time to change my cell phone service. I wonder if Sprint's CEO is any better...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Ask any European if they're not somewhat envious of the advancements of smartphone technology in the US. So it just seems to me this is just not even close.
We are not even a little envious. In fact, the use of smartphones in the US is considered somewhat of a joke. The iPhone, although pretty and easy to use, was a couple of steps backwards functionality wise.
And were does he think all the latest smartphones (WinMobile, Android, Symbians) are coming from? HTC isn't US, neither is Nokia. And Google Nexus was produced by HTC.
We have high speed mobile internet everywhere, something the US will never have, considering the fact that the US is so much larger and less densely populated.
If you look at Europe, they publish penetration rates of 150 (percent), 160 (percent), 170 percent meaning that people have more than one phone, two phones, three phones.
You know why? Roaming rates are so high. My guess is you probably have two or three different phones to carry to—to use in different countries because your roaming rates are so high. And you say, yes.
No, it's because everyone have at least one phone, just as the numbers indicate. Some people (myself included) have more than one phone because we use them for different purposes (work/personal for me, some kids have one phone on prepaid and another on a regular subscription).
I've never heard of anyone buying a second phone to use in another country.
But those are the people we will throttle and we will find them and we will charge them something else.
Fuck you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Being a Verizon consumer and having a broadband mobile data package that I use when tethering, I receive txt messaging reminding me when I've come close to my quota. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I go over I was under the impression that I would be charge steeply per MB over my quota. So I wonder, being a consumer that they already have on record (since I pay my bill), when they come to my address on record to find me using my quota as advertised, will Verizon physically throttle my usage by exchanging my device for an less capable model?
IANAL but it seems that you could use that statement and show the advertisements the marketing department is putting out the same week and have a pretty solid class action for any users who are "hunted down".
I wish Obama would grow a pair and pack the Supreme Court before the ahole conservatives on the bench ruin everything.
These CEO nuts must come from some place in outer space. Perhaps there is a nebula somewhere that births the likes of Verizon's CEO, CitiBank's CEO, etc. Certainly they never had a mother.
I hate Verizon. If they were the only carrier available to me I would do without. As bad as AT&T (my cell carrier) and Cox (my cable provider) are, they combined and squared could not approach the level of poor service I have experienced with Verizon.
Verizon. Never. Ever. One of the absolute worst companies.
Fuck Verizon! Worthless piece of shit ISP. I had their DSL for several years. Instead of getting better it got steadily worse to the point that I was often seeing 500 k down on what was supposed to be a 3 mb down connection. It would work for a week at full speed and spend a couple weeks at slow speed. Every time I called they claimed it must be "my wiring" or some bullshit excuse. I finally dumped their sorry asses and moved to a competitor who has surprised me so far. I'm paying for a 10 mb down connect but seeing over 20 mb normally from the new service. BTW, my home is all of 2 blocks from their local phone center building. Verizon can bite me.
Yeah, I really don't know where I got the 9 minutes, it would be a bit longer at 22 hours, but still not bad really.
I don't think anyone expects that they can transfer 5 TBs a month over a shared line. If you expect to transfer that much data I don't see why you expect to pay the same as the average user who is likely closer to 1 GB.
The average user won't stay close to 1 GB per month for long. Not as Internet video on demand gains popularity. For example, video on demand (e.g. hulu, youtube, netflix) might be encoded at 1 Mbps, or 450 MB per hour. If someone watches an hour per day for 30 days, that's 13.5 GB already. Add another GB or two for web browsing, e-mail, and operating system patches, and you're already past 15 GB, which is three times most 3G providers' monthly cap.
The cap is advertised in the mobile data plan - you get a 250 MB plan, a 5 gig plan, etc...they're just planning on enforcing it now.
And what does FIOS have to do with mobile data plans, which is what the CEO is talking about?
Charge a flat fee plus a dab per gigabyte. If you go like a stinking maniac against your biggest users, then your biggest customers go somewhere else. These people drive internet functionality. And in the grand scheme of things, this guy is being a first class idiot in other ways too. In 2000, companies were GOING OUT OF BUSINESS because there was TOO MUCH CAPACITY. Lots of dark fibre still around. 360 networks is better now, but they nearly died (or did they die), because about the same time fibre became plentiful everywhere (massive bundles of fibre connecting major centres) digital compression made the amount of bandwidth needed much much smaller. Suddenly everyone was driving a pinto on a 6 lane expressway early Sunday morning. Now this guy starts up about "killing off people who use the net" blah blah blah. Did I already use the phrase "First class idiot". Simultaneously a liar, a poor businessman, and a jerk. What a combination.
Do they sell a mobile/wireless plan that doesn't have the phrase "xBytes Per Month" in it?
Cause if they do... lemme know - I'd love to see it.
"We're so far ahead of everyone else, it's "not even close."
You're taking it out of context. He was talking about how far ahead they are at fucking over their customers.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Who you callin heavy? I'm big backboned, you insensitive clod!
Based on this article alone, I would not buy stock in Verizon. We use cell phones and the internet more than others so that equals our networks are better? So I drive my 78 Malibu more than your new xxx that makes it better? I hope this interview was conducted in a bar after many drinks because if this guy is leading a major corporation with such nutballery then I can only presume that there are many other dumbass things going on there.
If you need to raise rates to make a little more money, fine, it happens, just be reasonable. But stop pretending that data packets running across a switch are costing you more from one user to the next. If you were dumb enough to sign up for a "Pay per meg" connection to the internet from Sprint. Then shame on you, fold and let the next smart guy come along that doesn't make stupid business decisions. Please knock off all of this "blame it on the internet" non-sense. IT'S THE INTERNET! It doesn't have any real utility, and merely provides a form of limited entertainment at best. I will say this.. I am not even a "heavy" user per say, I think the most I have used in a month was 19GB, and that was because of Netflix on-line. Which brings me to my point. This is all about. "How much can we squeeze out of this lemon?" The second I get hit with restrictions of this nature, I will simply "turn it off" and move on in life without the internet. If EVERYONE took this stance, WE WOULDN'T HAVE THIS GREEDY ZEALOT PROBLEM. Hopefully Verizon burns themselves on this one, but I doubt it.
Finland is densely populated compared to some rural, out of the way parts of the US. Finland: 16 people/km^2. In fact, Finland is about as densely populated as Maine.
For a European telco, which may be required to service everyone in the country, this isn't as big a deal as it is in the US or Canada. The US is big. A wiring crew can spend *days* laying fiber without seeing a town or city in the US. Getting high-speed internet to everyone is a huge undertaking and frankly, just not worth it.
(Out of the way places in the US: Montana: 2.5 people/km^2 (same size as Finland), Wyoming: 2.1 people/km^2, N. Dakota: 3.5 people/km^2,
S. Dakota: 4.0 people/km^2 -- it's just not worth wiring places that aren't population centers.)
Quote: "Ask any European if they're not somewhat envious of the advancements of smartphone technology in the US."
And then when they've finished laughing...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
We should all be on fibre transfering terrabytes with no problem, but greedy telecoms took their government subsidies and instead gave themselves fat bonuses. These people stifle innovation in the name of profits and i hope they all get aids and die
Verizon CEO Says "We Will Hunt Heavy Users Down" And thus was the origin of SkyNet.
It's ridiculous how little BW I use on my Verizon account each month, and how much I get charged for it. So I'm not surprised the high bandwidth users will be hunted down and charged. They do that to low bandwidth users. They do it to everybody. They're not treating high BW users any differently from anybody else.
The summary and the page the summary links to are VERY misleading and most of the rants posted above are all based on incorrect assumptions. If you want the real picture, read the actual interview. I'll try to clarify some of these issues as objectively as possible. Not arguing one way or another here, but some of the ranters need to chill out.
1. Verizon is "hunting down" heavy users of it's 3G broadband (i.e. Verizon Wireless) NOT it's FIOS or DSL. It is also important to note that Verizon Wireless does NOT offer unlimited data usage in its data plans (I'm a subscriber). The unlimited Verizon plans refer specifically to voice and text. So anyone screaming bloody murder about punishing users for using what they paid for can STFU. You aren't paying for unlimited, so you won't get unlimited.
2. The iPad. The summary and the linked article really spin this one into something it's not. According to the actual interview, Verizon (as a company) had several people stand in line for iPads because Verizon is interested in the device (as they should be) and want some to play/experiment/develop/whatever with. The CEO did not dispatch a personal assistant to stand in line so he could have his own iPad without the need to stand in line with those filthy "commoners". The summary and linked article puts its own spin in order to imply the latter, but nothing in the actual interview suggests this at all.
3. US #1 in broadband? This guy defines being #1 in broadband a little differently than the FCC and most people. While the FCC is looking at broadband speed, he looks more at broadband penetration and utilization. Now I don't know the exact numbers, and no sources were really cited in the actual interview, so this is still pretty debatable. However, I think he brings up a good point in how we rank broadband. If a country has the highest speeds available in the world, but only a select few can actually get access to it, then are they really #1 in broadband? I would argue that being the best would be a combination of speed, availability, reliability, and even cost. Again, though, some fact-checking needs to be done on this one.
In summary, Slashdot has once again gone for sensationalism, and the linked article is probably worse. I wouldn't mind it so much if it didn't spark all of these threads making arguments about things that were never said or even implied by the person in question. This is supposed to be a site for intellectuals, yet we can't seem to have an intellectual debate over the issues, because the real issues have been so clouded. I urge everyone to read the actual interview, even though it is quite lengthy. There is a lot of good stuff in there and it gives some good insights into how one of the largest companies in the country feels about issues from net neutrality to health-care. The real answers are not quite as evil as you might think.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
LPB - Low Ping Bastard.
Playing an FPS in America is horrible compared to playing the same game on a Southeast Asia connection. Hell, even the internet cafe's in Germany had faster (better pings) connections than American games.
America is NOWHERE near the top when it comes to internet speeds. I long for the days of playing on a BF1942 64-player server with a ping of 20 or lower. I'm lucky if I go under 100 on my current connection.
So it's the FCC making the rules or this kook? I'll take the feds - even if they're wrong - just to keep this guy in his cage.
Who the hell is advising this guy?
Yeah, I used to spend more time on the internet back when I had dial-up.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
I'm ok with a 250GB cap on my 8Mbps cable line. I'm ok paying double if I need to use 500GB. What I'm not ok with is the gouging. I calculated out one of the wireless providers overage charges, though I can't remember which one right now. I think it was T-mobile. The first 5GB was $60/month. The second 5GB was $1,000. So, I'm quite happy with Cricket, who says "If you go over 5GB/month, we reserve the right to throttle you." Much more sane than "If you go over, we'll do our best to bankrupt you." ;-/
Sean
"But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day doing things that--who knows what they're doing--those are the--"
He obviously doesn't comprehend the nature of he service and devices that his company sells. Srsly, just...wow.
That line was aimed at smartphone users. Smartphones are DESIGNED to "camp on the network all day long every day doing things". Like getting mail updates, weather updates (activated and enabled by default!), and the like. And those are just built-in services included with the phone that are designed to run constantly. There are also IM apps, twitter apps, navigation apps (one provided BY VERIZON!!!), etc. which are constantly generating network traffic.
A person who does not understand the product and/or service that his company sells should not be in a position to dictate policy and this guy's the freakin' CEO!
And it's all the government trying to stick their nose in and tell them how to run their business. Again, "wow". The government isn't forcing Verizon to advertise their services as unlimited. That's all Verizon. The government got involved when ISPs started to LIMIT the service provided to people with those UNLIMITED plans. If they want the government to stay out, don't advertise a product or service that you don't want to deliver. Offer the products and services that you're willing to provide. If people feel your product or service has value within the terms that it is offered, they will buy it.
And people who use the service they were sold are "abusers" because they're in the top 10 percent. That the hell is that crap? There will ALWAYS be a top 10 percent. Makes it awful convenient if you want to ensure there's always a villain.
This guy seems pissed that he might be forced to deliver the service that his company advertised and sold.
If you fuck up FIOS, Verizon will lose EVERY GOOD WORD that it has earned by FIOS's oustanding service.
Cap/Throttle FIOS users at your own peril. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
CmdrTaco: We here at Slashdot recognize our obligation to bring resposible opposing viewpoints to our articles. Here now with an editorial reply is Miss Emily Litella.
Emily Litella: What all this fuss I keep hearing about Verizon's CEO wanting to hunt down heavy users? Why it's outrageous! Hunt down fellow human beings? Why that's murder! A man gains a little power and he thinks he can do whatever he wants! Any why single out the heavy users? They're slower and make bigger targets! Is he a cannibal? If he wants real sport he should be hunting the skinny ones! And it's a fine way to be treating customers anyway! He should be going after people who use Boost Mobile! If I hear one more person saying "Where You At?" I'll get a gun myself!
CT: Um, Ms. Litella..
EL: What, what?!
CT: Mr. Seidenberg was referring to heavy broadband users, not heavy people. And when he said "hunt them down" he was speaking metaphorically. He wants to charge people who use broadband all the time more than those who don't.
EL: Oh, I see. That's very different.
CT: Yes.
EL: Kind of a misleading headline.
CT: Well, we'll speak to timothy about that.
EL: Never mind. But this guy's still being a dick though.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That's all about to change.
I just read his chat with Murray. He is very candid, though sometimes predictably misleading. He can be this way because he knows that his company, and therefore its leader, is untouchable. He was candid about healthcare, essentially saying that the employees were going to pay for it one way or the other. He let his customers know that they are not customers, just subscribers to the service of an unregulated monopoly, and they should not use "too much" of the service lest they be dealt with by the Company.
Verizon is two mergers away from being THE national communications monopoly, and I could tell that he can taste it. The power of acting with impunity, controlling human communication, making money any way that the company chooses, deciding what is 'right' and 'wrong' with the way an industry is run -- all that is quite the aphrodisiac, like Tiger Woods trapped on an island with all the Victoria Secret models. Who could resist? I suspect Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had similar feelings. After all they are only human.
Link to the actual interview, instead of a summary from ars:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/21840/conversation_with_ivan_seidenberg.html
Sure, out East in the fat markets, where Verizon is offering fiber to the home, I'm sure the high-speed Internet picture looks great.
Here in Colorado, we don't have Verizon FTTH. We have QWest, who only this year started putting DSLAMs out in neighborhoods instead of just the central offices. They didn't put DSLAMs out in the neighborhoods because doing so would have allowed the CLECs to put them out there, and eat away at areas where QWest didn't want to spend the money to put them. Contrast this to Saskattoon, Saskatchewan Canada, which is very similar to where I live, as far as town size, ruralness, etc... Back in 2000 when I was there, they had deployed remote DSLAMs and had coverage of over 90% of the city.
So, I'm fairly confident that Verizon has a more rosy picture of what the US high-speed network connectivity to the home looks like.
Don't forget, the phone companies got an extra fee added to our phone bills to delivery fiber to the home by 2000. They raised 2 billion dollars from that (or was it 20?), and as far as I can tell they largely pocketed it.
Sean
What will they use to hunt Heavies down? They could Spy on them... or hire a Sniper. An Engineer could come in handy, too.
You just have to watch our for those pesky Medics following them around. ...Wait, we're not talking about Team Fortress 2?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
100Mbps = 12.5MB/s
5TB / 12.5MB/s = 400,000 seconds
400,000s / 60s/m = 6,666 minutes
6,666m / 60m/h = 111 hours
Clearly you have never tried to actually download 5TB.
I suggest you look into downloading blurays.
I know a guy who does 5-10TB a month in blurays with half your bandwidth.
np
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
What they want is to charge anyone that actually uses the net as heavily as they were promised they could to pay more, while making grandma and grandpa pay the same they are now.
I say fuck that, they can have it one way or the other, but they can't have it both ways just to squeeze as much out of a customer as they can. You sell unlimited, you best be supplying it.
Let's have a little context:
The Ars Technica piece is missing the bit in bold.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I had a chuckle about his perceived US dominance in the smartphone arena. Has he never heard the name, "Nokia," before?
The problem with this whole comparison is that, from what I've read, people in somewhat rural parts of Finland (rural like Alabama, not rural like northern Alaska) enjoy much higher internet speeds than just about everyone in the USA does.
If it were only people in northern Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and other such places who had slow and unreliable internet connections, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes, the USA is a big place, and some of it is extremely remote. But other parts (including most of the East coast and California) are very heavily populated.
Instead, people in large cities, midsize towns, and places not far from either of these, don't have internet access that comes even close to what almost everyone in Finland enjoys, and they probably pay a whole lot more too, and have to worry about bandwidth caps. That's the problem right there. If your average internet user in Colorado Springs had internet access as good as the Finns have, then we wouldn't have as much to complain about.
maybe best american phones were us, but they are pathetic to the offerings available in certain countries abroad cough *japan* cough
Verizon and FIOS will give it to you sideways, and you will smile and like it.
as many other people have pointed out, the throttling quote has nothing to do with FIOS. it's about wireless. here's the full quote:
So what we will do is put in reasonable data plans, and we've done this. We've just introduced a $30 data plan that does with every one of our BlackBerrys or smart phones, a 10 (dollar) or a $30 data plan that covers the majority of people who feel that's a fair price. I get to use it for 30, 40 hours and I pay a certain rate.
But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day doing things that -- who knows what they're doing -- those are the --
(I'm guessing he was trying to keep from saying the word "porn".)
But those are the people we will throttle and we will find them and we will charge them something else.
not talking about throttling FIOS. Probably because they're not so worried about capacity on their FIOS network.
now you are probably right that Verizon (and all the majors) work very hard to keep competitors out. And that's hardball and it's nasty and deplorable and it's pretty much the way business works (and has worked) in this country. Maybe Seidenberg is a huge a**hole and it's very possible that he and Verizon's board sacrifice kittens (only the cutest, most trusting kittens) to their lord Cthulhu in order to maintain their profit margin.
but you know what, FIOS is a damn sight better than any other product on the market and it has been for years. Uptime is amazing, throughput is amazing, no bandwidth throttling. I am very satisfied customer.
Though I guess that just means that I like it sideways.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
When economies of scale are king, where fixed costs & relatively fixed costs make up a disproportionatly high percentage of total costs, competition drives costs up which mean higher prices longterm &/or provider bankruptcies offloading costs community wide.
Just compare the costs of a govt owned Telco monopoly that has 98% of a national market, verses the costs of say 3 private Telcos all competing nation wide. Plus govts don't have to pay to axcess govt land right-of-ways or aerial bandwidth spectrum (beyond paper-work semantics of govt paying itself). Ontop of which govt can axcess credit for infrastrure/technology upgrades at cheaper rates than the private sector, including even the rates that multi-nationals can negotiate.
Sure some people here may come out of the wordwork saying govts can't run businesses efficiently & govt corporatised bodies, statutory corporations 'n utilities are full of bloat & take for ever to get anything done, but if one bother's to go to the trouble, one can find plenty of exceptions to this arround the world to prove this a furphy in reality.
Of course it's possible for private monopolies to exist but the problem there is they exist to maximise dividends for their shareholders & thus legislative regulations are required to prevent over-pricing, which are a restriction on private businesses having the right to charge what they want, pluses adds the costs of a regulatory enforcement & appeal regime, adding more costs. While govt corporations & utility monopolies are useally restrained to only charging enough to keep themselves in the black (with govt dividends to consolidated revenue being near traditional norms) by the politicians being afraid of being voted out if.they increase charges too.
.I forgot the word "much" at the end of my post above.
please calm down.
here's what Seidenberg said:
But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day doing things that--who knows what they're doing--those are the--
here's what Seidenberg would have said if, you know, he wasn't talking as the face of a publicly traded company:
But when we now go after the very, very high users, the ones who camp on the network all day long every day downloading porn
does that make it clearer what he's talking about? he's not talking about checking your email, or IMing or any of the low bandwidth applications you mention. he's talking about constant, high bandwidth usage and that's video. and Seidenberg is thinking porn, but he doesn't want to say that.
the interviewer actually interrupts him/bails him out by saying
It's video, right? I mean, it's video.
so actually, since Verizon never advertised anything like unlimited wireless internet, his claim is pretty reasonable. he's saying that people like paying a flat fee for usage, but that flat fee isn't fair for the most active users since they degrade everyone else's service and strain the network. so those people will either pay more or have their service throttled back.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
That doesn't explain speeds in New York city, now does it?
The problem is that transit on a packet switched network isn't like renting a house, so the analogy is off-base to start with. In terms of communications services, renting a house is more analogous to buying a dedicated point-to-point circuit; you get exclusive, 24/7 usage of that house for the term of the lease.
However, the Internet simply isn't a point-to-point network, and there is no way any ISP can give anybody point-to-point circuit guarantees to "the Internet" at large. You can only really get such guarantees to specific nodes that you name in advance.
Are you adequate?
there is no reason for dense city areas to not offer 100/10 connections for the same or cheaper as the Finns, Japanese, and/or S.Koreans. i think that shines a whole different light on the problem. if they're not upgrading connections where they have the people to use it, why the fuck would they put the same-ish slower connections in rural areas? also, whatever happened to all the tales of dark fiber that was already run all over the place?
...
I would think that the most logical approach to internet connectivity would be a co-op that charges tiered per-kb prices based on clearly-defined speed metrics. Of course, we never do anything logical in this country, but am I wrong? Being in essence a utility, I'd think that internet connectivity can be treated like one, and isn't that how utilities are best managed?
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
The CEO's mentality seems to remind me of Randal Graves from Clerks...
"This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."
[WSJ executive editor Alan] Murray: So on the measures that matter most to you, where does the United States rank in terms of—
Seidenberg: One. Not even close.
One, but he didn't clarify that he meant that on a scale of 1 to 10.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Does anyone here on /. have any views or experience with Atlantic BB along these lines? Meaning, have you ever head of caps per month, or received any type of warnings for such? I have to admit, I'm guilty of using torrents on occasions (far from 24/7 basis, more like 2 days a month), but I mostly just game online and browse.
Its becoming a bit of a problem, because I would like to downgrade my service but I don't want to deal with a cap or anything. The prices have been going up and up over the past two years, with nothing new to offer recently than Lifetime and E! in HD, so I would like to offset the cost of my internet cost while keeping all of my HD stations. $190 a month for 2nd tier internet access, HD package with HBO (only $5 extra), and two DVRs (its very necessary in our house to have them, with two girls under 10). Could potentially save a bit going with the basic tier internet, but I don't want to handicap myself without knowing what I'm asking for.
I'd hate to keep throwing money at them if they keep use it to add junk stations. Regardless, its hard to get a real view on their internet access because its quite hard to find someone else that uses Atlantic BB and knows what they're talking about. Most of my friends use Verizon DSL, and other people at work have Atlantic but just take the "Hey, thats what it costs so I pay" mentality. Anyhow, hope theres a fellow Atlantic BB'er out there who can offer a point of view!
"... they may have faster speeds, but we have higher utilization of people using the Internet"
Translation: "our network is totally saturated and overloaded"
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
After I had clicked to read this story, the advertisement on the right is Verizon's "No borders, no boundries" ad. Got a good laugh out of the one.
Verizon is an actively anti-consumer company. They sell you a product, but if you use it then you have to pay more for it. I don't care how good their network is, (Hint: it's not that good) I won't be getting on anything Verizon, ever. When we had Verizon DSL at our old office, the speed was terrible. They blamed everything from our routers to our wiring, after many months of wasted time they admitted that we were 2,000 ft too far to get decent service.
My service provider TPG in Australia has a great plan. $1 per month that gives you 150 mb for DSL subscribers and 50 mb for people who are not DSL subscribers with them. Phone calls are 10c per minute and excess data is 2.75c per meg. I usually spend about $20 per month on my iPhone. I did have to buy my iPhone out right but hey they sell iPhones unlocked in Australia and I liked paying full price for my phone rather than having to be locked into a draconian contracts. Other service provider give you a free iPhone but charge you at least $60 a month and lock you into an 18 month contract.
Plus in Australia we do not pay to receive calls with any service provider. I was shocked when I first got to the USA and got an AT&T prepaid phone and my minutes were used when receiving calls.
FTFY
P.S. Why could I not find an online homonym generator?
Probably the singlemost important rule in business is a simple one: sell what's cheap! Sounds pretty simple, but any successful business has, as its core component, finding something that it can offer cheaper than is available elsewhere, and then offering it at a markup.
When you buy an iPad for $500, you do so because the easiest way for you to get whatever it is the iPad offers cheaper/easier from Apple than any other reasonable channel. When you buy a tomato from the local grocery for $0.59, you do so because it would cost you more to get it elsewhere. By specializing in making iPads or distributing tomatoes, companies develop ways to reduce the cost of obtaining goods, and thus make it easier for products to be obtained by everyone.
This is simple Econ 101 type stuff, but it's something that's easily forgotten, even by guys who majored as MBAs.
The truth is that the cheapest thing Verizon could possibly offer is data. There is basically no per unit cost for transmitting data. The cost is so low that it might as well be free, at least for Verizon. The only cost that there is for transmitting data are flat-rate running costs of infrastructure development and maintenance, and keeping everything plugged in.
Think about it: 10 years ago, you might have had a 10 Mbit hub at your home or office. 5 years ago, you might have had a 100 Mbit hub, and now you'd probably have a 1000 Mbit hub. The actual cost to you is the same, regardless of the hub speed. The 10 Mbit hub cost around $100 and used perhaps 200 mw of power. The 100 Mbit hub cost around $100 and used perhaps 200 mw of power. The 1000 Mbit hub cost around $100 and used perhaps 200 mw of power.
Are you noticing a trend, here? The only real "running" cost of transmitting data is the relatively flat cost of power. Upgrading equipment is an expense that actually makes data transmission cheaper!
So here's Verizon, swearing to "go after" the customers that most use a product/service that has no meaningful unit cost. (WTF?!) This is blindingly stupid! Verizon runs the real risk of being side-swiped by (among other companies) Google and/or companies like Metro PCS who offer their own data networks. Think this isn't serious? think again: MANY communities have inquired about Google fiber Internet!
Sometimes, people just can't seem to help but trip over their own idiocy...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Can someone verify this claim, please?
In 1995, I cruised on the Net for the first time at uni, in a Sun station, in the engineering building. The USA was in the vanguard of network buildout, and national broadband plans in Europe/East Asia were not in exisntence---that I recollect, or have since heard about.
But then, am I wrong?!
Was there, in Sweden, in 1996 retail, civilian access to 100 megabit Internet access??????????
You get to use all that power from a 200mph car every time you accelerate.
The power in such a car is in the torque it delivers.
It's what gets you from 0-65mph in 3.5 seconds.
You would need to look at the torque graph of a car t find out where its peak is, but it is generally not at 200mph and more often than not, in the 20-65mph zone (for aerodynamic and other reasons, nut just legal.)
to the United States of America!
Saver the world, one Dictator at a time.
the Murderer of the Reuters reporters.
As the GP notes, it's already happened . When I left Japan in summer 2005, the slowest speed I could possibly get was around 24MBps, for a whopping $30/month ($20/month for the first three months). I have no idea what the minimum ISP offering is there now, but I'm sure it beats the pants off anything I could get here in USia. For that matter, here in Seattle, I get around 1.5MBps, for substantially more than $30/month... <sigh.>
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
No, but I do expect that when I go into Golden Corral for an all-you-can-eat meal, I can get a meal and not just a snack. Lately, the offering of several wireless ISPs has tended to look more like a snack, as they limit users to 5 GB per month, which is about 20 minutes a day of 1 Mbps video.
But wait...that bold print in the ad...UNLIMITED...that wasn't the contract?
Advertising something and then refusing to sell it may qualify as a bait and switch.
For example, a "Home-Standard-50" plan from a typical ISP allows 50 GB/month of transfer.
The problem comes when a highly promoted plan comes with only 5 GB per month of transfer. This is common with satellite and 3G ISPs. Today's Internet users tend to expect to use video on demand services, such as YouTube, iPlayer*, Netflix*, or Fancast*. Streaming for an hour a day at 1 Mbps puts you at nearly three times this cap.
* Substitute your country's counterpart.
Ladies and Gentelman: the latest posterboy to gloriously represent everything that is wrong with Corporate America.
From TFA:
The company has long had a maximum transfer limit on monthly data plans.
He's talking about the wireless business, which has always had limits (I think 5GB/month).
VZW is close to The Super Devil on the evil meter.
Verizon FiOS though, isn't quite as evil.
So, unless I'm missing something, this is a non-story.
"VZW says it's going to continue enforcing transfer limits...news at 11"
The Verizon guy is wrong when he says US is #1. Even if you limit yourself to continent-sized federations, the Russian Federation is still 2 Mbit/s ahead (9.8 mbit/s) of the States (7.8 Mbit/s).
So that puts us at #2, ahead of the EU (6.9 Mbps), Canada, Australia, China, and Brazil (2.5 Mbit/s).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Wireless is a shared medium -- a handful of bandwidth hogs will ruin the service for everyone else.
Cable modems are also a shared medium, but their cap is at least 10 times greater than 3G (terrestrial wireless data).
The only way to address this is to add more channels to your wireless data services -- but the cellular providers only have so much spectrum
Adding capacity doesn't necessarily require adding spectrum. The one advantage that 3G technology has over satellite Internet comes from the "cell" in cellular: more towers mean more capacity.
Now we can argue about the 5GB cap and whether or not they really need such a low cap to ensure quality service -- but the fact remains that there's no feasible way with existing wireless technology to provide unlimited service and a decent level of service at the same time.
True. I understand the point of caps, but some providers use surprisingly low caps as a crutch to avoid having to invest in their networks after a shift in usage habits. Hint: if a network has a large fraction of users who regularly come close to the cap, it could be a sign that usage habits have shifted. As of right now, the only way they get away with this is failure to compete: all the wireless providers have similar caps around 5 GB/mo.
Of all the things to open source, as in done by the people for the people, what about creating a high speed Internet that anyone can use without charges? In other words, the hotspot brought to every home...
Infrastructure costs billions, and open source has mostly been about the engineering rather than the installation and replication but open source is also about solving problems. Large scale solutions have been available by open source: Wikipedia, file sharing, etc. If there is someone willing to take it on, there has been success - is a mega fast free Internet possible, even if it's just a backbone and not the last mile to every household?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I visited my son who was living in Latvia, a post communist country. The telecommunications for this country with a poor economy was superb. Fibre connection almost everywhere. His flat had voip telephone and internet, with amazing speeds. I could download a dvd image in very few minutes. I am in Montreal, and for the normal user, I have VOIP telephone and DSL internet. It is not the best, but it is better then 2400 baud modem connections. We should be expecting fibre everywhere very soon, as Video, Telephone and other services are demanding broadband access by home. So, it's time the USA networks got into the 21st century. The Fed Government built the interstate highways, it is time to build the telecommunication highway.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I came to post about ditching verizon, and there, at the top of the page, is a google ad for Verizon. Wow, does it get any better? If you support verizon with your business, I guess you get what you deserve. Look into TracFone (not affiliated). If all you want is to have a cell phone, cant be beat. Somehow we have got to get these behemoth companys out of our computers by returning to PDAs that can be used as phones instead of phones that are also PDAs. The business model currently in play is obviously bad for consumers, so i think it must be up to consumers to change it. Verizon certainly won't!
I open my email. i see /. headlines has arrived. i grab a couple cold ones, some chips, and put the puppy on the chair next to me (she LOVES /.!) then i begin reading the headlines. i see the one about the verizon-guy and i gotta readdit. i click. then i wait. and wait. it takes 15 seconds for the article to hit the screen. this wait crap is something new.... i have comcast hs internet. is /. so damn popular that the servers are breaking down, or is the govt guy who reads all emails a bit slow these days, or is there something wrong with my hs internet connection? any feedback from y'all????? thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom