On Monday, AT&T Customers Enter Era of Broadband Caps

theodp writes "The Age of Broadband Caps begins Monday, with AT&T imposing a 150 GB cap on DSL subscribers and 250 GB for UVerse users, and keeping the meter running after that. The move comes as AT&T's 16+ million customers are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable. With AT&T's Man in the White House, some fear there's a 'digital dirt road' in America's future. Already, the enforcement of data caps in Canada has prompted Netflix to default to lower-quality streaming video to shield its users from overage fees."

Comments

AT$T

[the_Bionic_lemming]

What's just as bad as them trying to force you up from DSL to UVerse (hence the 100/250 cap) the terms they sent out also had a provision where you had to be nice when calling in for service issues or they would cancel your account. I quit two weeks ago because AT$T's attitude still sucks, and the company is still Horrible despite realizing that they now have competition.

Re:AT$T

[Samantha Wright]

The thing that really confuses me about AT&T is that after it was painstakingly dismantled at the legal level, not only did it reassemble itself, like some very ugly swarm of very large nanobots, but it took back up the name of its former self, thus completing the reincarnation into the monster hated and feared by its customers. Why the name, AT&T? Was the labelling on all the old switch boxes really bothering your field techs that much? Why would a company choose a name so completely and consistently associated with poor treatment of customers?

Re:AT$T

[mcgrew]

I have the Uverse service, but don't really see a problem (yet, we'll see). DSL alone is $20 per month, Uverse is twice the speed and is only $25. Both are cheaper than Comcast -- but if they start charging me extra, it would be easy to go to Comcast, who are even worse than AT&T.

Re:AT$T

[postbigbang]

No. AT&T is Southwest Bell with lipstick. They are an amalgamation of Ameritech, PacBell, and assets they picked up on the way. But at the core, they are a "Baby Bell" monopoly. It's the management of SW Bell in their "take over the world" phase.

And now they need to complete their rape and pillage by buying T-Mobile. Did you think the caps were for technical reasons? No. They need revenue to finance the hideous acquisition that would make them The Death Star Monopoly again.

Re:AT$T

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are 6 month special pricings only. Then the price will go up after 6 months.

Re:AT$T

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No. AT&T is Southwest Bell with lipstick. They are an amalgamation of Ameritech, PacBell, and assets they picked up on the way. But at the core, they are a "Baby Bell" monopoly. It's the management of SW Bell in their "take over the world" phase.

IOW, the original AT&T monopoly reassembling itself, exactly like GPP said. The fact that the company which kept the AT&T name was swallowed by one of its children, rather than the reverse, is really irrelevant -- the point is that it was all Ma Bell originally, and it keeps coming back to that, the monster that just won't die.

Re:AT$T

[WyzrdX]

I have the Uverse service, but don't really see a problem (yet, we'll see). DSL alone is $20 per month, Uverse is twice the speed and is only $25. Both are cheaper than Comcast -- but if they start charging me extra, it would be easy to go to Comcast, who are even worse than AT&T.

Yes uVerse is cheaper than Comcast. Yes it is twice as fast as DSL. But lets face it, 25 per month for 1/4 of the speed my 60Mb connection. I pay 50 per month and get 300% faster than uVerse. Even the top speed uVerse Max Turbo is up to 24Mb down and 3Mb up. I get up to 75Mb down and 6.5Mb up and if I have a problem or outage, I get those days credited to my account and the service doesnt depend on Where I Live in proximity to AT&T lines.

Re:AT$T

[KDR_11k]

Consider yourself lucky, my house only gets 3MBit/s DSL.

Re:AT$T

[loxosceles]

Great. A duopoly instead of a monopoly. I feel SO much better.

Unfortunately, for wired, there is no competition with Vzn. I can't get Verizon's fios where I live; it's either AT&T's capped uverse, AT&T's capped DSL, or comcast's capped cable.

Re:AT$T

[93 Escort Wagon]

Why the name, AT&T? Was the labelling on all the old switch boxes really bothering your field techs that much? Why would a company choose a name so completely and consistently associated with poor treatment of customers?

You only had to follow the news (tech and mainstream) in the 1990s to know the answer to this - the name Southwestern Bell/SBC was absolute poison because of customer dissatisfaction, repeated management cock-ups (I guess the latter isn't really separate from the former), and IIRC even financial malfeasance. They felt they had to get away from SBC at any cost. The AT&T name had some history behind it, at least.

I recall their ads at the time tried to play into the long history of AT&T.

Re:AT$T

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Choosing between AT&T and Comcast is like choosing between leprosy and Aids.

Re:AT$T

[bipbop]

Yet.

Re:AT$T

[smitty97]

oblig. from Colbert: http://www.stopthismerger.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/colbert-att-merger-history.jpg

Re:AT$T

[russotto]

IOW, the original AT&T monopoly reassembling itself, exactly like GPP said. The fact that the company which kept the AT&T name was swallowed by one of its children, rather than the reverse, is really irrelevant -- the point is that it was all Ma Bell originally, and it keeps coming back to that, the monster that just won't die.

Yep, it's the T-1000 of monopolies. Although I think it's going to have a hard time swallowing Verizon, and it's still anyone's guess which of the two ends up with Qwest (assuming the CenturyLink thing falls apart)

Re:AT$T

[ScrewMaster]

Choosing between AT&T and Comcast is like choosing between leprosy and Aids.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "A consumer between two giant corporations is like a fish between two cats."

Re:AT$T

[iamhassi]

Doesn't Uverse also power your TV service? 250GB is almost 10GB a day, that does sound pretty huge, but if I'm surfing and streaming HD to my TV I could see how 10GB a day would be gone pretty fast...

Re:AT$T

[pjbgravely]

Consider yourself lucky, my house only gets 1.3Mb/s DSL.
And I consider myself lucky, that I don't live a 100 feet further and not able to get DSL at all like so many stuck on dialup.

Re:AT$T

[NeutronCowboy]

That's the beauty of the cap - it currently doesn't affect ATT's version of IPTV. You can also be certain that any service that ATT launches will also be exempt from the bandwidth cap. Hypothetically speaking, ATT could launch a new search engine and exempt it from the bandwidth cap. And Google will be dead in a way that neither MS nor Yahoo could achieve.

Re:AT$T

[dragonturtle69]

Nothing new, AT&T has always been this way. SNL skits, humorously, give a historic perspective (Ernestine + one ringy dingy or something like http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml). T-Mobile touches upon it in one of their commercials, AT&T charging more for less makes sense, when you don't think about it.

As someone else notes later in this thread, AT&T exempts their services from the cap. Can't cut the throughput to another content provider's site, so they cap the data, and charge $10 per 50 GB.

Re:AT$T

[jonathan21]

What's just as bad as them trying to force you up from DSL to UVerse (hence the 100/250 cap) the terms they sent out also had a provision where you had to be nice when calling in for service issues or they would cancel your account. I quit two weeks ago because AT$T's attitude still sucks, and the company is still Horrible despite realizing that they now have competition.

I wish our country and a bandwith gap of 250 in our country its 1 gig so you have nothing to complain about.

Re:AT$T

[Glendale2x]

My AT&T DSL was stuck as 3Mbps after they installed the VRAD for uverse in my neighborhood. The only other game in town is Charter and they have a 250GB cap (on the highest package only - hundreds of dollars more expensive than uverse). Ended up settling for uverse. It's actually not that bad. While I still look upon the days of the small local ISPs nostalgically, those days are dead and gone. Don't foolishly think there is competition in a world where giant telco vs. giant cableco are your "choices".

Re:AT$T

[mcgrew]

As long as it streams without stuttering it's fast enough for me, since I stopped playing online games when the game companies got stupid, greedy, and evil.

Re:AT$T

[mcgrew]

It can, but I refuse to pay for TV that has commercials. After getting TV with commercials for free for thirty years and commercial-free and paid for fifteen or twenty more, getting charged for TV with commercials (and worse, the logos at the bottom right and even commercials in the bottom left while the show's playing) would be like suddenly being charged for air. I dropped cable ten years ago.

Re:AT$T

[LunaticTippy]

Why do you assume the merger falls apart? As far as I can tell, it has already happened
It affects me, and I am sad about it. Mergers are never done to improve things for the customer.

Re:AT$T

[LunaticTippy]

Leprosy is easily cured. AIDS is not.

Good Idea.

[outsider007]

I'm tired of having to ask AT&T iPhone customers to refrain from masturbating while riding on public transportation. Hopefully this new cap will help put an end to such obscene displays.

Re:Good Idea.

[TaoPhoenix]

What else do you think MultiTouch was for?

Just you wait, someone will develop an interface that actually creates SFW real work with those motions.

"Johnson! What the HELL are you doing??"
"Your report is in your inbox, Sir."

Of course people are swallowing this

[countertrolling]

just like they did when told they would be paying to receive calls on their cells. More proof that the 'free' market is retarded.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone companies are near monopoles. That's why they can do that. In the free market monopolies can and must be regulated by government. This type of behavior is because of a failure of regulation. What's with this knee jerk reaction against markets on /.?

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Samantha Wright]

It's pretty sad, given that your classic knee-jerk Slashdot Libertarian annotates every post with "ignoring the phone companies, which have completely embedded themselves legally and don't representing anything remotely like a free market..."

It's as if extremely opinionated people are impervious to the ideas of everyone else, or something! (Oh no!)

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Anonymous Coward]

"ignoring the phone companies, which have completely embedded themselves legally and don't representing anything remotely like a free market..."

Because it's true?
The cellular market in the US is highly regulated, it's probably the only market in the world with a multi-billion dollar barrier to entry (what's cellular spectrum segments going for these days?)

You can't have a free market if no-one else can compete. Go ahead, set up a cell tower in your back yard - see how quickly the FCC come knocking.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[KDR_11k]

It's because many issues foster an us-vs-them mentality where it's either kill-the-market or kill-the-government, never anything in between. Meanwhile the Social Market Economy works just fine in some countries.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[KDR_11k]

I believe that's common in the USA and it's one of the reasons the US cellphone situation is considered outdated by Europe and Japan.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I would never have imagined someone would take that.

Well, you gotta take into account that it's phrased a bit differently. It's not "you have to pay to receive calls", it's "you have to pay for the phone being on the air."

The perspective is different.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[countertrolling]

The reality is that such institutions are again and again the visible result of state collusion with favored sectors of the economy to insulate those actors from competition. The railroad monopolies, the telephone monopolies, the big media monopolies, they all owe their existence to government protectionism. They couldn't exist without it -- monopolies collapse in a free market.

Government protection of 'property rights' are basically what makes monopolies possible.. That is where the discussion must end up eventually.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Samantha Wright]

Hey, I'm not debating that. Just pointing out how sad it is that even though the people who talk about "the free market fixing the problem" say "ignore phone companies," countertrolling decided to strawman himself into a corner by claiming that the phone companies were proof that free markets can't fix problems. Reading comprehension!

That being said, there's a grain of truth in it. An unregulated market that develops a sufficiently powerful monopoly (or duopoly) will eventually use legislation to regulate itself in favour of retaining the status quo, unless Ayn Rand (or Ron Paul) bursts out of the grave, guns blazing, and stops it.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[BeanThere]

You're welcome to live in a country like where I am from, with socialist/government-protected telecomms, where 3GB caps are the norm and the average speed is 384Kbits/s for only 3 times the price of the average US ADSL connection, and you will see how fantastic that works. And you think they don't profiteer? Of course they do.

You describe something that isn't a Libertarian system at all, and then use that as an argument to bash down Libertarianism. A company "using legislating to regulate in favor of itself" is the precise opposite of Libertarianism. Libertarians don't believe in "no regulation", they precisely believe in enough regulation to bar companies from abusing state power for their gain (which is called "corporatism"). You don't even know the most incredibly basic facts about what Libertarianism is but you still bash it down. Are you really confusing "pro-free-market" with "pro-corporatism"? They are opposites. Or are you just trolling.

Companies abusing state power for their benefit is also not unique to western corporatism, it happens under every single system - communism, socialism, you name it. In fact, Libertarianism is the only system in which this would specifically be formally disallowed. You use the word "regulation" as if every type of "regulation" is equivalent. There are different types of regulation. Your posting is confused on so many levels it's difficult to know where to begin to unwind the multiple levels of cluelessness.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Samantha Wright]

You might be able to make more sense of my post in context—my original perspective was "how sad it is that people keep bringing up the phone companies in order to bash Libertarians, when the Libertarians say in nearly every single post that the phone companies are a bad example, because in a true Libertarian atmosphere, that kind of thing is impossible."

My second opinion is this: any sufficiently powerful corporation would use its resources to destroy a true Libertarian system, in order to fortify its market dominance. The same lobbying forces that have created current state power abuses are strong enough to prevent the creation of a true Libertarian system in a country like the US. At present, they don't need to lift a finger, however, because the Left is doing the work for them. But if there were no unions and no academics in the way, they've demonstrated many times with other threats that there's nothing stopping dirtier tactics. The phone companies are therefore both a guarantee that a Libertarian government will never occur in the US, and a demonstration that Libertarianism would fail because it depends so heavily on incorruptible legislators. When you're at the top, the first thing on your mind is staying at the top.

Full disclosure: I believe that capitalism isn't efficient enough. It was a good experiment, and it got us this far, but we need to rethink the fundamental concepts of work, value, motivation, and money. I'm also Canadian, and by your broadband pricing I'm guessing you're in Australia.

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[countertrolling]

Wow.. you're so far off base, I don't know where to begin... First notice 'free' was in quotes. There is no true free market, except in contraband. Where other governments might use tax money to directly operate their corporations, the US protects their business monopolies through regulation to eliminate the competition. It's just as 'socialist' as anybody else, in a backed handed way. This leaves the market nothing but crumbs as far as choice is concerned. So one of two things should happen. Either regulate the protected companies to to satisfy the consumer, or force them to deal with truly open competition from the rest of us with real freedom of choice. That will involve a real discussion on the limits of property rights, and whether a corporation should enjoy such a thing. The 'market' is retarded because that same market also votes for the politicians that are screwing things up, and people accept everything that is printed in a glossy brochure as god's honest truth.

Reading comprehension indeed!

Re:Of course people are swallowing this

[Samantha Wright]

I think you need louder sarcasm quotes, then.

But that being said—we're all doomed. Try to change it, and they'll just make enough astroturf, glossy brochures, and strategic bribes to stop you. Time to go start a micronation.

Thx

[togofspookware]

I needed more reasons to quit AT&T; maybe now I finally will (we have some other, crappy-in-different-ways competitors here in Madison, WI).

Sweden

[Securityemo]

I sit here, 90 miles above the polar circle in the northernmost city in Sweden, and I pay ~52 USD a month for an unlimited 100/10 (guaranteed minimum 60) connection from an RJ-45 jack in my apartment wall. It's an ordinary apartment, nothing special about it, this is something that is generally available. Bask in my smugness, etc.

Re:Sweden

[Securityemo]

Nope, you don't get cut off. There are no hidden caps, at least not that I've ever heard of (and such information would spread fast.)

Re:Sweden

[Edsj]

And not so far from Sweden, baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) have unilimited 50,100 and even 200Mbps for a cool $40. These countries are not even the richest but somewhat think that this is an investment for their future as they can create a new type of industry with all that bandwith avaliable, helping their economies.

Re:Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

That is quite untrue. I once did 3 terabytes in month myself and absolutely nothing happened. When the northern European ISPs say unlimited they mean it.

Also they don't undersize their core network capacity. It generally can handle the traffic. If it slows down they will enable more fibers and buy more hardware.

Re:Sweden

[Securityemo]

No, not to the best of my knowledge.

Re:Sweden

[moonbender]

To be fair, 40 USD in Estonia are not 40 USD in the US (or in Sweden, for that matter). The GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity of Estonia is less than half of that of the US. A Big Mac is about 2.70 USD in Estonia, compared to 3.70 USD in the US.

Still, your point stands.

Re:Sweden

[TyFoN]

And here in Oslo I'm getting 60/60 mbit internet, hdtv and telephone over a fiber connection without any caps for about $100 :)

Re:Sweden

[Securityemo]

When I look for conversion according to "purchasing power parity" for Sweden I wind up with my connection costing 34$ USD, but that can't be right. I'm not well-versed in economics; do you have a source for the "adjusted conversion rate"?

Re:Sweden

[alex67500]

That is mainly false (maybe your american point of view that Europe is backwards?).

But sometimes you have to choose your provider carefully before you start hoping for a service. For example, Free in France and BE in the UK mean unlimited. And although the latter has a "fair usage policy" that isn't available anywhere, after 2 years with them I haven't triggered it yet (and boy do I try!).

Re:Sweden

[KDR_11k]

Or it means that they figured the bandwidth your connection provides is already a sufficient cap.

My connection can do at most 963 GB per month and that is if it's used at 100% throughput permanently.

Re:Sweden

[Achra]

Here in Seattle, I'm getting 25/25 mbit internet & telephone over fiber without caps for about $100. :)
Sure, our internet isn't as good as yours.. and our skiing isn't as good as yours.. and we can't get lutefisk except at christmastime.. but I'm sure there must be some reason that I live here instead of Norway, just let me think about it some longer.

Re:Sweden

[moonbender]

tldr: In Estonia, 1 USD (12 Estonian kroons) buys more stuff than in the US. In Sweden, 1 USD (6 Swedish kronor) buys less stuff than in the US.

Well, I'm just an arm chair economist so I just looked it up on Wikipedia. :)

For instance, look at these two tables, listing GDP per capita, one nominal, and one adjusted for PPP. Sweden has about the same nominal GPD/capita as the US, but is at about 80% of the US when adjusted for PPP -- because stuff is more expensive in Sweden. For instance, a Big Mac is about 8 USD in Sweden. The price of food stuffs in Scandinavia never ceases to amaze me, AFAIK it's not just limited to bad American fast food. The PPP rate is calculated from the prices of a range of goods, very similar to how inflation is calculated. I'd imagine that the price of internet access factors into it, but maybe it's limited to more corporeal stuff. Of course, the fact that Sweden has a much higher VAT than most if not all of the US immediately affects the PPP.

Anyway, yep, that'd mean your connection "ought to be" cheaper in the US than it is in Sweden, all other things being equal. But of course all things aren't equal, hence you get ridiculously cheap Internet while the Americans get dirt cheap fast food. You be the judge. ;)

Re:Sweden

[Kjella]

Norway here, ~85 USD for 25/5 and it delivers. I downloaded a 500GB torrent at ~2.9 MB/s one month, still no complaints. Too bad I'm not on fiber though, they have 25/25 for same and 60/60 for ~105 USD/mo.

Re:Sweden

[Mr. Underbridge]

I sit here, 90 miles above the polar circle in the northernmost city in Sweden...Bask in my smugness, etc.

I thought that was just the reflection off your eternally vampire-pale skin.

Re:Sweden

[hedwards]

You do have to adjust for the cost of living. But around here you can't get a connection like that without being an ISP. For home users a connection like that isn't available at any price which is really a huge part of the problem. People will swallow this change by AT&T, but it will be primarily because they haven't any other options apart from canceling service completely. And with more and more vital services moving online only, that's getting less and less viable all the time.

Re:Sweden

[Dcnjoe60]

To be fair, 40 USD in Estonia are not 40 USD in the US (or in Sweden, for that matter). The GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity of Estonia is less than half of that of the US. A Big Mac is about 2.70 USD in Estonia, compared to 3.70 USD in the US.

Still, your point stands.

40USD is 40USD no matter where you are. What things are priced at is a totally different situation, but the value of the currency doesn't change. If I am in the Middle East, I can purchase gas a lot cheaper than in the US, using US currency. That doesn't mean that a dollar is worth more in the Middle East. It means gas costs less.

If I am in Missouri and a gallon of milk costs $2.65 and then I go to Alaska and the gallon of milk is $4.85, the value of my dollar hasn't changed. The price of milk has.

Likewise, the price of a Big Mac in Estonia is 2.70 and 3.70 in the US (although it is only $2.95 here in the heartland). McDonalds will sell a Big Mac for whatever people will pay for it. In Estonia, evidently it isn't more than $2.70.

But again, 40USD is 40USD no matter where you are. Supply and demand determine local prices.

Re:Sweden

[moonbender]

Thanks for enlightening me... I had been under the impression that dollar bills change their physical form when travelling across borders!

Re:Sweden

[jedidiah]

The same $40 goes a lot farther in other parts of the world or represents a much larger proportion of total income or disposable income.

Re:Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the classic "but we are bigger than you" argument.

And tell me, why wouldn't the problem scale linearly?

Re:Sweden

[the eric conspiracy]

Here in New Jersey USA I get 30/5 uncapped for $45 USD.

The secret is competition; both FIOS and Cablevision serve my area.

Re:Sweden

[ScrewMaster]

And this kinda shit is exactly what the ISPs who are starting to implement caps and throttling want you to think. They've realized they can make a ton more money off you by charging you by usage just like the cellphone industry has been doing for years. If you honestly believe this then clearly they're winning and you're hopeless.

It's called an artificial scarcity. Just like what the record labels have been doing for a long, long time.

Re:Sweden

[ScrewMaster]

Thanks for enlightening me... I had been under the impression that dollar bills change their physical form when travelling across borders!

They don't, actually. It's the people that get bigger and smaller depending upon the economics of the region they are in.

Re:Sweden

[ScrewMaster]

I sit here, 90 miles above the polar circle in the northernmost city in Sweden...Bask in my smugness, etc.

I thought that was just the reflection off your eternally vampire-pale skin.

Nowadays, the vampires actually work for AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. I know when I pay my Internet bill every month I feel like I just lost a pint.

Re:Sweden

[ScrewMaster]

Ah the classic "but we are bigger than you" argument.

And tell me, why wouldn't the problem scale linearly?

Untold thousands of miles of fiber that have to be laid across the whole country, for one. I remember the AT&T cable trucks that came around my area a few years ago, laying bright orange fiber optics all over the place. The amount of infrastructure required per consumer is much, much greater. You probably also don't face level of corruption, malfeasance and naked corporatism that we do. The GP was wrong about one thing: our telcos did get substantial help from the Federal Government: about a hundred billion in tax breaks (because that's what they claimed it would take to build out a national FTTH network.) What we got for that money was DSL. So yeah, the situations are simply not comparable. Our government does a lot of things well, but regulating our communications industry is no longer one of them.

Re:Sweden

[grapeape]

I live in the midwest 12 miles from the heart of a major city, I can get 10/1 (guaranteed 5/512) but have to pay for business class to get it, thats $165 a month but hey it comes with 1 static IP address...If I go 5 miles further south I cant get anything but dial up.

Re:Sweden

[Nyder]

Here in Seattle, I'm getting 25/25 mbit internet & telephone over fiber without caps for about $100. :)

Sure, our internet isn't as good as yours.. and our skiing isn't as good as yours.. and we can't get lutefisk except at christmastime.. but I'm sure there must be some reason that I live here instead of Norway, just let me think about it some longer.

Dang, and here in Seattle I'm stuck with DSL at 6mbps/75kup, or Cable (who cares speed, comcast sucks) for $65.

The sad part is? I'm right pretty much downtown. But do i get fiber optics even though I (and everyone else) paid for it in the 90's? Oh hell no.

I hate you. (not really, just pipe envy)

Re:Sweden

[LordLucless]

There is a limit - there has to be, somewhere, in a physical system. I dunno about Sweden, but in Australia at least, its our international links; no matter how much our ISPs upgrade our internal infrastructure, there's a finite amount of bandwidth available on the hugely-expensive undersea cables they share that connect us to the outside world.

Europe's different because it's so geographically close, and also because of the fragmentation of languages; because we speak English in Australia, US and British resources are just as valuable to us as native ones; on the other hand, nobody produces Swedish language resources other than Sweden, which promotes a lot more internal traffic - even taking into account that many (most?) Swedes are also familiar with English and would access English resources too (like Slashdot).

But somewhere in the system, there is a limit. It may be so high that it has no practical impact at the moment, but it's there. It may not even be something your ISPs can really control. And changes in capacity utilisation in this space happen so quickly that what seems like a reasonable limit now may not seem so in a mere decade.

Re:Sweden

[tsotha]

You're paying more than $52/month, it's just that part of it is paid in your tax bill.

Re:Sweden

[compro01]

Hardly sparse. Most of the country is all but vacant. About 90% (And almost all of that 10% is a few large northern cities, particularly Edmonton) of the population lives within 160km of the US-Canada border, giving us an actual population density of about 20 people/square kilometre.

Re:Sweden

[guruevi]

He said there was a 100/10Mbps limit with a guaranteed 60Mbps. There are NO limits in data transfer ANYWHERE, they're artificial constructs made to extract more money for less service. The only physical limit there is is bandwidth, the amount of signals you can push through a cable before it starts distorting, with fiber there are a nearly infinite number of signals you can push through theoretically (the whole light spectrum), the limit is currently only in the transceivers. If a provider buys a certain amount of bandwidth at certain locations (the really big peering centers charge something like $20,000/year per Gbit) they can then oversell that to their customers - all they have to do is maintain the connection to their customer which is very inexpensive (when was the last time you've seen a switch die?) and those are likewise relatively cheap ($1M will buy you a really nice core switch, the endpoint switches for a neighborhood can be done as cheap as $10k).

Re:Sweden

[dragonturtle69]

I agree with you, that wiring Sweden is not the same as wiring the lower 48. But, we could do it, like we could do a lot of other cool/grand things, if we wanted them. Instead, we choose "good enough".

If we wanted, we could have each home wired with nice big optic connection. It would actually be a make work project that would stimulate the economy. Advances would be made in cable manufacturing and connection, equipment, then along would come the business uses.

Re:Sweden

[guruevi]

In Sweden a beer is easily $10. It's not because the cost of living is lower that the cost of developing technology gets lower, in the Baltic states the companies still need to put in fiber to several areas and copper cables to the home and are working hard to get their customers business, the US is already fully wired and continues to be funded by your taxes and your phone bills.

Comparatively Sweden and Norway pays a LOT less than we do, adjusted for the cost of living I would say with the current economy that would mean we can get the same Internet for $20 or $30 in the boonies.

And those economies are capitalizing on the Internet. Ever heard of AstraZeneca, Electrolux, Ericsson, Nokia, Securitas, Volvo, Trolltech (QT, KDE), Frictional Games (Amnesia), Mojang AB (Minecraft)? Volvo has their facilities from Sweden throughout Europe and Asia wired over the Internet - their products are made to order and all parts arrive in order of assembly to the second without downtime - really magnificent if you ever get to visit one of their factories.

Re:Sweden

[guruevi]

Here in NY I'm getting 8/1 mbit Internet for about $100, HDTV and phone bring it up to $150.

Re:Sweden

[spirit of reason]

Hm, but those 40 USD do not have intrinsic value. The vast majority of their value is determined by what can be bought with them.

Meh, on second thought, it depends on which definition of value you are using. There's the numeric quantity or there's utility.

Re:Sweden

[Dcnjoe60]

Because things cost less in a poorer country does not mean that the dollar is worth more than it is in the United States. If in the foreign country, the average wage is $10/day, then sure $10 USD buys a lot, but it is not because the dollar is worth more. Even in the United States, things cost more in Manhattan then they do in Lenexa, Kansas. That doesn't mean the dollar is worth more in Lenexa, it still only purchases $1 worth of goods for every $1 bill. The average wages in Manhattan are also a lot higher than in Lenexa, so the average person has the same purchasing power.

Now, when you talked about travelling to a poorer country, the average wages are not equivalent so the person coming from the United States can purchase more than the person from the local region. However, if they took their USD and ordered something online from Amazon.com, it is still only going to purchase the same amount as if they were in the US. The value of the dollar hasn't changed.

Re:Sweden

[scarboni888]

You say this like there's never any upgrades in capacity. so in a decade the infrastructure will not have grown at all? And if that's the case then what are the telco's doing with all our money?

Re:Sweden

[LordLucless]

Ask the US. That's exactly the situation they were in. A decade ago, they had so much excess bandwidth, that there was no conceivable way their subscribers could use it all. All their plans were unlimited data. There ISPs did nothing (except pocket the money) and consumers were generally not tech-savvy, so they didn't know the ISPs should be doing anything.

Re:Sweden

[AmiMoJo]

There seem to be two things preventing us (UK and US) from accessing these kinds of speeds.

There is the cost of installing the infrastructure, which seems to be higher due to things like the rules for digging up roads to install cables and an apparent lack of willingness to share ducting. Someone needs to invent a robot mole to do this job (or just train actual moles).

Then there is the lack of vision. Once upon a time we didn't have a rail network, a phone network, a power grid or motorways. These things had to be built, and of course there were NIMBYs who didn't want a large electricity pylon looming over their house and people who wanted to preserve the pristine countryside, not to mention the huge cost, but we did them anyway. We realised that they were necessary for our country to be part of the modern age and there was enormous political will.

Nowadays we seem to rely on companies who can't see past next quarter's dividend to do it, which is why we are so badly fucked. I am fairly confident in saying that in every country that does have cheap high speed broadband the government has helped it happen. Cutting red tape and subsidising unprofitable areas are the usual methods.

the joke(s)

[AmigaHeretic]

I called at&t customer service and spoke to a nice representative. After listening to my concerns about broadband caps being imposed on accounts, he explained that the rising cost of fuel was effecting the price of delivering the bits to my home, hence the need for the limits on bandwidth. He asked if he could place me on hold for a moment while he talked to a supervisor, when he came back he said had gotten permission to grandfather my account to keep it as unlimited for as long as the account remained open.

(this is probably only sad/funny for people that have actually ever called at&t. feel free to point out all the discrepancies/truths)

Re:the joke(s)

[TaoPhoenix]

It's been a while but I vaguely recall AT&T reps being better than Verizon reps.

Re:the joke(s)

[VortexCortex]

I visited my mother over easter, and she showed me her AT&T bill while I was browsing the Internet using her DSL / Wifi connections.

When I looked at the price line-item for her DSL service I was ASTOUNDED!

The bill said: "Canceled as of [mid March] -- Fee: $10.23 (prorated)"

I looked at my laptop -- refreshed the Firefox page, then said, "Mom, did you finally switch to Verizon?" "No," she said, "We're waiting for your little brother's phone contract to expire first" I scratched my head, "You didn't cancel your Internet service?"

In fact, it was just a "billing error" When I called the AT&T support to get make sure it got fixed, and not cut off the sales rep told me: "We've had our technicians in your area installing the new U-Verse system. It shows here that one of them got your line crossed with a faster U-Verse line, that's why there was a billing issue."

I called bullshit: "Woah, U-Verse is a Cable modem, We're using DSL, so that scenario COULDN'T happen, besides there has been no service interruption -- The DSL is just fine... I don't appreciate being lied to. How would crossed wires cause a Billing Issue anyway?"

They'll tell you anything to get you off the phone -- I guess those calls really aren't recorded for quality assurance purposes: I told the twerp's manager to review the tape, and she said she was unable to...

Re:the joke(s)

[phatrabt]

Maybe I need my sarcasm\joke meter adjusted, but you're incorrect about the type of service that U-Verse is. U-Verse isn't a cable service, it's a type of DSL. So in theory the billing issue COULD happen.

Re:the joke(s)

[T-Bone-T]

You are correct. I bet the confusion comes from the modem using the existing cable to distribute data through the house.

Re:the joke(s)

[the eric conspiracy]

Which is why I am not switching to FIOS. Technically the service is fine, but billing and service are abysmal.

Re:the joke(s)

[ScrewMaster]

he explained that the rising cost of fuel was effecting the price of delivering the bits to my home, hence the need for the limits on bandwidth.

That's hysterical.

Re:the joke(s)

[ScrewMaster]

Woah, U-Verse is a Cable modem,

No. U-Verse is a modified form of DSL called VDSL. Fiber to the VRAD box, and then a short-haul loop to your home. That's why it's so fast compared to DSL: the signal isn't traveling very far. In either case, whether it be standard DSL or U-Verse, your standard twisted-pair phone wiring is providing the connection to your DSL modem / residential gateway.

Re:the joke(s)

[EdIII]

he explained that the rising cost of fuel was effecting the price of delivering the bits to my home

That is, in a very removed sense, actually true. It takes energy obviously to deliver the bits whether or not it is photons or electricity at different points along the way.

On the fact of it though, it sounds like he his just full of crap.

Considering the margins already on bandwidth I seriously doubt ISPs and backbone providers are in the same situation as the airlines. Do they have to purchase electricity in 6 months contacts? Hedge their electricity bills in such a fashion? Uh huh. Riiiiiggggggght.

It does remind of me a true story though. You may have had the same reaction on the phone.

Several years ago I was on a plane flight across country and my legs start to hurt being a big and tall man and I was loitering around the bathroom just trying to stretch out my legs.

Stewardess comes to me and says that I need to sit down. I nicely explained to her that I am in a little pain and that stretching my legs helps with the discomfort and to please be reasonable or give me a pretty good reason why it is dangerous for me to be standing with the seat belt light off.

She then said the most awesome thing I have ever heard, "Well Sir, the reason why you need to sit down is that the oxygen level is different back here than it is at your seat".

I looked at her. I looked at my seat no more than 15 feet away. I looked at her again. I remembered from high school chemistry that Oxygen atoms move pretty damn fast. Pretty sure they move faster than the plane I was flying in and some vague memories about gas laws and equilibrium and other scientific "shit".

I took a hard look at her for about another second or two and she was dead serious or an Oscar winning actress. I smiled and said, "Thank You", and then went to sit down.

I mean seriously... how do you come back at something like that? What could you possibly say? It's like trying to explain particle physics and the Higgs Boson to a 4 year old.

Your story reminded me of that and I just suspect you may have had a similar reaction. We probably both felt like spectators at the Special Olympics.

Re:the joke(s)

[amplex]

The thing is, AT&T doesn't care about their copper (last-mile) network anymore. It is costing them WAY too much to maintain it, they make virtually no money off it, and they are not sad to have people switch to other services for that. It's the mobile market that is the only thing they care about, it's where they make all the money, and what they think is the future, money best spent upgrading this. However I really don't see how the rising cost of gas is causing them to implement caps. It's really to make more money off the services than the original unlimited plans. Since now Netflix is rising in popularity so much, & AT&T didn't upgrade their network when they took all the subsidized money to do just that, it went in the pockets of executives, and in upgrading their mobile network, and buying more small companies to have an even greater monopoly. Now they don't even want to supply the pipes for big video, so they are capping and hyping Uverse to hope to get people to switch! It's really not cost-efficient for them to supply TV and light web browsing over a 3meg/6meg pipe, they'd MUCH rather just supply light web browsing .. Facebook etc.. They realize that Netflix is killing their network and are hoping that 5-10% of their userbase (Netflix/Hulu junkies etc) will switch services to remain uncapped, is what it seems like to me..

Good to see America is catching up

[Hermanas]

Here in South Africa we've always had capped Internet.

Re:Good to see America is catching up

[icebraining]

Here we used to, now we don't. That seems the natural progression, but apparently it works backwards in the US.

Re:Good to see America is catching up

[Hermanas]

Do people not understand sarcasm anymore?

Re:Crappy

[TaoPhoenix]

That's just it, I haven't done the chart yet, but aren't most of the big names moving to bandwidth caps?

Does no one else notice that "move your stuff to the cloud" ... takes bandwdith?

Then in that corporate "never give ground" fashion, they'll just ratchet down the caps every 2 years or so.

We all need to go see that movie (Total Recall?) where someone cuts off the air. That's what we're headed to, Bit-Wise.

Truth in advertising?

[hawguy]

Maybe the FTC should force them to add a "Not suitable for streaming" disclaimer to all of their advertisements unless their cap can support high quality streaming (2.3GB/hour) for as many hours that a typical household watches TV (6.75 hours/day), which would mean a cap of 465GB/Month.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[transporter_ii]

Well, anyone who has any knowledge of how the Internet works knew that there wasn't enough bandwidth for everyone to stream at the same time because the ISP business mode was based on overselling bandwidth. Plain and simple.

So everyone gets mad to find out that "unlimited" didn't really mean unlimited. And then everyone gets mad when they stop calling it "unlimited" and actually telling people it is capped. You can please some of the people some of the time, but...

Let me state how much I hate phone companies right now. But start your own ISP and see how expensive it would be to get unlimited, dedicated bandwidth to every last one of your subscribers at the same time 24/7...and do so for 19.95 or 29.95 a month. I've worked at a WISP and it's a whole different ballgame when you are on the other side of the table. Especially when you have investor's money and they are expecting a return on their investment.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Osgeld]

its perfectly suitable for streaming, you want on demand hd buy that service, you want to watch the office 3 days later on hulu, well its still there

Re:Truth in advertising?

[hawguy]

Sure, I understand how oversubscription works, but don't say that your service is great for video streaming when I'd hit your cap in 15 days if I tried to replace my normal TV viewing with streaming.

I really don't care what the economics of being an ISP are - if they can't support the use they are claiming it's for, then they shouldn't be making that claim. It's not like they didn't know years ago that video streaming was on the upswing and would become a dominant use of bandwidth so surely they've had time to come up with advertising collateral that accurately describes what their product can do.

It's like a car manufacturer advertising that their latest pickup is great for heavy construction use... then in the fine print they note "Warranty invalid if used for heavy construction use".

Re:Truth in advertising?

[airfoobar]

I think the future for ISPs may be to adapt a Social Business model: all profits are reinvested directly back into the business, so instead of having to pay a bunch of investors, the profits go towards better infrastructure and improved service.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[hawguy]

What exactly do people gain by using their internet connection to watch live sports, news, or the latest episode of their favorite sitcom, instead of just watching it as broadcast or recording the broadcast, like they have done every day for the last 30 years?

Yeah, and why should they need cable either - they can watch over-the-air broadcasts through an antenna on their roof like they did every day for the last 70 years. Sure they may only get a few broadcast networks, but that should be good enough for anyone. I mean what possible reason could there be for cable? Is there really any difference between broadcast tv and cable?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[JamesP]

Yes, but

1 - People rip DVDs to files around 700MB / 1GB that's 2 hours. And that's good enough for TV
2 - Do people really watch almost 7h of TV per day?

I'm thinking 150GB is more than enough.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[hawguy]

1 - People rip DVDs to files around 700MB / 1GB that's 2 hours. And that's good enough for TV

http://www.digitalhome.ca/2011/04/netflix-now-has-800000-canadian-customers/
a High Definition video stream which consumes about 2.3 GB per hour.

The TV industry is telling me that I need to have BluRay player (~ 16GB/hour) to take advantage of my expensive new HD TV, now you're saying "Bah, even DVD is too much, you don't need that kind of quality, highly compressed 480i (0.5 GB/hour) is good enough for your 1080p TV"

2 - Do people really watch almost 7h of TV per day?

http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html
Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Electrawn]

Social Business? A new buzz word for mutual company, co-op, credit union or non profit. I love it! Let's realign all business models around Facebook...

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Mousit]

It's like a car manufacturer advertising that their latest pickup is great for heavy construction use... then in the fine print they note "Warranty invalid if used for heavy construction use".

Which they do, extensively, and have for years. Think of all the commercials for performance cars that show speeding (indeed outright racing), drifting, stunt turns, etc. through the middle of a city's downtown/urban center. All underlined by the tiny print "Professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt." Think they'd honor their warranty--or for that matter an insurance company honor their contract--if you went out and actually used the car the way they show in their commercials and had a wreck?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Firehed]

There's a big difference between lowering people's throughput during peak usage hours and cutting them off entirely after a certain consumption level. The former is quite reasonable and akin to a traffic jam - everyone is trying to use a limited resource at the same time which just doesn't work. The latter doesn't translate to a car analogy very well but is along the lines of disabling vehicles after a certain distance was traveled no matter how much fuel remains or what road usage looks like.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[T-Bone-T]

How is it an investment if there is no return?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[ScrewMaster]

It's not like they didn't know years ago that video streaming was on the upswing and would become a dominant use of bandwidth so surely they've had time to come up with advertising collateral that accurately describes what their product can do.

They were paid in tax breaks to deliver that network, but they stole that money and delivered DSL instead. Bloodsuckers.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, but

1 - People rip DVDs to files around 700MB / 1GB that's 2 hours. And that's good enough for TV 2 - Do people really watch almost 7h of TV per day?

I'm thinking 150GB is more than enough.

Personally, I think that 640G should be enough for anyone. But that's just my opinion.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Darinbob]

I don't think it's even possible for me to use 250GB in a month on my DSL. Heavy people upset that the buffet is no longer all-you-can-eat.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Darinbob]

And the rebels revolt by dropping their cable service while continuing to use cable infrastructure.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[adolf]

*shrug*

All of those things are often considered to be better than a for-profit corporation.

If calling the concept a "social business" helps sell the idea better than calling it a mutual company, co-op, or non-profit, then I'm all for it.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[adolf]

Wrecks don't involve warranty coverage, unless (perhaps) the wreck was caused by a warranted mechanical failure, so your question doesn't make much sense.

And the comprehensive policies on my cars don't cover off-road use, so the insurance company would be honoring their contract with me if I smashed things up on the track ("closed course") and they refused to pay for it.

Try again.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[gmhowell]

While that's fantastic that you haven't formed enough social bonds to have a spouse or children, if 3-5 people stream a few movies, it can add up.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Darinbob]

I meant first that I don't think I have enough bandwidth possible for that, even if I streamed all day long. Second, get all the kids on the couch and watch the same movie together, instead of everyone with a nose glued to the iphone.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Polo]

Actually, what would be entirely possible and FAIR would be...

...make them send their own UVerse/TV products through the sme metering system so that it is counted against the bandwidth.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[JamesP]

1 - People rip DVDs to files around 700MB / 1GB that's 2 hours. And that's good enough for TV

http://www.digitalhome.ca/2011/04/netflix-now-has-800000-canadian-customers/
a High Definition video stream which consumes about 2.3 GB per hour.

The TV industry is telling me that I need to have BluRay player (~ 16GB/hour) to take advantage of my expensive new HD TV, now you're saying "Bah, even DVD is too much, you don't need that kind of quality, highly compressed 480i (0.5 GB/hour) is good enough for your 1080p TV"

Oh, I get it. All I'm saying is that ripped DVDs don't look "bad" on my 32 inch TV, and certainly watchable on bigger screens.
Of course BluRay looks stunning. But I can see that only from being right in front of the TV.
2GB/hour of HD content may look great, but I guess I wouldn't mind not having that for TV shows, for example.

2 - Do people really watch almost 7h of TV per day?

http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html
Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes

How much would they watch if it wasn't for commercials? It's almost 50% show 50% commercials nowadays.
Streaming/Tivo/etc leads to a different pattern of watching.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

lol.

You must be living in another dimension. In the meantime, here in the real world, entrepreneurs have to deal in realities, not "social" fairy tales.

Christ, you're probably 12 years old and never far from facebook, right?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

All of those things are often considered to be better than a for-profit corporation.

Considered by whom? Often when? Better how? Creating employment where? Paying taxes? Building infrastructure? Advancing technology, civilization, society, humanity, etc?

Go live in North Korea if you're so hungry for social enlightenment. What's a bet you're a parasite living on the dole in the UK? Too lazy to work, but not too lazy to opine about things you know little about, or to spend tax money drinking at the pub.

Please.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[airfoobar]

I don't have Facebook, I'm not Christ, and you are a fucking idiot for just reacting to the word "social" instead of applying critical thinking. Go die in a fire, moron.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[cynyr]

Hmm my dvd rips seem to be around 1.3 - 2.5GB each. These are 480P rips into h264 with AAC audio. I'm using the lossless_slower profile from ffmpeg and no restrictions on bitrate.

Now Serenity on blueray is ~30MB/Sec but that is VC1 not h264. Cars is around half that. So using the cars number, and figuring that my 2 tvs will both be in use for around 3 hours weekdays, and 6 on the weekends...

Not only would i need a 30 - 45 MB/sec internet connection, but i would need 27 hours of video at 30MB/sec(15 for each tv). 27*60*60*30/1028 means that i will need ~2800 GB of bandwidth each week just to watch TV. now there is an average of 4.3 weeks per month. We are now talking 12 TB of video per month. We are assuming that there is a quality reason for the industry pushing bluray.

Now account for the move to 4k2k video at some point in the future and you'll see that we really do not have enough bandwidth.

Most of my complaint with the capping is that they are apply it to accounts that signed up when it was being advertised as unlimited. Also the lack of the ability to see how the bandwidth is being used, and that things like blaster and whatnot can use up my bandwidth even if they get blocked at my router.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[gmhowell]

I'll cut you slack on the former (enough bandwidth). On the second, not so much. IIRC, even the Mormons only do family game night once per week. All I'm saying is that it's much easier to bust the caps than the singletons on slashdot seem to think.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[LunaticTippy]

GMC had those irritating ads for "Professional Grade" trucks. They would load the trucks as if they were a dump truck or have them tow an unreasonable load. All of the ads were probable warranty-voiding abuses. I found some amusement in them because I knew that most buyers would rather die than let their $50k truck actually do some work.

Re:Truth in advertising?

[Alamais]

So, basically a Co-op ISP. Haven't the big guys been trying to make that illegal?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[AmiMoJo]

Man, you should take a look at the adverts UK ISPs put out. Over here "unlimited" has a strange new definition in ISP advertising where it actually means limited to whatever they consider "fair use", sometimes as low as 20GB/month. Mobile data is even worse with Vodafone calling 1GB/month "unlimited", with T-Mobile being only slightly better at 3GB/month.

I was one of the many who complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about this but they decided that "fair use" limits were industry standard practice and did not mean an ISP could not claim to be "unlimited". It makes a mockery of the ASA and advertising in general - say you are a really truly unlimited ISP that doesn't cap, throttle, block, shape or manage traffic in any way... How are you supposed to advertise that fact if "unlimtied" actually means "limited" and your competitors can provide a fraction of the service and claim it is the same?

Re:Truth in advertising?

[swalve]

Love.

Cap

[dn15]

So it's come to this, has it? Good thing I still have unlimited data on my iPhone. If my home ISP starts capping I'll just have to watch NetFlix over 3G on my phone. :P

Re:Cap

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Using the Magnifying iGlass app?

What is so bad about it?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Come on a 150GB download limit, that is okay. If you need your porn faster then 150GB per second then... wait, it is NOT per second? Oh well, 150GB per day is still... not per day either?

Oh dear. You poor Americans... thank god in mainland Europe we have evil state sponsored businesses and no free market so we have a lot of choice of ISP's. But who will I now download my porn from at 100mbit and no bandwidth limit? Oh wait, Japan! Country of un-limitted porn AND bandwidth and now thanks to Fukushima, tentacle porn without special effects!

But I know the perfect way to get the Americans to shit up and enjoy the AT&T dick going up their ass for the thousand time. Here is it. Are you ready for it? Brace yourself:

The way to fix this, is government regulation.

Whoa, see? All the complainers now switched their energy to frothing at the mouth about the free market, small government etc etc and they stopped complaining about the ass raping they are getting. Always works.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[Arlet]

That only works when there are enough alternative ISPs serving the same area.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Quit the service and go where? To the other big cable company/telco that has the exact same bandwidth caps?

Re:What is so bad about it?

[failedlogic]

This is more than just a tad insensitive: "Oh wait, Japan! Country of un-limitted porn AND bandwidth and now thanks to Fukushima, tentacle porn without special effects!" I agree with the rest of your comment, but I hope it doesn't get modded as funny.

That said, the majority of the Canadian market share for high-speed is run by monopoly companies. There used to be a dozen or so ISPs in each city when the dial-up Internet was around and this worked well. Then these ISPs stayed around when the high-speed was available but were squeezed out, I think by low margins because the Ma Bells put some high costs on leasing the lines. Since its all monopoly players in the major markets, generally each province, Canadians don't have a choice. Your provider puts a cap and you have little if nowhere to go. Its too bad and I hope someday we get ourselves out of this mess.

If there are caps they should be higher. I'm leasing a place right now and I don't have much a choice on what the landlord is offering on Internet. I'm on 15 GB right now, started at 2 GB (which believe me is gone in NO time - I had to turn off images on everything!). I have to be careful with downloading Windows Updates. And I can't really download Linux ISOs. 150 GB is gone in no time with You-Tube, iTunes, etc. After 4 months of this, I'm getting a new place and have to sign-up for Internet. So, I'll finally be able to get the new Slackware ISO to try out rather than paying for a DVD to be shipped. :)
 

Re:What is so bad about it?

[Demanufacture]

Like pretty much everything else in life, it's not a clearly black-and-white situation. Sometimes government regulation is good (whether it is telecommunications, health care, food standards, whatever) and sometimes it is bad.

Until recently, in Australia our options for ISPs have been very poor. This was essentially the result of the previous government's (whose Communication Minister for some time was Robert Alston, regularly pilloried by The Register as being "The World's Biggest Luddite") blind ideological drive to privatise the government monopoly (Telstra, nee Telecom). To preserve the value to shareholders of the newly privatised company, the company was not split into separate retail and wholesale parts (which was advocated by pretty much everyone in the industry who wasn't Telstra) but instead a private company found itself with a complete monopoly over the entire national infrastructure. The government passed some feel-good laws about minimum service obligations (e.g. see http://www.telstra.com.au/universalservice/docs/uso_smp.pdf) to prevent people in the bush from getting screwed over because they weren't economical to service, but these covered only telephony services. As a result, many people outside of the major cities (and even a substantial number inside their suburban areas) have only been able to use dial-up (and then not even at 56k) until wireless services became more widespread recently. Telstra also abused it's monopoly and illegally prevented other companies from accessing the telephone exchanges (e.g. see http://www.theage.com.au/business/telstra-cops-18m-fine-for-exchange-block-20100728-10uwx.html) which prevented any serious competition from emerging.

Thankfully, in the last few years, things have been changing - some great ISPs have finally been able to build up some infrastructure (iiNet, Internode) and offer at least some level of competition to Telstra. These guys mostly service only the cities (which includes something like 80% of our population) but it doesn't help those in rural areas. In most places there is now some level of wireless coverage available. Although this is fairly expensive (e.g. $30/month for 1GB, $150/GB for excess data with Optus) it's still much better than what they had before. The current government has started building a $40bn National Broadband Network, but it will take many years until this is finished.

TL;DR: Sometimes government regulations are good, and sometimes they are bad.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[Kjella]

The way to fix this, is government regulation.

Whoa, see? All the complainers now switched their energy to frothing at the mouth about the free market, small government etc etc and they stopped complaining about the ass raping they are getting. Always works.

Don't worry, the libertarians will simply claim all the problems with monopolistic ISPs exist because the market is not free enough. To me it sounds like stabbing yourself with a knife, the harder you push the more pain you're in, but if you only push hard enough the pain will go away. On second thoughts, maybe they are onto something...

Re:What is so bad about it?

[phantomfive]

The way to fix this, is government regulation.

Uh, do you think there isn't government regulation in the US telecom industry? There's tons of it. In fact, in some places, the problem is exactly government regulation: there are regulations making it illegal for any other operator to enter into a geographical region (for cable). Really.

Saying "Regulation will fix this" is like saying, "someone else will fix this." Regulation can either fix a problem or make it worse, and unless you have a specific regulation, you're admitting you have no clue how to fix it.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[phantomfive]

Oh, and since you didn't give an idea of what kind regulation to use to fix this, here's mine:

We need to separate the service providers from the people who are building the infrastructure. That way, people who are building infrastructure will be competing against those who are building infrastructure, and they will have no way to differentiate themselves except on price and capacity. This will have the effect of driving up the capacity and driving down the cost.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[icebraining]

I know Europeans hate it when anyone treats them as a single unified situation, you should do yourself the same credit.

You're doing the same in that very sentence.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[Jeremy Erwin]

I have to be careful with downloading Windows Updates. And I can't really download Linux ISOs. 150 GB is gone in no time with You-Tube, iTunes, etc. After 4 months of this, I'm getting a new place and have to sign-up for Internet. So, I'll finally be able to get the new Slackware ISO to try out rather than paying for a DVD to be shipped.

Macs are worse: 400 Meg updates are routine. XCode (development tools) is now distributed through the App Store, and it's 4.5 Gigabytes.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[stinerman]

Buy up all the infrastructure under eminent domain and have the ISPs compete based on services. Done.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[grapeape]

The problem there is that you have the telco and cable companies making the "rules" for their own regulation which always means they are done to look like something "restrictive" but only purposefully sever to restrict any decent competition. They have "regulated" themselves back into the monopolistic structure that was in place before the original bell split up. What needs to happen is regulation without the telco's and cable companies being allowed much say.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[LordLucless]

Why would the government do that when they're busy shoveling bribes from the communications industry into their own pockets? The fundamental problem here isn't free market vs regulation, it's a government that isn't representing its people.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[dragonturtle69]

The number of devices matters too. Say three PC's, an iPad or two, a Wii + XBox + PS, a few smartphones, BluRay player, and now you got some downloaded data. Heck, with one smartphone during a roadtrip I did 4 GB in a week (Sprint). The curious part is IF AT&T content is really excluded from AT&T caps.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[AmiMoJo]

Problem is that infrastructure is very expensive, so basically people won't bother if they can help it. In the UK the only cable provider, Virgin, keeps its speeds a bit above what the best ADSL can offer. The online phone line provider, BT, is very slow at upgrading the network and when they do they charge a lot for access which results in ridiculously low bandwidth caps from ISP eager to cram as many customers on to a pipe as possible.

Where there is cheap high speed broadband it is because the government has forced the installation of the infrastructure and then forced it to be offered to ISPs at reasonable rates. In the long term everyone still makes plenty of money, the intervention is just needed to "help" companies see past the next quarter's results.

Re:What is so bad about it?

[phantomfive]

In the UK the only cable provider, Virgin, keeps its speeds a bit above what the best ADSL can offer. The online phone line provider, BT, is very slow at upgrading the network and when they do they charge a lot for access which results in ridiculously low bandwidth caps from ISP eager to cram as many customers on to a pipe as possible.

I'm sorry that your experience with internet in England is so bad. But the fact is, this anecdote has nothing to do with my comment. I was talking about a system where the providers are different than the ones who build the infrastructure. If you had an anecdote related to that, it would have been interesting, but right now yours is not. Also, it is not clear to me what an 'online phone line provider' might be. Is that like Skype?

Re:What is so bad about it?

[swalve]

What is an ISP but an infrastructure provider?

Re:What is so bad about it?

[phantomfive]

Really? That is all you can think of to add to the conversation?

I know he was trolling

[rsilvergun]

but that doesn't change the fact that he was right :(. My idea of quality of life is a rising income higher than my parents, good schools and good health care. All of those are disappearing fast. Real wages have been stagnant since the 70s, school funding is being slashed (and what little money there is goes to wealthy schools thanks to the property tax scam) and the only thing going up faster than insurance premiums is the speed they deny your claims. Here in Arizona we literally just let two people die because we didn't want to pay for organ transplants.

As for the manufacturing, the big threat to Americans isn't Outsourcing, it's computers & robotics. I know keep bringing this up in my posts, but there is a sleeping bag factory making 2 MILLION bags a year with a total workforce (including salesmen, marketing, accounting and all other non-manufacturing jobs) of JUST 120 people. Fact is, it's not just that we're outsourcing, we just don't need all these people. So far the only answer I've heard to this is "Tough titties, at least they're free to starve to death in the streets".

A free, inexpensive Internet is seen by a lot of progressives as the only hope. China is starting to see some progressive movements (very little, I know) because they have a well educated middle class whose brains work well enough now to realize they're being taken advantage of. If the schools & centralized media fail us, the only hope is people on the Internet. It's not much, but I still like it better than saying 'Oh well, time for 70% of our populace to die in a gutter'.

So, yeah, he was trolling. But ye was also right.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

Oh please. Stop using garbage statistics and uninformed ideas. (yeah, that's a troll way of saying it, but please, get real).

Real wages have been stagnant since the 70s

Great, but why would you use that statistic? A lot of people talk about real wages in order to deceive you, because it matches the narrative they want to push. Forget it: it leaves out portions of compensation. Measuring real compensation is hard of course, but it gives a better measurement of what the average employee is getting. And it's been going up. Look at the graph.

I know keep bringing this up in my posts, but there is a sleeping bag factory making 2 MILLION bags a year with a total workforce (including salesmen, marketing, accounting and all other non-manufacturing jobs) of JUST 120 people.

Where did you learn history? Really, do you even think? Do you realize how many people were employed in the farming sector just a hundred years ago? When tractors got introduced, people were complaining about the same things you are complaining about. They even made movies about it (check out Gene Autry, The Old Barn Dance as an example). These are things people manage to adapt to.

And we do adapt. We've already adapted to the robotics revolution. For example, there is a sleeping bag factory that produces millions of sleeping bags with only 120 employees. All this stuff happened years ago. Some people moved to other industries, some people retired early, and for some people who had trouble adapting, it was quite painful. But you'd have to be braindead to think this is going to cause 70% of the population to die in the streets when the manufacturing industry only employs around 10million people? Even if all those people exploded, it would only be ~4% of the population dead. Really, 70% of the population is not going to die in the streets because of robotics. Anyone who told you that is lying.

A free, inexpensive Internet is seen by a lot of progressives as the only hope

They are idiots.

China is starting to see some progressive movements

Please never use China as an example of what we should do, unless you have extremely smart, solid, amazing reasoning backing up why we should copy them. They jail dissidents, disallow many types of public gatherings, and prohibit free speech, you know. We don't want to copy them. People who hold up China as an example of what we should do are typically just propagandaists.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

As for the manufacturing, the big threat to Americans isn't Outsourcing, it's computers & robotics. I know keep bringing this up in my posts, but there is a sleeping bag factory making 2 MILLION bags a year with a total workforce (including salesmen, marketing, accounting and all other non-manufacturing jobs) of JUST 120 people. Fact is, it's not just that we're outsourcing, we just don't need all these people.

The computers and robotics are the solution. That factory is only employing 120 people, but it's employing 120 Americans. Those people can get paid an average of $40,000/year and the labor cost per sleeping bag will only be $2.40. Now put the factory in the vicinity of an Amazon.com warehouse instead of on the other side of the world and you can get a sleeping bag of the same quality, shipped to your door, for $15 instead of $50.

The idea that there will be no work to be done is totally ridiculous. We have massive landfills going back a hundred years or more that could be sorted through for recyclable materials. Most members of the middle class would be happy to have a housekeeper. No one would complain if there was a shorter line at the DMV. The reason that those jobs are not created is that the value of that labor is lower than its costs, and the reason for that is that the cost of living in this country is too high -- because we ship everything in from the other side of the world.

If you build a fully-automated factory in the vicinity of where the goods are consumed, the goods cost less. That reduces the minimum amount of money someone has to make to have a living wage, which allows unskilled laborers to accept those lower paying jobs without experiencing the ravages of poverty. Which allows landfills to hire employees to sort through the junk for profitably recyclable materials, allows middle class people to hire more housekeepers, allows the government to hire enough DMV employees to have shorter lines, etc.

On top of all that, "traditional" non-automated factories in America just aren't competitive anymore. The decision isn't between losing 880 out of 1000 American factory jobs to automation, the decision is between keeping the remaining 120 jobs in America by automating or just sending the whole factory to China. It seems abundantly obvious which alternative is better for American factory workers.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Kalis84]

I call bull on this entire statement. Housekeepers? Landfill workers? Do you have any idea how much those jobs actually pay? I'm a security guard, and I realized long ago that there isn't a single aspect to my job that couldn't be replaced with a moderately expensive security system.

There aren't enough middle class households in the world to employ the number of people who need jobs. And as robotics comes down to the consumer level, those same housekeepers would be fired anyways because a machine cost less than a person to maintain. And as those middle class careers are replaced by sophisticated software that can do the same job more efficiently, more people will join the unemployed line.

Face it, at the current rate of development, automation, and globalization, there will be an increasing amount of unemployed over the next few decades. The only people holding all the wealth are the ones who own the computers and robotics, not the ones who are making them.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Hazel Bergeron]

The solution is to reduce the working week. Especially since ploughing women into the workplace has hugely increased the proportion of the population in the workforce.

For some reason, people are increasing their hours again.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

Measuring real compensation is hard of course, but it gives a better measurement of what the average employee is getting [wikipedia.org]. And it's been going up. Look at the graph.

That graph is meaningless. It isn't referenced within the Wikipedia page that contains it, except for a caption saying that "health insurance" is one thing it counts. This is misleading, since insurance rates have been inflating wildly for the last decade, while coverage has been dropping. So yes, you get "more insurance" now than you did costwise, but in reality you get the same amount of less.

Also, to illustrate a point if not make an actual argument: A lot of people talk about compensation in order to deceive you, because it matches the narrative they want to push.

In reality we should be taking compensation, real wages, and cost of living/inflation into account. Paying attention to one of them exclusively screaming "cherry picking to support my initial premise".

But you'd have to be braindead to think this is going to cause 70% of the population to die in the streets when the manufacturing industry only employs around 10million people?

Yes, he exaggerated. Thats bad. But you missed his point, at the same time. If we can eliminate a large portion of our workforce, then that is less money in the system, if there is less money in the system there is less buying power, if there is less buying power there is less demand, if there is less demand we eliminate more of our workforce. Very simple logic, and very accurate logic.

Even if all those people exploded, it would only be ~4% of the population dead.

Yes, it would be around 4%, but it still would be ten million INDIVIDUALS just like you, and hell you could even be one of them (your probably not rich enough to have a significant safety net, and I'm sure your industry is next on the block and you probably aren't indispensable at all.) . I'm sorry, I'll always hold individuals above meaningless economic abstractions and utopian ideals. Even if it is ONLY 10 million people.

Freemarketeers always sound like sociopaths to me.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

In reality we should be taking compensation, real wages, and cost of living/inflation into account.

Sure, lets do that. Where are your numbers? Do you have a graph, or are you just talking out your ass because you don't like looking at real data?

If we can eliminate a large portion of our workforce, then that is less money in the system,

Uh, where do you come up with this stuff? Did you take a class called "Economics for retards?" Probably not because you actually would have learned something there. This is so braindead a drunk monkey could come up with something more realistic.

Listen: money is a worthless placeholder that represents real goods. You already know that. The more real goods in the system, the more wealth there is available for society. That is what matters.

Now pay attention, because this may be what you are missing: if we can automate some tasks, that means the people who were doing those jobs are free to do other things, and society as a whole produces more goods, more wealth (and more money, if you'd like to think in those terms, as long as they print more to represent the increase in wealth). This is the pattern that has been happening for hundreds of years, if not millennia. It also happened during the robotics revolution that started in the 60s.

Now, it is true, it can be hard for transition from one system to another, but the answer isn't to stop the transition (because you can't), it's to help people make the transition. One nice answer is Denmark's Flexicurity system. Check it out, you might like it.

Yes, it would be around 4%, but it still would be ten million INDIVIDUALS just like you, and hell you could even be one of them (your probably not rich enough to have a significant safety net, and I'm sure your industry is next on the block and you probably aren't indispensable at all.)

Wow, you're right!!!! We should start a government program to help out all those poor INDIVIDUALS who are going to EXPLODE! Good thing you understand exaggeration, otherwise we'd be in trouble.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

Freemarketeers always sound like sociopaths to me.

Because you can't face reality. Reality is that the free market creates prosperity wherever and whenever it is supported by respect for civil rights and private property rights. It works better than feudalism, which seems to be what progressives want these days, and better than socialism / communism, which has starved and killed more people than any other economic system in history.

And let's be clear: A free market is one where the consumers are in charge, and the system is focused on working to satisfy consumer needs. Socialist systems do the opposite - they focus instead on satisfying the needs of the producers. So where you see corporatism at work - like this government protection and sanctioning of AT&T's expansion of profits while the gouge their customers, most of whom are stuck in an area of monopoly control of Internet access, THAT is a socialist system in nature.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

your probably not rich enough to have a significant safety net, and I'm sure your industry is next on the block and you probably aren't indispensable at all.)

In the modern era, because things change so quickly, it is the people who are flexible and able to learn new skills that will do well. This may not be fair, but neither is life. So if my industry goes, I will be flexible and adapt to my new situation. It's what you have to do.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

Housekeepers? Landfill workers? Do you have any idea how much those jobs actually pay?

I'm going to guess that it's less than the person hiring the housekeeper makes and more than you get paid having no job once your unemployment insurance runs out.

And as robotics comes down to the consumer level, those same housekeepers would be fired anyways because a machine cost less than a person to maintain.

Not if the person costs less because the person's cost of living is reduced by automation.

The only people holding all the wealth are the ones who own the computers and robotics, not the ones who are making them.

As long as the corporations are not monopolies/oligopolies, you still get the benefits because automation reduces costs and competition requires the cost savings to be passed onto consumers. Obviously if they are monopolies/oligopolies then you're screwed, but only as a result of the lack of competition rather than the existence of automation.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Kalis84]

But how are the consumers going to be able to buy anything if they have no jobs?

People will ALWAYS cost more than machines. It simply takes more to maintain a human than a computer. Look at medical bills. Even with insurance, for any major problems, it will still number in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The price of a machine will go down because the cost of manufacturing reduces over its lifetime. If it breaks, just replace it. Humans still need to live, with or without a job.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

The solution is to reduce the working week. Especially since ploughing women into the workplace has hugely increased the proportion of the population in the workforce.

The problem is that that is inefficient for skilled jobs. If you train one person how to do a job and they work 60 hours a week doing it, you have 1/3rd the training costs as if you have to train three people who each work 20 hours a week.

Additionally, employees generally prefer to work e.g. 40 hours/week rather than 20 if they can get paid twice as much for doing so, because the increase in discretionary income is so disproportionate. If it takes e.g. 18 hours of labor to cover necessities spending (food and shelter) then working 20 hours leaves only 2 hours wages in discretionary income, whereas working 40 hours gives you 22 hours wages in discretionary income. And if it takes 35 hours of labor to cover necessities spending then working only 20 hours is just not feasible.

What would work a lot better is early retirement. If people would work 40-80 hours/week for 10 or 20 years while saving for retirement and then leave the workforce, that would solve a lot of the problem. The trouble is that some people are idiots who refuse to save anything, and so we set up systems like social security and unemployment to save those people from starvation if they lose their jobs, but the existence of those systems encourages everyone else not to save anything (and taxes them by the amount of money they might have saved), so then no one can retire until they're eligible for social security and everyone has incentive to work as many hours as they can until then.

Re:I know he was trolling

[jbengt]

Measuring real compensation is hard of course, but it gives a better measurement of what the average employee is getting [wikipedia.org]. And it's been going up. Look at the graph.

That chart has no explanation in Wikipedia, but a little digging finds similar charts some that include wages, salaries, and benefits of wage earners, salaried employees, CEOs, small business owners, etc., some that are limited to the paycheck of wage earners. Unfortunately for the wage earners, they mostly don't get stock options, profit sharing, pensions, and other benefits that higher paid employees do. Also, as others have pointed out, health insurance costs have gone up rapidly for the employer, but at no benefit to the wage earner. So the real take-home pay of wage earners has gone down in the last 10 years, even as costs have gone up for employers. The take-home pay of those earning top dollar has not fallen like it has for the lower echelon of workers, which is irrelevant to the point being made.

Re:I know he was trolling

[rsilvergun]

I don't know where you work, but aside from some crummy health insurance I pay $150/mo for (for just me, if I had my kid on it it's $450/mo) I don't get jack. And I've got one of the nicer positions in my neck of the woods. The top 10% are the only ones seeing gains that aren't pure wages, and even they're starting to lose out to the top 1%.

And History has nothing to do with it. It's just what lead us here. The farmers were absorbed into the factories. We have nothing to replace the factories, but we've still got all these people. Modern conservative capitalism says if you don't got a job, you don't get to eat, and it's your own damn fault for not working hard enough. That's where I get 70% of the populace starving. We let millions starve to death in Africa every year, any reason why we won't do the same here at home when we have no use for these people? Are you going to give them a portion of your income? No. They either tell me what you're going to do with them or admit you're going to let them starve and die. As for statistics, the 20% unemployment is just the tip of the iceberg. It's going to get a lot worse, and really fast.

And who the hell was using China as an example of what we should do. I was just noting that they have a progressive movement building that is DIRECTLY CAUSED BY AN INCREASINGLY EDUCATED POPULACE. Seriously, did you even read my post? As for people pinning hopes on the Internet, how the hell else is the middle class suppose to function and grow in an increasingly global world? They don't own private jets you know? If you have any constructive ideas I'd love to hear 'em.

Re:I know he was trolling

[ScrewMaster]

your probably not rich enough to have a significant safety net, and I'm sure your industry is next on the block and you probably aren't indispensable at all.)

In the modern era, because things change so quickly, it is the people who are flexible and able to learn new skills that will do well. This may not be fair, but neither is life. So if my industry goes, I will be flexible and adapt to my new situation. It's what you have to do.

That only works as long as there's something left to do. Look at the countries which have no industrial base and no natural resources they can sell to buy technology from those who do. Then ask yourself whether you'd want to live there. It has been decided that America is to become a third-world country, dependent upon the largesse (or otherwise) of other countries. It won't happen overnight, there is a lot of inertia, but it is in the program. Accept that fact, and then maybe you can find something to do about it. Just "being flexible" is not going to fix the fundamental problems which our industrial economy is facing, and those problems come from the top.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Lonewolf666]

What would work a lot better is early retirement. If people would work 40-80 hours/week for 10 or 20 years while saving for retirement and then leave the workforce, that would solve a lot of the problem. The trouble is that some people are idiots who refuse to save anything, and so we set up systems like social security and unemployment to save those people from starvation if they lose their jobs, but the existence of those systems encourages everyone else not to save anything (and taxes them by the amount of money they might have saved), so then no one can retire until they're eligible for social security and everyone has incentive to work as many hours as they can until then.

Working for 10 or 20 years while saving for retirement is not enough unless you are very well paid.
Looking at my own savings after approx. 15 years of work (as average software developer in Germany, and with some unemployment-related breaks), those are not sufficient to retire. After another 15 years (I'd be going on 60 then) I might be able to retire with a modest lifestyle.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

People will ALWAYS cost more than machines. It simply takes more to maintain a human than a computer.

That is obviously not true in all cases. If you need to buy 100 expensive machines to replace one human because it's something that machines can do but are bad at, the human will cost less. Just think about it: If machines always cost less, why do any humans have jobs?

More importantly, you can reduce the cost of a human by reducing the cost of living. People get all caught up in money and inflation/deflation etc., but the fact is that the less labor is required to produce the same products and services, the more products and services that each person can consume for each hour they labor. Or equivalently, the fewer hours of labor you need to put in to make enough money to have the same amount of goods and services.

Where the problem comes in is if you start with a world where everyone is working e.g. 40 hours a week and producing all that everyone needs, and you transition to a world in which half the people are working 40 hours a week to produce everything everyone needs and the other half are unemployed. That is not a trivial problem, but there are a number of solutions to it that are obviously superior to intentionally creating inefficiencies just so that more people can have something to do. Even if all you do is just print money and give everyone enough to buy food and shelter, it's better than forcing people to do redundant work in exchange for the same money, because in the former case they can at least have the possibility of doing something which is actually constructive with their time, instead of forcing them to do something menial and time consuming that a machine could do faster and cheaper.

Re:I know he was trolling

[mbkennel]

"The computers and robotics are the solution. That factory is only employing 120 people, but it's employing 120 Americans."

No it's not. They close a higher labor factory in the USA and open an automated factory in the East. After a few years, the local manager --- with government support --- opens a competing factory with the profits also flowing to the Eastern company (and he is CEO and not just a manager). The USA company goes out of business, but the executive who made the decision made enough money in 5 years to provide for his heirs and theirs for their lifetimes, so he doesn't care.

The robots are made in Germany, for a while.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

If you can afford to live by working 20 hours/week then you can work for 40 hours/week at the same hourly wage, spend only 20 hours/week worth of wages and before the end of 20 years have saved enough money that at 5% interest will yield the equivalent of 20 hours/week in wages.

Compare that to working 20 hours/week for 40 years and not being able to save a single dime because you spend as much as you make, so that by the end of the 40 years you've worked the same number of total hours but have zero savings whereas someone who worked twice as many hours for half as many years will still have the entire amount of their savings at the end of the 40 years and be able to live off the interest indefinitely.

The original suggestion was to reduce the length of the work week. Obviously if you can't afford to live on 20 hours/week worth of wages then neither plan works, but if you can afford to reduce the length of the work week then you can instead reduce the age of retirement with better results.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

It doesn't matter to America whether a factory in China uses automation or cheap labor to produce goods. What matters is that you can build an automated factory in the US and produce goods at competitive prices, because the automation mitigates the labor cost advantages of foreign factories and the US factory then has the advantage of significantly lower transportation costs when selling to the US market.

Moreover, it is for the same reason that anyone who offshores an automated factory is generally an idiot -- offshoring and automation are largely incompatible strategies to reduce labor costs. If you spend the money to automate, the advantage of then having cheap labor is substantially reduced because you require far fewer employees, and that small remaining advantage is swallowed by the cost of transporting the finished goods back to the US from the other side of the world.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

It has been decided that America is to become a third-world country, dependent upon the largesse (or otherwise) of other countries.

Oh good, you braindead lout, I always do love a good conspiracy theory. Tell me, who has decided this? Was it the illuminati? A cabal of nameless corporations? The Bilderberg conspirators?? The same puppetmasters that installed President Bush, and who now control Obama? Please tell me who has decided this so I mock you further.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

I don't know where you work, but aside from some crummy health insurance I pay $150/mo for (for just me, if I had my kid on it it's $450/mo) I don't get jack

Oh, I'm sorry that you are below average and your job sucks. There is really nothing I can do about it though. Also, you'll have to forgive me for not caring much about your anecdotal evidence.

And History has nothing to do with it. It's just what lead us here

It has much more to do with it than your conspiratorial rant.

That's where I get 70% of the populace starving.

Where, because only ~30% of the population is republicans? You didn't explain where you got that number at all.

We have nothing to replace the factories, but we've still got all these people

Then where did all the people go after they stopped working in factories? You do realize that the vast majority of America does not work in factories, right?

how the hell else is the middle class suppose to function and grow in an increasingly global world?

Lots of ways, but apparently you're too dumb and uncreative to even think of one.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

It's a complicated topic, and of course there there are many factors on all sides, for example, 20 years ago, only the richest Americans had cell phones, and now even the poorest have them. Healthcare has gotten better, with new treatments (hip replacements are much more common, for example, and so have MRIs and you can get viagra), so people are getting better treatment for their money, even if it's not as good as you personally would like it to be. Traveling to Europe is significantly easier for Americans, as another example. Also you need to consider that we've had a huge influx of immigrants with no skills whatsoever, and of course that's going to push the average wage downward.

If you want to make the case that Americans are getting poorer (which is really what we care about here), you need to consider all these factors. It is not easy to do.

Re:I know he was trolling

[iamhassi]

"As for the manufacturing, the big threat to Americans isn't Outsourcing, it's computers & robotics. I know keep bringing this up in my posts, but there is a sleeping bag factory making 2 MILLION bags a year with a total workforce (including salesmen, marketing, accounting and all other non-manufacturing jobs) of JUST 120 people. "

So... you think people should be sitting there stitching together sleeping bags rather than having a automatic sewing machine doing it?

Re:I know he was trolling

[iamhassi]

"As for the manufacturing, the big threat to Americans isn't Outsourcing, it's computers & robotics. I know keep bringing this up in my posts, but there is a sleeping bag factory making 2 MILLION bags a year with a total workforce (including salesmen, marketing, accounting and all other non-manufacturing jobs) of JUST 120 people."

Not just manufacturing either, now baseball players are being replaced by robots

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

It works better than feudalism, which seems to be what progressives want these days [...]

Wait, what ? Feudalism is where the "free marketeers" are trying to take us, with a rapid and growing - particularly in America - concentration of wealth amongst an increasingly smaller group of people. At the current rate it should only be another couple of decades before the middle class has been completely obliterated and the owners of a handful of corporations are ruling over their wage-slaves. They might even be nice enough to do it via the proxy of government to maintain the illusion of democracy.

I'm not quite sure how you conclude the "progressives" want Feudalism. Especially in America, since there's not really any "progressive" politics to speak of in the first place.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

The reason that those jobs are not created is that the value of that labor is lower than its costs, and the reason for that is that the cost of living in this country is too high -- because we ship everything in from the other side of the world.

The cost of living in the USA is the lowest in the Western World. Essentials like cars, petrol, housing and food cost literally 1/3 to 1/2 as much in the USA as they do in pretty much every other first-world country.

If you think the cost of living in the USA is - proportionate to living standards - anything greater than "dirt cheap", you need to travel a *lot* more.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

The trouble is that some people are idiots who refuse to save anything, and so we set up systems like social security and unemployment to save those people from starvation if they lose their jobs, but the existence of those systems encourages everyone else not to save anything (and taxes them by the amount of money they might have saved), so then no one can retire until they're eligible for social security and everyone has incentive to work as many hours as they can until then.

No, the problem is that "some people" don't get paid enough to actually save a meaningful amount, because the people who are their employers are taking all the money for themselves.

This is graphically illustrated by the phenomenally large (and growing) gap in earnings and wealth between the "rich" and "everyone else".

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

No, the problem is that "some people" don't get paid enough to actually save a meaningful amount, because the people who are their employers are taking all the money for themselves.

If you are literally at the threshold of starvation, all social security is going to do is take enough out of your paycheck to push you over the edge and cause you to starve to death before you ever get old enough to collect. If you are not at the threshold of starvation then you make enough money that you could save some if social security did not exist -- at least the amount that you currently pay in social security tax.

This is graphically illustrated by the phenomenally large (and growing) gap in earnings and wealth between the "rich" and "everyone else".

The relative difference in net income or net asset value has little practical consequence. The large majority of the wealth of rich people exists only on paper. The question is whether poor people today are better off than poor people historically. The answer is clearly that they are.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Anthony Mouse]

The cost of living in the USA is the lowest in the Western World. Essentials like cars, petrol, housing and food cost literally 1/3 to 1/2 as much in the USA as they do in pretty much every other first-world country.

Yes, if you exclude all of the countries with a lower cost of living than the US, the US has a lower cost of living than the remaining countries. What does that have anything to do with the idea that if you can further reduce the cost of living then you can increase your competitiveness and reduce unemployment?

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

It works better than feudalism, which seems to be what progressives want these days [...]

Wait, what ? Feudalism is where the "free marketeers" are trying to take us,

Yea, dumb ass, because "free market" means the King owns all the shit by Divine Right! What kind of stupid shit claim is that? Centralized control is feudalism, dumb ass, free market means you are FREE to TRADE. WTF?

with a rapid and growing - particularly in America - concentration of wealth amongst an increasingly smaller group of people.

Called GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATORS and CORPORATE EXECUTIVES - each swapping roles all the time. Duh.

At the current rate it should only be another couple of decades before the middle class has been completely obliterated

Yep. And assholes like you supporting it.

and the owners of a handful of corporations are ruling over their wage-slaves.

And a handful of government bureaucrats lording over the remaining slaves to government dependence and handouts.

They might even be nice enough to do it via the proxy of government to maintain the illusion of democracy.

As if they could do it without the government protection and "regulation" (which somehow always ends up as some form of twisted crony capitalism).

I'm not quite sure how you conclude the "progressives" want Feudalism.

LOL - because you keep expecting that if you vote in enough lying shitbags that cry "Eat the Rich" and "If we could just bash a few more heads, we could get [your enemy] under control!" that they will magically be on your side and do something that actually helps.

Especially in America, since there's not really any "progressive" politics to speak of in the first place.

Well then what the fuck do you call yourself - socialist? I thought you preferred progressive. Tell me what you call it and I'll use your term.

Re:I know he was trolling

[cyp43r]

I'm not sure how he reached the conclusion that the economic system which made the middle class huge is going to destroy that same class.

Re:I know he was trolling

[mbkennel]

Other essentials like medical care and education cost literally 2x to 3x to 10x as in pretty much every other first world companies.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Kjella]

We let millions starve to death in Africa every year

Most estimates put the number of people starving to death - not just undernourished - at about 10 million/year or 0.1% of the world's population. The problem is not that we don't have food, it's because they live in war zones - mostly civil war - where foreign aid has had to pull out. If you just got all the warlords to stop shooting at each other, nobody had to die from hunger.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

Yes, if you exclude all of the countries with a lower cost of living than the US, the US has a lower cost of living than the remaining countries.

No.

If you set a particular standard of living - let's call it "the American lifestyle" - then of all the countries in the world that have a roughly equivalent living standard (let's call them the "first world" for the sake of argument), in the USA that lifestyle costs the least, by a large, large factor.

It's true if you set your minimum standard to be something on the level of a South American or Eastern European slum, then cost of living in the USA is "high". But that's an argument with a broken premise.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

If you are literally at the threshold of starvation, all social security is going to do is take enough out of your paycheck to push you over the edge and cause you to starve to death before you ever get old enough to collect. If you are not at the threshold of starvation then you make enough money that you could save some if social security did not exist -- at least the amount that you currently pay in social security tax.

Wow. I...

Really, I just don't know what to say to someone who thinks that so long as people aren't literally dying of starvation, they've got enough money to save for retirement. I just can't comprehend how your moral compass could get that far out of whack.

The relative difference in net income or net asset value has little practical consequence.

No, it makes a lot of difference. The person who barely makes enough to cover his essential expenses, when faced with a large unexpected expense, is suddenly on the edge of ruin, if not death. The person whose essential expenses comprise a single-digit percentage of his annual income, when faced with the same unexpected expense, suffers no meaningful impact whatsoever on his quality of life.

The large majority of the wealth of rich people exists only on paper.

Taxable income measured in hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars a year, is not money that "only exists on paper". Neither are property holdings, or blue-chip stocks and the like.

The question is whether poor people today are better off than poor people historically. The answer is clearly that they are.

No. The question is whether the median living standard is rising. Whether or not that is true, especially for the last 20-30 years, is dubious, to say the least. The middle class is shrinking, real wages are dropping and social mobility is decreasing.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

Other essentials like medical care and education cost literally 2x to 3x to 10x as in pretty much every other first world companies.

No, they're not.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

Yea, dumb ass, because "free market" means the King owns all the shit by Divine Right! What kind of stupid shit claim is that? Centralized control is feudalism, dumb ass, free market means you are FREE to TRADE. WTF?

Control by a small number of owners over most of the property, tended to by vassals and peasants is where an unregulated free market ultimately converges, and a destination we are well on the way to. That's pretty much Feudalism to a T.

Called GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATORS and CORPORATE EXECUTIVES - each swapping roles all the time. Duh.

No. Those are the people the real wealth holders (generally - some still get their hands dirty at the coalface) pay to do their bidding.

Yep. And assholes like you supporting it.

Not in the slightest.

And a handful of government bureaucrats lording over the remaining slaves to government dependence and handouts.

Given how pitifully inadequate the "handouts" to normal people are in the US, that's difficult to envisage. Mainly because if any large proportion of people really had to depend on "handouts" in the US, they'd probably be dead from neglect inside a year.

As if they could do it without the government protection and "regulation" (which somehow always ends up as some form of twisted crony capitalism).

Wow. Talk about missing the point.

The reason they do it with government protection and "regulation" is because they've used the "free market" to buy and pay for the government to enact the legislation they need (that's what happens when you have a system that does something as ludicrous as equating money with speech), because that's cheaper and easier than having to do it the old fashioned way with private armies.

LOL - because you keep expecting that if you vote in enough lying shitbags that cry "Eat the Rich" and "If we could just bash a few more heads, we could get [your enemy] under control!" that they will magically be on your side and do something that actually helps.

Well the first part sounds like some sort of anarchist warcry and the second part sounds like a cornerstone of conservative philosophy, so I'm still a little unclear as to how we get "progressive" out of it.

Well then what the fuck do you call yourself - socialist? I thought you preferred progressive. Tell me what you call it and I'll use your term.

Well I would call myself centre-left, because that's what most of the world would consider me. But in America you'd probably call me a raging communist because I support things like publicly funded healthcare and education, large amounts of publicly funded infrastructure, strong protections for workers' rights, high and progressive taxation to minimise wealth disparity and strong regulations to curtail corporate abuse of property and the environment. You know, the stuff the Democrats used to work towards 30+ years ago when they were still something that could be regarded as a vaguely left-wing political party.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

Because you can't face reality

You don't say? I stated that because the parent stated that is isn't a big deal of 10 million peoples lives are ruined because of market conditions, because that 10 million people is ONLY 4% of the population. The reality of that statement is a bit sickening to me. Basically it is fine and dandy if 10 million people are rendered homeless so their bosses can make more money, and a limited set of consumers (definitely not the ten million who just got screwed) can buy a product marginally cheaper.

I am not a Marxist, or anti-capitalist, but I can understand them much more when people bandy about points like that.

Capitalism is fine, as long as it is a slave to human interests. The, largely mythical, freemarket should be balanced with what leads to the greater good of society. The second it starts working against normal people, it needs to be checked, since human good is the only ends that makes any sense. When working from within a society, this means societal good, not individual benefit at the cost of everyone else (that goes against the basic tenets of the social contract on which our society was based).

I am a capitalist, it is the only system that has shown itself to work and probably the default state of natural economies. I am not a "freemarketeer" since that is a bit of ideological dogma that people somehow aspire towards; it is a utopia, it isn't based in reality.

free market is one where the consumers are in charge, and the system is focused on working to satisfy consumer needs.

Sure, I can buy this. But that isn't the definition of "free market" as people use it here. A free market is one completely unfettered, i.e. free. People who espouse it somehow put market forces about human good, the market is its own ends and good. And somehow actions of this market are conflated with the moral or ethical "right". It ignores extra-market forces like coercion, economic inequality, restriction (or misrepresentation) of information, corruption, crony-ism, etc... It presumes that if somehow the Government walked away the market would work itself out, and magically start working towards the societal good. I am not aware of any historical case when this has actually happened, nor does the logic really work itself out.

Any market has to be restricted and regulated to keep things balanced witnin itself, to minimize extra-market forces, and to keep it a slave to the good of the society that it is based in.

A market is not a good in itself, it is only good in its relation to society. When the scale tips to favor the market over everyone else, then something must be done. This is the case currently.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

Sure, lets do that. Where are your numbers? Do you have a graph, or are you just talking out your ass because you don't like looking at real data?

Where were your real numbers? You posted a meaningless graph, with no citations or sources, that was even out of context of the article in which is was embedded. And further, you actively ignored my critique of it in order to flame a reasonable statement that measuring how well we are doing requires a more complex analysis of multiple factors instead of your one factor (which you claim is better than the GPs one single factor).

I also never made a claim whether, or whether not we are doing better. I just stated that your single axis of information was insufficient to make a conclusion, and was probably subject to the same individual biases (picking a single bit of information to prove your point) that you accused the GP of.

Hell, your point may be correct; but it will take much more than a single graph on a single metric, to prove it.

I don't see why your getting so emotional about it.

Uh, where do you come up with this stuff? Did you take a class called "Economics for retards?" Probably not because you actually would have learned something there. This is so braindead a drunk monkey could come up with something more realistic.

And at this point I stop having this conversation with you, since you seem completely incapable of rational debate, or at least debate which wold question even the surface of your pre-existing ideals. In other words, there is no point, since your not actually interested in debate; instead you are interested in evangelizing your ideology.

You pretty much illustrate whats wrong with American politics these days, and why we're on a decline.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

Heh.....you spent two paragraphs explaining why you don't need to find any numbers? What, do you expect me to do all the work in the conversation? Your points would all be valid, that perhaps real compensation is not a good measure for quality of life, if you had brought up data to show it. Instead your comment could be summarized as, "I think you are wrong!!" You have nothing concrete to back yourself up. You only have speculation. And your speculation might be right, but there is no reason to think so.

And at this point I stop having this conversation with you, since you seem completely incapable of rational debate

Actually you are incapable of debate because you lack knowledge. What you call 'very simple and accurate logic' only seems that way to you because it is based on false premises. Because of your lack of focus on real data, you don't have the required knowledge to make good judgement. This statement is so wrong it is almost beyond belief: "If we can eliminate a large portion of our workforce, then that is less money in the system,"

Until you get knowledge, any 'debate' will be extremely one-sided: though it may have the form of debate, it will actually be me imparting knowledge to you.

instead you are interested in evangelizing your ideology.

If you consider my ideology to be, "discussion based in data" then yes, I am only interested in that ideology. Anyone who isn't is an idiot.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Lonewolf666]

Your idea works in principle, but I think the numbers are off - most people cannot quite afford to live off half their income.
For a small, very well paid percentage of professionals it would work though. Those that make $100k/year or more.

Re:I know he was trolling

[ScrewMaster]

It has been decided that America is to become a third-world country, dependent upon the largesse (or otherwise) of other countries.

Oh good, you braindead lout, I always do love a good conspiracy theory. Tell me, who has decided this? Was it the illuminati? A cabal of nameless corporations? The Bilderberg conspirators?? The same puppetmasters that installed President Bush, and who now control Obama? Please tell me who has decided this so I mock you further.

Corporate America, of course. Who else? Who else makes the decisions about where to sell, where to make products, and who is going to make them? Are you BLIND? I've spent thirty years working for industry. Started out working in a manufacturing plant running a punch press back in the seventies, but in 1981 started began developing data acquisition and process control systems for industry. It's what I still do. I've seen what's been happening to our manufacturing economy firsthand: people like you that seem to think everything is all peachy frighten me. I've worked for multi-billion-dollar American companies that had plants all around the country, all around the world, watched them shrink down to a couple of facilities ... and then to nothing. I've been in once-thriving industrial cities that are now nothing but ghost towns. I've seen upper management sell their factories to "competitors", promising their workers that "nothing would change" ... and then watched as those people came to work the next day, only to find chains on the doors and giant trucks hauling all the machine tools and manufacturing equipment off to China.

Hell, I remember the division chief of a once-huge outfit I used to consult for saying a few years ago, "I don't even know why we make things", in reference to Chinese competition. Maybe that's not a "conspiracy" as we usually understand the term, but it most certainly is a pattern, and you'd have to be, well, a moron not to have noticed it. But that's okay: I'll accept being a lout if you'll agree to be a moron, at least for the sake of argument. Fact is, greed is the only explanation required for what is happening, greed and a sociopathic perspective towards your fellow Americans. Ask yourself this: why are more and more CEOs of "American" corporations not Americans? Why? Because they don't want any vestigial bit of patriotism or concern for any remaining domestic workers to interfere with their plans to maximize profit now.

Get out and see what's going on, and then come back and call me a lout. Unlike many of the people here, I'm an older engineer whose been around for a long time, seen a lot of people that I worked for and with lose their jobs because it was easier to sell out than to compete, witnessed the rise of the MBA and the destruction left in their wake. So I'm sorry if you mistook my original comment (still no reason to be as insulting as you were) but you're obviously ignorant of the topic. Educate yourself, and then we can talk about what's going on more intelligently. Fox News sure won't tell you. Obama sure won't tell you. The CEO's of our once-major domestic manufacturing concerns most certainly won't tell you: according to them, everything is fine. But the sell-out has been going on for decades, is still going on, and when we're completely hollowed out, I guarantee our standard of living is not going to improve.

Face it, a free nation which cannot provide for its own citizens is anything but free.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

Control by a small number of owners over most of the property, tended to by vassals and peasants is where an unregulated free market ultimately converges, and a destination we are well on the way to. That's pretty much Feudalism to a T.

Because you say it does? Because Karl Marx says it will? Despite the fact that it only happens through unrestrained government power?

Here's a clue for you: You have been fed a line of BS, and you don't want to question it, even though history has proven it wrong. Try thinking for yourself some time, instead of latching on to hating the groups people tell you should hate.

Well the first part sounds like some sort of anarchist warcry and the second part sounds like a cornerstone of conservative philosophy, so I'm still a little unclear as to how we get "progressive" out of it.

Oh, I'm sorry, too direct for you? The excuse for why government regulation failed is always because "there wasn't enough government regulation". In other words: "If we had been allowed to bash enough heads, things would have been better".

Well I would call myself centre-left, because that's what most of the world would consider me. But in America you'd probably call me a raging communist because I support things like publicly funded healthcare and education, large amounts of publicly funded infrastructure, strong protections for workers' rights, high and progressive taxation to minimise wealth disparity and strong regulations to curtail corporate abuse of property and the environment. You know, the stuff the Democrats used to work towards 30+ years ago when they were still something that could be regarded as a vaguely left-wing political party.

Well you just sound like a misguided socialist, bought into the idea that central planning will provide equal outcomes for everyone. Which in a way it will, as we see in places like North Korea, where most of the people live in abject poverty, and the rulers control the economy and all the means of production. This is how all socialist systems work - they focus on satisfying the needs of the producers. But it leaves most people without the food and goods they actually need.

I'm sure it will all work fine when nobody has property rights, and government micro-manages every plot of land and property is leased at the pleasure of the collective. You know, just like the good old days of Kings and Vassels. Do you think you'll get to be one of the rulers, or will you be one of the serfs?

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

I am not a Marxist, or anti-capitalist,

Oh, okay.

Capitalism is fine, as long as it is a slave to human interests. The, largely mythical, freemarket should be balanced with what leads to the greater good of society. The second it starts working against normal people, it needs to be checked, since human good is the only ends that makes any sense. When working from within a society, this means societal good, not individual benefit at the cost of everyone else (that goes against the basic tenets of the social contract on which our society was based).

WTF? How is that not Marxism? So we should have free markets (which you some how think are mythical, despite the prosperity they have produced throughout history), but the collective "society" should be considered before any individual? "Social contract"? Really? "I've go mine and you've got yours" isn't good enough for you?

Whose ideal of "societal good" should we follow? Yours? Should we set up some dictator to decide for us? Or is it majority rule? So 51% of the people can decided that everything the other 49% owns should be taken and given to someone else? If 99% of the people decide that some people should not be allowed to have food and water is that okay too? Or will some grand ruler make those decisions?

I am a capitalist, it is the only system that has shown itself to work and probably the default state of natural economies. I am not a "freemarketeer" since that is a bit of ideological dogma that people somehow aspire towards; it is a utopia, it isn't based in reality.

Ah, so you are the worst kind of statist. "Capitalism" is okay, because then all capital can be controlled by a central bank and it can be doled out to only the "proper kind" of Corporations. Anyone else must petition the rulers for the privilege of participating in commerce. Yea, we're very close to that kind of crony capitalism already. And it sucks.

It presumes that if somehow the Government walked away the market would work itself out, and magically start working towards the societal good. I am not aware of any historical case when this has actually happened

You never heard of the Renaissance? Yes, government was around, but they totally left the merchants alone. Their only involvement was to draw taxes from the land use and hang the thieves. That's what created the middle class in the first place.

What it comes down to is a respect for private property rights and individual liberty. As these two tenants lose their value, governments take more power and more control and prosperity is lost and poverty increases. And that's bad for society.

Re:I know he was trolling

[rsilvergun]

"Lots of ways, but apparently you're too dumb and uncreative to even think of one."

As apparently you are too, as is every conservative I talk to. They just don't have any answers. Lots of pretty words about freedom, which always boil down to tax cuts for the rich and the same Voodoo economics that don't work because the rich can only spend so much money before they're just hoarding it all. So I say again, let's here some constructive ideas. Something that will truly elevate a large percentage of mankind. For me, I'll put out socialism as my answer. There's a large body of work describing why it would benefit mankind, and many, many European countries that prove it works.

So, what's yours? I hope you're not planning to dredge up trickle down economics and the writings of that pre-Industrial age fellow (Adam Smith). Discrediting that won't even be a challenge.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

still no reason to be as insulting as you were

Yeah, you are right. Sorry about that, I was in a horrible mood, but that is no reason to take it out on you; you are right.

Face it, a free nation which cannot provide for its own citizens is anything but free.

In a way this is true, but I don't think it's as serious as you portray it. I consider it to be similar to myself not being able to provide for myself without the help of other people. I don't grow my own food, can't make my own tools, couldn't build a car if I needed to......in a very real way, I am dependent on other people, and thus not free. My destiny is linked to other people. Globalization means our destiny is linked to other countries, and it is not necessarily a bad thing.

But, as we know, any US manufacturing that is labor intensive has left the country (many of the few that remain, for example butcheries, are staffed by Mexicans and other immigrants). I believe that is the point of your post, that there aren't many US manufacturing jobs left. We still do make things, we are the worlds biggest exporter, but our production is not labor intensive.

How bad is it? Hard to know, but the way I look at it, eventually our trade deficit is going to need to close. We'll either have to stop importing those things, or start exporting more to close the gap. The trade deficit varies and you can look at it, but let's say it is about $700 billion annually. That means we're going to have $700 billion sucked out of our economy every year to take care of that. Our national GDP is around $14trillion, so that means we'll have a 5% drop in the economy to cover ourselves. On top of that we'll have to add some pain that always comes when industries rearrange themselves. That's painful, but it's not anything that will really destroy us.

So yeah, I know some industries are bad (check out the US textiles industry for a giant crater), but overall it seems like we are ok.

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

Voodoo economics that don't work because the rich can only spend so much money before they're just hoarding it all.

See, once again, you are displaying your ignorance. The point of voodoo economics, by which I assume you means Reagan's supply side economics, was exactly to cause rich people to hoard money; that is to invest it, since no one hoards money in a vault in the side of the mountain these days. It was called supply side economics, because it was theorized that this greater investment, or hoarding, would create more supply, making products cheaper, which would also create more demand. In practice, studies showed that it failed because the rich did exactly what you said they wouldn't do: they spent their money instead of investing it.

For me, I'll put out socialism as my answer.

That's not an answer. Socialism has many definitions and policies. Some are utterly useless, some are extremely harmful, and some work. Since you don't have a particular answer, I suggest you look at Flexicurity as a solution that seems to be fairly effective. As for myself, I prefer the government to leave me alone as much as possible. I personally have the strong safety net that comes with a loving family, though I understand others are not so fortunate.

Re:I know he was trolling

[drsmithy]

Because you say it does? Because Karl Marx says it will? Despite the fact that it only happens through unrestrained government power?

You misspelled "government power corrupted by rich corporate interests". Hope that helps.

Here's a clue for you: You have been fed a line of BS, and you don't want to question it, even though history has proven it wrong. Try thinking for yourself some time, instead of latching on to hating the groups people tell you should hate.

Comedy gold coming from someone preaching cookie-cutter right-wing rhetoric.

History has demonstrated - is currently demonstrating - what happens with poorly regulated markets.

In other words: "If we had been allowed to bash enough heads, things would have been better".

I though that the was the right-wing excuse for why we had crime ?

Well you just sound like a misguided socialist, bought into the idea that central planning will provide equal outcomes for everyone.

You sound like a typical paranoid Tea-partier, convinced that the only two possibilities are an unregulated and unrestrained free market, or a centrally managed communist economy.

Which in a way it will, as we see in places like North Korea, where most of the people live in abject poverty, and the rulers control the economy and all the means of production. This is how all socialist systems work - they focus on satisfying the needs of the producers. But it leaves most people without the food and goods they actually need.

Or, if we're not parroting more paranoid rhetoric, we look at the rest of the Western world, at countries like Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands, where the horrible curse of "socialism" has produced some of the most successful states in history. The UK, Australia and Canada to a lesser degree, particularly in recent decades, but that's largely because they have followed the US down the path of deregulation and corporate rent-seeking.

I'm sure it will all work fine when nobody has property rights, and government micro-manages every plot of land and property is leased at the pleasure of the collective. You know, just like the good old days of Kings and Vassels. Do you think you'll get to be one of the rulers, or will you be one of the serfs?

I'm sure it will all work fine when nobody has property rights, and a handful of rich old white men allow their vassals to manage their affairs in exchange for luxury and wealth. You know, just like the good old days of Feudalism. Do you have to go to work tomorrow ? If you do, I've got bad news for you - you're going to be one of the peasants.

It's amazing that you're so scared of a centrally planned economy, when that's exactly where the "free market" will take you. Centrally planned by a small number of people who either - directly or by proxy - own everything you need to live your life.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

Or, if we're not parroting more paranoid rhetoric, we look at the rest of the Western world, at countries like Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands, where the horrible curse of "socialism" has produced some of the most successful states in history. The UK, Australia and Canada to a lesser degree, particularly in recent decades, but that's largely because they have followed the US down the path of deregulation and corporate rent-seeking.

Well of course those countries do some amount of central planning, but they are generally mixed economies, not socialist (like North Korea). I suggest you take a closer look at those countries, and try to distinguish between the things run as socialist systems, the financial situations in those countries, and try not to let your ideological filters get in the way. Sweden is a good example of how even in a country full of people with a strong work ethic, high participation in civic duties (it's nearly universal), and trust in government institutions, socialism can work its universally destructive process. It led to some severe economic problems in the 1970's, and the way out in early 1980's was massive deregulation of industry, including cutting taxes and welfare expenditures, abolishing government monopolies, reducing regulation, floating the currency, and permitting more private alternatives in the public sector. High tax rates (on all wage earners) kept the social safety net in place, but after the collapse of the Krona in the 1990's the only fix was to rolled back government control and spending. The central bank was made independent. Austerity measures included spending ceilings for public expenditures. The fact is, Sweden has learned its lesson about runaway government spending, and balances its budget. They are not the bastian of socialism you seem to think they are, and they have a much better handle on their finances than the (broke and failing) US government.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

WTF? How is that not Marxism? So we should have free markets (which you some how think are mythical, despite the prosperity they have produced throughout history), but the collective "society" should be considered before any individual? "Social contract"? Really? "I've go mine and you've got yours" isn't good enough for you?

Perhaps you should actually read some Marx.

Also, can you give me a positive example of a "free market", one free from outside influence and regulation? The early industrial revolution comes to mind (it was close, but still lightly regulated), Somalia might be the best example, though. There might be some in early history, as well. Most markets and economies throughout history have had some form of regulation. Don't confuse "freemarketism" is "capitalism". One is a form of trade, and the other is an ideology.

Whose ideal of "societal good" should we follow? Yours? Should we set up some dictator to decide for us? Or is it majority rule? So 51% of the people can decided that everything the other 49% owns should be taken and given to someone else? If 99% of the people decide that some people should not be allowed to have food and water is that okay too? Or will some grand ruler make those decisions?

Exaggerate much? Also, exclude the middle much? Child labor laws are a perfect example of what I'm talking about. As are the various banking and finance laws that we had, and stripped away, that kept financial catastrophes like the current at bay. Consumer protection laws are another example. Laws keeping powerful corporations from intruding, and interfering, with the lives of normal people are another. Or keeping them from amassing to much power, by breaking up and regulating harmful monopolies.

Notice how I emphasized balance?

Also, I don't understand your fear of democracy, and the public choosing the public good. Yes, there are risks. But I'd rather accept those risks than just allow rich and powerful corporations to work wholly in their own good, at the potential cost to the real people out there. Would I rather have Sony rule my life, or the tyranny of the masses? Neither, we could form a type of government called a "republic", or a 'representative democracy", and then use this government to look out for our societal good, ala various "social contract" theories. It could then support such tenets as "your rights end when they inflict upon the rights of another", and apply this to corporations and businesses. Perhaps said government could also learn what practices within the market lead to large scale problem in enact laws to avoid these problems in the future.

Ah, so you are the worst kind of statist. "Capitalism" is okay, because then all capital can be controlled by a central bank and it can be doled out to only the "proper kind" of Corporations. Anyone else must petition the rulers for the privilege of participating in commerce. Yea, we're very close to that kind of crony capitalism already. And it sucks.

Could you please find, and quote, where I said any of this, or endorsed any bit of it? Reading over my previous reply I don't see any mention of this whatsoever. Please enlighten me to my true intentions.

You never heard of the Renaissance? Yes, government was around, but they totally left the merchants alone. Their only involvement was to draw taxes from the land use and hang the thieves. That's what created the middle class in the first place.

And times have changed quite a bit since then. The renaissance didn't have corporations that rivaled some governments in funds. The renissance didn't have globalism on any scale even approaching our current times. The renaissance didn't have corporations with a vast history of abuse. Int he renaissance the acts of a small group of individuals couldn't bring down global economies. In the renaissance most people lived very short, dreary, lives. In the renaissanc

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

blah, blah, blah SOMALIA blah blah

Go back to sleep. Oh, you still are.

Consumer protection laws are another example.

An example of incremental oppression, yes. While the idea may have been good intentioned when people thought they were getting rat feces with their canned ham, nowadays it's just code for "reducing consumer choice." The little people can't be trusted to not kill themselves by shear stupidity, so we must decide what products they can purchase. Oh, and what a great opportunity to decide which corporations should survive and which ones won't....

Laws keeping powerful corporations from intruding, and interfering, with the lives of normal people are another.

THAT is what the free market does, not some crony bureaucrat or paid-off politician. Do you really think they care about you? Here's a clue for you: The government is the institution with a monopoly on coercion and force. No corporation can make me buy a car, but the government can. No corporation can force me to buy overpriced health insurance that covers things I don't really want or need coverage for, but the government can, and will.

Keep thinking that government will protect you from corporations. The more power you give the government, the more powerful their favored corporations will become. Why do you think they are different entities? Do you know how many Goldman Sachs executives, for instance, are now in charge of the bureaucracies that are supposed to be regulation the financial sector?

If you really fear the power of corporations, you'll check out where they are getting their power: GOVERNMENT!

Re:I know he was trolling

[rsilvergun]

I hate to keep saying "you too", but you do know it was Regan's successor, Bush Sr, that coined the phrase 'Voodoo Economics'. That's sorta why I used it. Also, the trouble is they DON'T invest it. They have no reason to, because taxes are higher on investments than on just holding on to the money, and once money gets to a certain level it no longer represents wealth, it's POWER. e.g. the power to make society at large do anything you want. They hoard it for the power it brings, instead of investing it for the wealth. This is why countries become conservative: They're conserving the old order.

And yes, I'm over simplifying things when I say my answer is socialism. To be a little more specific: Tax the rich heavily to force them to invest or lose the money. In Brazil we saw this. The rich were holding onto prime farmland while the poor staved. The gov't forced them to sell the land at the rate they were claiming it was worth (about $1/acre I think, coulda been less), and more or less took the land and gave it to farmers so they could eat. That's the sort of policy we need if people aren't going to starve. You're loving family is a luxury. They're not just loving, they're very lucky to have never been crushed by capitalism. I don't want to rely on dumb luck as my social safety net....

Re:I know he was trolling

[phantomfive]

OK, Brazil is a completely different case. I know very little about Brazil. In America, everyone invests. No one hoards except the very poor, and they do it because they don't trust banks. Maybe you don't realize, but Bush coined the phrase voodoo economics specifically referring to Reagan's economic ideas.

And my family is not lucky to have never been crushed by capitalism. It is normal to not be crushed by capitalism. It would have been extremely unlucky to be crushed by capitalism. (Again, I can't speak for Brazil).

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

An example of incremental oppression, yes. While the idea may have been good intentioned when people thought they were getting rat feces with their canned ham, nowadays it's just code for "reducing consumer choice." The little people can't be trusted to not kill themselves by shear stupidity, so we must decide what products they can purchase. Oh, and what a great opportunity to decide which corporations should survive and which ones won't....

I agree. We should immediately get rid of OSHA and those pesky child labor laws, the freemarket didn't necessitate them, and indeed makes them redundant! Hell, we need to remove the EPA since unregulated companies have such a good track record with environmental concerns. We need to kill the FDA too, since obviously these corporations were trustworthy enough to never necessitate its creation in the first place.

Only after these vile socialist plots are removed from the honorable and honest backs of corporations may we finally live in a utopia like China, Mexico or Singapore. I want my very life to depend on the demonstrated benevolence of corporations.

Ah.... Utopia.

(in all honesty your vision is just as heinous as communism, as far as the conditions for normal people go... People should always, 100%, come before corporations or markets. Always.)

blah, blah, blah SOMALIA blah blah

Go back to sleep. Oh, you still are.

Your ability to argue like a mature, rational, adult astounds me. Your rhetorical skills have earned my respect and have elevated your point to a place of irrefutable beauty. Truly, the classical thinkers of old have many things to learn from you.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

Never met a government program you didn't like, eh? It doesn't seem to bother you that corporations get handouts and protection from the agencies you think are working for you. The FDA == Monsanto. The FDA is too busy raiding farms and food co-ops to worry about what their corporate bosses are doing. The EPA == GE (which paid no taxes at all last year on $5.1 billion in taxes. OSHA didn't protect me from a painful repetitive stress injury, and wouldn't do anything to help me get reimbursed for the hundreds of dollars in ergonomic office equipment I had to buy out of pocket. The union didn't care, so OSHA didn't either, but I'm sure if the union wanted to bring back child labor, OSHA would be perfectly okay with it.

I think your trust is misplaced.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

Never met a government program you didn't like, eh?

Odd, I don't recall ever claiming that. There are plenty of things the government does that I don't like, actually, and several programs that are far more harmful than good. I am distrustful of the government as I am of corporations, actually. But the government, at least in theory, is something I can change.

It doesn't seem to bother you that corporations get handouts and protection from the agencies you think are working for you.

"
I know this. I never claimed that anything was perfect. Things could be much better, no one will argue against that. Right now the system is broken, but I wasn't talking about what is, I was talking about what should be. Its a theory, a philosophy, often times those are future oriented and not merely observations. The government should act as a check, this doesn't mean that it currently is.

The whole system is broken. A lot of that is because of the various anti-regulation movements stripping actual regulatory power, and placing self-interested people into the position to regulate themselves.

I honestly can't think of a better solution though, and things still are better than they were 100 years ago. If I could make one sweeping change it would involve giving regulatory bodies teeth and removing their heads and replacing them with people who aren't directly involved in the industries they are regulating, or at least people with no financial stake in said industries.

And it will never be perfect. But the real question is, "is it better than the alternatives?" Nothing has ever been perfect, nothing is perfect, nothing will ever be perfect.

As long as corporations have the ethos "maximize profit no matter the costs", government will be a necessary check. No, the government shouldn't rule markets, but they should keep individuals from being exploited, and try their damnest to keep things like the last big crisis from happening.

Please stop erecting strawmen, though.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Curunir_wolf]

Okay, so maybe we do agree on the problem, but I think we are far apart on the solutions. To me, "giving regulatory bodies teeth" is simply asking for more abuse, handing over more power to a group that already has a monopoly on violence, and expecting regulation to work better by "bashing more heads". There are simply too many issues to get around if you want to "remove [those in charge] and replace them with people who aren't directly involved in the industries they are regulating." We already have rules that supposedly avoids putting people in charge with "no financial stake", and Obama tried to implement more, but then he provided waivers for many of those. Working in a job for 4-5 years dealing with powerful heads of wealthy corporations always means it's easy to make friends and connections for future career opportunities. Allowing people to regulate industries that they know nothing about can create all kinds of unintended consequences and is bound to do more harm than good.

What it boils down to, for me, is that you have to ask who is being served - the producers or the consumers? Top-down central planning and regulation will always end up focused on producers, which means that the more control you exert, the more businesses will necessarily need to become involved in the regulatory process to survive. In that scenario, the biggest players get the most access, the best lobbyists, the most persuasive argument, and they win out over their smaller competitors. As various issues lead to a need for another regulation, another control, greater authority, businesses focus more on getting the most favorable regulation instead of being the best at meeting consumer needs.

The free market is the best system for working those things out. It puts consumers in charge instead of producers. If a company can't provide what consumers want, they should fail, and if another business can do it better and cheaper, they should succeed. Why is there still a Record Industry that fails to provide what consumers want? Because the government has expanded what was once a 14-year monopoly for works into one that is practically forever, and use of justice department resources to enforce it. Recent FDA rules favor Big Ag over everyone else. What started as an idea for universal health care ended up as nothing but a racket that favors insurance corporations.

I'm not arguing for some total anarchistic "freemarket" theory that has never existed, only that we already have so much regulation that we are micro-managing industries, and it is picking winners and losers and suppressing the ability of entrepreneurs to try new ideas without being crushed by the incumbents.

None of this will end well. All this stuff is sold as "good for society", while trampling any consideration of the individual - it's a road to tyranny.

Re:I know he was trolling

[Omestes]

Allowing people to regulate industries that they know nothing about can create all kinds of unintended consequences and is bound to do more harm than good.

I agree with this. Regulators should have experience within the field, but shouldn't have an active financial stake in it. This is the rule, but it is so ignored as to be pretty much non-existent.

Really the system and rules we currently have would work very well if we actually wanted them to work well. I'm not that much in favor of expanding power, but in using the power we already have wisely.

What it boils down to, for me, is that you have to ask who is being served - the producers or the consumers?

Again, agreed 100%. I don't believe a purely governmental solution would ever work, to much waste, too much chance for corruption and "rights erosion", or mission creep. The government is too likely to think it "knows better" and act on this impulse. I think we all agree on this.

I also think that the (mostly) free market can, often, do a decent job. And if humans were perfect, it would be a perfect system. I also distrust human nature as much as I distrust corporations or government, though.

The problem I have is that I distrust corporate self-regulation as much as I distrust the government.

The gist, I don't trust any body to keep the markets working for the common good. And before you attack that phrase, I mean it in the sense of an aggregate of individuals and not some giant communal collective. When I say "society" I mean US, the cumulative rights of every enrighted individual within the larger society.

The free market is the best system for working those things out. It puts consumers in charge instead of producers. If a company can't provide what consumers want, they should fail, and if another business can do it better and cheaper, they should succeed. Why is there still a Record Industry that fails to provide what consumers want? Because the government has expanded what was once a 14-year monopoly for works into one that is practically forever, and use of justice department resources to enforce it. Recent FDA rules favor Big Ag over everyone else. What started as an idea for universal health care ended up as nothing but a racket that favors insurance corporations.

In the modern economy this becomes a problem. I can't stop buying Sony products (for example) without a huge amount of research, and there will be certain niches that I would be completely barred from buying. Sony, and other giant multi-nationals, have millions of tentacles, subsidiaries, etc... You can't ever avoid them all.

Information is another problem. If information was free-flowing consumers could make rational, informed choices. But corporations have the power to withhold this information, and thus restrict the ability to make informed choices. This is made worse by the media being largely controlled by giant corporations who generally hold hundreds of other interests. There is a massive power-imbalance between corporations and us little people.

Copyright... This is another example of letting the foxes run the henhouse.

I'm not arguing for some total anarchistic "freemarket" theory that has never existed, only that we already have so much regulation that we are micro-managing industries, and it is picking winners and losers and suppressing the ability of entrepreneurs to try new ideas without being crushed by the incumbents.

Sorry, then, for mentally turning you into a anarcho-capitalist, then. I agree with your sentiment. In a lot of areas the government has overstepped. My favorite is farm subsidies, and the amount of harm they actually cause in the bigger picture, while benefiting farmers in the short term, little picture.

The market should be allowed to function as autonomously as possible. I won't argue against that. I think we just disagree on what should be done when

Marginal pricing is good economics.

[imcdowell]

Having a bandwidth cap per se is not a bad thing from a societal perspective; if there really is a marginal cost to carrying a GB of data you'll only get the socially optimal result if you price bandwidth at that marginal cost. From that perspective the Netflix degradation referenced in the article could be a good thing; if individuals value the higher video quality less than the price of transmitting it, the right outcome for society is for them to see lower quality video at lower cost.

Of course, the marginal price for a GB of data these days is near zero -- (one site pegged it at $.03). AT&T has a fine idea, they're just pricing it 150x too high. The fact that they're able to do so screams market failure/monopoly to me.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Ichijo]

Of course, the marginal price for a GB of data these days is near zero -- (one site pegged it at $.03). AT&T has a fine idea, they're just pricing it 150x too high. The fact that they're able to do so screams market failure/monopoly to me.

When your use of bandwidth deprives your neighbor of his use of bandwidth at the same time, you've imposed an external cost on your neighbor. Flat rate bandwidth caps are a clumsy way of making you pay for this type of market failure known as a "negative externality".

A better solution is time-of-use pricing/bandwidth caps, because when you use your bandwidth when nobody else is, you aren't imposing any cost on anyone, other than the $.03 wholesale cost per GB of bandwidth that you mentioned.

So if you're really concerned about market failures, you would be in favor of time-of-use pricing/bandwidth caps.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[ritcereal]

The claim that your denying your neighbor from bandwidth is complete FUD. If you are provided a service (lets say 10 mb down / 5 mb up) and you consume said service and it degrades your neighbor's service, is that YOUR fault? No. It is entirely your service providers fault for providing service in such a way that a single customer affects another customer.

In the real world, you alone do not deprive bandwidth from another user (even in cable with shared medium environments it is rare, and if it does happen it is STILL the ISP's fault not the customers).

With that said, the real issue is that the ISPs don't want to pony up and order additional capacity to their providers, peers, or even within their own network. They've all increased subscriber counts, data rates, and expected to spend little to nothing on improving the network? That's crap. ISP's are just trying to convince us that we are the cause of congestion because we watch too much You Tube and Netfix while they neglect maintaining and improving the network. It is ok to oversell, every business does it, but if you neglect your own service to the point that customers service is being denied because you refused to invest in your own network, how could this be the consumers fault?

Clearly the internet market in the United States is flawed. It's ok, the free market is clearly worse than the guaranteed monopolies we have with our telecoms.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[SilentChasm]

Uh.. AT&T is using DSL, which doesn't affect your neighbor's last mile like cable. Unless you're talking about the bandwidth at AT&T's end which should be more than enough if they haven't screwed things up.

I can kind of understand the caps on cable but some kind of protocol neutral throttling, not heavy like they currently do to bittorrent, just minor amounts like dropping from 10Mbps to 5 when the entire network is loaded would be less bad in my opinion. You're right that using bandwidth when no one else has need for it shouldn't cost extra.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[FSWKU]

It all boils down to greed. First, they pocket the money given to them for building out their infrastructure. Now, they see Netflix/Hulu/etc becoming more popular than their overpriced VOD services.

My guess is they ultimately want to start raising their overage fees. The reasoning (internally, of course) will be something along the lines of, "Fine...you want to shrink our profits by choosing the better & cheaper streaming alternatives? Well now you're going to be paying us more in overages than you save by not giving us your money in the first place!"

Now in public, they will try to spin this as a win for "fairness" and being able to provide "quality services that customers demand" or some other such bullshit...

And this is why I'd love to see more companies providing nothing but a connection to the internet. No phone companies, no cable companies, no other vested interests trying to stifle what you do on your connection because it competes with the other offerings they want to shove down your throat.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[imcdowell]

Good points, I wholly agree that bandwidth caps and time-of-use pricing are a good thing if done right. There's still the problem that under most systems the service provider will likely be the entity collecting the congestion tariff. This might set up an incentive for them not to upgrade capacity so that they're able to collect "congestion" rents more often.

So yes to bandwidth caps (as part of a two-part tariff structure), yes to pricing at wholesale cost of bandwidth plus some epsilon, and yes to congestion pricing, with the caveat that the premiums paid during congested periods should be collected by someone other than the ISP - say, a federal regulator that uses the money to monitor/curb their monopolistic behavior. ISPs would still have an incentive to invest in extra capacity as that's the only way they get to sell more bandwidth/make more money.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Ichijo]

If you are provided a service (lets say 10 mb down / 5 mb up) and you consume said service and it degrades your neighbor's service, is that YOUR fault? No. It is entirely your service providers fault for providing service in such a way that a single customer affects another customer.

No, it's your own fault for not paying for business-class service that guarantees 10 down and 5 up.

With that said, the real issue is that the ISPs don't want to pony up and order additional capacity to their providers, peers, or even within their own network.

Because it would be very expensive, and force ALL customers to pay for the upgrades. Why not instead give your customers an opportunity to save themselves money?

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Ichijo]

I can kind of understand the caps on cable...

If cable has caps, then DSL providers would be throwing money away by not also instituting caps of their own, needed or not. Stuff is priced by the market, not by what it costs the business to provide the service. If business A raises prices, then B will follow. If a business can't afford to provide the service based on current market rates, then they won't provide the service at all--they can't simply raise prices above the market and expect to make a profit.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[sjames]

They must be the cheapest bastards in the world. Their cost to deliver service is the loop cost (the cost to install and maintain the actual wires in the ground) plus the upstream bandwidth which will be at the very worst $4/Mbps. Of course, that price is for small quantities while they are buying in huge quantities, so it will actually be a lot lower.

The reason DSL and cable operators are so anxious to kill community ISP projects in court is that they know they are raking in huge (and unearned) profits on their current services and they don;'t want some upstart government coming in and showing that they could charge less than half of what they do now for much better uncapped service and still make a fair profit.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[sjames]

The proper solution to the problem is fair queuing. Each customer is given a non-oversubscribed committed rate. Then set each queue to allow sharing unused bandwidth and let them all burst within that shared pool on an equal basis. That way, no matter what you do, you'll not leave your neighbors unable to use the net.

They want to avoid that proper and fair solution because it would then be apparent just how big their marketing lies really are. They do NOT want to admit that, in fact, their blazing fast internet allocates less than half a Mbps/customer.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[sysrammer]

A different analogy: You rent me a car for $x a day. It has a full gas tank. When I use up the gas, I foot the bill.

I certainly might rather do that than pay $x+$y amount, without choice, to carry all the slackers.

Hard to say, of course, without knowing x & y. Both types of "rentals" are used in the economy, and both work.

sr

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Darinbob]

The problem is the last mile stuff. If you're a cable user you share that wire with all your neighbors. If you're wireless you share that band with your neighbors. You only get your own wire on DSL, and apparently that's the slowest option.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[blahplusplus]

"The fact that they're able to do so screams market failure/monopoly to me."

Definitely evidence of information asymmetry (in this case the general publics ignorance).

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[dachshund]

My guess is they ultimately want to start raising their overage fees.

I actually think they don't want to raise the overage fees. With streaming as popular as it is, this would mean dramatic overages for a huge swath of their customer base, which would ultimately be exactly same as simply raising their base rate and offering an 'email/web only' plan for grandma.

In other words, it's easier for them to just raise their base prices and have done with it.

I suspect that the real goal is to force players like Netflix to pony up money in order to get behind the headend an thus (magically) be exempted from the cap. Then they can charge people twice for their bandwidth --- without consumers actually realizing this.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Bengie]

High Max Speed, Reliable Max Speed, Cheap

Pick two.

The average user picks High Max Speed, and also doesn't want to pay a lot. They tend to get an unreliable Max Speed.

Although, I can't consider sub 50mb a "high" speed with modern routing equipment. 60mb on a 100mb line during peak hours is one thing, 3mb on a 10mb line is another.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[swalve]

Start your own fucking ISP then.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[swalve]

That's silly FUD. Coax has ~80 channels it can use, and each of those channels can carry 38mbps. That's 3040mbps, and that's just to get to the little node box where the network turns to fiber. Modern cable networks are nothing like they used to be. Mathematically, if they lay out the fiber right, coax has enough bandwidth to provide infinite television channels (or the streaming equivalent) to the subscriber.

Re:Marginal pricing is good economics.

[Darinbob]

Only if you have a modern cable network. Many houses in the US still have the same wires they laid in the 80s I think.

Re:I'll help it "WIN" a bit then, vs. this... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR

Re:Alternatives?

[mcgrew]

I don't think the speeds are that high; I have 6 mbps for $25, 3 mbps is $20. And the TOS forbids leaving your router open. This kind of annoys me, as I latch on to open hotspots and would like to leave one open for others.

My only other choice is Comcast, but I don't know what speed they deliver. Movies stream fine, so the 6 mbps is working for me.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[Osgeld]

oh thank you, I have never thought of that before, lets see here in my area there is

#1) ATT
#2) Comcast

well fuck me, that showed them

If only it didn't suck!

[Whip]

The caps wouldn't be that bad if the service didn't *utterly* suck.

The gateway they give you is the only thing that works with the service (you can't use your own hardware, or at least nobody has found a way to). It won't do any kind of bridge mode. It won't talk to more than one IP per MAC address, so you can't put a router behind it (unless that router is doing NAT for *everything*). It randomly drops connections, especially long lived ones -- I can't make local backups of my server in a remote datacenter anymore, because the connection will almost never stay alive long enough to transfer the whole ~400MB. Sometimes it starts blocking random incoming connections, even to static, un-natted, unfirewalled addresses -- one day I can't get to my webserver from the outside world for a few hours... the next I can't ssh into my home server ("unknown inbound session stopped" ... of course it's unknown, it's the first packet of a new connection, you piece of garbage). It supports logging to syslog, but outputs a constant stream of useless messages so thick that it's almost useless.

Recently I've started to notice having periodic problems downloading content (like the slashdot style sheet!) from akamai-based sites, which a little bit of goggling shows to be an ongoing U-Verse problem since 2008.

The support sucks massively. If you call with basically any problem beyond "my internet is down" they will forward you on to their "advanced" support department, who has a fee of $39 (might be $29... don't remember)... which they'll charge you even if all they do is tell you that they can't help you and you need to call regular support.

Netflix, on my 24Mbit downlink, varies from "great quality" to "OMG you can barely do SD quality"... many other people report this as well. Some days the performance is great, some days the performance is just absolutely miserable. I'd try to see if there was some common network path causing problems, but they basically disable traceroute for all of their internal nodes (I'm guessing they just stop them from sending TTL exceeded datagrams completely).

You can't switch back to ADSL -- they wouldn't even let me get U-Verse service unless they disconnected my ADSL at the same time. But it is "no longer available" so now I'm stuck with this garbage.

I'd gladly take a usage cap if it meant any of this crap would get better. I'm somehow doubting it, since not a bit of it seems like it's related to network saturation... just lousy service. And my only other choice in this area (AFAIK) is Comcast, who also has caps, along with their own set of problems...

I'd say "welcome back to the 90s" ... but my network worked a lot better back then. So I guess... welcome to the future!

Re:If only it didn't suck!

[trparky]

If you need help beyond what the jokers on the phone can do, send an email to uversecare@att.com along with your account number, the reason why you are emailing them, phone number, and a good time to call you. The mail address goes to their Social Support Team that can actually help you.

I don't work for AT&T nor do I have their service. I used to have their service before I switched to Time Warner Cable so I still know some of the inside hidden support options that can help people when no one else can.

Re:If only it didn't suck!

[ScrewMaster]

I'd say "welcome back to the 90s" ... but my network worked a lot better back then. So I guess... welcome to the future!

My first high-speed connection (after I got through with dial-up) was a 4 mbit/sec symmetric service from @Home. Fast, it worked, and I had it during the heyday of Napster. That 4 meg backchannel was great: I'm on U-Verse now and I get at best 2 mbit/sec up. Too bad that @Home's management was so bad (in fact, it changed constantly) because they really had an awesome service for the time (late nineties.)

Re:If only it didn't suck!

[adolf]

The gateway they give you is the only thing that works with the service (you can't use your own hardware, or at least nobody has found a way to). It won't do any kind of bridge mode. It won't talk to more than one IP per MAC address, so you can't put a router behind it (unless that router is doing NAT for *everything*).

I'm a U-Verse subscriber, and yes, you do have to use their gateway. Boo-hoo, waah -- I must say that my ATT-supplied 2wire box is about the most stable chunk of networking gear I've ever used.

I do wish it had a proper bridge mode, but alas, it doesn't...but this is reasonable, in that the gateway itself also provides VoIP and some IPTV multicast magic -- all behind one address. My experience with the "DMZ Plus" feature is that it works fine, and is perfectly reliable with a WRT54 running Tomato USB. (Yes, IPV6 would be a better answer to the problem, but that's a different discussion.)

It randomly drops connections, especially long lived ones -- I can't make local backups of my server in a remote datacenter anymore, because the connection will almost never stay alive long enough to transfer the whole ~400MB. Sometimes it starts blocking random incoming connections, even to static, un-natted, unfirewalled addresses -- one day I can't get to my webserver from the outside world for a few hours... the next I can't ssh into my home server ("unknown inbound session stopped" ... of course it's unknown, it's the first packet of a new connection, you piece of garbage). It supports logging to syslog, but outputs a constant stream of useless messages so thick that it's almost useless.

I had an issue once that I thought was related to the gateway dropping connections, but that wasn't it at all. It was me: I'd done a piss-poor job configuring my own router, and it was flaky all by itself.

I frequently beat the snot out of my connection with torrents and Netflix. I download DVD ISO images with simple HTTP. I backup my Droid with Dropbox. I run my own servers. I have port 25 open. Ever since I fixed my own gear, it hasn't been a problem. I have SSH sessions open to boxes at work which last for weeks.

I don't look at the logging much, because it -is- very verbose, and I just don't have any problems that can be solved with it. But I'd rather it be too verbose than too concise: At least with the too-verbose condition, I can grep what I need.

The support sucks massively. If you call with basically any problem beyond "my internet is down" they will forward you on to their "advanced" support department, who has a fee of $39 (might be $29... don't remember)... which they'll charge you even if all they do is tell you that they can't help you and you need to call regular support.

Perhaps you're just no good at navigating a support structure. I've got a direct-dial number for ATT that lands me with American folks who have a clue, and who are able to actually understand and correct issues on the network. I actually had this conversation with them:

Me: My connection is up and the levels are good, but it won't grab an IP address.
Them: Strange. Oh. It looks like our radius server is down for that area.
Me: Ah, ok. That makes sense.
Them: To be honest, I have no idea when it will be fixed, but we're working on it. Do you want me to give you a call when it's back online?
Me: Sure!

No reboots, no cable-swapping, no nothing. Just a short and straight-forward conversation between two folks that have their wits about them.

It seems reasonable to charge folks to troubleshoot PC problems, though. I know that I would. A flat rate of $39 sounds cheap for tech support. But if you got shuffled into that category somehow for a problem on their end, then that should never have happened.

Never have I been charged for support, at all. It's never even been mentioned. (And I used to call, a LOT, because of s

Re:If only it didn't suck!

[adolf]

I missed a /blockquote in there somewhere, but meh.

I'd also like to add a complaint of my own: AT&T's DNS servers are complete shit. They are the slowest part of my web-browsing experience. They perform DNS lookups so slowly that it was sometimes easier for me to remember IP addresses instead, before I looked into something different.

It made me want to run a local copy of BIND, and just do my own DNS.

Instead, I switched to Google's DNS on a whim some time ago, and things have been fine.

Re:What the U.S. and world needs

[Osgeld]

yea and where the hell are you going to go, comcast has caps, cellphones have caps (if you read your contract) so where is this great exodus going to take us, 20 years back passing messages over fidonet on a 2400baud?

They should remember ...

[BlackBloq]

I pay a lot for my extreme account. If I get capped or torrents blocked I'll just dump my service. While I'm at, it I'll dump my cable service and save like 2k a year at least. With that cash I can buy whatever I wanted to download. Lately no EZTV streams will work for me. Lame cuz it's like PVR'ing because I pay for extended cable service I just never really use it (wifey does). Maybe I will get a PVR and dump internet down to light. Either way the cable company is loosing money from me.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[magamiako1]

FUCK YEAH! FREE MARKET WINS OUT AGAIN!

YOU TOTALLY HAVE A CHOICE!

But you forgot:

#3) No internet at all

The amusing thing is that the free market libertarians argue very much like religious people (usually they're one in the same), in that the choices religious people present to you are:

#1) Bask in God's glory and accept Jesus Christ into your heart and be saved.
#2) BURN IN THE FIERY PITS OF HELL AND BE TORTURED FOR ALL ETERNITY

Doesn't sound like much of a choice to me, but for them, it is.

Back to the market for a second, the obvious excuse is "Well, if you feel that you cannot do without the service, that means having the service is worth whatever they're willing to charge and whatever you're willing to pay before you'll do without."

But me, I prefer to live in a more modern society, with an elected government body that represent the people. And I want laws that I know are good for *everyone*, not just for a *select few*.

A business opportunity

[DigiShaman]

Where some see a problem, I see a business opportunity. Why not great a deal where by the content providers (Netflix, Hulu..etc) offer to put a cached server in the headend of ATT and Comcasts local networks. It would reduce bandwidth between pairing agreements and save everyone money. Not only that, with sharing of the profits, networks can use the funds to increase data capacity to match the exponential growth in data usage.

Re:A business opportunity

[joocemann]

Lol.... yeah.... fixing simple problems with complex answers is totally a good idea.... LOL. NOT!

Re:A business opportunity

[MoonBuggy]

In an ideal world, perhaps that'd work. As it stands, it's exactly the kind of net-neutrality destroying idea that so many geeks are worried about: it'd give the ISPs an incentive to create ever more onerous (and artificial) transfer caps, to encourage more content providers to pay for hosting on their cache servers. It would disincentivise costly upgrades to the backbone network (since many of the big names that customers demand are already on the caching network), further marginalising the wider internet by reducing the speed available within those strict transfer limits. Eventually, as even the last mile network becomes saturated, you might even end up with secondary transfer caps being introduced on data from the cache servers.

Looking at the past actions of the ISPs, can you honestly say that kind of behaviour is beyond them?

Re:A business opportunity

[nurb432]

You are talking about tiered internet and the blackmailing content providers.

Unless you were just being sarcastic?

Re:A business opportunity

[hedwards]

I take it you've never heard of Akamai, but beside that, it doesn't really help, as the toll is on the last mile, meaning that no matter where the content is being cached, at some point it has to go over that last mile, and that's what's being capped here.

As much as I've grown to despise Qwest over the years for being poor quality, slow and expensive, they don't have any caps at all on their service. The only limitation is what the pipe can handle at full capacity through the entire month.

Re:A business opportunity

[sehgalanuj]

It would appear that content centric networking (CCN) can solve this problem. http://mags.acm.org/queue/200901/?pg=8#pg8

Re:A business opportunity

[JerryLindenburg]

Well ya know, you have to hand it to you.
At least they're honest about the fact that they're capping, and what the constraints are.

Clear on the other hand uses capping, won't tell you what the constraints are, and then they put you through to an indian who tells you that the walls in your house are the problem, or that the modem they just sold you as an "indoor" modem is actually an "outdoor" modem. Either that, or they might have you unplug it, and put the modem on the side of the house nearest to the highway. Everyone knows that cars make internets faster, right?

I suppose if I had to choose one poorly built network infrastructure over the other, I would probably go with at&t.

Dealing with Clear is pure hell.

Shut up already!

[PhreakOfTime]

Nothing bothers me more than hearing this whining. blah blah blah... I want things for free... blah blah blah...

If thats what you want, then GO GET IT.

Want to hear a dirty secret? My ATT internet will NOT be capped starting monday. Why not? Because I decided it would be a better idea to PAY FOR a business account. Those are not capped at ATT, or Comcast.

Yes, it is more expensive than 'residential' service, but it also meets my needs, has better reliability, etc. My Uverse biz acct is also cheaper(and about 10X faster) than the old business DSL I switched from.

Bottom line, you get what you pay for. So don't be surprised when your service gets lumped in with the lowest common denominator. Because, that's exactly what you are.

Get over yourself.

Re:Shut up already!

[inode_buddha]

Let's see you just *try* getting business-class service in an area that's zoned "residential" in NY. If it wasn't for that, I actually would have a business class. But OTOH, time-warner cable is already giving me up to 1.5 MBPS down and 512K up, uncapped, which is plenty for me.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[VGPowerlord]

You have Comcast? My choices are:
#1) AT&T
#2) Broadstripe (one of the worst rated ISPs on Broadband Reports)

I currently have Broadstripe and am seriously considering switch to AT&T because Broadstripe seems to think 150+ms ping times that wildly fluctuate up and down following their last upstream provider change is perfectly normal. They also consider random 15 second upstream dropouts to be perfectly normal. Did I mention I called techs out twice to fix this issue?

Call it what it is

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Rationing. That is what a monopoly does when it can't/won't keep up with demand. The good news is, uh, well, there isn't any good news.

Re:What about advertising

[jmccue]

That is my concern, I do not come close to 250g a month, but seems people will start paying to see ads in the near future. Also, once limits are imposed, they seem to slowly shrink over the years. Easy enough to block some ads but may end up in a arms race similar to email and spam :( I would want a refund for any ads eating bandwidth and I will call the ISP if I ever start approaching the limit

New ISPs

[Palmsie]

Could anyone inform the other readers (and myself) about perhaps what kinds of things it would take to start up new ISPs? I mean, if we hate AT&T and Verizon so much and it only seems that Google is here pushing the Internet envelop, why aren't more entrepreneurs starting ISPs (other than it is probably expensive, just like any other business startup)?

Re:New ISPs

[sjames]

Because you can't even start the process until you grease a few thousand palms to get right-of-way. If you get past that one, AT&T will sue to stop you claiming they have an exclusive. It doesn't matter that they haven't a legal leg to stand on, they have enough lawyers to keep you in court until your investors pull out.

Cable only managed to barge into the market because they already had right of way for their coax to deliver television. They slipped in with internet service before the baby bells knew what hit them but rest assured, neither phone nor cable company will make that mistake again.

On AT&T's man in the White House

[dkleinsc]

The big lie of omission here is that AT&T doesn't just have an executive in the White House, they've been giving out bribes^Hcampaign contributions to about 75-80% of Congress as well as the president and a lot of other movers and shakers. That's what makes them immune to any sort of government interference. Their efforts completely bipartisan, because AT&T's only ideology is to make more money for AT&T.

Measuring at the DSLAM

[Xian97]

The way AT&T is measuring it also adds in the protocol overhead, which can be 10% or more. They measure it at the DSLAM, not the customer modem. For instance they show me uploading 10 GB and downloading 97 GB this month. The only uploads I have did for the entire month is some emails that might contain a picture or two, nothing with a large file attachment and I do not use any P2P software that would be uploading. The previous month the overhead that they measured was enough to put me over their 150 GB limit for DSL.

They need to improve their online usage tool too. It is only updated weekly until you go over their limit so you really don't have a precise way to measure daily usage, other than my router which doesn't match what they say I use.

Metered service, finally.

[John Hasler]

Good.

Re:Metered service, finally.

[haruchai]

If you had an unlimited plan or hadn't hit your cap, you could have typed a complete sentence. :-D

Switch to Sonic.net

[Animats]

If you're in Northern California, you have the option of switching to Sonic.net. Sonic is an independent ISP which has grandfathered rights to lease AT&T DSL lines at favorable rates. They back-haul your DSL link to Santa Rosa, CA, and then connect to the Internet via Cable and Wireless.They have no usage cap and no intention of adding one. Sonic has been slightly more expensive than AT&T until recently. But if you're faced with AT&T's bandwidth cap, they can now be cheaper.

Sonic just sells a data pipe. They don't sell any content over their DSL lines, so they have no incentive to force you into some "entertainment package". (They do resell DirectTV, but that's via a satellite dish and is mostly a sideline for their rural customers.

There's no "packet inspection" nonsense with Sonic. No caching. No funny DNS rerouting. No custom browser. They just pipe through the bits you send and receive. You pay for bandwidth (and it's not "up to 6 mbps", it's "3.0mbsp to 6.0 mbps download, 512kbps to 768kbps upload."). My own line at in that tier measures at about 4.1mbps.

They also have 20mbps and 40mbps services, but they're available only in limited areas.

Sonic also has better policies than AT&T. "Sonic.net, Inc. functions as a common carrier and does not censor." They don't require arbitration; you can go to Small Claims Court if you have to.

Re:Switch to Sonic.net

[haruchai]

Sonic.net sounds like a cool company - and they've been chosen as a Google partner for the FTTH experiment

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20101213/BUSINESS/12131005?p=all&tc=pgall

Re:Switch to Sonic.net

[John Newman]

I just switched to Sonic from AT&T DSL when we moved last week. I've fallen in love with Sonic and their Fusion service. This is where they use their own equipment at central offices and offer as much speed as you can get, up to 20Mbps, for a flat $40/mo. Highly recommended.

I didn't particularly have a problem with AT&T before, but when we decided to move less than a mile across the city I was told:
1. I couldn't keep my phone number
2. I had to buy a new DSL modem, even though mine was AT&T recommended and less than 6 months old
3. I had to switch to U-Verse, which meant paying more for less download speed

I understand the technical rationale behind some of this (we'd be served by a different central office that was exclusively U-Verse, which uses a different flavor of DSL, etc.) but it was a lot of shit to swallow in one gulp. And then I heard about the upcoming caps, too. We watch a lot of Netflix and would probably hit it regularly.

Sonic told me:
1. Sure, I can keep my old phone number
2. I can use my current modem
3. I'll get speeds at least as good as before for the same money
4. No speed limits (you get whatever your line can handle), no bandwidth caps
5. Free POTS phone service, just tossed in there

And it's been a pure pleasure to deal with them. Local human beings on tech support, who know what they're talking about, 7 days a week, never more than a minute on hold.

I love it. I wish the local infrastructure were better, so I could get better than 3.5/1 in the middle of San Francisco, but I love everything about Sonic so far. This is what telecom service is supposed to be like.

Re:Switch to Sonic.net

[no1nose]

Those of us in Northern Nevada have access to: http://www.greatbasin.com/index.php?click=sales&click_sub=DSL

Re:Switch to Sonic.net

[phantomfive]

Good tip, thanks, I'm checking them out.

Re:Switch to Sonic.net

[OFnow]

I'm less than 15 miles from the San Franciso border in an 'affluent' suburb. A DSL line to my house peaks at perhaps 30 Kbits/sec (18000 feet to telco building). So, uh, no, sonic.net is not an option unless you live really close to a telco building.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[CrimsonAvenger]

FUCK YEAH! FREE MARKET WINS OUT AGAIN!

Except, of course, that this isn't a sign of the free market in action.

Local monopolies for Telco and Cable are government imposed, not free market entities.

For that matter, all the corporate immunities that annoy so many people are also government imposed.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[characterZer0]

You have choices? My choices are:
#1) Time Warner

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[hsmith]

You rally against the free market - but you fail to realize these are government create and granted monopolies. Congrats on your failure of logic.

Re:LOL, the West is losing BAD!

[clang_jangle]

Here where I live the choices are AT&T DSL, comcast's "xfinity", dial-up, or satellite. AT&T actually does fine with their service in this area for a consumer-grade line, it's the billing dept that makes one think about sending a bomb in the mail. A cap of any size is disappointing, but in practice not many people will use more than 150GB /month. Yet.

They Already Tried This

[The O Rly Factor]

Although I would call it more "extortion" than a "business opportunity"

Basically, Comcast said to Netflix, "We're gonna shake you down to allow you to put cache servers in our datacenters. If you don't like it, then we're just gonna throttle and DPI the shit out of you."

Europe vs. US

[Palal]

After deregulation, In all EU countries there is an "infrastructure manager" (IM) They are responsible for maintaining and expanding the telecom infrastructure. They charge ISPs for using their infrastructure. The ISPs buy this capacity and resell to individual consumers.

Why does this work? The IM is ONLY responsible for infrastructure and it's in their interest to fulfill the market need for more capacity if such a demand exists. Thus it's in their interest to EXPAND coverage and infrastructure because that's how they make money. They're a regulated monopoly.

In the US...

The monopolies (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon) are responsible for both expanding infrastructure AND selling access to end-users. This means that it's in their interest to sell as much end-user service as they can, using the least amount of investment possible. It's not in their interest to expand capacity, unless someone kicks them in the ass because of a lack of capacity.

NB. In the EU, the IM can be an old state telecom that has been privatized. Sometimes a part of the company is also an ISP, but the accounting books must be separated. This type of deregulation works a lot better in some countries than others. The system is not perfect, but IMO it's a lot better than the one in the US.

I HATE TO SOUND LIKE AD

[Vitriol Angst]

But I use Clear.com -- and I've got 4G mobile and a home WiMax for ~$60 a month. If you just want home -- that's about $40 depending on deal.
You can get 7 mps and 1mps up -- and it has no bandwidth caps (except on the Mobile).

I got rid of AT&T/Bellsouth a while ago and it is cheaper.

I'm also using MagicJack -- which now has a software-only option (rather than using the usb jack) - but I'm not a fan of requiring people to press a series of numbers after using the star key (*).

>> On the downside, I've got T-Mobile for cell phone. And AT&T is going to gobble them up because our government works for corporate profits and nothing else these days.

If anyone knows a way to hack a 4G usb device and pair it with an iPad or iTouch -- let me know. It would be great to give AT&T the shaft.

>> But the ONLY way to solve this problem right now, is to move away from companies with bandwidth caps in droves. The NONSENSE that it costs them money is absurd -- AT&T and other companies got the internet backbone for FREE from the government. Does a bit switch when the power is on cost MORE or less? Their U-Verse is based upon cobbled together T-1 lines (like DSL is cobbling together normal land-lines). So approximately 4 U-verse lines per T-1 (because they don't have dedicated bandwidth) -- so U-Verse CANNOT provide their rated speed all the time. It's a cost-saving measure because they have all this old crap sitting around -- RATHER than investing and going all fiber.

The OTHER reason for bandwidth caps, beyond NOT INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE, is that all of them want to become content providers. So you get content from U-Verse, no bandwidth cap. You get it from NetFlix -- add in the cap.

I'm sure most people know this -- but I just want to create a complete document of my annoyance at this anti-competitie nonsense that passes for "free market."

Re:I HATE TO SOUND LIKE AD

[Musicologynut]

I'm glad someone is happy with Clear... my connection through them sucks and the company as a whole can just go gently caress itself.

Be considerate and concise

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> if reading is "too much '4U'"?

1) Notice how his "TL;DR" is a criticism of your article in the slashdot context. It is not in any way a nuanced criticism, but he found it too long for what he comes to slashdot for.

Your criticism, however, is to insult him. It makes you look worse and him look better, especially when dealing with an audience of professional and largely courteous people.

> why don't you TRY to technically disprove ANY of the 20 points I put up then, instead of doing the "TRUE ANONYMOUS COWARD" mod-down & run?

2) Why should he? Maybe he's busy.

3) You could have made your point much more simply, and it would have been more persuasive. "Using a good custom hosts file saves a large amount of bandwidth and reduces vulnerability to malware. This isn't perfect but helps in a lot of situations." You have a lot of subsidiary points, but they are not especially relevant to a slashdot audience, which already understands what a hosts file does and how it works.

4) [Omitted.]

Re:Crappy

[DarthBart]

Then they'll be happy to sell you the "twice as expensive per month" business class so you can still connect to "the cloud".

Can anyone confirm this for UVerse?

[ruiner13]

Ok, I called my UVerse representative to express my displeasure with a 250GB cap being implemented that I did not agree to. He reassured me the cap was only for DSL users, not UVerse users. I cannot find anything in my TOS about a cap, nor anything on their website that mentions a cap for UVerse, only DSL users. The rep said he has UVerse internet too, and he also would not be happy with a cap, but swears such a thing has not been implemented or will be implemented. So, can someone show some proof that doesn't come from a blog that this actually applies to UVerse customers? I'd like something on AT&T's site, if possible...

Re:Can anyone confirm this for UVerse?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

It was in the letter they sent out. You'll have to wait till monday to see it on AT$T's site, they haven't updated it to the new terms of service yet (no mention of a 100 gig cap either).

Last update was in June of 2009 - adding link here so it can be found quickly Monday.

http://www.att.com/u-verse/att-terms-of-service.jsp

Re:Can anyone confirm this for UVerse?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, can someone show some proof that doesn't come from a blog that this actually applies to UVerse customers? I'd like something on AT&T's site, if possible...

Here you go...

Go to AT&T Broadband Usage Policy, go to the Data Calculator page, click the "AT&T High Speed Internet Data Calculator" (will popup a window), take a look at the choices in "Select Your Service" dropbox (upper right corner of popup window). That shows "AT&T High Speed Internet 150GB" and "U-verse High Speed Internet 250GB" as selections.

I'd say that is a fairly authoritative source for the 250 GB cap.

you think you understand something, you don't

[YesIAmAScript]

You don't understand how the politics break in the US.

In general, it is the old people who have the money who are complaining about taxes, government regulation and state how the free market will fix everything.

But it's the young people who watch a lot of video over the internet (specifically torrent a lot) and they aren't anti government-regulation in general. Mostly because they wouldn't mind voting some older people's money into their pockets, which is (to circle back) what the old people are worried about in the first place.

So you've created a false dichotomy. Those who are up in arms about caps likely would not complain if the government stepped in.

Re:you think you understand something, you don't

[NeutronCowboy]

In general, it is the old people who have the money who are complaining about taxes, government regulation and state how the free market will fix everything.

There's also a very significant proportion of students and middle-aged business people who think Ayn Rand is better than Jesus. Small Government is a religious tenet right now, with representation all across the population. Just look at who votes for Paul Father & Son: it's a nice niche of middle-class Americans who believe that their success is 100% their doing. In that, they're not that different from the protestants of old who came over by boat.

You're right that those who are up in arms about caps would not complain about government intervention - because those who understand how bad caps are in the current system also understand that the free market cannot fix the current situation. But that doesn't mean that cries of "Government Intervention!" won't be a nice distraction from the problem.

Re:you think you understand something, you don't

[gmhowell]

He understands perfectly; he's just a troll.

Re:you think you understand something, you don't

[timeOday]

Mostly because they wouldn't mind voting some older people's money into their pockets, which is (to circle back) what the old people are worried about in the first place.

When actually it's the old who are robbing the young. For decades, everybody saw the shortfall in Social Security coming. People like Ross Perot and Al Gore campaigned on shoring it up. But by in large, the boomers voted for candidates who promised (and delivered) lower taxes (and deficits) instead.

So what if we don't fully fund Social Security? So what if we don't fully fund state and federal pension plans? Let's just vote for Reagonomics and hopefully everything will be solved by skyrocketing economic growth by the time we get old. Oops, that didn't happen. So how can we keep our taxes low and our government checks rolling in? Well, we could fill 0.001% of the gap by cutting head-start, children's food supplements, and all that other crap that doesn't affect us any more. Hey I know, we own all the real estate, let's inflate real estate prices by using borrowed money to make interest rates ridiculously low. Hey all you brown people, get out of my country... wait, not until after you mow my lawn... ok, now get out.

Uverse

[Derosian]

We have Uverse here and honestly I don't use up 250GB a month worth of bandwidth, the problem occurs because my roommates do. 250GB a month may be perfectly normal for one person but when you have a lot of people living in the same apt trying to save money this way, this is going to become absurd, and I know if we start getting charged extra for going over the cap per a month, even if I suggest switching to another company it likely won't happen because of my roommates stubbornly not wanting to switch cable TV providers. In my case I can't vote with my money, but if I lived by myself I would switch right now.

Doesn't affect everyone yet, thankfully

[ya really]

Although they're pushing caps on everyone, many are still not affected due to AT&T's slow adoption of giving customers tools to monitor their bandwidth. DSLreports has had quite a few complaining about how their first attempt at giving a meter for bandwidth monitoring was horribly inaccurate so I assume that is why many still do not have it.

I am on their DSL where I am and I just checked today and there is no tool for me to monitor my bandwidth yet. Since there isn't one, it says that "I do not need to be worried about my usage until there is one in place."

Anti-Competitive

[EmagGeek]

The only reason AT&T is doing this is to try to force you to buy cable TV from them instead of using online streaming services.

This is why Internet needs to be considered a public utility and regulated as such.

Re:Anti-Competitive

[dragonturtle69]

The only reason AT&T is doing this is to try to force you to buy cable TV from them instead of using online streaming services.

>

Good point

Re:Shaw limit in Canada (Calgary, Alberta)

[Adambomb]

People talk about how bad the oligopoly in the US is in telecommunications, but it really does take the cake up here in Canada. Oddly, the number of choices is about the same per municipality but the indirect collusion for high pricing and poor quality of service is even worse. People have forgotten the large amount of subsidies that went to the expansion of broadband and cellular coverage and are now being squeezed for terrible service.

Bell and Rogers basically use the same playbook, Shaw is going the same route, and Telus is barely any better (although i must admit they are a little better since they rely on their consumer market a fair bit more than most). Any other provider in canada is reselling lines from one of these and so has been suffering from the same terms of service that they impose on their own accounts.

Sadly, the market in the main is willing to bear it and any time organized attempts at challenging the way things operate disappear with no real outcome. Several class actions came up against carriers between 2004 and 2007, and the only one i've seen succeed was one involving the billing of 911 access fees in the Northwest Territories (in areas that did not HAVE a 911 service). The Telco's are definitely right below the Canadian banking industry in terms of national influence and managing to get their way.

What can you expect..

[blind biker]

...in a country where you're charged for incoming calls! And the most outrageous/hilarious thing about it is, USians think that's completely normal.

Re:What can you expect..

[zippthorne]

Only cell phones charge for incoming calls. And it does make sense, as long as it is used to maintain number transparency: In the US, there is no difference in area codes between cell phones and land-lines. It's unfair to spring surprise charges upon the calling party to pay for the cell network. It makes much more sense that the people with the cell phones should pay for the cell part of the connection.

Re:What can you expect..

[ScrewMaster]

...in a country where you're charged for incoming calls! And the most outrageous/hilarious thing about it is, USians think that's completely normal.

Get your facts straight. A. if you're talking about cell phones, it's not that you're charged for incoming calls, it's that you're charged for airtime. B., we're Americans, not "USians" whatever the Hell that means, and C. no, we don't think it's "normal", it's always pissed us off. Also, I might add that you can't make such sweeping claims, it just demonstrates your ignorance. For example, many cellular providers offer completely free calling to all phones on their network, all offer some kind of more-expensive unlimited plan, and my particular provider allows me to use Skype on my Android device all I want. I can also pick ten numbers (on any network, including landlines) that I can call for free, no limits on airtime. Different providers have different options, of course, but there are plenty to choose from.

What was it you were saying again?

Re:What can you expect..

[LordLucless]

You're Americans, but you're not the only Americans. USians creates a distinction between you lot, and your southern neighbours that also inhabit the American continent. If he'd said "Americans" he would have been incorrect, as he was actually referring only to a subset of Americans.

Re:What can you expect..

[WWE-TicK]

When someone says "American", normal people that have at least two brain cells to rub together don't think "Canadian", "Mexican", "Brazilian", "Peruvian", "Haitian", or whatever country that happen to exist here on the American continents. They think "citizen of the U.S.". A person who refers to us as "USians" might think he's being clever, but in reality to everybody else he just looks like a gigantic douche bag. Jokes on him. I hope he doesn't do that in real life in front of strangers.

Re:What can you expect..

[LordLucless]

No, Americans think citizen of the US. The fact that Americans associate themselves with "normal people" really says all that needs to be said.

Re:What can you expect..

[dragonturtle69]

Umm, "Southern neighbors" would be in different countries, like Mexico or Argentina?. Or, are you trying to use "Usians" as a subset of Americans, like French is a subset of European? Not sure how the rest of the America's would take that, being called, across two continents, Americans.

Re:What can you expect..

[LordLucless]

Exactly. "America" is not a country - it's a continent. The population of that continent - Americans. The country is "United States of America". Citizens of that country? Well, you don't really have a name, which is why the OP had to use a more recently coined one - USians.

Re:What can you expect..

[kindups]

"America" isn't a continent either. It's "North America" or "South America".

Re:What can you expect..

[Musicologynut]

Also, I might add that you can't make such sweeping claims

But that's what people like him do, outsiders who complain about us Americans ("USians") never seem to understand two simple facts: 1. The US as a country is more in line with the idea of the EU as a country and less with France or England as a country. I'd bet that someone from England would get pissy if they were grouped into a sterotype based on someone from Italy; imagine how someone from Florida might feel about being lumped in with the actions of someone from New York (Rome-London=890mi, Albany-Tallahassee=1000mi).

and

2. That perhaps there might be a chance that you cannot, in fact, lump 380+ million people spread out across almost 4 million miles into a single, homogeneous group. I mean, French, English... Korean, Vietnamese... Pakistani, Indian... Michigander, Texan... they're all the same, right?

Re:What can you expect..

[xtracto]

Hello, I am American too. See, I was born in the American continent; no, in my country we do not differentiate between "north american" and "south american" as being two different continents.

When someone says "American", normal people that have at least two brain cells to rub together don't think "Canadian", "Mexican", "Brazilian", "Peruvian", "Haitian", or whatever country that happen to exist here on the American continents. They think "citizen of the U.S."

Nope, we call you Gringos, some people call them douches...

I hope he doesn't do that in real life in front of strangers.

The funny thing is, all citizens from the USA I have met usually respond with the name of their state when asked "where are you from". So while other people say "I am from France", "I am from Germany, "I am from the UK"... stupid Gringos say "I am from Chicago" or "I am from Ohio". That's why next time I meet a Gringo and he pulls that one up, I will tell him "I am from Champoton" to show him how stupid it sounds.

Re:What can you expect..

[xtracto]

That's what they taught you in the USA, I guess as a matter to "differentiate" yourselves to the dirty people from the south. In other countries in the American continent it is an accepted fact that America is just one continent ( El continente Americano).

Re:What can you expect..

[dragonturtle69]

Sure about that? North and South America are on separate tectonic plates with only a thin strip connecting them and were physically separate in the past. The racist point of your comment obviously fails as Central America is considered part of North America. Then again, defining a continent seems to be like defining a planet, or beauty.

But going with your definition on one continent going circle to circle, are we all Americans, $countryname + "ians", or something else?

Re:What can you expect..

[ScrewMaster]

I'd bet that someone from England would get pissy if they were grouped into a sterotype based on someone from Italy

Yes. Or someone from Poland being grouped into a stereotype based upon someone from Germany.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[blind biker]

I know it doesn't help much, but I recently moved ISPs from AT&T of this. It sounds childish and passive aggressive, but it's easier to do than you think.

1) http://lmgtfy.com/?q=internet+providers [lmgtfy.com]

2) When you find the best for you, just ask for free installation on the call. They always do it, if not, go to #2 in the list. (Bonus, new business always gets to a live rep immediately on a call. No waiting)

3) Request a weekend installation

4) Cancel At&t service. There's no contract with AT&T internet.

The only thing keeping you from unlimited data is those 3 steps (the 4th is the pay-off).

I live in a country of only 5 million inhabitants, and yet, I have access to about a dozen different ISPs. How many ISPs, with truly differentiated services, do you have access to? If I was capped at 150GB a month, I would top it in less than a week. Luckily, we don't have such nonsense here. Any ISP that were to try to pull such shite would be dead.

By the way: I have yet to read a post including LMGTFY that wasn't an utter douchebag troll.

A better FREE OPPORTUNITY for end users... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wish to get some of that bandwidth back, especially as an "end user" who is paying a monthly billing to ISP/BSP's like AT&T instituting this? You can... easily & here is how + why:

Use a custom HOSTS file!

It can gain you added online "layered security" (the best thing we have really to date), better speed, and even better "anonymity" (vs. DNS request logs, &/or DNSBL), but perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY is, it gets you more "bang for your buck" for your monthly bill... and folks? IT IS NOTICEABLE SPEED, and yes, NOTICEABLY BETTER SECURITY, period, if done right!

On this issue of "bandwidth caps" by ISP/BSP's, specifically however:

It can help you in 2 capacities vs. this, for:

---

1.) Conserving bandwidth YOU PAY FOR (after all folks - IT IS YOUR MONEY)

AND

2.) GAINING BACK SPEED YOU PAY FOR THAT YOU ARE WASTING LOADING ADBANNERS!

---

In fact, I'll post the ENTIRE "gamut" of WHY A HOSTS FILE IS SUPERIOR TO BOTH AdBlock &/or DNS servers alone, right now - which not only gets you more SPEED & BANDWIDTH PER MONTH, but also better online "layered security":

---

20++ ADVANTAGES OF HOSTS FILES OVER DNS SERVERS &/or ADBLOCK ALONE for added layered security:

1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).

2.) Bad news: ADBLOCK CAN BE DETECTED FOR: See here on that note -> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars

HOSTS files are NOT BLOCKABLE by websites, as was tried on users by ARSTECHNICA (and it worked, proving HOSTS files are a better solution for this because they cannot be blocked & detected for, in that manner), to that websites' users' dismay:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT FROM ARSTECHNICA THEMSELVES:

----

An experiment gone wrong - By Ken Fisher | Last updated March 6, 2010 11:11 AM

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars

"Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn't see our content."

and

"Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet!"

Thus, as you can see? Well - THAT all "went over like a lead balloon" with their users in other words, because Arstechnica was forced to change it back to the old way where ADBLOCK still could work to do its job (REDDIT however, has not, for example). However/Again - this is proof that HOSTS files can still do the job, blocking potentially malscripted ads (or ads in general because they slow you down) vs. adblockers like ADBLOCK!

----

3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.

4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 4-7 next below).

5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are

Re:Ah Verizon Fios

[nurb432]

For now. Don't think for a moment that it will start AND stop with AT&T. We are slowly returning to the dark days where you were afraid to get online ( or use your phone ) as you knew you would get an extra bill.

And don't forget you get to pay for all the spam and commercials too, in effect since its cuts into your bandwidth.

Re:A taxicab without a meter

[Truekaiser]

from what i understand the business standard on this is the end of the month surprise. A few company's provide a website to check your usage, which going to to check also adds to your usage.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[VGPowerlord]

You have choices? My choices are:
#1) Time Warner

AT&T didn't do DSL out here until just recently. I used to only have one choice. As it is, the fastest DSL speed I can get from them is 1.5Mbit/s down, 384kbit/s up.

Re:Nice

[hedwards]

Saccharin doesn't cause cancer, hence why the FDA allowed the removal of the warning label. The link was never particularly strong and was based primarily on animal studies which didn't accurately model normal intake. Warning label removal

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[countertrolling]

But me, I prefer to live in a more modern society, with an elected government body that represent the people. And I want laws that I know are good for *everyone*, not just for a *select few*.

Maybe the next life... won't happen here

Re:LOL, the West is losing BAD!

[gomiam]

Good point, but I think those patches would eat them up whether it is played often or only ocasionally.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[Deliveranc3]

Look dude, here's your solution. Get a cell phone with an unlimited data connection and tether. I'm selling them in Canada and it can work for you too.

You can get a used Android phone and put Cyanogen on it for about $130.

Latency isn't great for gaming but otherwise you can put all your bills into a single low phone bill.

Meh

[Sin2x]

191 comments and not a single one suggesting founding a new ISP. America, meh.

Re:Meh

[LordLucless]

Probably because it's illegal to; yay government-sponsored local monopolies.

So if I run downloads full time for a month...

[Freddybear]

At ~160kB/sec download speed (1.5 Mb/sec DSL) for a month of 100% usage, I would be getting something like 450 GB of downloaded data.

ATT plain DSL accounts supposedly go into overage at around a third of that.

So I have to be careful if I want to run downloads more than eight hours a day, every day for the whole month.

Yes.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> Ahem: Can you answer the question in my subject-line above, first??? A simple YES or NO, is all that is asked for in that regard.

Yes. I can. But not with a yes or no, because either answer would be slightly wrong. It is relevant the conversation. It is not relevant to bandwidth caps.

> Additionally - Is there a forums section here on 'writing style' critique????

No. There is not. We critique writing style as an integrated part of our discussions. This is because we are Nerds, and Nerds tend to like things that are done well.

> P.S.=> When you get YOUR PHD in English, maybe THEN, you'd actually be SOMEWHAT credible - but, it really wouldn't matter... why?

Funny how you assume I don't have one. Odd how you assume one might make me credible on this topic. An MFA might be more relevant, if you were looking for an appeal to authority. Or experience as a reporter, or a writer.

> Well, then again, you'd STILL BE OFF TOPIC no matter how you slice it & this isn't a paper for a grade in academia, nor is it a legal or business correspondence... it's computing oriented technical material, & it's ONLY A FORUMS (that again, has NO section on "writing style critique" either)...

Asking people to be courteous and restrain from ad hominem attacks is never off-topic. A critique may be genuinely helpful, if we are open-minded about them, reject the parts we disagree with, listen to what others think, and figure out how we should craft our message to better reach our audience. And yes, it is only a forum.

As to the the primary point, yes, having a hosts file that blocks certain ads can certainly help. It should cut the web browsing and DNS component of your bandwidth use. It will not help with Netflix, which is currently the elephant in the room, bandwidth-wise. It does have side benefits, as well as social costs.

>However, even IF you had a PHD in English, it'd be YOUR PROBLEM if you cannot gather the meanings of the words within the context in which they are used (which said context clearly seems to be "over your head", on computing)... apk

Having a Ph.D. in English is not relevant to understanding the meanings of words (with very, very rare exceptions, e.g. Old English roots if you happen to study it).

I have no problem. I am simply going out of my way for you in the hope that you make your points in ways which receive better reception in the future, in which case we will all be a little better off--you will make your points more effectively and perhaps be able to contribute to the community in a more positive way. Truthfully, it is not worth my time, but I thought to stop for a moment and help both you and, to a lesser degree, the person you attacked.

I know the meaning of words, and I know the context. Calling me stupid does not make that less true, and it certainly does not make me more likely to agree with you.

Re:Yes.

[phantomfive]

Sorry, I couldn't read your comment, I hit my bandwidth quota for the month reading the first one in the thread. :/

i'm not saying i like caps ..but

[atarione]

how many of y'all actually are getting close to 150GB?

I work from home and we have 2 HTPC's that are streaming some netflix or hulu a fair bit (maybe 5hrs /wk ea?) i listen to streaming radio all day at work with a vpn going

this month I downloaded a shit ton of of stuff from technet around the 1st (15GB in one day) and still looking at the WAN Status page on my DD-WRT router I'm right under 60GB for the month. I scrolled back and at xmas time when I got a bunch of new stuff and was playing / downloading stuff for that the highest we got was 94GB, maybe i'm not trying hard enough but I'm having a hard time figuring out how I'd go past the cap (we have a 250GB cap w/ COX..meh).

Re:i'm not saying i like caps ..but

[Xian97]

AT&T has a page where they show your usage. Last month I was at 179 GBs, but I did buy several games from Steam sales (about 36 GB total), more from Good Old Games, and watched all 65 episodes of Weeds on Netflix (approximately an hour a night for a month) along with my regular surfing, updates for multiple devices, and other downloading. I probably was less than 150 GB myself, but it doesn't take into consideration what my wife and kids use, which is quite a lot as well. It's not hard to run up against the cap in my opinion, especially once you start streaming video.

Let's talk about real caps

[Yvan256]

If you think 150GB or 250GB is a "monthly cap", then let me tell you about how it works up here in Canada.

Some ISPs have 35GB/month limits.

Vote with my wallet? Sure. I can have high-speed internet from that company, dial-up internet from that same company or no internet at all.

Thoughts

[DaMattster]

This is a giant step backward for citizens of the United States. However, this is not an insurmountable problem. AT&T has just created opportunities for the building of community owned networks backed by non-profit corporations. AT&T's greed will drive some market forces. Let's just build an entirely separate internet on fully open standards/source that is totally separate from government and in the control of non-profits. We can use radio and wireless as the transmission means. Americans forget that the consumer is the one that reigns king, not the big boys. We can all vote with our wallets. If this gets big enough, we attract the interest of businesses like Netflix that would want connections to a community-based network. It will be David vs Goliath in modern times and, as history repeats itself, David will win again.

Re:Thoughts

[stinerman]

Wow, it must be nice to be so optimistic. I'm only 27, and I fully expect life will continue to get worse until the day I die.

Cheers to you, sir.

Re:Is your "english critique" on topic? No... AND?

[salesgeek]

Dude, no one's arguing with you. We're just saying your post was long, boring, redundant and is preaching to the choir on Slashdot.

You could have said:

You might want to update your hosts file to ensure that you don't waste your bandwidth on ____, _____ and _____ . ______.com has a some pre-built hosts files that may be helpful.

Also, since lots of us use Macs, Linux and Android devices, you may want to provide instructions on how to use your hosts file with non-Windows systems.

AT&T caps don't start tomorrow for everyone...

[King_TJ]

I'm pretty sure the AT&T U-Verse users in some areas are not ready to receive the AT&T capping treatment just yet, because they promised they'd only do that once a tool is made available for the users to check on their monthly bandwidth usage. Currently (at least, last I checked last week), AT&T didn't have such a thing in place on their web site. (They have a page that says it will give this information out, but appears to only do so for DSL users right now.) Attempts to visit the page, as a U-Verse user, resulted in a brief message saying the feature wasn't ready yet and not to worry about bandwidth usage until it was ready.

Rollover gigabytes

[reboot246]

Since AT$T pioneered rollover minutes for their cell phone service, maybe they should consider doing the same with their internet service. Just as I don't talk the same amount each month, neither do I download the same each month.

I love them for cell service. Best thing going in my area. If they ever get around to offering their U-verse service here, I'd seriously consider them to replace my current isp, Charter (aka asshats).

Re:Rollover gigabytes

[dragonturtle69]

Since AT$T pioneered rollover minutes for their cell phone service,

Rollover was courtesy of Cingular. Cingular was purchased by Bell South, who was purchased by SBC, who bought AT&T, then renamed itself AT&T.

Re:Rollover gigabytes

[Boogaroo]

Cingular was the cellphone service that did the rollover thing.
Cingular bought AT&T, and it wasn't until later that they bought the name and renamed themselves to AT&T. Not the same company at all.

Besides, the idea has a fundamental flaw in it.

If you are constantly rolling over minutes/GB, you're over-paying for service.
If you're not rolling over much, you have very little to cover overages.
If you're not rolling over anything, you're paying overage charges.

The whole scenario works for very few people. The rest just feel better about having over-payed every month.

What about online education, etc.?

[ebusinessmedia1]

The telcos make me sick, and they are making America sick! Imagine what this will mean as education, training, and other necessities migrate online - with massive, bandwidth-sucking applications; those who can pay for bandwidth will be able to access these things; those that can't, won't.

The telcos have done *everything* they can to cripple expansive growth, so that *they can save infrastructure investment dollars*. In the offing, they have paid off our legislators and others who are supposed to be looking out for us. Their actions are nothing short of criminal, and are legal only because they pay for the laws that are supposed to "protect" the consumer.

In a word, these capping policies are UNAMERICAN (and, I'm not a nationalist, by any means.) What do these caps do to things like scientific research, education, legal artistic sharing, etc. etc. They *cripple* those innovations, thus crippling the forward promise of Americans, and America. Something HAS to be done; the pure profit motives at any cost of the grotesquely greedy telcos must be legislated. It's time to nationalize these companies, or else slap them upside the head so hard that they will start *serving* their customers instead of crimping their futures.

What's more, we need to start with the people who run these companies; we need to see them for what they are, and the large-scale harm that they do. They may be scions of their individual communities, and good parents, and all that, but they are literally putting us on a path that will disadvantage this country for decades, if someone doesn't put a stop to this egregious insult to information access, invention, and innovation.

Bandwidth is (theoretically) unlimited; we don't need to meter it; we need to *make it accessible*, and let 1000 ideas bloom. From now on, we must *insist* on nothing less - our future depends on it!

Re:What about online education, etc.?

[ebusinessmedia1]

Also, AT&T spent $15.4 million lobbying Washington last year, the eighth-highest of all corporations. And it has ties to the White House — Obama's chief of staff, William Daley, is a former president of SBC Communications Inc., which bought AT&T in 2005, creating the current telecom giant. This isn't just coziness, it's near collusion.

Re:What about online education, etc.?

[ScrewMaster]

Also, AT&T spent $15.4 million lobbying Washington last year, the eighth-highest of all corporations. And it has ties to the White House — Obama's chief of staff, William Daley, is a former president of SBC Communications Inc., which bought AT&T in 2005, creating the current telecom giant. This isn't just coziness, it's near collusion.

No, it's malfeasance in office if not outright treason.

Re:What about online education, etc.?

[zentigger]

These capping policies are as American as it gets. America is all about corporate geed and that is what data caps amount to. Making people pay for services they use doesn't sound like a particularly harmful idea unless you are all about communism, and we all know how well that works out.

Bandwidth is as theoretically unlimited as energy is, so maybe the power company should just charge everyone a flat rate. They could take the entire operating costs for the month, divide that by the number of users, add a reasonable margin for profit, to cover the expenses for future growth, R&D, unexpected maintenance (ie, tornado damage, etc.), and then charge each user for their "fair share" Except that really wouldn't be a very FAIR share, would it. What about That Guy living next door that always leaves every light on in the house, has four old "beer fridges" out in the garage (each with two cans of MGD) and leaves the A/C on with every window open. That Guy uses 10 times the amount of power You do. Why should he pay the same amount?

I am probably one of the first people to jump up and rally against corporate greed, and I really believe that usage rates are usually pretty outrageous (especially mobile operators). But what is truly the American ideal, is opportunity. If you think these fees and rates are so completely outrageous, why don't you start an ISP and charge more reasonable rates, then you can start looking at the very real expenses of installing and maintaining metropolitan area networks and the assiciated services as well as trans-continental fiber-lines. Once you have done that, please, let me know how you feel about giving away the service for free so other people's ideas can blossom and profit.

Re:What about online education, etc.?

[swalve]

You are a moron.
First, caps like that wouldn't stop one iota of that benevolent usage you detail.
Secondly, bandwidth isn't unlimited. There is always a wire somewhere along the line that will be the bottleneck, and the provider will have to find a way to get that data out. Usually that means a new wire from one place to another. That shit costs money. Hence, providers charge more for higher usage. Something for nothing, same size fits all is the opposite of "the american way". It's commie "gimme gimme gimme" bullshit, and THAT'S what's ruining america.

Real world speed vs advertised speeds

[matty619]

Are these 200 Mb/s connections people are talking about in parts of Europe and Asia getting anywhere close to that once you're off the ISP's network? Perusing through speedtest.net worldwide results seems to suggest that world wide, real world speeds are pretty similar. to each other.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[T-Bone-T]

Your 4th point is not true for everyone. If you got a promotional rate, you are most likely in a contract complete with an ETF.

It's false scarcity based on greed.

[pushf popf]

When most of the long haul and medium haul fiber was laid, they didn't just bury what they needed, they buried a bunch of it. However most was never connected to equipment (lit up).

This dark fiber is still sitting in trenches and conduits (many were taxpayer funded) running along a huge number of US superhighways, and has not seen a single byte of data.

This is mostly because having additional capacity would remove the artifical limits, increase the supply and cause prices for internet access to drop.

While some companies have problems with "the last mile" (to the home), companies that ran fiber to the home like Verizon, are still attempting to limit bandwidth and create artifical shortages.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[dryeo]

Don't you need cell coverage for that to work? I'm 40 miles out from Vancouver, no cell coverage.

Under the Bridge are Water and Trolls

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

>> You can quit giving orders. first of all. Secondly, you clearly trolling off topic fool, per this answer from you that finally answered my question of "is there an writing style critique forums here, and is the topic here on that much?":

> "No. There is not" - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Saturday April 30, @03:45PM (#35986224)

>> See subject & your answer above, goof - you're off topic right off the bat, so take your trolling ass out of here please... because the rest of what you wrote? UTTER BULLSHIT, period.

Seriously?

1) I didn't answer the question "finally." I answered it when you asked.

2) I don't recall giving orders, although I did say that ad hominem attacks generally make you look bad.

3) You are mischaracterizing my answers to your questions. As I said, there is not a separate forum here for critiques, but that does not mean critiques have no place. Also as I said, my answers are relevant to the conversation but not to the underlying topic of bandwidth caps.

4) In what way is it bullshit? Do you consider everything you disagree with or that criticizes you to be bullshit? Or do you simply consider it bullshit because you consider it off-topic, regardless of whether it is valid?

> "As to the the primary point, yes, having a hosts file that blocks certain ads can certainly help. It should cut the web browsing and DNS component of your bandwidth use. It will not help with Netflix, which is currently the elephant in the room, bandwidth-wise." - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Saturday April 30, @03:45PM (#35986224)

> Aha, SO you DO concede my point that using HOSTS files CAN conserve bandwidth (after you doubtless read my posts in their entirety you couldn't HELP but realize that much)... good, a "point in my favor" right off the bat!

1) It is not conceding a point, it is agreeing with you, while recognizing some of the limits and costs of your suggestion. If you looked at my original post, I did not disagree with your point.

> The point here was to HELP PEOPLE CONSERVE BANDWIDTH, & you can speed up their access to NetFlix further even, by hardcoding the IP address of that site to your HOSTS as well (not just getting more of your money's worth by blocking out adbanners only).

A little bandwidth, in the case of Netflix--a DNS request is trivially tiny compared to the bandwidth you save on ads, and compared to Netflix bandwidth generally. It is also not clear that this is "your" money's worth. The advertisements pay for content on many web sites, and cutting into that revenue stream is a cost to society associated with your use of ad-blockers, since it takes away an incentive for content production. On the other hand, that also encourages companies to use less annoying ads, so that people won't bother to block them.

> Funniest part here, is, that recently? During the Fukishima incident in Japan?? The U.S. Military did the SAME IDEA - blocked out doubleclick adbanners to SAVE BANDWIDTH! They didn't use HOSTS for it, but they could have easily to the SAME EFFECT.

I fail to see how that is funny, although it is interesting.

---

> Wouldn't MATTER if you did, on 2 grounds here: ... 1.) An English PHD? Worth shit... face it, it is. It's NOT going to "cure cancer" or anything that will TRULY improve the human condition... & I really don't want to hear some "mile long speech" on how it has or will, ok? It'd just be more OFF-TOPIC BULLSHIT outta you, period! 2.) I've eaten PHD's for lunch... easily, & especially on the topic of computer sciences, not just "english professors", either!

1) You are the one who brought up the English Ph.D. as something that might give my arguments more credibility.
2) English majors don't cure cancer, and a Ph.D. is a piece of paper showing you've done some work. People with doctorates can be good or bad, and smart or dumb. I never said otherwise. As to the human condition, the truth is far more complex than you give it credit for, but I will spare you the mile long speech.
3) I don't care who you've eaten for lunch.

Sad

[backdoc]

This is just fucking sad.

WiFi is going to suck now.

[lexsird]

Aside from the obvious BS from these corporate goons of ripping us all off, you have another factor. WiFi theft is going to be BIG now. I wonder how many antenna arrays are spawning clandestinely as we speak? I would think the WiFi industry would want to get some lobbyists over to Congress to reign in this highway robbery and giant step BACKWARDS in the information age.

Factor this, when your neighbor Bob gets a $2,874.56 Internet bill because the neighborhood kids all soaked off his open wifi router, he's going to flip out. And so are a lot of people, they aren't going to pay it and people will start leaving in droves to anything that isn't AT&T. I think the market will correct it's self, but in the mean time, there will be people getting burned with monster bills and AT&T are some down right bastards when you owe them money. I had them all over my ass before and they suck. We overpaid them by mistake a few dollars, and we refused to cash the refund check. lol. we figured it would set on the books like a herpes sore for the rest of time if we just ignored it. They have hounded me down now for about a decade trying to get me to take it...lol, I think it grew some interest. It's a weird way to say "fuck you" to them, but it works for me.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[ScrewMaster]

You can get a used Android phone and put Cyanogen on it for about $130.

Well. More correctly, you can get a used Android phone for about $130 and put Cyanogen on it for free. And yeah, I'm a big fan of Cyanogen. I'm on T-Mobile here in the U.S. and frankly I like my plan. I get a 5 Gb per month soft cap (they throttle you if you go above it, but no extra charges) and they don't care about tethering.

Interestingly, T-Mo recently announced that Skype will now be allowed to make calls over Wi-Fi and 3/4G. It works very, very well, and it's going to be a hard pill to swallow for millions of subscribers when AT&T takes over and does what I think they're going to do.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[englishknnigits]

Except that the select few are the ones that lobby the government, influence officials, and pay for their election campaigns. It is called "rent seeking". I would also like to live in that modern society you speak of but unfortunately it doesn't exist yet. You have to remember that monopolies and oligopolies only exist (and last) with the help of the government. Either the government creates barriers to entry for competition or turns a blind eye to anticompetitive behavior.

Re:AT&T caps don't start tomorrow for everyone

[Freddybear]

I am an ATT DSL customer and I got the same message.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[LordLucless]

But me, I prefer to live in a more modern society, with an elected government body that represent the people. And I want laws that I know are good for *everyone*, not just for a *select few*.

Well, congratulations, it's your "elected government body representing the people" that granted these monopolies (in violation of the concept of the free market) after accepting huge bribes from the corporations it's supposedly not representing. Oh, and good on you for throwing a bit of anti-religious flamebait into the mix for good measure.

You really need a solid whack over the head with the clue stick.

Re:LOL, the West is losing BAD!

[iamhassi]

"Here where I live the choices are AT&T DSL, comcast's "xfinity", dial-up, or satellite."

I'm in a similar boat, so really all we have is AT&T and Cable. If those are bad, what is left?

Here's to hoping 4G and WiMAX are as good as they say! But I hear their caps are even worse....

From the looks of it my internet service in 2015 will be slower/worse than my internet in 2001 :(

Here here! No mmore tentackle-buisinesses!

[KreAture]

I get internet *only* via ethernet in the wall. I can select between 10/10 and 100/100 for $57/$150 a month respectively. There are no caps and no services attached, not even a firewall or silly nat. They focus on being a ISP. Oh and my ping to the backbone in Norway is around 0.8 ms... It's not as cheap as the 10/2 deals around but then again, it's scaled to be used, not milked.

What a Frigging Ripoff!

[hardburlyboogerman]

Trust the very greedy US ISPs to do that.Well,since AT&T DSL is not in my area,I'm wondering when the rest of the ISPs start and force us back to hacking phone codes on dialup.

Re:Alternatives?

[tsotha]

I have 6mbps from Comcast. It wouldn't do me any good to have more than that, since the sites I stream tend to max out at a far lower rate.

Nationalize the wires

[currently_awake]

Nationalize all the communications wires in the country. All the phone, cable, internet wires. Then let anyone who wants bandwidth rent it at cost + 10% from the department of telecommunications that owns and operates the wires. Every ISP/telco/cable co in the whole country can rent those lines to deliver their services to every single person in the country. Or put another way every single person in the country can pick their cable (from every cable co in the whole country), they can pick their telco (from every telephone company in the whole country), and they can pick their ISP. Only the government would own the last mile, and they would be strictly limited in cost and service. We have national road service, national police service, national water etc, surely the wires are next?

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[sunspot42]

Local monopolies for Telco and Cable are government imposed

So what's your alternative there, hotshot? How are you going to manage having 50 or 100 companies running fiber all over town, into every home? Logistically, how's THAT gonna work out?

In the case of natural monopolies - like roads, utilities or telecom, where physical limits dictate that only a handful of providers / single provider can practically operate - you have three options. You can either:

1) Tolerate a single monopoly or possibly duopoly, but heavily regulate what it can charge and the level of service it must provide, with an eye toward allowing it a decent return on its investments but no more. This is kinda sorta how AT&T and the utilities operated in the United States from the end of WWII until the deregulation craze in the 1980s.

2) Have the state run the portion of the system where physical limits preclude an efficient market (as we currently do with roads), either directly or via some sort of non-profit quasi-corporate option. This is probably the most efficient proposition from a macroeconomic standpoint, since presumably the money consumers and businesses save here can be directed to other areas of the economy, instead of having some private sector monopoly functioning as a drain on the economy. It's how our interstate highway system was built and operated in the US and one of the reasons why our economy boomed in the postwar period. Making that infrastructure available to consumers and businesses essentially at-cost freed up a lot of capital which in turn was either spent on consumer goods, or invested in education, manufacturing plants, research and development, resource extraction and so forth.

3) Allow unregulated monopolies to form, gouge consumers and businesses, and soak up a huge portion of your overall economic productivity simply because they're squatting on some important resource or access point. You see this a lot in third world shitholes, which the United States is rapidly devolving into. Consumers and businesses end up paying more and more money for less and less in the way of services, the overall economy stagnates, and the country is impoverished and outclassed by more efficient competitors who don't tolerate this kind of kleptocratic stupidity.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[NeutronCowboy]

Congrats for your failure to understand Econ 101. They cover natural monopolies right out of the gate there. Common sense can explain that as well, but that seems to be missing among libertarians.

This is proof that AT&T is not a broadband com

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

This is proof that AT&T is not a broadband company. If AT&T is going to cap its users, this is AT&T's fault, not the users.

If AT&T cant provide its users with broadband without capping data usage, they are NOT providing broadband, they are simply a shit company incapable of delivering service to its customers.

My advice, CANCEL your AT&T immediately.

Put it this way. Only a shitty ISP/Broadband provider fails to understand that users will always demand increased bandwidth as technology advances.

AT&T is trying to fuck you over. CANCEL your accounts immediately, and TELL THEM EXACTLY WHY.

My advice to AT&T, start improving your shitty networks (internet and cellphone) or go out of business. Light is pretty much easy to produce. Lay down more fiber, and stop being a shitty fucking company trying to rape its subscribers.

I will use this time to acknowledge and praise Verizon for FIOS. I've been with them for years now. I was an early adopter of FIOS, I knew when it was coming. I anxiously awaited FIOS, and gladly left Cablevision to get on FIOS because like AT&T... Cablevision started to cap their users secretly, rather than upgrade their shitty networks.

Verizon brought Fiber to my house. AT&T.. Where the fuck were you?

SEE THE PROBLEM?

AT&T... You're LATE TO THE GAME, and you cant provide service because you refuse to be a quality company. Go out of buisness, the consumer doesnt give a shit if you cant provide a quality service.

Verizon LTE

[sonicmerlin]

Just pay Verizon $70/month for an unlimited LTE connection on a Thunderbolt. Then tether it and you'll be wire-free.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[magamiako1]

They'll never respond to your post because they don't have an answer. One doesn't exist in their idealized world--only greed, only money.

Another interesting tidbit that they don't quite know: Major cable operators are required by law to do fly-over measurements of signal leakage near airports to make sure that they're not interfering with air traffic controller communications.

Yes, the cable wiring leaks signals into the air. Imagine that. And they have to measure it and file with the FCC to ensure air traffic safety.

Of course, we could get rid of this GOD AWFUL GUBMENT REGULATION and let your planes crash because the pilots got a momentary listen in on Jersey Shore instead of hearing the air traffic controller telling them which runway to land on.

But hey, GET THAT DAMN GUBMENT OUT OF MY BUSINESS!

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[magamiako1]

Even more interesting:

What's to say that even *IF* for some magical reason the governmental barriers to entry for ISP rollouts were removed, what's to say that anyone could even get peering with the rest of the internet? Let alone the IP addresses out of the IPv4 space to even get onto the world wide wibby.

I could see something like the scenario below:

"Hm, I'm going to start my own ISP and run my own fiber and get all linked up to the interwebs. I project over the next 10 years I'll make me $100M big ones, and I'll be able to pay $10M to a tier 2 ISP to link my network up to the tubes."

Meanwhile....at Comcast...

"Hey, Tier 2 ISP, We'll give you $10M per year to make sure that guy isn't able to get peered."

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[mbkennel]

"Local monopolies for Telco and Cable are government imposed, not free market entities. "

Obviously. In the free market, they would merge.

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[mbkennel]

Come now. Why are you so socialist-collectivist thinking? In a real free-market some true capitalist would surely run fiber to every aircraft.

Re:This is proof that AT&T is not a broadband

[Ka D'Argo]

It does not matter. Terms of Service. Trust me I'm a customer of an ISP just like the next joe schmoe, and sure a cap can suck. But ya know what? I got myself into this. Every ISP, cell phone company, land line phone company, etc etc etc all has a Terms of Service, and one of the key things in pretty much every ToS is that the ToS can change at any time to reflect any changes the company wants, and you agree that it is ok with you that they do this and that you agree they are allowed to do this. Do caps suck? Yes. Does having sporadic speeds at times not reflect the advertised speeds suck? Yes. You however are the consumer. It is your responsibility to decide, if the service sucks do I continue to use it or do I move on to another ISP? Complaining to the ISP will not solve anything. Canceling service, and telling them this is exactly why you are canceling service, will not solve anything. For every one customer that cancels, AT&T and other large ISPs have dozens and dozens of brand new customers signing up. It would take mass droves of people leaving which, simply will not happen. Your options are as follows; Deal with whatever terms the ISP hands out. Discontinue service with that ISP and find service with another ISP. Most ISPs are going to have the same terms if not similar terms. And sadly some people WILL live in areas of the country where you may only have one choice of an ISP due to location and services offered in that area. That sucks and I can understand the hassle but unless you are willing to move, you can't really complain too much about having just one ISP in some out of the way boonies rural area, if it bothered you THAT much, you'd relocate. Do I think things should be better? Yes, they should. But this is the country we live in. You make due with what you've got.

exclusive rights

[dean.collins]

i have no issue with broadband caps AS LONG AS isp's have no issues giving up exclusive rights to geographical areas. as soon as time warner cable introduces caps i intend to petition for the eliination of their exclusive rights via the courts. are you sure you want to take that step time warner?

Re:This is proof that AT&T is not a broadband

[Vernes]

Wait, switching ISP won't fix anything? How do you figure that?

Re:Verizon LTE:Elephant in room.

[Kumiorava]

You mean AT&T Wireless will compete with AT&T uVerse and Verizon Wireless will put Verizon FIOS out of business?

Re:Vote with your Wallet

[f16c]

"Come now. Why are you so socialist-collectivist thinking? In a real free-market some true capitalist would surely run fiber to every aircraft."

I doubt that this is very useful considering that this would either tie the plane to the ground or be disconnected during flight. Were you being sarcastic or just stupid? If the first it came off a bit dry. If the latter you really need to learn what fiber is. It's a lot like a cable but the center conductor(s) conduct light rather than electrons.

Re:TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

=)

Interesting.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

In response to your point 1: You accuse me of avoiding a question by saying I only answer it "finally," and then claim it is off-topic to respond that that is not true. So it is all right when you accuse me of avoiding a question, but horrible off-topic trolling for me to point out that I didn't? Regarding "writing style forums" and "you're FAR from an authority" we have discussed the former, and you have already said the latter (without foundation aside, perhaps, from your beliefs about my posts). Our posts can speak for themselves.

In response to your point 2: You accused me of giving orders. I said I did not. You responded "Your constant being off topic & doing your blatantly OFF TOPIC writing style critiques makes you out to be the troll you clearly are... period." However, I was not criticizing your *writing style*. I was saying your claim--that I was giving orders--was simply *wrong*.

In response to your point 3: Again, I was not criticizing your writing style. I was saying your claims about what I had said were *wrong*.

In response to your point 4: Interesting. We have different ideas about the definition of bullshit, and about what it means to be off-topic, and about style v. content.

In response to your PS: Repeating your position does not make it less false or more true. You are still as wrong on the things you're wrong about and as right on the things you're right about. Calling me names won't change that. As to whether I am expert at "the subject," whether you are referring to bandwidth management or writing style or something in between, you are again making a claim without foundation.

Bandwidth

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Also, for all your concern about my off-topic-ness, you neither responded to nor acknowledged the part of my post that was directly on point, i.e. about the limitations of a hosts file in conserving bandwidth, choosing instead to attack other points for being off-topic and generally calling me not an expert despite the validity of the technical points I made.

how to check usage?

[mzs]

I have DSL from AT&T. How can I check to see how much I have used in a month? What happens as I approach the limit? What happens when I cross it? Could someone please provide me with helpful links, thanks.

Um, where are the warlords gettin' all those guns

[rsilvergun]

*cough*Blood Diamonds*cough**cough*. Naw, couldn't be. Must be all those Lazy brown people.

Still, nice try.

Re:Crappy

[gellenburg]

Where do you get "twice as expense per month"? Maybe for DSL.

Not for Comcast Business.

It's $20.00 extra per month.

50/10 residential is $169.95 w/ a 250GB cap.

50/10 business is $189.95 w/ no cap, and I can get static IPs, and run as many servers as I want.

(Atlanta region)

In Japan

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The military was probably concerned about it for low bandwidth applications, kind of like how CNN turned off all advertising and just used a text page on 9/11. But as compared to video streaming, it would be much less useful.

> So you DO concede that blocking adbanners will save bandwidth (to offset some of the capping being done by the likes of AT&T & others)... I don't blame you that, because it's UNDENIABLE, & quite a noticeable speed boost (as well as a potential security measure vs. maliciously scripted adbanners).

I agree that it will save some bandwidth. (Which is not a concession, but I suppose is close enough for government work. :)) I agree not because it is undeniable, but because it is true, as I said. It is also a speed boost, although whether it is a noticeable one depends on a lot of variables. Certainly on low end machines or with badly done advertising it can be. And it can theoretically help with security, although NoScript and the like will help more.

I do not think it will significantly offset capping. It will reduce bandwidth. If you characterize it as a loss of a theoretical full pipe... Even if you save 250K/page (I am not sure what the statistics show these days), it would take 600,000 page views to reach the AT&T cap. If movies are ~300 megs, you'd need 1200 page views per movie for the bandwidth savings to keep the movies from reaching the cap, assuming you were at the cap beforehand. So it can help, but if people are using netflix or other broadband sites and utilities it will be a bit of a drop in the bucket.

Even if you have only a 250KBps connection, 250*60*60*24*30/1024 ~= 630 GB, about four times AT&T's cap. If all you did was viewed pages, you would need to save about 15 GB worth of ad bandwidth a day to offset the lost amount. That's A LOT of advertisements, and connections tend to be a lot faster than that. So you save bandwidth, but it's a drop in the bucket.

You pay your ISP for your internet service. They have a huge advantage in negotiating power, but if they change the contract so it has a cap, and you continue to buy the service, you are paying for the service with a cap--not for the bandwidth without a cap. They may be engaging in false advertising by continuing to advertise by bandwidth, but you are getting what they are agreeing in the contract to sell you. If you don't like it, you have to find someone else to provide the service without a cap.

As to the idea that people don't care about content if they are depending on advertising revenue, think about that for a second. Almost all of television is paid for by advertising revenue. Facebook and Google are paid for by advertising revenue. Millions of people who care about content they produce are supported by advertising revenue.

There is also an argument that you steal what they are paying for. Companies have to pay for bandwidth too, and content, for you to look at their page. They provide you some bandwidth and the content as part of an integrated transaction in which you receive both content that you are looking for, to make the transaction worthwhile to you, and advertising they are selling, to make the transaction worthwhile to them. Even if you don't call this stealing, but only describe it economically, it is still a cost to society for ad-blocking.

You said that.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Each time you say that, we get a bit further removed from the point. As is clear, we disagree.

As to trolling, "In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." [Wikipedia]

I clearly believe your responses have been inappropriate, as they include significant name-calling and derogatory remarks. You clearly believe my responses have been off-topic, as I have pointed out it might be more helpful not to go around calling people names. We disagree.

Also of interest from that article:

Application of the term troll is subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. Like any pejorative term, it can be used as an ad hominem attack, suggesting a negative motivation.

Close, but not quite. NETFLIX.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Selective quotation of my words does not change what I said. You are again mischaracterizing my statements.

It will save bandwidth. BUT the bandwidth saved is small compared to broadband bandwidth. It WILL NOT come close to offsetting the theoretical bandwidth lost by a bandwidth cap, from full pipe 24/7 to capped, for even a 250KBps pipe. It WILL in at least certain circumstances save time. It WILL in at least some cases be more secure. NoScript helps more in that department.

Finally, you are not the only person spending money. Your downloading costs other people money too. Paywalls as locked doors are a poor answer because then you are requiring everyone to be inconvenienced. If everyone did what you are suggesting, it would eliminate much of the internet.

The Widening Gyre

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

No, because your OWN WORDS made my point for me!

Not sure what you're responding to.

"Each time you say that, we get a bit further removed from the point." - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @03:40PM (#35992406)

We do. Hello Pot, this is Kettle.

Ahem:

---

1.) Is the topic here about AT&T instituting bandwidth caps on users? Yes, it is.

2.) Do HOSTS files save you bandwidth by blocking out adbanners?? Yes, they do (you even said it yourself, for Pete's sake!)

---

Now, given those 2 points?

If you are NOT USING AS MUCH BANDWIDTH A MONTH ON ADBANNERS, YOU WILL BE OFFSETTING THAT BANDWIDTH CAP (lessening how fast you hit it, in other words).

Period!

---

You will be "lessening how fast you hit it" as you put it, yes. I never said otherwise. But the gain is limited because most website ads are small compared to video. But that discussion is in another thread.

"I clearly believe your responses have been inappropriate, as they include significant name-calling and derogatory remarks." - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @03:40PM (#35992406)

I KNOW you've been "off topic" here nearly the ENTIRE time, and I blew you away above on the very point of this article & what I stated can lessen its effects (hosts files usage to block out adbanners).

APK

P.S.=>

(1) Yes, I know you believe that, for the first part. You've said it repeatedly.
(2) You blew me away on the point of this article? Are you kidding? I never disagreed with the notion of the article. I pointed out limitations and suggested you not make ad hominem attacks. You have a very strange definition of blowing people away.

"Application of the term troll is subjective." - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @03:40PM (#35992406)

LMAO - who are you trying to fool here? You came in here with some OFF TOPIC "writing style troll" post... and kept it up! That's TROLLING TO THE MAX, & the "oldest troll trick in the book"...

Funny how well you read my posts NOW though, eh?

Lastly - You weren't on topic until I pointed it out, and then when you tried to be "on topic"?? See the 1st paragraphs of this reply here... your showing??? Not good! apk

Nobody. You have driven them all away. I read your posts well in the beginning. They were insulting and childish, and remain so. I do not know why you are quoting "on topic." Since you complained about a lack of on-topicness, yes, I replied.

And my showing was fine. You keep quoting me and pretending that the quotes mean something other than what they do, or more than what they do. I am not sure whether it is because you believe it or because you are used to scoring cheap points.

I hope you get better.

But not a lot of bandwidth.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

>"BUT the bandwidth saved is small compared to broadband bandwidth. " - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @03:54PM (#35992466)

>"Oh, really? Then why did the U.S. Military do the same basic thing during the Fukishima crisis?? To SAVE BANDWIDTH"

The two statements are not incongruous.

Merely because something saves bandwidth, it does not necessarily save enough to be particularly useful in a given situation and with a given net usage pattern. You repeatedly ignore this point.

>"It WILL NOT come close to offsetting the theoretical bandwidth lost by a bandwidth cap, from full pipe 24/7 to capped, for even a 250KBps pipe. " - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @03:54PM (#35992466)

>You said it yourself above: Again - HOSTS can save a user bandwidth - & in doing that VERY THING? It helps you NOT have to hit that limit, sooner, by downloading adbanners!

>Period...

I never disagreed with that. What I say is that the improvement is not great. There is a difference between a fact and its importance.

Did you recommend noscript? Well, good. I did see you recommended layered security, but must have overlooked the noscript recommendation.

Re:Verizon LTE:Elephant in room.

[sonicmerlin]

LTE won't be uncapped for long. Rumors have it Verizon will introduce tiered pricing in the summer. That's why I recommend people get an LTE phone and uncapped plan before that happens. As for tethering, it's an Android phone. You don't even need to root it to use a wired tethering program, and for the wireless hotspot rooting isn't that hard.

Try harder

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> "I hope you get better." - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @04:14PM (#35992584)

> I endeavor to do so, every day of my existence...

> APK

Good. You might start, when someone points out that you are being childish, by not saying [paraphrasing] "at least I'm not a troll."

As to my showing, it was fine. I agree with your point that the hosts file, if used properly, can save some bandwidth. I do not think the bandwidth it saves is significant in all cases. You view my agreement with the first point as some sort of evidence I did not make a good showing. But real conversations are not binary. I can agree with your point and still have something else relevant to say which diminishes the importance of your point, as here.

> P.S.=> No troll here EVER "gets the best of me"... trolls lack the intelligence to do so is why! apk

Do you just mean that you never seem to lose an argument?

Then why are you posting as A/C? Why, when you were modded down, did you attack a person who found your comment too long and accuse him of not being able to read AND of being the same person who modded you down? Why do you repeatedly call people names? Why do you take quotes out of context and pretend that they state more or other than they do? Why do you pretend you are winning points in an argument when they are points on which we agree?

As the Wikipedia article points out, trolling is subjective. From your POV, I am a troll because you consider me off-topic. From my POV, you are a troll because you are insulting people and are generally not behaving in a way that is normal for the forum. But I do not go around calling you one, because it would not be helpful. I am not trying to fool anyone, I am suggesting that you think about the way you are talking. Your second to last point, about endeavoring to improve yourself every day of your existence, is by far the thing that makes you look best in your most recent response. Notice how it is not insulting anyone. When you go on to insult me in your PS, you look far worse. There is a lesson there. If you truly wish to improve, I suggest you take it.

I don't understand

[buddilla]

I don't understand how capping a line would change any usage of bandwidth. For instance 10 homes on a block share a 100mb connection and they all are on the internet at the same time they should be getting 10mb each. Lets say 8 cus we don't want to push theoretical maximums and cause problems. Now say that one person hit their cap and doesn't go on the internet anymore. So now you have homes sharing the same line at 80% the theoretical limit. 80 / 9 = 8.89mbs. Being a shared line everyone else would get a speed bump but the same amount of data is going over the network. On understanding of the internet, it is a shared network so no matter what, the same amount of data should be being pushed through the network. No matter how many people are using it or not. I only pay for 10mb down / 1mb up and when its late at night i can get 20+mb down. But my Upload is always the same at .95mb. But during peek I get 5mb down .95mb up.

And is this cap for both Downloads and Uploads? I'm sure it is.

No what's gonna happen if, for instance, Apple goes download only for it's new OS or other large Applications, sure it won't. The average family I'm sure has atleast 4 computers. Say they were all apples and lion was download only thru App store. I'm sure the size of lion will be about the same size as previous OS which, I think if memory serves, 6.8GBs. 250 / (4 x 6.8) = 9.19% of monthly data has been used. Then there's the software updates iLife, iWork and Final Cut ect. You can see where I'm going with this.

This is wrong. And I'm sure it's all planned this way to keep us "poor" enough so we don't have time to protest or fight back cus we don't time to cus we're working all the time. It used to be in old days whole towns would be burning down company buildings over this. In no way am I saying thats what should be done. But, you have to admit it sure does get the point across. And it works. Pitch forks, torches and angry people!!!

Hahahaha

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> That'd be from the greatest authority there is, & that's the NORMAL PERSON'S POV: Mine ( &, not an off-topic trolls' opinion, which is yours)!

Hahahahaha.

Wrong.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> "you attack a person who found your comment too long and accuse him of not being able to read" - by Oxford_Comma_Lover (1679530) on Sunday May 01, @05:42PM (#35993170)

> He apparently couldn't.

He didn't. That is not the same as he couldn't. You are wrong.

Wrong again.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I answered it numerous times.

Heh.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I answered that question many times.

You are wrong.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Of course you were wrong. Everybody is wrong about something. I have corrected you on so many points I don't know which one I was referring to. All you do is recycle old words and quote things and pretend they must mean other things.

I made numerous points, about why banner ad bandwidth saving is a drop in the bucket next to netflix and modern usage profiles, about how many of your claims were wrong, like claiming the first poster couldn't read, among others. Instead of asking me, why don't you try reading them again? Instead, you latch onto an area we agree on and say it's in your favor. Newsflash: I don't disagree that it can save bandwidth. That is not a point "in your favor," it is simply a point, because we agree. It is not a point I "conceded," it is not a sign that you are "winning," whatever that means, and it is something that I have said many times because you seem to love pointing out that I have said it and pretending it invalidates everything else I have said.

It does not.

You are only pretending it does, either to yourself or to others. Perhaps you are convinced you can't be wrong, so you thread things together and imply they make other things true, when they do not logically follow. You are like the person who responds to "Country X is committing war crimes" with "General so-and-so says country X has done a lot for human rights so you MUST be wrong & I win."

And you have no idea how to engage with intelligent people. You are only attempting to ride over them, which is probably why you say you have eaten people for lunch.

Now? It has existed in India since eternity.

[sattu94]

It looks way better than the condition in India, where unlimited broadband plans are practically unlimited only for the first 8GB, after which the speed is throttled down to 256 kbps from a promised 8 mbps. While the non-unlimited ones charge Rs.250 (5.63 USD) per month upto a 1GB limit. After which it's Rs. 0.60 (0.01 USD) per MB, for a speed of 2 mbps.

60GB

[DarthVain]

At least they didn't start at 60GB like Bell and Rogers in Canada and actually make some accounts lower than that...