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Verizon Posts Message In Morse Code To Mock FCC's Net Neutrality Ruling
HughPickens.com writes: Chris Matyszczyk reports at Cnet that Verizon has posted a message to the FCC titled: FCC's 'Throwback Thursday' Move Imposes 1930s Rules on the Internet" written in Morse code. The first line of the release dated February 26, 1934 in old typewriter font (PDF) reads: "Today (Feb.26) the Federal Communications Commission approved an order urged by President Obama that imposes rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph." The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines in favor of new Internet service rules that prohibit blocking, slowing or prioritizing traffic. The rules, which have not yet been released, are opposed by cable and telephone companies that fear it will curb Internet growth and stifle payback on network investment. "It isn't a surprise that Verizon is a touch against Thursday's order. In 2012, it insisted that the very idea of Net neutrality squished its First and Fifth Amendment right," writes Matyszczyk. "I wonder, though, who will be attracted by this open mockery. Might this be a sign that Verizon doesn't think the fight is over at all?"
So don't use Verizon...
No can do. Verizon is the only option in my town.
Hardly. The only thing they fear is that they're going to lose their very lucrative revenue streams since they can't overcharge for prioritizing traffic any more.
This is not far off how it used to be. Years back Verizon DSL was covered under Title II. They provided the lines, but you could choose any one of dozens of ISPs to actually buy your service from. It was wonderful.
It just drips Irony doesn't it?
I'm in Tulsa, OK. I live in a gated apartment building, and we only have access to AT&T. There is no coax in the entire complex, the management refuses to acknowledge this is illegal...even though I took them a print-out of the FCC's ruling from 2007 against these exclusivity contracts. I even offered to run cable from the front office back to my building for free if they would just get a run to the front office...they just look at me blankly like I'm talking in a foreign language. Even more ironic is right across the street is our state's first "local CLEC" that has fiber AND my apartment complex is spending millions on various cosmetic upgrades,..we're moving soon, and this is the major reason. DSL barely has enough up to support my job; with my work responsibilities increasing soon it won't be enough to have a max of 180k up. I've already had to turn down a couple of high-prestige projects for some remote stuff because of this.
I'm paying $85 a month to get a "business class" DSL, just so I can get around the "bandwidth caps" AT&T has imposed on it's consumer accounts. If I hadn't, my bill would average $400-$800 a month just from usage. Some might say this is my apartment's fault; but I have been told b y management here that just recently several AT&T drones have come in and flat-out lied to to them about "future upgrades" that don't even exist to get better speeds.
This "company" acts like a giant angry child.
At some point the united states is responsible for the idea and creation of the corporation. It would be nice to see that they can also impose a 'death penalty' on these immortal creations when they turn into giant sour monopolistic monstrosities.
I've no idea why Verizon exists. It's not healthy for the people, or the nation, as such given it's size and impact the only reasonable thing to do would be to protect the public by shutting them down and scattering their assets. Third parties could move in and take advantage of a nice new open market space somewhere that actually has people and this would lead to entirely new entities rising.
Where I live, I have so many ISP's I cannot even throw a rock without hitting one, 77 of them at last count in my city alone. The death of Verizon would bring this to you. Kill them now!
the oft discussed "fast lane" has yet to actually happen
Tell that to Sprint and T-Mobile and AT&T and the other carriers who announced plans to do exactly that, not to mention the numerous examples already in effect worldwide.
Only exist on paper? What the fuck. I seriously don't know what rock you're living under.
Of course... that article is dated before the ruling.
Today, the front page reads this way.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
I case you don't choose to read the ruling.
Let me summarize:
EFF LOVES THE RULING.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
(the oft discussed "fast lane" has yet to actually happen)
I get about 5x lower bandwidth streaming movies from Amazon than from Netflix. I've stopped renting HD movies from Amazon because the buffering kills it. Netflix happens to have paid to AT&T (my ISP) to get preferred service [1].
Hmm... That sounds an awful lot like a "fast lane" to me.
[1] http://time.com/3059431/netfli...
Australia is almost as big as the US. Our last govt* began a project to roll out fibre to everyone's house (well at least 97%) which would've given us all 1G fibre. Australia has a lot more empty space than the US and far sparser population. If we can do it, then the US should be able to piss it in.
*unfortunately our last govt lost the last election and the new govt knocked the project on the head, despite every independent analysis backing up the claim it was a net gain for the economy and would've returned a profit to the govt as an asset once complete. Ah politics. never let the facts get in the way of chance to score points, even if it means fucking over the country in the process.
I propose that instead, we bring FIBER to a COLO, from where the citizens can CHOOSE (market forces) the options and features they desire from the multitude of companies that offer these services.
That's how we do it in most of "socialist" Sweden. I.e. I have an "open city network" fibre to my house. ISPs are free to sell service on that fibre/network (for a small access fee that pays for the network infrastructure, now less than 10% of my montly fee). So I have a choice of eight different ISPs and pay about $40/month for 100/100Mbps + IP telephony (no subscription fee, but charged calls). I also get cable TV over the same fibre from a different company but that's extra, about $25 for the channels I get.
That's how you'd actually want it organised to enable a free market.
Stefan Axelsson
A couple years ago, youtube was extremely frustrating to watch on my DSL connection. Lots of buffering. I don't just mean one day youtube slow for some reason; this went on for several months and I basically gave up on youtube for a little while. Then I finally got around to googling the issue and I saw a bunch of people saying to use a VPN. So I did. Flawless performance from then on... this despite the VPN having significantly lower bandwidth than what I had through my ISP. Oh and my ISP was heavily pushing their own streaming on-demand video service at the time.
So tell me... what's YOUR explanation for what happened?
The problem with this sort of thing not being illegal is they really don't have to even tell people they are doing it. And if they're smart, they can and probably are taking measures to prevent people from realizing they're doing it--rotating out the customers they throttle, throttling only at certain times of day, etc.
So, that's my thesis. It has existed for quite a while, but it's growing and starting to involve third parties so that it really isn't possible to hide it any more. Oh yeah, and ISPs were throttling P2P users (not pirates--ANY use of p2p, like sharing ubuntu ISOS) a LONG time ago.