Sprint Begins Punishing Customers For FCC's Net Neutrality Rules

ourlovecanlastforeve writes: A few days ago Sprint announced their intent to stop throttling certain customers' bandwidth in the wake of the FCC fining ATT $100,000,000 for doing the same. Sprint has now begun circulating an internal memo to their front-line reps that the 12-month warranty on non-branded accessories, a featured selling point, will be eliminated. Additional rumors are emerging that Sprint may increase prices on unlimited data plans and stop offering wireline long distance service.

Comments

TNSTAAFL

[_Sharp'r_]

There's no such thing as a free lunch. - Various Economists and Heinlein

Same types of things happened after the regulations around credit and debit card fees. The money comes from somewhere and ultimately you aren't punishing the big players in the industry with the regulations, but their customers and their smaller competitors.

Another case of people who don't understand regulatory history being doomed to repeat it.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[fustakrakich]

This is why we have to turn them into public utilities and abolish all exclusive franchising. They only get away with this because they are a protected monopoly.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[PRMan]

This makes no sense. What you are seeing here is this: Fake unlimited is cheaper than real unlimited.

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[publiclurker]

you mean another example of a shameless corporate whore blaming the victims for the greed of the companies don't you? Face it, no matter how special your masters told you they were, they are not entitled to screw over anyone no matter how much their CEO want's a new boat.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people advertised and sold unlimited plans.

They caught for lying. Pure and simple. And now those assholes as acting like the victims.

We need MORE regulations on these people - and every other business. You advertise "unlimited" anything, it better be unlimited and fuck them if they don't deliver.

In a fair World, I should be able to NOT pay if I do not receive the services I paid for but these assholes rigged the game so that _I_ go to collections and get screwed with they fuck me.

More regulations. If they don't like it then they can give back all the tax breaks and incentives that we - the taxpayer - gave them to do what they were supposed to do.

They owe me, you and every other taxpayer who helped them build out their infrastructure.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[Bert64]

And there's nothing stopping them continuing selling the same plans at the same price, they just have to be honest and tell their customers that they aren't unlimited.

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[ArmoredDragon]

Like everything else, as good as we want it to be.

And you base that on what? The people just vote how they think it should be, so that's exactly what it becomes?

Wrong.

There's actually a long established history of why it's wrong too. If history teaches anything, it's that when private industries become nationalized, the service quickly turns to shit. The reason for that is simple: It becomes a monopoly so the people who provide the service don't have to worry about competing with anybody else. Worse than that, politicians often hold it for ransom so that they can promise to fix it later if they get re-elected.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[ArmoredDragon]

And there's a long history of governmnet run utiities that do well. Dallas Water Utilities is a surprisingly good operation. And TXU was much better before "deregulation" and privatization.

Running a water utility isn't anywhere near as complex as running a telecom service. How often do you have to call their tech support because your faucet isn't working? Oh that's right, you call a plumber.

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[meglon]

And what you say may well be, however you're creating the same stupid as shit argument that dipshits made about the ACA being a government takeover of healthcare.... the net neutrality regulations ARE NOT a government takeover of the running operations of telecoms. Anyone who says it is is full of shit; anyone who believes them is a fucking moron.

EVERY time a government service is privatized, all that does is add an entire layer of costs to the service... businesses call it profit. Medicare plan B was touted as going to be cheaper, with better service over what the government could provide. Within 3 years the costs were more, even with government subsidizing the private companies.. and the companies were cutting services. Why? THEY COULDN'T MAKE A PROFIT.

I was in the army when the Reagan/Bush base closing started happening, and one of the things that they were saying was that by shifting some non-essential functions to private contractors, money was there to be saved. My $600+ a month was dwarfed by the pay of the civilians they brought in to serve chow, which was once simply another thing we had been cycled through taking care of.... thing is, those civilians served chow only, they didn't also have the skill to call arty onto the threat. End results... way more cost. Why? PROFIT.

It truly fucking amazes me that people don't actually have even a beginning inkling of how the fuck businesses work.

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[meglon]

Same stupid as fuck strawman argument. Net neutrality is NOT a government take over of the running of telecoms. People who think it is are fucking idiots. As for public highways, maybe you should take a look at how much good those highways have done for this country, and look at how dismal the business climate would be without them... like it used to be.

Re: TNSTAAFL

[KermodeBear]

Yeah, because I'm sure that everyone loves their local BMV. Everyone wants it to be fast and easy to deal with, but I will tell you a secret: in most places, the BMV sucks, everyone bitches about it, and it isn't getting better.

Shall I mention the VA or the IRS? I bet we all want those to be good too but, uh, yeah. They suck.

Government agencies, on the whole, are pretty shitty in part because they don't have to be good in order to stay in business.

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[AK Marc]

How complex is a retirement plan? Most of the problems with Social Security are coded in law. But for a retirement fund, investing in "cash equivalent" like government bonds, the SSA is an order of magnatude more efficient than the private sector (based on cost to manage a fund). And the IRS (similarly handicapped by law) is two orders of magnitude more efficient than the private sector (companies like ADP).

The government is almost always more efficient. The only times they are obviously not, is when the things being compared aren't equal (like schools, where a non-profit church school with free land and no administration is compared to the total cost of a public school, including facilities and administration), but for apples-to-apples, in-class spending, public schools are more efficient than private.

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[tsotha]

I've never seen any evidence this is true. The Catholic high school I went to was far more efficient with money than the local public school. The land wasn't free and we had administration. Not only did that school spend a fraction of what the public schools spent on students, our college acceptance rate was higher.

There are all sorts of areas private companies do better than public. While it's true you pay more for mobile service in the US than other places, that's mostly the result of stealth taxation. Last time I looked Verizon alone had paid seventeen billion to the government just for spectrum.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Do you seriously think you would have an octocore Galaxy S6 in your hand if it were all government?

Go look up a Trabby car, as governments tried to keep up with the free west. And if not for the west, they wouldn't have even bothered.

I can handle Government Should Do More types, who look to safety and safety nets and such, but your type is found exclusively in cloistered areas of the free west.

Re:TNSTAAFL

[meglon]

However, it's still not net neutrality. ATT got busted for fraud basically. They were lying to their customers. Sprint, because of their actions here, are basically admitting that they too were committing fraud, but because ATT got busted and they don't want to, they're going to stop lying to customers; they just needed a scapegoat, which was an easy find because, once again, we have a certain population in this country who HATE the government no matter what.... Sprint simply knew it could jerk their chain and they'd rant, rave, and froth at the mouth voicing their hatred of the government.

Let me fix that for you: "Telecoms could only offer "unlimited" data because it was never truly unlimited, BUT THEY WOULD LIE ABOUT IT SAYING IT WAS."

Throttling phone plans vs Net Neutrality

[Mr D from 63]

Two different things. Please pay more attention.

Good luck with that!

[whoever57]

Why do people use Sprint? Because it is cheaper than AT&T or Verizon. If Sprint increases prices, they remove that advantage, while retaining the disadvantage of poorer coverage.

This is just sabre-rattling. Sprint cannot increase prices significantly without giving up large numbers of customers.

This reads like a list

[rsilvergun]

of crap they were going to do anyway that they're blaming on the evil govmint and their nasty nasty net neutrality. I've long since noticed businesses doing this; blaming every evil thing they do on gov't regulations because if only they'd just leave us alone to innovate we'd play nice. Didn't happen in the robber baron era and it's not gonna happen in my life.

No Excuses!

[Anonymous Coward]

They owe me, you and every other taxpayer who helped them build out their infrastructure.

There is a flaw in this statement. It assumes that infrastructure never changes. Sure the wires do not get replaced often but the switches, software, etc does. Then there is the cost of new technology required to push more data through old wires. New technology, upgrades, etc can only be funded through profit,

NO EXCUSES!

YOU sell unlimited plans, you deliver unlimited access. PERIOD.. No Excuses. Period.

Otherwise YOU are a liar. Period. No Excuses.

WTF is so hard to understand about that?

These people deserve the fines and more. They deserve to be sued and more. Because they are LIARS! Period. No excuses!

I disagree

[rsilvergun]

The success of Net Neutrality certainly had a role in making the bureaucrats bold enough to fine AT&T.