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Sprint Begins Punishing Customers For FCC's Net Neutrality Rules

Posted by Soulskill on from the unintended-regulatory-consquences dept.

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.

12 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. TNSTAAFL by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    1. Re:TNSTAAFL by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:TNSTAAFL by PRMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    3. Re:TNSTAAFL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:TNSTAAFL by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    5. Re:TNSTAAFL by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:TNSTAAFL by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      The government often does it better, but those examples are ignored by the ignorant and dumb.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    7. Re:TNSTAAFL by meglon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  2. Throttling phone plans vs Net Neutrality by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Two different things. Please pay more attention.

  3. This reads like a list by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  4. AT&T's Fine by Fnord666 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    AT&T's was fined for "deceptive business practices". It had nothing to do with "net neutrality". If Sprint is reacting to and is concerned about AT&T's fine then that tells me a lot about how Sprint executives truly view their own business practices behind closed doors.

    --
    'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
  5. No Excuses! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!