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Verizon's Mobile Video Won't Count Against Data Caps -- but Netflix Will (arstechnica.com)
Earthquake Retrofit writes: Ars Technica has a story about how Verizon Wireless is testing the limits of the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules; Verizon has announced that it will exempt its own video service from mobile data caps—while counting data from competitors such as YouTube and Netflix against customers' caps.
Let's hope that the FCC shows that its net neutrality enforcement has teeth.
If they get too heavy handed with it, people will bail.
Damn straight. If Comcast pulls this shit, I will dump them for Xfinity.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
You are wrong. Netflix will put servers physically next to Verizon's. The cost is that of a few feet of fiber and some ports. It's probably cheaper because your "general" incoming bandwidth isn't used.
And it's about antitrust. Since the telcos have what us basically a government approved monopoly, they have to agree to certain rules that might seem weird in a free market. Such as net neutrality.
I feel sorry for you Americans. In Finland I get 250/100Mbps for 29.90 EUR/m. And if there was a case of carriers favoring their own products over direct competitors like Verizon they'd find themselves in court pretty damn soon. Heck, even if they taunt their competitors using names or other similarly identifiable information they'd go to court.
Doesn't this prove by example that there is no last mile scarcity on Verizon's wireless network? The reason for limits on wireless has always been this bottleneck, transit costs over fibre are small, if not free for a tier 1 provider. These costs are easily covered by a cellphone agreement. What is the IP transit cost for a 95% average line that does 2GB a month to Verizon $.05?
With this move, Verizon is demonstrating that caps are unnecessary. With this evidence, one might even argue that caps are an arbitrary and capricious with the sole purpose of extorting money from customers and content providers.
The free market is a nice idea but fails at the entrance fee.
If I have an established system, I can operate at much lower cost than someone who would have to establish the system first. If I already have a factory pumping out a product (which has redeemed its cost already by me being able to set the price due to having a de facto monopoly due to a lack of competitors), I can easily squish any and all competition that may arise by lowering the price to the point where it is not feasible for someone who still has to redeem his investment. By fixing the price at a level where he cannot redeem his costs, I can ensure the continuation of my de facto monopoly. This is crucial in markets where the initial cost of doing business is magnitudes higher than the operational cost. Like, say, ISPs.
There are a few ways to crack open such a monopoly. But that first and foremost needs the will of the law makers to actually do something against it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's no such fucking thing as a fucking free fucking market ... a free market is a lie, because companies will always lie, cheat, steal, collude, and otherwise game the system.
There never has been, and never will be, a free fucking market.
You can pretty much replace corporations with anything run by people (including the government).
Difference is, it's easier (not easy, just easier) to get out of the way of a corporation than it is to get out of the way of government.
Example, I hated sprints customer service so I switched to t mobile. I have my city's electrical company but the cost of switching away from that is much higher (have to move, find a new job, etc.)
Verizon has peering agreements to cover costs the wider Internet. Secondly, the ISPs have always argued that the last mile (in fiber or spectrum) is the bottleneck and why they need data caps. So it's amusing watching you try to flip the argument now that we see that Verizon has no real bandwidth bottleneck for its wireless service if it can zero-rate streaming as long as you pay the piper.
The last mile for towers and cell sites are very restricted technically. The bottle neck is NOT the backhaul. it is the number of people that can connect to a sector. It is something like 40 concurrent connections.. and they all have to share the bandwidth for that sector. Wireless just doesn't scale for high bandwidth usage.
charge only for data leaving their network, instead of charging for data traversing their wireless networks.
This is exactly how the backbone is organized and settled. When people mention "settlement free" peering agreements, these are normally just when the data going both ways is about balanced. Every once in awhile one of these agreements gets stressed due to a growing imbalance, several times now due specifically to netflix's at-the-time provider (first when they were with Cogent, second when they were with Level 3, and interestingly that first time the dispute was between Cogent and Level 3) discovering that one of their settlement-free agreements isnt going to be settlement-free in the future.
In any event, ultimately its the sender of the packets that must secure its delivery. In some cases this requires paying someone else to complete the task.
"His name was James Damore."