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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)
An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."
On what the fck is 0rating
So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?
Further, why in this sissy state the Loony Left is breeding, must someone always be harmed or be a victim? Honestly, you can't do anything good anymore, or some Libtard will cry foul because they didn't get "their fair share."
Is it possible that the wireless companies are playing a complex psychological game here, trying to turn public sentiment away from net neutrality, by first offering to not (in essence) charge for certain services, secretly expecting someone to raise complaints against the practice because it violates net neutrality, so they can then throw up their hands and say "Sorry, the FCC won't allow us to give this to you for free, so now we're forced to count it against your data cap"?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
basically on one side we have,
limited content, mostly preselected by others, offered at zero cost.
on other side,
unlimited content, which must be selected by consumer expending time and effort(esp brain), offered at a price.
economics of mass acceptance of 1st could eventually lead to limitation of all content even for those making 2nd choice, or at least ever higher prices in 2nd choice
but should government(fcc) decide to ban the 1st prevent that? or let the consumer decide (even if most will choose them 1st)? that is the question. harder to answer than it appears.
I think the gist of this complaint, /. headline aside, is that zero-rating harms open competition and violates the FCC's policies towards net neutrality. The impact on poor people isn't the focus of it. An example might be how T-Mobile doesn't count Pandora traffic against the cap. While I might prefer to use another music service, I use Pandora since it doesn't count against the cap. Thus putting competitors at a disadvantage. Of course, large established players always have all sorts of advantages.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Because the cost differences are below the noise level of their cost structure? Seriously, do you think that Comcast would not allow Netflix (1/3 of ALL traffic) to install their CDN boxes that would make the Netflox packets cheaper to transport if the savings for Comcast were significant?
This zero rating is an anti-competitive move that is unrelated to costs.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I'm struggling to find the argument for network neturality here
I'll help.
A company decides to give people unlimited data use on preferred, highly popular services. Services that those same communities really, really want.
A company decides to limit customer's access to the internet, while giving unlimited access to their business partners. This is done so that the companies can make more money. The term for this type of business practice is called racketeering. "Racketeering is the act of offering of a dishonest service (a 'racket') to solve a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist without the enterprise offering the service.
The companies benefiting from zero rating are also engaging in a business practice which is an attempt to keep their own income higher than they would be in an unrestricted market. The consumer is the one who has the least control of the situation and is thus the one most harmed.
"Legislating pricing" is not what's happening here. You imply that net neutrality is some sort of government subsidy; it is not. In reality, it's basically just a rule that ISPs have to provide the whole Internet instead of picking some subset (often "coincidentally" controlled by them) to provide at the base cost and then charging extra for the rest.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The argument is "because I'm rich, I can watch video from any site on the Internet I want (anything from Ted.com to $porn_site) without worrying about data caps, but poor people can only afford to use sites that are zero-rated which limits and/or censors them." Why should only rich people be able to watch Ted talks?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In a modern networked world, yes, phone calls should cost the same regardless of distance: The marginal cost is so low that by paying for the local access infrastructure and a little on top, every consumer should expect not to be charged extra for that. The only reason why things are different in the phone world is that it's an old system with long established idiosyncrasies that aren't easily eliminated. Traditional systems exhibit lots of inefficiencies. That's what makes people think of them as "ripe for disruption". Another example: Sending a package from China to Europe is dirt cheap. The other way around is many times more expensive, even though the same people handle the packages and obviously the distance is the same too. The ships are even mostly empty on their way back to China, so why isn't sending something to China cheaper? Because of the Universal Postal Union. Basically international mail is completely regulated, and sending packages is priced based on the living standards in the country of origin. If international mail were invented today, that's not how it would be regulated. It's inertia in the system. But we don't have to build these kinds of pricing inefficiencies into new systems, and we sure as hell don't have to retrofit them into systems that we built without them.
By that reasoning, again, free local calling while charging for long distance should be considered anticompetitive, should it not?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If the solution is only a few people can have it, thus nobody should have it, and nobody should be better off because of other people being hurt, then you're just harming society.
It's okay for rich people to have toys the rest of us couldn't afford anyway *even if we took those toys away*.
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...you whiny liberal bitches. This is the free market at work. If the telecoms don't want to waste their time on squeezing money from low-lifes and bottom-feeders like "the poor", they don't have to. They should be free to run their businesses in whatever way they find most profitable. Right? So just STFU about net neutrality, and monopolies, all the rest of your socialist ideas.
That'll be $3,240 per sustained Mbps. We take credit cards.
(Show your work: 86400 seconds per day, times 30 days per month, times $10 per GB, times 1 GB per 8000 Mbit)
This zero rating can be an anti-competitive move that is unrelated to costs.
Fixed that for you.
In Comcast's case, zero-rating their own services while not upgrading backbone links to allow Netflix traffic was most certainly anti-competitive. In T-Mobile's case, not offering their own streaming services and not collecting a single cent from their zero-rated "partners" (look up how to become a partner; you can enroll your personal media server if it can provide a stream at less than 1.5Mbps), not so much.
Comcast's actions prevented a competitor from providing decent service, with no possible recourse; T-Mobile's actions encourage companies in the music and video streaming markets (not competitors, as T-Mobile is not in that space) to provide better service and sets clear guidelines that any legitimate service should already be following in the first place. The only non-technical requirement is that a provider request to be zero-rated; and one cold argue that to be a technical requirement as T-Mobile can't possibly know of every single provider in existence.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It does? How does my argument amount to that?
I hit Enter too soon. I thought we were talking about "Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T" as stated in TFA, though I realize GP did mention T-Mobile specifically (why?) ... but really I'm talking specifically about the philosophy of zero-rating specifically. I certainly didn't mention T-Mobile, why are you talking to me about them?
I don't believe we shouldn't abolish speed limits based on the idea that most people will drive a safe speed. Likewise, I don't think we should avoid regulation based on the idea that one service provider or even most wouldn't abuse what is so easy to abuse.
Read past the first line and you'll see.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What kind of phone contract do you have which charges more for long distance? I haven't seen that for a long time.
A more relevant example would be when long-distance and mobile companies charged more to connect calls to other networks. But in those cases, the cost to connect those calls at that time was not trivial.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Thats not a bad price for a 1GBps dedicated symmetrical line with SLA.
At least out not out here in the sticks anyway.
I could get a 2GBps dedicated line with SLA for $12K/month
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Technically yes, but in practice it doesn't hurt anyone.
The root of the problem is pricing. Unlimited flat rate data plans permit maximum data use with predictable and acceptable cost to the user. The provider finds they either exceed expected costs or determine the market will bear higher prices /limited bandwidth, and we get either higher prices or throttling /caps.
Forcing providers to abandon caps /throttling leaves them only with pricing.
When providers determine that their customers are both end users and services (like Netflix or Yahoo!) then they may exert the same pressure on both...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Zero-rating is the new 800 number. Remember when you had to pay for long distance phone calls by the minute? Companies who wanted you to use their services would set up 800 numbers so you could call them for free. The receiver of the call paid the bill.
Zero-rated services likewise have to pay, or have to comply with certain rules, to be included in the zero-rating program.
800 numbers didn't kill the "neutrality" of phone calling, and I don't think zero-rating necessarily will kill off net neutrality. As long as every business has the same opportunity to become part of the zero-rating tier, and the costs aren't prohibitive, a form of neutrality is preserved. On the other hand, if the carrier only exempts its own services, and doesn't let other in, or makes it cost-prohibitive, then we have a problem.
"communities of color"
Can someone explain to me why this policy has a racial bias? Or is this just along the lines of "terrorists and pedophiles" and "think of the children" type arguments?
Your argument amounts to "we shouldn't be allowed to have nice things that might be able to be abused, whether or not they're being abused"...
You oversimplify the situation. You also bias toward what they do by using the word "nice things" in place. I somewhat understand it is "nice" for you because you are a part of the situation. However, this does not mean there is no consequence or is nice to others.
A good example has already stated by jbmartin6 about Pandora (music service). Your argument toward the example is, however, unreasonable. You said that just telling the provider what you prefer to use, then the provider will lower the cost for you. Hmm... What jbmartin6 mentioned was about individual perspective, not a business perspective. It is about free cost when streaming via Pandora. Are you telling me that the provider would also give free streaming for other music services if you tell them you (as an individual) prefer those services better?
You seem to argue based on your current satisfaction. You need to look at any issue at a bigger picture. The answer is yes, we SHOULD NOT allow things that can be abused in the future even though they may look nice to you now. Why would you allow them to happen if you already see or know that there can be a problems/abuses/issues in the future? Could you tell me why? A short-term satisfaction, and being screwed later?
That's why prevention is preferred over looking for a solution especially when you already know what issues/problems would happen if allowed.
I somewhat understand it is "nice" for you because you are a part of the situation.
Then you understand incorrectly; I have unlimited LTE data on two devices and uncapped internet at home. Zero-rating provides literally zero benefit to me.
You said that just telling the provider what you prefer to use, then the provider will lower the cost for you.
No, I said (and specifically relating to T-Mobile, as jbmartin6 had mentioned) to contact the streaming provider you prefer to use and pressure them to participate in T-Mobile's (free and open to any provider who wishes to sign up) Music Freedom program. Currently, there are 40 providers participating, not including personal servers registered by individual users, which are not listed there. Pandora is onle one of those services.
I didn't read the rest of that paragraph, as it is entirely based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote. Go back, re-read what I write, and try again.
You seem to argue based on your current satisfaction.
On the contrary; I'm arguing based on what I feel is fair to others as, as notes above, I have unlimited data, so this does not affect me. You, on the other hand, appear to be arguing based on ignorance and inability to understand the posts you are replying to. For example:
we SHOULD NOT allow things that can be abused
So: water (can be used to drown someone), air (can be used to propel projectiles at high velocities), wood planks (can be used as a weapon), democracy (as we've seen, can certainly be abused)... these are all things you say we should not allow?
Why would you allow them to happen if you already see or know that there can be a problems/abuses/issues in the future? Could you tell me why? A short-term satisfaction, and being screwed later?
How's my attachment to reality strike you as an argument? You know, anything can be abused, so, rather than banning things with legitimate uses, why not ban the illegitimate uses and things without legitimate uses instead? Otherwise, well... we'd be banning literally everything.
That's why prevention is preferred over looking for a solution especially when you already know what issues/problems would happen if allowed.
Give a company the chance to screw up before you punish them (and their customers). If, and only if, they screw up,: by all means, throw the book at them.Bar them from any future participation in whatever activity they were doing (in this case, zero-rating) and fine the living shit out of them. That is prevention; not just a fine, but completely barring them from participating if they screw it up. However, if they operate fairly (as T-Mobile currently does), it does nobody any good to stop them. And I'll point to water again: we know people can drown in it; yet banning it would be far worse for society than allowing it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
World ends, poor and minorities disproportionately affected...
Why does *everything* have to be filtered through an SJW lens?
Zero-rating isn't akin to a speed limit; it's akin to changing lanes. We allow changing lanes, of course, with some restrictions; and we fine people for ignoring those restrictions. Let's do the same for zero-rating.
If an ISP wants to offer zero-rating for services fitting a given set of technical specifications (e.g. video streams under 1.5Mbps which can be detected as such) at no cost to participating providers, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, what's the problem? More to the point, given the user's ability to enable or disable the service, it's user-requested traffic control, something we should be encouraging providers to implement!
Mandate that participation (on both ends) be voluntary and that no fee may be collected (on either end), and call it a day.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I did. In fact I read your post a few times. Essentially what you've done is said "your argument amounts to X" without making any connection between X and my argument. That's called a strawman argument, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and a chance to actually make the argument you skipped.
To quote you:
While most of what you've said here is correct, none of that is relevant to this discussion
Oh?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I already gave a solution, it's not my fault you missed it. Here it is in your format:
Problem: Zero-rating (can be used to hinder competition)
Solution: Require that no fee be charged for zero-rating and that it be voluntary for all parties involved and open-access for any providers wishing to participate. Bar companies who fail to uphold this standard from using it at all and fine them heavily.
I think we're in agreement on that last bit; your proposal simply lacks resolution. I may be wrong, but I'd ask that you more clearly state your position in that case.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Great, we'll ensure that rather than having access to some video sources, they have access to none.
Mission accomplished.
The argument is "because I'm rich, I can vacation anywhere I want (anything from Aspen to Bangkok) without worrying about airline or hotel costs, but poor people can only afford to vacation at public parks" Why should only rich people be able to vacation in Aspen?
The argument is "because I'm rich, I can eat anything I want (anything from fois gras to Beluga caviar) without worrying about grocery bils, but poor people can only afford to eat at McDonald's off the dollar menu" Why should only rich people be able to eat Beluga caviar?
The argument is "because I'm rich, I snort as much cocaine as I want, without worrying about how much an ounce costs, but poor people can only afford to smoke crack at $10 a rock" Why should only rich people be able snort high-quality cocaine?
And going to government at any level for service would probably (from experience) result in below average service, poor customer service, increasing prices, and a genuine risk of introducing regulations worse than what we have now. Has no one considered whether a municipal Internet provider could be forced to filter objectionable content? Some would be pretty obvious, but some not so much. Porn in Utah? Gun blogs in Malibu?
In Sweden we have had this for quite some time. What is done is basically that the city builds a network but then allow house-owners to connect their houses to it for a fee. What then happens is that you have multiple ISP's offering service on this network where you get to choose from several different operators.
This allows competition to be fair for both small and large ISP's and the ISP's only pay for maintenance etc of the city-network for their connected customers.
So in terms of filters it would be no more than what ISP's already does.
(it's a bit complex than this in reality, and it may differ from city to city, but this is the basic description anyway.)
For me a non-metered 100/100Mbit connection, including IP-phone, is about $14/month.
Cost of upgrading my service to 1000/1000Mbit is about $30 extra..
The basic idea about this is that the city could start a non-profit organisation that would build a network and allow different ISP's to provide their service thru it or the city could just see this the same as any other utility like water/power..
Doing this as a city is more viable than as a standalone ISP... The city still have to dig up streets to fix pipes and/or lay new asphalt.. When the street is already torn up just dig down a few pipes where they can install fibers later on... It will take a few years before everything is connected, but that's the price you pay for getting a cheap installation.
What kind of phone contract do you have which charges more for long distance? I haven't seen that for a long time.
It's still pretty common for land-line service, actually. Even though most providers have moved to "unlimited long distance", it's a separate line-item on the bill and you pay extra for the ability to call long-distance numbers compared to local-only service. Without that long-distance plan you would have to pay by the minute, e.g. by calling collect or using a prepaid card.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
It's okay for rich people to have toys the rest of us couldn't afford anyway *even if we took those toys away*.
Sure, fine. Except we're not talking about toys. We're talking about data, WHICH DOES NOT BEHAVE LIKE ANYTHING ELSE!!1111elebenty-one. Goddamnit, you'd think Slashdot, of all places, would have figured this out by now. Nearly every analogy fails. As far as I know, every analogy fails. Data does not act like water. Data does not act like electricity. Data does not act like toys. Data does not act like cars.
Data does not act like anything else, and every attempt to try to reason about it by analogy runs afoul of this problem.
Nope, that's toys. They can watch a movie and you can't. That's like rich people being able to go to a play and you can't because it costs money to maintain the theater and pay the actors and support the orchestra and filling those seats with moneyless poor people won't keep the stagehands fed.
Data comes across data networks; you're paying for access to a system and for content production, at a minimum. If you can't afford it but someone else can, fine; and it keeps being fine as long as their ability to access said data doesn't reduce your ability to access some other good (by raising costs to you).
Nearly every analogy fails. As far as I know, every analogy fails.
Analogical thinking is the foundation of human intelligence. The major human fault is false analogy by whole body: most things behave like parts of other things assembled in different ways.
The Internet does, in fact, behave like a water or gas pipeline; both data and electricity flow like water; and there are details that don't match up with those systems, but do match up with other systems. For example: water and electricity both flow in volume (current) by pressure (voltage) and resistance; data flows at a basically constant rate, and only by usage, and so won't flow faster if you pump up the system. Data networks do behave like water and gas pipeline networks: If too many people try to draw on the resource, they saturate its capacity (which is limited by flow rate; this happens to be adjustable in water pipelines by raising the pressure at source, but you need fundamentally different hardware at source and receiver to adjust this in data networks).
You're holding data access luxuries up as a special kind of magical thing. It's not.
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Nope, that's toys. They can watch a movie and you can't.
Nope, it's not toys. Who cares about movies? I renew my license plates using the Internet, and at the rate the state is going, that will be the only possible way to do it by 2020. They're closing DMV offices all over the state, and they never had a mail in option. I have two different bank accounts that are accessible solely over the Internet. There is no local branch whatsoever. There are no branches in my state or in the neighboring state.
These are not toys. These are necessities of living, and I'm not a rich person. The trend is more of the same, where interacting with government, financial systems, and health systems are all moving to Internet-only. It's inevitable, because it's cheapest. They're closing offices, shutting down call centers, and eliminating mail handling centers. I don't give a fuck about stagehands. I need to be able to pay my taxes.
The Internet does, in fact, behave like a water or gas pipeline; both data and electricity flow like water;
Wrong. No, it doesn't. The Internet does not behave like electricity or water or gas. The analogy especially fails for water and gas. Water and gas are physical things, being moved into your house. You will perform physical processes using them, and they behave in ways specific to physical things, which do not apply to data.
Water and data are in no way analogous. Water requires acquisition, treatment, and the ability to move vast quantities of something very heavy. Water pressure and data throughput are in no way analogous. Water velocity is a physical thing, which can be very expensive to achieve. Data velocity is an electrical thing that costs nothing beyond powering the routers and switches. Specifically, moving no data at all costs exactly the same as moving maximum data (since the majority of installed routers and switches today do not have sleepy ports). Similarly for gas, though the power required to move gas is much less than it is for water, since it is much lighter. It's still far higher than that required to move data, and still changes substantially based on demand, because it is a physical process.
Electricity and data are not analogous either. Electricity must be generated, and that generation requires vast physical plant with, in the case of coal and fission power, extremely heavy inputs. How much you and your neighbors are using changes how much must be generated from moment to moment, which requires changing a very large physical process. Sending or not sending data changes nothing at all. Send, don't send, the same (minuscule) amount of power is required either way.
Congestion does not behave the same way either. If too many people try to draw on the capacity of a physical system, physical processes simply stop working. If the gas pressure is too low, your gas water heater will not ignite correctly, and will in fact extinguish itself if it's an older model driven by a pilot light. If the water pressure is too low, your shower won't work. If a network connection is congested, many things keep working. Only latency-sensitive things suffer, at first, and even that can be alleviated by QOS routers. There is no analogous process in water or gas systems. You can not simply throttle your faucet and make your shower work when water pressure is too low.
Data access is no longer a luxury, and while it's not magical, it's definitely special. Attempting to reason about it as if it were a physical thing fails in numerous ways, some of which I have described here. Other people do it a bit better, but I think I hit the high points.
THE BEHAVIORS ARE ANALOGOUS.
The substance isn't.
More to the point: I illustrated that a house isn't a screw or a plank, but a collection of things with varied behaviors; and so is a ship. You refuse to believe that the timbers in a ship flex like the timbers in a house.
This is where the basic human intelligence thing would have happened for you, but didn't. Humans, again, are good at analogical thinking, with their main mistakes being applying the analogy in a whole-body extent instead of finding the correct limits; you've shown an inability to find the limits of an analogy, so you can't understand a new thing by the ways it behaves like an old thing.
Life must be very, very hard for you. Everything must be so complicated and difficult to understand.
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