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FCC's 'Nutrition Labels' For Broadband Show Speed, Caps, and Hidden Fees (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica article: The Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new broadband labels modeled after the nutrition labels commonly seen on food products. Home Internet service providers and mobile carriers are being urged to use the labels to give consumers details such as prices (including hidden fees tacked onto the base price), data caps, overage charges, speed, latency, packet loss, and so on. ISPs aren't required to use these labels. But they are required to make more specific disclosures as part of transparency requirements in the FCC's net neutrality order, which reclassified Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC recommends that ISPs use these labels to comply with the disclosure rules and says use of the labels will act as a "safe harbor" for demonstrating compliance. However, ISPs can come up with their own format if they still make all the required disclosures in "an accurate, understandable, and easy-to-find manner," the FCC said today.
...anything even remotely resembling this are significantly less than the chances of Donald Trump making a well-considered, rational and coherent statement on any topic and then sticking to that opinion for more than five seconds.
If it's not required, what's the point?
How do I tell if my broadband is organic?
I'd say:
[size=1000]Unlimited[/size][size=0.0000001]*[/size]
[size=0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001]* For the first one (1) byte. We reserve the right to throttle your speed to one (1) bps after you go over.[/size]
I'm on a low-bloatware diet.
They should also add 'potential side effects' section. For Comcast it would read something like:
Warning! May cause inability to unsubscribe, blood in your stool, and impotent rage.
It says it guarantees Safe Harbor if they use the FCC format. What they will likely do is adopt the format and then try to weasel the information actually included and then claim Safe Harbor.
Making it a "suggestion" and offering the carrot of Safe Harbor is about avoiding being instantly sued for issuing a mandate that the carriers don't want them to have the right to give in the first place.
I'm pretty sure they're already being sued in as many ways as possible to stop their having any authority in the first place, I vaguely remember reading something about it.
It seems fairly clever to me I just hope the FCC is ready for the manipulative ways it will be implemented (which will obviously be in as useless a way as possible by the carriers).
I can't wait to see how fast my exit node, I mean middle node, I mean bridge I mean client will run.
I'm so sick and tired of deceptive sales practices which are technically legal but involve all manner of legalism and obfuscation to sell a thing which differs conceptually from what the buyer actually gets.
This kind of thing should be required for any consumer contract advertising.
The advertisers should literally not care if its there if what they're selling in the big print actually matches what they deliver in the small print. The only way they should complain is if they are lying or intentionally deceiving consumers.
Except for GMO products? (Not directing this at you, but slashdot as a whole.) According to the slashdot majority, truth is something you can apply selectively when you have an agenda.
Even is ISPs are relatively transparent about what they sell you, it is always about maximum download and upload speed, and never about latency and quality of service. In fact, sales and first-tier support folks don't even know these terms, much less what their company's typical values are. In practice, a stable, low latency broadband connection with 15 Mbit/s cap gives you a better overall experience than a jerky, high latency connection which on paper tops out at 50 Mbit/s.
I am very glad the FCC is including these numbers by default to judge a provider's disclosure practices.
As an aside, test your connection at https://www.voipreview.org/spe... and see your latency, jitter and packet loss alongside the other metrics.
quit shoveling the bullshit in the first place so such things aren't needed.
set the monthly price. set the data speed, down and up. set the modem monthly rental rate.. that's it. no quotas, no bogus fees, no termination fees, no 'setup' fees, no term length contracts, no selling/giving our info away, no snooping/sniffing our data streams, no ad injections, etc etc
a simple-no-bullshit-all-i-want-is-a-big-dumb-pipe-without-getting-buttfucked-by-the-isp plan.
Capitalism starts to fail when companies spend most of their resources on trying to dupe customers rather than building a better mousetrap.
For example, my online banking requires me to select a "payment type" for each and every transaction I submit, which is typically each monthly bill.
I called customer support and asked to have it default to the payment type I use 99.9% of the time, but they said they'd put it in the wish-list and left me hanging.
The reason they do that is that the actual default is a goofy gimmick account that requires registering online and receiving spam (if you read the fine-print). They force you to see it.
They KNOW it's a time-waster to have the default payment type be the gimmicky one, but do it because they want their damned Spam-A-Tron promoted.
And there are other time-wasting gimmicks that I won't go into. It adds up. I'm not saying we should switch to socialized banking, but these capitalists sure are giving capitalism a bad name and make people more likely to agree to big-co regulations during elections.
Table-ized A.I.
Will ISP try to do stuff like well you can buy your own hardware but it takes a lot work to do so or if you do then any other service from us will not work. Just so they don't have to say that it is needed?
The labels just say that fees and taxes "varies by location". First off, is that even true of Federal fees and taxes? And secondly, how about a little transparency here, and link us to the anticipated extra costs of the government.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
To list the price on a label, they'd have to pick a price. Not everyone in the same neighborhood even pays the same rate. It's whatever they can get away with. This could be very good (everyone gets fair pricing) or very bad (everyone gets the high price).
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-...
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-...
These should have been in PNG. Whoever picked JPEG for those images should take a few minutes to learn the difference between the two.
You mean like how suddenlink refuses to say what speeds they can sell you? http://i.pictr.com/2ii71jz9q6....
Or like how Paypal always defaults to using your bank account and there is no option to change the default?
a few years ago paypal fked up and credit cards were made default for about the whole month of December. There was a 10+ page thread on their support forms with people thanking them saying they wish they had done it sooner.
They got it fixed in time for new years tho give people what they want? hell no.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Let the FCC use customer experience to do the labeling. It's precisely the kind of repository of info we need when choosing a service. Something like a "Consumer Report", if you will. And while they are at it, they need to prohibit exclusive contracts that suppress competition.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
>Capitalism starts to fail when companies spend most of their resources on trying to dupe customers rather than building a better mousetrap.
No, it starts to fail when companies spend most of their resources trying to convince the government to perform stupid tricks that support them. Since companies are smart, a majority of these tricks are to try to bring in legislation exactly like this so they can use it to kill off the small companies that can't bear the weight of heavy regulation.
And howzabout a guaranteed minimum download speed? I want some guaranteed minimum speed they would stand by and keep to, by repairs and upgrades to infrastructure. I know, that one is actually difficult and very expensive. But after years of deception and disappointment, they owe us truth about what we are buying.
Don't step on the baby.
Do away with custom contacts for most things like EULAs, and have a standard set of terms that the manufacturer can select from.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Do you have ANY evidence whatsoever that Generally Marketed Online services are harmful AT ALL?!
No?! Then why would the consumers need this extra information?! This labeling is harmful because the minority of morons who believe in tinfoil hat conspiracy theories about "corrupt GM online service providers" can NOT be trusted to make purchase decisions based on fact based evidence.
While it's true that labeling the products will allow 3rd party researchers to perform experiments to put the issue of harm to rest once and for all, THIS LABELING REQUIREMENT IS JUST ANTI-SCIENCE SCAREMONGERING!
There's no need to know exactly what's in the product, IT IS GOOD FOR YOU, TRUST US. No one would be selling it otherwise. This is a totally different issue to Lead and Nicotine, those are CLEARLY harmful. But today's scientists haven't shown that the current GMO is harmful, so they need no labels.
For voice over IP, 128kbps with very low jitter and low latency will give ideal results. More bandwidth will neither help nor hurt.
For Netflix, it's all about about bandwidth, jitter doesn't matter at all and latency barely matters.
For ssh, it's all about latency. Bandwidth and jitter don't matter. (Assuming at least 28kbps).
It's a bit confusing for the average consumer. Heck, the average Slashdot reader doesn't know what jitter is.
But I fail to see how it help so long as there is nothing to compare it to for any given market.
Second, kill all the marketers.
Actually, some ISPs already do this in spades.
Most (honest) Satellite Broadband providers will tell you your caps, average latency, average speeds, what happens if you go past the cap, any QoS action, etc. For instance, I have a 30GB daytime cap each month, average latency is 570ms, if I go past the cap my speeds drop from 25mbps to 1-5mbps, etc. I knew all of this before I even called to order the service.
'course, most folks would say "man, your connection sucks", but consider that I could lash a dish/modem on top of an RV and use it anywhere I want in North America. In my case, I use it because I live way out in the sticks. It's good enough for most basic stuff and VPN to work daily (and it's not bad at all for streaming), but VoIP and FPS gaming is shit. I knew this (grew out of the twitch-gaming a long time ago), but the sales lady on the phone went out of his way to let me know all of this (she read it off a script) before I authorized anything.
But yeah - if a Sat. provider is not up-front about all of this? Drop/Avoid them, because most are.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Capitalism is about efficiently allocating the *market's* resources, not the resources of any particular particpant in the market. A prerequisite for this is information about the market. Obfuscation makes the market less efficient therefore it is anti-capitalist.
Should include:
ISP packet inspection practices
Ports blocked
Protocols blocked
Prioritization and/or throttling policies
Double NATing
IPv6 availability
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Capitalism is about efficiently allocating the *market's* resources
No, like Tablizer above, you're projecting your socialist outlook onto capitalism. Capitalism is not about efficiency or fairness or any other outcome for the whole of society. That's the whole point. It's about individuals and self-chosen groups of individuals exchanging goods and services in a marketplace unmolested by external factors. It's saying, what persons decide to do is what is valuable, and the overall results be damned. Hence the opposite of socialism.
That said, efficiencies can and often do happen in capitalism. And obfuscation by players within the market is essentially fair game. Caveat emptor.
This is great and all, but in most people's lives their internet access bill is a small part of their monthly expenses - let's apply the same logic to something that has a greater impact on a person's financial future: student loans. Imagine a one-page document that students must sign each school year that itemizes their borrowing like so: Name: Total amount borrowed to date: New amount to be borrowed this school year: Total amount owed at end of current school year: Grace period before loan repayment starts: Grace period if student chooses to leave school before matriculation: Estimated monthly payment amount (based on previous debt level): Estimated NEW monthly payment (based on new debt taken on): Number of monthly payments until loan(s) paid off: Total of all estimated loan payments (principle and interest), assuming no pre-payments made, for old loan balance): Total of all estimated loan payments (principle and interest), assuming no pre-payments made, for NEW loan balance: Kids signing up for student loans have no idea what their payments will be, that is a much, much bigger problem than over-paying for Internet access.
but the sales lady on the phone went out of his way to let me know all of this (she read it off a script)
You know, I find it really annoying when people go out of their way to use the female pronoun when referring to a person of undetermined gender. I.e., "the teacher ... she ...". I have to admit, I find it just as annoying when someone uses the masculine pronoun for someone we have been told is female.
Well, most want it to have some degree of "efficiency or fairness", otherwise it's too broken to be useful. It needs a degree of taming to better achieve those at times.
Fair by whose standards? If obfuscation makes it less efficient, then our economy is wasting resources from a consumer's perspective.
I'd rather have co's far more focused on making better mousetraps than on tricking mousetrap customers. I'm not a social-Darwinist, at least not a pure one.
Table-ized A.I.
If so, it's not working very well, the rich are still getting richer. It looks like the 1% are winning the convincing contest, if you go by the numbers.
Table-ized A.I.
I'd rather have co's far more focused on making better mousetraps than on tricking mousetrap customers.
A free society means you'd have to try convincing and educating people, to voluntarily look for and shy away from those who choose to conduct their businesses that way.
Yeah, I guess I shouldn't complain.
I've got two shitty, overpriced and under-performing services to choose from.
Consumer Choice!
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Capitalism starts to fail when companies spend most of their resources on trying to dupe customers rather than building a better mousetrap.
For example, my online banking requires me to select a "payment type" for each and every transaction I submit, which is typically each monthly bill.
I called customer support and asked to have it default to the payment type I use 99.9% of the time, but they said they'd put it in the wish-list and left me hanging.
The reason they do that is that the actual default is a goofy gimmick account that requires registering online and receiving spam (if you read the fine-print). They force you to see it.
They KNOW it's a time-waster to have the default payment type be the gimmicky one, but do it because they want their damned Spam-A-Tron promoted.
And there are other time-wasting gimmicks that I won't go into. It adds up. I'm not saying we should switch to socialized banking, but these capitalists sure are giving capitalism a bad name and make people more likely to agree to big-co regulations during elections.
Did you stop to think that perhaps the bank are trying to cover their ass and make it so the default payment type is one that does not take money off you. That way when some moron just clicks through on accident and resubmits it a dozen times, they cannot sue the bank for anything as they did not actually lose any money from the goof up?
I do rant online about certain practices, but I cannot cover every topic or person by far.
Table-ized A.I.
Aaah yes of course... because "tell the truth about what you sell" is such a burdensome regulation that absolutely no small company could ever manage to survive complying with it.
Give me a break, hell the FCC even gave them a frickin template ready to use - they've made it ridiculously cheap and easy to comply with this. This is pure hassle for big corporate ISPs who have no desire to have to be honest with customers, it will have less than zero effect on small ISPs who have had to rely on "having a better product" all along and who will only benefit from the big boys being forced to be honest about how inferior their products are.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It is like putting a nutrition label on Soylent Green. Is the label still useful if the grocery store sells only one food object?
I guess, maybe. "It's made of people!" vs. "Maybe I won't buy any Internet, then."
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...
* Less power/cpu/ram+ IO use vs. local DNS servers + addons w/ less security issues vs. DNS + routers. Less complex vs firewalls (needing layered filtering drivers - hosts don't + firewalls block less used IP addresses, hosts block more used host-domain names) complimenting 'em. Antivirus = reactive. Hosts = FAR more proactive, blocking infection BEFORE you get it. Gets its data from 10 reputable security community sites.
APK
P.S. - Hosts get you more speed (hardcodes + adblocks) & faster vs. addons, security (vs. bad sites/dns security issues), reliability (vs. downed/poisoned dns), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) vs. other "so-called -solutions'" w/ what you natively have. Unlike Adblock/UBlock/Ghostery, hosts != blockable by ClarityRay/BlockIQ... apk
Satellite broadband providers are competing with the big boys. The best way to compete in an entrenched market is to do something different. Since the big boys are all evil, the best competition strategy is to not be evil. Thus, satellite broadband providers will be more likely to tell the truth.
AT&T for instance won't tell you details easily, first you have to log in, provide your contact details, and so forth. This is only partly because they may want to know if you can actually get the service. More important this lets them shove in more ads and upsell you, and because it allows them to hide information they don't want you to know (new customers are shown the lower prices they don't want existing customers to know of). They are also good at hiding in the fine print the fact that your good deal is only for the first year; but almost no company ever wants you to know the price you pay after the first year is up, almost no company wants you to know when the price has gone down, etc.
You got a better gender neutral singular pronoun that can't be confused with objects like "it"?
Their/They
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You know, if you don't like the way Paypal does things, you can feel free to open a competing service. That is how capitalism works.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Compared to the US government, even the most wealthy person is no match.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
They
Fucking retard.
Voting with my wallet means I use amazon or google to pay for things any time they are offered.
That is how i'm told capitalism is supposed to work.
I sent Paypal support a message yesterday about opting out of offers for Paypal credit. This is part of what I got back:
"I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. We appreciate the time you've taken to write us with your comments about our service. The advertisement or the offer from PayPal Credit will automatically pop up and this is hard coded on the system.
We will not force you to apply for PayPal Credit. Just disregard the offer.
We continuously strive to provide you with the highest quality website features and navigation system. We carefully consider every feedback email we receive and appreciate your suggestions.
Thank you for your feedback, and we hope that you continue to enjoy using PayPal!"
I certainly don't have the kind of money and expertise required to go into competition with them but someone really needs to......Oh yeah that's right bitcoin is actually bigger than any of Paypal's competitors AFAIK.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The user should be able to choose their default. Most people have one "regular" account anyhow: it's regular-joe bill-paying.
The "account type" is mostly so they can stuff their gimmick "account" into it. They didn't even used to have that field, and if one only uses one account, it arguably shouldn't even show up on that user's form.
Table-ized A.I.
He.