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Net Neutrality Advocates To FCC: Put the Kibosh On Internet Freebies (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader cites a CNET report:Net neutrality advocates demand action. Representatives from Fight the Future, the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday hand-delivered a 6-foot tall package containing 100,000 letters of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission. They ask the agency to take action against AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and Verizon for violating the agency's Open Internet order by offering so-called zero-rating service plans. While the practice offers some benefits to customers, critics say it violates the agency's Net neutrality principles, which requires all services on the internet be treated the same. They claim it puts smaller competitors at a disadvantage and highlights the fact that data caps are unnecessary. Carriers say they are simply experimenting with new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers.
If we tweak it enough capitalism will benefit everyone! No, if we don't it will benefit everyone! God protext us from the proletarian mob!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
I'm LOLing at the Europeans today, most of whom are mourning the first of many nations to leave the EU. It's a matter of time before the rest of the EU fails, too. I'm so thankful for being a Canadian, because we are smarter and better than the Europeans and Americans.
They're paid for by increasing the price on everything else, and they reduce your freedom by increasing the cost of making alternative choices.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I thought I had a pretty decent grip of the english language, but what's a kibosh?
Don't let the business definition of afford be conflated with the common interpretation. The objective of every business model to obtain the maximum compensation that you can afford for the proffered product... of course they want it more affordable.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Accept no substitutes!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now the "net neutrality" supporters are going to screw everyone with their demands that anything that isn't crappy, lowest-common-denominator service is a rule violation.
T-Mobile's Binge on does offer free streaming (both radio and tv) for qualified rate plans. But I was under the impression that any provider could opt in or out of the program once they met the technical criteria for the reduced bitrate streams. It saves the provider bandwidth to get the stream to T-mobile, and it saves t-mobile bandwidth to get it to the customer. There's no denying any service access to T-Mobile's customers, requiring bribe money to T-Mobile in order to be included in the service, nor prioritizing any service over another as far as I can tell (but could be wrong).
Is this any different really than Netflix's Open Connect for instance? It seems to be an advantage for everyone without being a detriment to anyone.
... their arguments and motives of the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday. They can all go kcuf themselves.
Using the most well-known example, Binge On delivers 480p video using adaptive bit rate around 1 Mbps. Regular ( non-Binge) Youtube is about 4 Mbps normally, 8 Mbps at highest quality.
By using Binge On, you agree to lower quality video (which still looks fine on a 4" screen), and in exchange they exempt it from caps. They actual cost of transferring 1 Mbps is much lower than the cost of 4 Mbps or 8 Mbps. There's not an increased price to pay for, it's a cost-saving system.
Binge On is an interesting pseudo-exception.
First of all, what I wrote still applies: it may not be increasing cost, but it's reducing the quality for the same cost, which is more-or-less equivalent. That's not to say it's a bad thing -- I, for one, love paying minimal costs as long as the quality is barely sufficient! I value-engineer my entire lifestyle, and plan to be able to retire 20 years early because of it. But I digress...
The problem -- and the reason I have Binge On disabled on my account as a matter of principle, even though I would be perfectly happy with compressed video -- is that it's implemented on a site-by-site basis. If I could ask T-Mobile to compress and zero-rate all video streaming, both from big providers like Youtube and Netflix and from any random small server (or when streaming video from the phone to elsewhere, for that matter), then I would have no objection to it whatsoever. On the contrary, it would be great! It would also then be categorized as "perfectly-acceptable QoS" rather than "a violation of net neutrality."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> it may not be increasing cost, but it's reducing the quality for the same cost, which is more-or-less equivalent.
It's NOT the same cost. On a phone (these are phone companies), it's providing approximately the same quality at much lower cost.
> If I could ask T-Mobile to compress and zero-rate all video streaming, both from big providers like Youtube and Netflix and from any random small server (or when streaming video from the phone to elsewhere, for that matter), then I would have no objection to it whatsoever.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that "any random small server" doesn't use the protocols, codecs, bit rates, etc that Youtube and Netflix agreed to. Maybe you can find a way to get everyone to agree on those particulars. Until then, it's used for video providers who use compatible settings.
"new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers."
That's the best joke I've heard all year. Prices only go UP, never down, with ISPs.
"...new business models that will make their service more affordable for consumers..."
Last time I checked the price of cable and data services has never gone down, ever. This is basically an alternative way of saying.
"...new business models that will increase our profit margins while harming the long-term needs of our customers."
Sure, maybe you can argue that they're helping it to not go *up* but that's a weak argument as well. The price will go up, and they'll keep taking a bigger slice of the pie. Dems da rules.
The connotation of one is totally different than the other.
Heh. It's funny watching people get upset when their rationale doesn't survive scrutiny.