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Netflix Pushes FCC To Crack Down On Data Caps (dslreports.com)
Netflix hates data caps. The on-demand movies and TV shows service has asked the US Federal Communications Commission to declare that home internet data caps are unreasonable and that they limit customers' ability to watch online video. From an article on DSLReports:Netflix has long has an adversarial relationship with ISPs, and often for good reason. Usage caps on fixed-line networks are specifically designed to protect ISP TV revenues from Netflix competition, allowing an ISP to both complicate and generate additional profit off of the shift away from legacy TV. "Data caps (especially low data caps) and usage based pricing ("UBP") discourage a consumer's consumption of broadband, and may impede the ability of some households to watch Internet television in a manner and amount that they would like," said Netflix in a new filing with the FCC. "For this reason, the Commission should hold that data caps on fixed Âline networks ÂÂand low data caps on mobile networksÂÂ may unreasonably limit Internet television viewing and are inconsistent with Section 706." Netflix's filing comes as ISP's increasingly turn to broadband usage caps to take advantage of the lack of broadband competition in many markets. Fearing FCC crackdown both Comcast and AT&T raised their caps to one terabyte, though many ISPs still cap usage at much-lower allotments. High, low, or somewhere in between, Netflix highlights that there is no good reason to implement caps on well-managed fixed-line networks, despite a decade of ISPs trying to justify the price gouging.
I hate the data cap too, but I don't like the lack of control I have over stream quality - on most devices it looks like it just does some automatic detection.
I much prefer the control in, say, YouTube where I can specify the resolution quality. I'd also like to be able to optimize the stream for audio or prefer certain programs in SD. The kids don't need to watch Pokemon in 4K!
g=
Their official policy is that you have to pay them for TV no matter what. Either you subscribe to TV, or your internet connection is capped, and you will pay them for TV anyway in the form of overages.
Seemed like a pretty good plan "Lets punish consumers and make them pay for our ill-conceived acquisition of Direct TV"
Gee, I wonder why they are losing subscribers.
The kids don't need to watch Pokemon in 4K!
The Orange Islands episodes are an exception. And the Beauty and the Beach episode for the same reason, though that only aired once in the US (and had chunks cut) and isn't available on Netflix.
the whole point of ISP mergers was to create larger networks that bypass Level 3 and other backbone carriers. And with everyone hosting content inside the ISP's own networks or at major peering centers then this traffic should be excluded at the very least.
or at the very least create something like T-Mobile's BingeOn where 720p and below isn't counted
This will be a continuing problem so long as the people who own the infrastructure also sell services over it.
They almost got this right with the ILEC/CLEC split with DSL. The only problem is that they let the ILEC sell services over the infrastructure they owned.
Don't let the guys who own the wires sell any services and this problem will fix itself.
Personally, if I'm sold a 30Mbps/5Mbps cable/dsl connection, I expect to be able to saturate that channel 24/7 if I want to. ISPs should provision accordingly.
And also the ability to delay or offload content in cache. For example, if your bandwidth is currently funky (as is typical with oligopoly ISP's), then set the play to notify you when the download is complete or the buffer reaches a certain percent complete. A fuller menu would look something like:
Bandwidth and Delay Options:
Quality (higher quality may slow download):
[x] Automatic
[_] High-Definition [rate value here]
[_] Medium [rate value here]
[_] Low [rate value here]
[_] Etc.
Delayed Playback:
[x] Don't play until buffer has ____ seconds of video [with a default but editable number]
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, Auto-Play
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, Pop-Up-Notification
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, No notification (click video window to play when "Ready" indicated)
But companies can argue these kind of options are too confusing to most consumers. Maybe a good UI designer could make them friendlier...
Table-ized A.I.
Centrylink DSL: 250GiB cap
Centrylink Fiber: uncapped
Other than the last-mine of data transfer, it is the same Centrylink back-haul network. So why does one get capped (who can and does use significantly more bandwidth) versus the slower connection that is easier manage and do shared provisioning for?
WALP, whatever their weird justifications, I'm currently pushing ~1TiB/week on my CL Fiber line from torrent seeding. It would be more, but torrents only go as fast as the other end is willing to download.
Adjustable quality would be a nice user control to have, if you're paying for bandwidth, you should be able to decide how much bandwidth to use on what downloads.
My wife and I live alone and we use 600 - 1000 GB a month. And that is a month where I don't boot up an old computer and install/update hundreds of steam games. I can't imagine what would happen to my internet bill if comcast decided to enforce a data cap.
If people only knew how little it costs per household for ISPs to provide cable TV and internet service! While no real figures are published, by some estimates it costs most ISPs less than $15.00 a month per household to provide both broadband Internet and cable TV, in some cases less than half of that figure.
Not only should the FCC remove all data caps, prices for broadband Internet service, and cable TV should be capped at $29.95 per month each. Our taxes have paid for the infrastructure for these services, yet we are massively price gouged for these services. One reason that this price gouging goes on is that ISPs have managed to stifle any hint of competition in most locations in the U.S., even buying draconian laws against cities that wish to provide their citizens with reasonably prices broadband Internet and Cable TV services.
I would also like to see the FCC mandate that as long as costumers are paying for their cable TV service, it should be commercial free, as we were promised at the very beginning of cable TV roll-outs!
Except that the problem of cable companies abusing their customers was caused by deregulation.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
When I turned my Uverse equipment in, the guy at the UPS store and I had a good laugh about the huge surge of AT&T equipment getting turned in. I was content with my 12Mb/s internet. It wasn't the fastest, but it was fine. Now I have 50Mb/s cable with a $4/month VPN service and things have been running great for a few months now.
Its costing me less, and I'm getting better service. I should actually be thanking AT&T for making me get off my ass and finally switch.
Instead of more regulation or less regulation, perhaps *better* or *different* regulations are required.
Given that Comcast enjoys government granted monopolies in its markets, it seems reasonable for the government to require them to remove data caps.
Of course, the better approach would be to tell Comcast fine, charge whatever you like, but we're going to open all of your markets to competition.
"Pixellated indistinct blobs, gotta catch em all!"
Table-ized A.I.
...because people tend to max out their bandwidth all at the same time during the day, creating a headache for network data management. To encourage people to schedule their torrents to throttle back during the day, ISPs should make their data caps only apply during peak usage periods, similar to "unlimited nights and weekends" cell phone plans.
There's a service called NightShift that helps people watch Netflix on bandwidth-constrained connections like dialup. It works by scheduling downloads to occur overnight so they're ready to watch the next day. Netflix could do something similar to bypass time-of-use data caps. "Do you wish to stream this program now or download to watch later? [Stream] [Download]" Then the ISPs might realize that the data caps don't need to apply to overnight downloads.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
{Citation needed}. Fail.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
NetFlix has no hope here.
They did not pay as much for the FCC Chairman as the cable companies did. The cable companies bought him fair and square.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Oligopolies suffer from similar problems as "big gov't": not enough competition to give them incentive and to give consumers real choices. They historically almost always take advantage of insufficient competition to screw customers: Railroads, oil, cars, computers (IBM, MS), CPU's, telecoms, etc. have shown mass dickery under oligopolies or monopolies.
If there were say 7 or more realistic ISP choices per typical customer, THEN competition could work its magic, Adam-Smith-style.
The biggest road-block to more competition in my opinion is the "last mile problem". It's not realistic nor efficient for every competitor to run wires to every potential customer. It's the main reason Google is dropping out in many areas.
If a gov't utility could set up "last mile" wiring, then multiple ISP's would only have to hook up to centralized routing nodes, not to each house. It's then just a switch. This could invite the competition needed to end most ISP BS such that regulators wouldn't have to get involved nearly as much.
The right conditions have to be in place for capitalism to work right.
Table-ized A.I.
Take it a step further and make "the wires" a public utility company, or at least the last mile, which is where the natural monopoly lives.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The key problems with Data Caps is the fact the business cannot keep up with the technology.
20 years ago 50 Megs data cap was more than enough for most dial up users.
10 years ago 5 Gigs data cap was more than enough for most broadband users.
Today 50 Gigs data cap is currently what is considered decent for home use.
For the most part our behavior hasn't changed that much, we more or less download data 2 hours a day. However as speed increases the amount of data we download increases.
In terms of stream quality. Netflix usually will go the max quality that the show is broadcasted for. So some of your old shows it will be at a much lower resolution. If Pokemon is streaming 4k that means that the show was made for 4k.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Indeed that's the point: an easy choice. If your bandwidth is currently hosed by Evil ISP, then it would be nice to switch to caching instead of streaming without closing your browser/viewer and going to a different utility.
Table-ized A.I.
My kids don't care when I drop youtube down to 240 resolution,
Someone calls child care services at once!
Full agreement.
That's not true — "natural monopoly" is a myth. But do find citations supporting your assertion.
Another unsubstantiated claim. Google Fiber was meant to run all of the "last miles" from the get-go — it was not something they realized they have to do later. I explain their lack of wide-spread success by the above-referenced regulation of local governments, but you are welcome to offer citations supporting your assertion(s). Meanwhile, I offer this map as evidence supporting my assertion. They are already offered in the "redneck" parts of the country like Salt Lake City, Charlotte, and Kansas City, while the corrupt locales like Chicago — despite having many more thickly-settled (and thus easy-to-wire) would-be customers — are merely "being explored".
Then instead of the poorly-competing oligopoly, we'll have a bona-fide monopoly — with government policing the Internet traffic. Today I can switch from FiOS to Comcast in a matter of days should I decide to. Bringing about a change to the government-owned service will require months and years of raising awareness and electioneering.
Absence of wrong conditions is sufficient.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Which VPN service are you using?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
They can abuse their customers because... gasp... they have a virtual monopoly granted by the government. Kill all the regs including last mile regs and the free market would kick the shit out of ATT and the other asshats.
would be the FTC (Fereral Trade commission) and ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission). They were both set up to deal with the same issue decades ago... Fair pricing for carriage of "goods". In this case the good are packets and then it was beef and grain on the railroads, but the ISPs (carriers of goods) are acting not, like the railroad did then. Similar issues should be solvable by similar means
They already to. You can select your default playback quality in user settings.
Why does Netflix have a limit of concurrent streams and they charge more for more streams? If Netflix is serious about having various levels of service at different prices is unacceptable Netflix should lead the way by going to a single fixed price for all customers.
4K or not, any number of concurrent streams, etc. It all could be the same price.
The reason why it isn't is the same reason ISPs don't charge everyone the same price. You can make more money by offering differentiated services at different prices.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
ctrl+shift+D and select the quality(bitrate) that you want. You can even select multiple. It has been possible since 5 years ago.
This will be a continuing problem so long as the people who own the infrastructure also sell services over it.
They almost got this right with the ILEC/CLEC split with DSL. The only problem is that they let the ILEC sell services over the infrastructure they owned.
Don't let the guys who own the wires sell any services and this problem will fix itself.
And don't let anyone who owns wires or provides service also create/sell content.
Why must the organization that owns and maintains the physical wires also control the traffic that runs across the wire?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
It may not have to. But it will — because that's the nature of government.
For example, AT&T "NSA closet" will seem quaint, once all traffic passes government-owned wires. Censoring content crossing government-owned equipment will also become much easier — seriously, would somebody, please, think of the children?! And, yeah, encryption is legal, but, if you use it on publicly-owned wires, the government must be able to decrypt it. And only government-approved (and registered) equipment can be thus connected too. Hasn't the sorry story of public roads taught you anything? Do you think, Internet-access license and uniquely-identifying IDs for your computer(s) will be far behind?
And, of course, instead of violating Terms of Service, (ab)users will be violating laws — feds are already seeking to "curb trolling", owning the last mile to every house will allow them to act on that urge.
No, thanks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's mostly based on anecdotes, and we don't know how many counter-anecdotes were excluded from that article just by reading it.
Please elaborate.
And what if they BOTH suck? That's the situation our family finds ourselves in. We've tried both ISP's available in our area, and are highly dissatisfied with both, but there are no viable alternatives in our area, despite being relatively heavily populated. Friends and co-workers report the same crap.
I'd welcome more experiments in various states and counties to see what works best rather than just argue theory and dogma, but every scenario that I "mentally simulate" over the longer run shows the last-mile-problem causing tons of wasted resources, duplication, property damage, and/or higher prices.
Table-ized A.I.
It's not because of network congestion. The reason for data caps is to limit how much you can stream. But if there isn't a congestion issue, they why limit streaming?
.
Ta da . .
In order to charge money on the other end to streaming providers to be "Zero Rated".
Basically because they have a monopoly on the last mile and want to exploit it.
Whoever will pay the biggest amount to "partner" with the ISP for Zero Rating will get all of their streaming through without trouble.
If data caps went away, then Zero Rating would simply not exist. Netflix is right to pick this particular battle rather than go after zero rating.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If there were say 7 or more realistic ISP choices per typical customer, THEN competition could work its magic, Adam-Smith-style.
Call me a raging socialist, but what I would rather have is municipal/PUD fiber run to the homes, and then be able to select the service provider that uses the publicly owned infrastructure. This works very well in Chelan and Douglas counties in WA. The PUDs there run the fiber, and look after the physical plant, and then the residents of the counties can buy service from any one of several different ISP and TV providers. Additionally, if you're a commercial setup, you can get transit from Level 3 and/or Zayo.
It's really the best of both worlds, a lot of competition for service, and very reasonable rates for the physical plant.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Addendum
You also seem to be confusing "socialism" with "crony capitalism". A good many competition-killing laws are bribed into place by established companies trying to keep out new competition.
You seem to be implying that all bad laws in place are from socialists or those with socialist ideals, which is often not the case.
I agree that crony capitalism laws are usually bad. However, nobody has found a side-effect-free way to fix that problem, especially on the local level. I'm all ears...
Table-ized A.I.
Both ISPs?
Try living in an area where you had two choices but choice one just bought choice two and then a year later shut down choice two.
Uh...is road building a natural monopoly? Your source isn't credible. It's clear and obvious that the very laws of physics create situations where a single firm can occupy the only feasible way to accomplish a task.
Actually, a stream limit is the same thing as a bandwidth limit. Netflix is fine with bandwidth limits. It is not fine with data CAPS. There's a big difference. By analogy, if Netflix were doing the same thing, they would impose a limit on the total amount of Netflix you are allowed to stream in a given month. As long as you stay under the stream limit, you can watch every stream 24/7x30 per their rules...
So, you're suggesting that whoever manages to land their stormtroopers at the cable entrance sites and is faster to lay new troughs unhindered by zoning, construction permits, rights-of-way will be my next provider? What could possibly go wrong with that? :-)
Only I can judge you.
Really they should be pushing it as an anti-trust issue. The same companies implwmenting the caps have a vested interest in their own video platforms, be it cable or Internet based.
For a short while we had 3, but then one bought #3 out and we were back to 2. I was just about to mail the contract also, singing to myself, "Sayonara you stinkin duopolies!". Then heard about the merger on the news on the way to work. Doh! I wish the regulators stopped that merger.
Table-ized A.I.
They can abuse their customers because... gasp... they have a virtual monopoly granted by the government.
No. Exclusive franchise laws have been illegal for a very long time. They have a defacto monopoly granted by the economics of competition, not by the government.
Kill all the regs including last mile regs and the free market would kick the shit out of ATT and the other asshats.
It wouldn't be a free market. One of the competitors is bound by a franchise agreement, the others would be free to cherry pick customers and services and avoid a lot of the costs.
San Diego blocked Google Fiber from deploying...I sure would like a 3rd option for Internet that wasn't Cox or ATT. A real 3rd option, not dsl or something that cost $200 a month.
> Hasn't the sorry story of public roads taught you anything?
Like the sorry state of telco copper?
I'm thinking the browser/viewer could encrypt the cache somehow and give you up to a few hours of delay (or whatever the content author allows). But with hacking cat/mouse games, sometimes that's easier said than done.
Table-ized A.I.
I went with PIA since they let me use a Walmart gift card to pay. No name or credit card tied to the account.
I own an ISP (WISP) that is virtually the only option outside of the two large incumbent carriers, Centrylink and Comast that residential users have. The other CLECs mainly, if not exclusively, sell commercial service. We have seen in the last 5 years demand for bandwidth increase nearly 500% mostly due to video streaming. The cost of the fiber and equipment has come down to be sure, but no where near 500%. So far we have been able to keep providing an essentially unlimited service. However if current trends continue, I'm not sure for how much longer.
Cable companies spend 10x more money upgrading their cable networks every 5-8 years than the cost of a fiber network that won't need to be upgraded for several decades. They're throwing money in the wind. Average cost to install 1Gb/1Gb fiber, $1.5k/house, cost to upgrade an existing cable network from DOCSIS 2.0 to DOCSIS 3.0, $10k/house. DOCSIS 3.1 will be more expensive for anywhere they plan to actually provide the "3.1" speeds, otherwise you're stuck with 3.0 speeds until they split nodes, which is hugely expensive.
That's not even including the ~20% industry average reduction in Op-ex costs going fiber, which is a lot of something that consumes 60% of your revenue.
Not in the general case. For example, Tokyo has competing subway/commuter rail lines in the city. Why can't Manhattan?
For another example, there are multiple ways to drive from Boston to NYC — why can't those multiple roads compete with each other? I-95 can emphasize quality facilities, while the Merritt Parkway/I-91 combo could advertise being scenic. In their effort to attract more customers, they may push for higher speed-limit — and eliminate police "speed traps". And so on. It is perfectly possible. We are spending billions of dollars every year on building/maintaining roads — not using the free market to its fullest is a horrendous waste...
Well, it is a fairly acclaimed work of a reasonably famous economist, which is frequently cited by his fellows in their publications. You are a Slashdot poster...
While you may be able to come up with a few contrived examples (why haven't you?), usually that is simply not true. It may seem wasteful to lay multiple cables/run multiple pipes to the same house, but in the obvious and tangible reality, those one-shot things are small potatoes compared to the permanent and ongoing damage a monopoly's complacency is doing us all.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Compared to the striking lack of citations in your posts, I think, my arguments are much better substantiated.
Oh, please. Do you really have no imagination? here...
Duopoly is likely to suck, yes. But not as badly as a monopoly. When I signed for FiOS six years ago, I chose 35Mbps up and down. Today I'm getting 75Mbps up and down for the same monthly fee. Name me a government-provided service, that can boast such an improvement in value...
Unfortunately for the participants, humanity's recent history already offers three near-perfect experiments. Here:
All three pairs had identical cultures, religions and development levels when one element of the pair chose the Socialism you propose and the other — the Capitalism I prefer... Note, that this is not even about Democracy — in the case of Cuba vs. Chile, both countries were run by dictators. But Chile's top man adopted Capitalism and turned his country into Latin America's top economy, while Cuba remains a basket case...
The more the government owns, the more Socialist the society, the more it sucks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've already cited an article, where the blame for this sorry state of the ISP-market is laid squarely on the local governments.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So, Charter, a cable company, has an operating income around 10 percent, before interest. AT&T, a landline phone, and wireless phone company, has an operating income which bounces around from 10 to 20 percent. Those operating margins are good, but not 'hugely profitable'.
Thanks for the data. IIRC, the median net margin for public companies is in the 7% range. 10%-20% is relatively high. Walmart's 2-3% is wafer thin. Apple's 25% is virtually unmatched.
He's not a credible economist if thousands of other credible economists, basically all of them, disagree with him.
Your rant defies the laws of physics, as I said. Your examples are stupid. It's bleedingly obvious to anyone but you that (1) even if there are a few different road routes, they are all saturated, so you just have an oligopoly at best. Ditto the cabling problem.
You're not a nerd, you're an idiot. Get off slashdot.
Way to difficult. Much easier to sell modem/router/firewalls with caching capability. Invisible to the user except the unit advises them when delivery is best delayed by making use of the onboard cache. What happens after that is what ever happens after that.
You could make them much more secure than current offerings and they would be far more resistant to attacks, receiving and as a result of that (bot nets) delivering.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Anonymous seems still to be pretty stupid, thinking the FCC applies to the entire Internet when it's only a significant issue for US services, US providers and US customers.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Incorrect comparison. I have exactly one road connected to my drive way. Whomever owns that has a natural monopoly. A subway is more like a bus than a road.
98% of the cost of an ISP has nothing to do with bandwidth or network equipment and speeds are increasing 100% every 9 months. It is so cheap it has been described as "selling air". Are you proposing that people who consume way more air than others should have to pay more? Stop running! You're breathing too much!
I agree that municipalities giving companies a virtual monopoly should be illegal. But my locale has done no such laws and yet the Comcast/Verizon duopoly here is just annoying as when Comcast ran the whole thing.
But you can't seriously believe that corporations will play fair once the regulations have been removed. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to roll out fiber/cable? Some upstart company isn't going to just show up and deploy when the existing monopolies/oligharchies will just drop their prices to nothing for a few months to make sure any new competitors are destroyed.
The existing companies are so entrenched that only regulation can dig them out. And even then, who can afford to lay enough new fiber to compete?
Look at Ma Bell in the 60's-80's. Do you think deregulation was what finally broke the monopoly? Do you think we should have left them alone? Enjoy being forced to buy your phone from the phone company, and your cable box from the cable company.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
That's about snooping. Diff issue, and probably orthogonal to who "owns" the wires.
Oh please! Those are non-democracies. Lack of democracy will screw up ANY system: capitalism, socialism, gerbilism, etc.
The best systems appear to mixed systems. Too much capitalism or too much socialism shows the worse results. Capitalism can fly higher, but then often crashes down via bubbles and excess cronyism buildup. Politicians just can't resist the Yuuuuge money of the fat cats. Canada avoided most of the mortgage bubble by having sufficient mortgage regulations in place.
Goldilockism.
Table-ized A.I.
That's not true — "natural monopoly" is a myth. But do find citations supporting your assertion.
Other responders have already mentioned roads. The other obvious response is water and sewers. Water (and sewage) flows downhill. Every sewage system in the world for the past 2000 years has been engineered to take advantage of this fact. Taking into account the position of structures on the terrain, there is generally one and only one reasonably downhill path for water and sewer. Once that route is occupied, it is physically impossible to add a second independent system. The second system would have to interpenetrate the first in order to use the same routes. If it can't use the same route, it must be suboptimally routed, which invariably involves adding pumps, therefore increasing costs. A second water/sewer system therefore can not ever compete successfully with an incumbent with optimal routing. Its costs will invariably and unavoidably be higher.
Water, sewer, and roads are physical natural monopolies, caused by actual physical limitations. Gas, electric, and telecommunications are financial natural monopolies, where it's physically possible to install parallel systems, but fantastically difficult and expensive, even in an ideal world of cooperative government, cooperative citizenry, and a cooperative competitor (which is an obvious oxymoron).
mises.org is a poor source for anything. They suffer from many Libertarian delusions that completely ignore physical reality.
AT&T Uverse, as of May 2016, installed data caps on all internet service contracts. To return to a cap free internet service; AT&T Uverse requires you to purchase a television package whether you are interested in their cable TV service or not.
I can see no reason to purchase a cable TV package at all unless you are addicted to professional sports. Personally, I can think of nothing more irrelevant to my life than a bunch of burly guys in spandex Capris pants trying to insert what looks like a leather suppository into someone's end zone. (Ed Howdershelt quote there...)
NRRPT/RCT
When I turned my Uverse equipment in, the guy at the UPS store and I had a good laugh about the huge surge of AT&T equipment getting turned in. I was content with my 12Mb/s internet. It wasn't the fastest, but it was fine. Now I have 50Mb/s cable with a $4/month VPN service and things have been running great for a few months now.
Its costing me less, and I'm getting better service. I should actually be thanking AT&T for making me get off my ass and finally switch.
It's pretty bad when cellular service actually offers better service than landline. I know of at least 3 people (including myself) who completely ditched both dsl and cable because I can get faster, cheaper, and more reliable internet using a hotspot in my home.
he is in no way a credible economist.
he is a quack, a racist who is part the Mises institutes efforts to unite pro-monarchism with southern white resentment, a man who believes slavery should be legal because "free market", and an apologist for big industry whether its denying that tobacco causes cancer or that fossil fuels have contributed mightily to global warming.
he is only acclaimed by fellow quacks with no connection to reality...which explains your admiration.
and as for natural monopolies, and yes, roads are. along with several other things.
again you only show your own ignorance and lack of rational thought.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If it waits to play until the entire video is "cached', then it's no longer truly streaming...
There's a point there where the content providers get itchy about how the content is being delivered... and insist on new licensing terms.
I was just going to say this
The only reason I haven't done the same is the cellular data caps. My pfSense firewall is already setup with a wifi dongle to tether off my phone in case of a cable outage. Speed tests often come back with higher rates on the LTE.
Bullshit.
They HAVE been granted monopolies by local govs in MANY places.
TWO fucking seconds of googling would have shown you were wrong:
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-smothers-city-run-broadband