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AT&T, Verizon Tell FCC To Back Off On Net Neutrality Complaints (theverge.com)
ATT and Verizon have responded to the FCC's letters that argued the way the two companies handle the practice of exempting their own video apps from data caps on customers' smartphones can hurt competition and consumers. The Verge reports: The companies defended the programs, which allow select data sources to not count toward customers' data plans through a process known as zero-rating. Although it did not explicitly ban them in new net neutrality rules laid out last year, the FCC has been critical of such programs, arguing that they can be used to hurt competition by unfairly favoring some data, creating an uneven playing field for businesses. In a noticeably pointed response, ATT takes a similar line to the position it's held all along: programs like Data Free TV, which allows customers to use data from ATT-owned DirecTV without it counting toward a plan, are not anticompetitive, but are simply a perk consumers enjoy. Verizon, in its response, makes similar arguments defending its FreeBee data program, which allows data from Verizon-owned Go90 to not count toward a data plan. "FreeBee data provides tangible benefits to consumers by increasing the amount of what they can do and watch online, at no cost to them," the company's response says.
They will keep claiming it's good for their consumers, while ignoring its very bad for any competing companies.
Makes no difference anyway. Ajit Pai is gonna invalidate all these rules anyway.
Good to know that Trump wasn't gonna be beholden to special interests, lobbyists and donors. LOL @ the retards who actually believed that.
They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't know that Trump was going to come down the pipe and back them up.
The FCC may as well give up at this point. I mean, hell, ALL US regulatory commissions may as well give up at this point, since he's gonna gut and destroy anything that prevents profits from being made, regardless of the impact that will have on health, the environment, or the well-being of US citizens.
OK I'm going to play Devil's advocate here.
it seems to me that if they want to not count bandwidth for certain services against your allowance, that can only be a good thing. I mean you're actually still free to use the other services if you want.
I'd have an issue if they tried blocking competition completely but as long as you ultimately have a free choice its no worse than Microsoft having their any of their browser/search engine/storefront/whatever open by default on Windows, until you explicitly choose an alternative.
If I became president, I'd spend most of my time actively going after these companies in every possible way. They are undermining one of the most powerful forces for change, freedom of communication, and the greater good.
It's not like the government is going to punish them in the next 34 days. Wheeler, the first FCC chairman in many years to push pro-consumer initiatives, is stepping down. His replacement is nobody for consumers to be optimistic about. The telcos can tell the government to go fuck itself, they know there won't be any repercussions.
A few years from now we'll all be writing checks to AT-TWC-VZW-ChartCast-Universal while President Camacho fiddles on the rooftop.
It's not Trump. The US antitrust environment has been very pro-business and anti-consumer for a while now. I would be more concerned about the incoming administration using antitrust powers to attack businesses it doesn't like than I would be about a general decrease in antitrust activity which happened decades ago.
Real lawyers write in C++
I suppose this is an important point of contention about what you mean when you say net neutrality assuming that you grant in the first place that the pipe-runners and pipe-leasers should be allowed to get into the business of pipe-content. Conflicts of interest have to be resolved somehow, after all.
Companies should provide content OR networking, NOT both.
Go well
...cable companies want to make the internet work like cable TV.
...and they're pretty damn sure he'll be much more "reasonable" than the current administration. And the cocky bastards are almost certainly right.
Say good bye to the internet as it has been (more or less) for decades.
Say hello to tiered access. On Comcast and want Netflix? Well, that would be our Multimedia package, which includes 30 hours of unlimited (non-high-def) Netflix per month, as well as 100 hours (480p or less) YouTube streaming per month! Only an additional 19.99 beyond basic!
On TimeWarner and want BitTorrent access? Well that's unavailable for residential access, however Business Class internet permits BitTorrent use, and is only 99/month more than basic residential access!
Frankly I can't imagine the shenanigans they're going to get up to when The Orange One tells the FCC to sit-down and shut up.
Well, his devoted minions, really, das Trumpenstien probably won't give two shits what's going on at the FCC, as long as it doesn't cost his empire money and his friends are happy.
I really hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad, folks. And the Internet as we know it getting fucked over is probably gonna be the least of it.
It'd be too bad if something... happened to it.
#DeleteChrome
It's just a perk. I mean you have to be a multi-billion dollar mobile carrier that has subsumed cable and satellite TV services to offer such "perks".
All the competition needs to do to offer a competitive perk would be to acquire a few cable TV operators, maybe a television network or two. It's so easy.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
For those wondering how monopolies get made, it's like that.
Obvious that AT&T and Verizon would say something like that, specially now that they know they'll soon be able to do whatever they want... they've built their empire with similar practices.
Big corporation abuses it's power to offer free services, starve competition out and stop anyone willing to enter the market with their impossible to beat practices. And then, when everyone is using the service with no other option left, they f you up in the ass and tell you to stop complaining. Whatcha gonna do? You have no other options.
And people will defend them to keep the steady stream of scraps coming. Because they don't realize how exploited they are. Please do take my absurd monthly payments in exchange for paltry data allowance and a spotty service, as long as you give me free access to your shit streaming video app I didn't ask for.
Not that it's particularly anyones' fault that this happens, but this is why. I know because my country is just the same. These f*cking companies making billions a year in revenue complaining about not having enough money to upgrade equipment and invest a bit to allow people to have usable data connections at reasonable prices. It's the gamers/video streaming/whatever fault for using so much data monthly. We are so so poor we can't upgrade our aging infrastructure.
For anyone who can, who has access to, and is lucky enough to be living somewhere you can get a smaller local service, do it. I cannot thank my provider enough for giving me and some cities in my state quality fiber service with no downtime, excellent costumer service and no datacaps. It's all the proof I need that all the excuses I had heard in the past 10+ years or so of using internet service from huge corporations are all bullshit.
Nothing is free people, specially if it's coming from some monopolistic corporation. Tell them you don't really want free access to their streaming video service and that you'd want whatever sum it would cost to be discounted directly in your subscription.
Tom Wheeler resigned effective 1/20/17. He will be replaced by a shill of the ISPs, turning the 5 into a Republican majority. Stay tuned for more, this is only the beginning.
Better yet, their competing companies can just offer unlimited data plans. That's the direction we're headed anyway.
You mean actually foster competitive markets and let consumers choose? That's crazy, it'll never work!
Hey, if I'm lyin', I'm dyin' (don't I wish!).
Just curious. There's lots of Trump supporters on /. And a lot of anti-Hilary folks who even though they don't support Trump preferred him over her. Anyway, given that it was pretty clear from the get go that net neutrality was one of the things that would go out the window (it's regulation after all, and Trumps #1 campaign promise was an end to job-killing regulation, his words, not mine) were you opposed to net neutrality (and if so why) or did you choose to sacrifice it for other gains? If so, what gains.
I'm genuinely curious. Real answers please, no trolls.
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What can be done about this? How can we force the issue?
I would be more concerned about the incoming administration using antitrust powers to attack businesses it doesn't like than I would be about a general decrease in antitrust activity which happened decades ago.
Don't be afraid of it. USE it to fix the problem.
This non-neutrality is incentivized by the vertical integration of the ISP (transport) with the TV provider (competitive transported service). Such vertical integration is clearly anticompetitive, and the result hurts consumers.
Antitrust law could be used to break up such vertical integration of ISPs and service providers - including content providers - as an anticompetitive practice. (It wouldn't eliminate these incentives in ALL situations, but it would cover a LOT of them, and could serve as a model for going after others.) Once there's a clear separation between service and transport providers, the service providers will all be on a level playing field, so antitrust wouldn't be such a big issue among them.
But how to get the Trump administration on board? What do we think Trump and friends hate?
Well, gosh. The mainstream media went all "alt-left" on him during the campaign and did a gang pile-on, didn't they? I bet he'd LOVE to return the favor.
Think about the various ISPs. Most of them are (a small) part of a conglomerate, with a much bigger part being content generators, who run services over the ISPs as part of their distribution networks (and/or want to hamstring competition who might do so) - the source of just those perverse incentives to be non-neutral that we're griping about.
Then think about the content generators. In addition to the people driving network non-neutrality, they're anticompetitive and hurting us in a lot of other ways. They're the members of MPAA and RIAA, just for starters. And they're also the mainstream news media mentioned above.
Don't you think that a Trump administration would LOVE to return the favor by cutting them apart from their ISPs, who have a lock on the last mile of Internet transport? Don't you think such an administration would LOVE to encourage alternate content providers (which include those more favorable to him) by giving them a level playing field to compete with the entrenched old-guard?
Don't you think that, if they could force such a disvestiture in the name of consumer protection and internet fairness (while simultaneously maintaining their stand that explicit FCC "fairness" regulations are a camel's nose for government control of the Internet), they'd do it in a New York Minute? B-)
Well if you don't, consider this: During the campaign Trump EXPLICITLY came out OPPOSING the merger of AT&T and Time Warner. This would let him not only put that into law and spike it solidly, but do the same to the OTHER, EXISTING, similar partnerships. And it would have the side effect of creating a legal doctrine that could be used against many of the other drivers of non-neutrality. Win for him, double win for us.
Trump doesn't like the media companies that are driving much of network non-neutrality. We don't like the same media companies that are driving network non-neutrality, copyright extension, and unfair competition against new-tech service startups.
Politics makes strange bedfellows - usually through opposition to common enemies. As long as you're in the same bed, you might as well have some fun together.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The current administration have been told to stand down with their inane and extreme damaging net neutrality rules as they will be rescinded within days of the inauguration. The fact that the libtard dominated FCC continues to push these asinine anti-free-market rules in the face of overwhelming voter and consumer opposition to them just goes to show how out of touch they (and the usual slashdot libtard/freetard types) are. Public is clamoring for free market innovation in internet technology.
... ATT has Data Free TV. Verizon has 'FreeBee Go90'.
If being free does not skew user behavior preferably and they merely 'enjoy' the benefit, then there would be just as many ATT user percentage using Go90 as there is Verizon. Is there? Something tells me I could bet a testicle on a higher frequency of Verizon users using Go90. And something tells me verizon users probably watch less of the same videos that ATT users do on their Data Free TV system...
Assuming I'm right, we've taken both interpetations of the same phenomena and proven that both are correct. The users do enjoy it, but it also skews them in an anticompetitive way since access for a specific internet product is effectively 'dumped' to the market.
When AT&T and Verizon agree on something we need to question their motives.
Hint: When a fox applies for a job at your chicken farm he probably isn't just after the health/dental/vision insurance and 401k you offer, even though he'll claim he just loves watching out for the chickens.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Politicians rarely see big business as the enemy. With Bush junior, we saw the government get very, very friendly with big business. Trump being pro-business is likely to do the same. If Trump, unlike Bush, chooses to protect his voters, his powers are limited since he doesn't make the laws and the DoJ can't declare war on big business, even if it's right thing to do.
....then why don't they offer uncapped data for all services?
If you get into bed with the enemy, don't be surprised when you get fucked in ways you don't like.
Machiavelli would tell you:
Your ally will gain strength from your support. If your ally is already stronger than you are, then you want to be bloody sure that you can trust them not to turn on you next.