Portuguese ISP Shows What The Net Looks Like Without Net Neutrality (boingboing.net)

"In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages," argues a California congressman -- retweeting a stunning graphic. An anonymous reader quotes BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow: Since 2006, Net Neutrality activists have been warning that a non-Neutral internet will be an invitation to ISPs to create "plans" where you have to choose which established services you can access, shutting out new entrants to the market and allowing the companies with the deepest pockets to permanently dominate the internet... the Portuguese non-neutral ISP MEO has mistaken a warning for a suggestion, and offers a series of "plans" for its mobile data service where you pay €5 to access a handful of messaging services, €5 more to use social media; and €5 more for video-streaming services.
The congressman notes this arrangement offers "a huge advantage for entrenched companies, but it totally ices out startups trying to get in front of people, which stifles innovation."

Comments

The trouble with Net Neutrality

[rsilvergun]

is that it's a small potatoes issue when 60-80% of your people are living paycheck to paycheck. If you want people to care about these sorts of things you've got to take care of their basic needs first. That doesn't just mean bread & circuses, that means actual stability in their lives. Trump and the anti-NN folks won because he went to the folks who are just skating by and said he'd do something that matters for them.

Basically, if you don't take care of your working class somebody's gonna come along to do it for you, and you won't like what that somebody does to you and yours.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[thegarbz]

when 60-80% of your people are living paycheck to paycheck

A useless metric that has no relation to wealth of people. Many chose to put themselves through this situation. e.g. one of my colleagues, same pay grade as me. I end up with a net disposable income of several thousand euros each month which is rapidly paying off my mortgage at a faster than required rate. He's living "paycheck to paycheck" driving his Tesla, living in a big house and feeding his 5 kids.

That doesn't mean Portugal doesn't have a problem, but it would be better to point out their well below OECD average income, well below OECD average workforce participation between ages 18-65, and the reflection of their governments books (though ratings agencies have only 2 months ago raised them from "junk" status).

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. When your subjects start feeling pain, then you feel pain, and in the worst way because they have nothing to lose.

Lets be honest here, the primary overwhelming, key factor in the US is healthcare. When a doctor's appointment costs $500 because you don't have insurance but only $20 if you do (not because they insurance is actually paying anything, it's just a price reduction to the actual cost), then you know your society is 100%, totally, fucked up.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, incidentally, is one of the arguments for Universal Basic Income: people can start paying attention to social issues when they aren't focused on finding a job or subsisting until the next paycheck.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand - we're talking about people who are living paycheck to paycheck living in an apartment, buying food, utilities, medical insurance, and getting by with an 11 year-old car.

They did NOT chose to be in that position. They were sold economic fairy tales of how globalization will raise everyone's standard of living up. Instead, most of the gains are going to the economic top.

Now why many of them voted for a billionaire reality TV personality is a whole different discussion.

And remember here in the States, we don't have the social safety nets that much of Europeans do.

Medical is all on us until we hit 67. Most of us are buried under student loans - even if we went to a state school and graduated with a marketable degree.

We must own cars in most of the country.

And housing costs have outstripped regular people's pay. The biggest problem in my Metro-Atlanta, Georgia, USA county is that the typical working class person can't afford to live here. We actually have homeless families. And it's because the free-market for their labor says they get paid shit and the free-market for housing says they pay dear.

We in tech are lucky enough to have high paying skillsets (and the parents who gave us the talents to do them) where we don't notice what is going on outside of our little bubbles.

This world wide wealth disparity will not end well. We are seeing the problems already: social unrest, people like Trump being elected, what's going on in Venezuela, ....

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with everything except the notion that trump is doing things for the working class. Though they may feel he's helping them

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[slashmaddy]

And killing net neutrality takes away one of the few open opportunities people had to improve their lively hood, by concentrating power to control human communication into the hands of select few who want to keep the general population living paycheck to paycheck, which is one of the few ways to enslave them.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's a rather bonkers "everyone free maniez!" argument from self-discrediting "progressives". Because, as usual, they forgot to mention where the money is supposed to come from. Besides, "paying attention to social issues" ought not to be a life goal in itself. That's really just code for "everybody SJW nao", and so not a worthy cause except to a very small loudmouth fringe group.

Moreover, there are better ways to free people from paycheck subsistence. But for that you need to dive into the cost structures and see how and why the things go wrong. You really only need a few people with the insight to do that, you don't have to give everyone free maniez. You just need to understand WTF you're doing and then find the clout to lobby your Obviously Better Plans through the political machinery. You'll need a lot of contacts and money for that, though.

Things to look into are: Basic healthcare for everybody, ensured by the state, so insurer shenanigans don't come into it. Even if it means drab-painted state-run and therefore hopelessly "socialist" hospitals. (You may now conclude that medicine is itself inherently socialist anyway.) Fixing the "30 hours" law so everyone gets benefits in proportion to hours worked no matter how few, so no more triple and quadruple jobs with multiple commutes per day. And, but this is really hard, weaning yourselves off your car dependency. Build cities where work and play and food and sleep are walking distance, at most bike distance, not car distance. No more suburbia and no more strip malls. And do something about the credit scam, the education scam, and a couple others.

This is just my observation from across the pond, but it should serve to get you started. Go metric while at it, you lazy sods. Arrogance doesn't become a world leader either.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

20 years ago no one had a cell phone (ok, very few people did)

today billions of people have them. I would argue that in some regards people are better off, even the poor

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Being forced to carry a surveillance device so you can participate in society is not an improvement.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant buy land or food, but you got an iphone! Rich!

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

I dont WANT to pay attention to social issues, and many other americans dont either. We simply want to live our lives, eat, sleep work and play with our friends. Its not that we dont have time for social issues it is that social issues are not something to give a crap about in 2017

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

if you can buy an iphone you can buy food (and should be smart enough to buy land)

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ShanghaiBill]

I would argue that in some regards people are better off, even the poor

People are WAY better off, ESPECIALLY the poor.

Don't mistake what is happening in America (and Europe) for what is happening worldwide. Over the last 20 years, nearly everyone is doing better, with the biggest gains going to the poorest people earning between $0 and $3 per day. The only "losers" have been unskilled poor people in rich countries, which is only about 5% of the global population. By worldwide standards, the American poverty line puts you at about the 85% level of global income: They are "rich" by global standards.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[wonkey_monkey]

Owning a cellphone is hardly a great indicator of being "better off."

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't take into account whether it permits a decent lifestyle. Here in this country there are people who can't afford rent and food on a full time job.
That's more indecent and obscene than any pornographic clip.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

I said that a few days ago and got modded troll when it should be insightful.instead of tryin to keep up with the joneses,maybe try just doing you and you will see it isnt so bad

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

with a modern cellphone you have access to the internet

with access to the internet you have access to job training and job recruiters.

with that access you have the ability to get ahead

in short, if you have a cell phone, there is no good excuse for not getting ahead in life with a little hard work and perseverance

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[sjames]

The absolute numbers are nearly meangless. If you make $10 a month but a weeks groceries cost $0.50 and a luxury apartment runs $2.00, you're doing quite well. If you make $5000/month but rent is $4500 for a hole in the wall and food is $400/week, you're in deep guano.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ganjadude]

if you make 5000 a month and spend 4500 on rent, you are making piss poor decisions

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ShanghaiBill]

Here in this country there are people who can't afford rent and food on a full time job.

Over the last 20 years, food prices in America have gone DOWN. Per square foot, housing prices are unchanged. Houses are more expensive mostly because they are bigger. Housing prices have soared in some coastal cities (which also tend to have high incomes), but in most of America, food and housing are more affordable than ever before.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[sjames]

Or you have a family and your employment status recently changed.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[thegarbz]

I don't think you understand

I don't think you read to the end of my post.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[dryeo]

You need a data plan or live somewhere where it is easy to leach WiFi. Data is expensive for the poor. My cheap pay as you go plan costs $10 for 60 MBs, you know how fast you can go through 60MBs in this day of the average web site being 5+MBs?
Sure I have a cheap cell phone, it's another bill to pay and hardly used.
What's scary is the kids who used to hang out at the park now hang out on facebook. It's hard for me to see that as an improvement. I also have a hard time seeing parents needing to check up on their kids continuously as an improvement but maybe we'll raise better people by keeping them sheltered from life.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[GameboyRMH]

LOL how incredibly privileged you must be to believe this. You greatly overestimate not only the number and quality of jobs available, but the number of employers who won't instantly circle-file any application that doesn't list a college degree (of the specific level they're looking for - you could be overqualified just as easily as you could be underqualified). You have a libertarian's child's understanding of the job market and I'm guessing no Gen. Y friends who aren't similarly overprivileged.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[sjames]

Taking a deliberately simple analogy literally is what is absurd. My implication is that someone making 60K in SF may be worse off than someone making 15K in a developing nation.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[sound vision]

A cell phone is a toy to them, like a hula hoop. They don't cost much more than a hula hoop either, especially in the East. They provide few more tangible benefits to the individual user than internet cafes or telephones.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

is that it's a small potatoes issue when 60-80% of your people are living paycheck to paycheck.

People are engaged politically in Internet related issues. NN netted over 20 million FCC comments. Snowden era politics and SOPA blackouts had major political ramifications.

Antidotally just today on her MTP interview Claire Mccaskill unprompted out of the blue said she wants to help her state invest in Rural broadband. Internet and related politics are in my judgment are hardly being treated as "small potatoes".

If you want people to care about these sorts of things you've got to take care of their basic needs first. That doesn't just mean bread & circuses, that means actual stability in their lives. Trump and the anti-NN folks won because he went to the folks who are just skating by and said he'd do something that matters for them.

Basically, if you don't take care of your working class somebody's gonna come along to do it for you, and you won't like what that somebody does to you and yours.

Is there any evidence Trump actually gives a shit about anyone but himself and his billionaire friends?

He keeps saying the people the people... yet at every turn does everything possible to undermine them.

Opening mega merger floodgates only hurts consumers by reducing competition and enhancing duopoly market fixing / collusion.

An FCC openly hostile to small business interests while giving the large carriers everything they want.

An EPA administrator openly hostile to protecting the environment and public health including incidents of no nothing politicians overriding scientists in making public safety determinations.

Throwing wrenches in Obama care on spite causing unnecessary premium increases.

Tax plans that will predominantly advantage the wealthy while leaving everyone else with shit.

Trump pissing on Puerto Rico for fun.

I see the markets doing well and large corporations worshiping DJT. What I don't see is how pouring gasoline on wealth inequality and promoting hoarding of cash by mega corps and uber rich helps real people. We can assume those living paycheck to paycheck are not playing the stock market. I see a lot of talk... a lot of empty rhetoric and NO ACTION.

We have decades of evidence of the failure of trickle down yet it's just more of the same forever and ever as corporations continue to capture government at an ever increasing clip. What the fuck is Trump doing to help people who are not himself and his kind? The answer is clearly not a damn thing.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's a rather bonkers "everyone free maniez!" argument from self-discrediting "progressives". Because, as usual, they forgot to mention where the money is supposed to come from.

Yes, because the "invisible hand of the free marketz" (see, other people can spell words with a z to discredit their straw men too) "conservatives" really understand where the money comes from. Seriously? The majority of these people seem to believe that remittances are money that vanishes from the economy. They also tend to be the largest users of "free maniez!"

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[slashmaddy]

You seem to argue that "the trouble" with Net Neutrality is that it's completely irrelevant to the lives of people who need government support the most. And that government you claim to be working for those people, has spent all of this effort repealing Net Neutrality laws, which are irrelevant to the demographic in question.

Here is something to dissolve the reality distortion field: -

Trump has been a rich businessman all his life, born with a golden spoon in his mouth, and has spent all his life in lavish surroundings. He is the last person I would believe who truly understands the plight of "people living paycheck by paycheck" and the last person who knows exactly what kind of support they need from him as a President.

On the contrary, he clearly understands the plight of the poor billionaire who "couldn't buy that luxury yacht because he was few hundred million short due to more investment required by this law". Hence, every action of his government has been towards helping those fellow poor billionaires.

He said whatever he said to "people living paycheck to paycheck", with the sole purpose of winning the election. And clearly, every single one of his actions has not been helpful (on the contrary, hurtful) for that demographic, YET. He is taking all of these anti-common-man actions early during his term to ensure all of these will be forgotten by the time of next elections.

And here is what I estimated will happen... come 2019 or early 2020 (year of the next election), you will see a flurry of activity from him which favor the common man! Why? He is a businessman of course, and he knows very well to exploit the short term memory of general population as a whole. But on an average, a significant portion of his actions will be helpful for the ultra rich and hurtful to the common man, and that has been the case for most Republican governments throughout recent history.

He is going to exploit every weakness of the general population to serve his purpose, which is far from helping common man.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Monster_user]

iPhones are provided by employers. Sufficient wealth to buy land is not.

The difference between land and an iPhone is night and say.

An iPhone contributes to an employee's productivity. The ability of an employee to buy land offers little benefit to the employer.

An iPhone costs a little under $1,000, and being company owned can be reallocated if the employee leaves before the phone's useful life ends.

A piece of land costs at least twice as much as an iPhone, plus the cost of developing the land. Developed land costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiple years wages. Financed, and including taxes and upkeep, the house will often cost at least as much as a rental. The only advantage is that the employee will hopefully have the home paid off by the time they retire, to reduce their retirement expenses.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

if you make 5000 a month and spend 4500 on rent, you are making piss poor decisions

Funny how the people who are least able to understand abstraction are the people who imagine themselves to be intelligent.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Bert64]

Having somewhere for their employees to live is very valuable for a company... That's why many used to build houses for their staff.
If people can't afford to live near where they work, then they will either suffer long commutes (resulting in tired and frustrated employees), or they will choose to work elsewhere. Employers should very carefully consider the availability of affordable housing for their employees.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the poster who has been trolling for Trump for over a year and was oh-so-enthusastic about how Trump was going to help with those social issues the entire time.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[sjames]

You should probably ask your mommy or daddy to explain analogies to you.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

That is for building new houses. Most people do not build new houses but buy existing ones. Looking at house prices historically and you find things are much much worse.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html

This shoots that graph all to hell. Historical average for a home in the US in 1940, adjusted to year 2000 dollars, is $30,600. And it only goes up, ending at $119,600 in 2000. 4 times the cost over a 60 year period. Then things get much worse...

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/

According to that, the average cost of a house in the US is currently $202,700. That's double what housing cost in 1990, and well over 50% since 2000. And yes I know its Zillow as a source, but they actually do get a ton of their market information directly from Realty databases, including the last estimate and sale price on most properties.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you intentionally obtuse? That $10/month number was an exaggeration to make a point, and you're still going with it even after supposedly understanding that it was an analogy.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

You should probably review the actual numbers. The working class white man myth was debunked long time ago. Trump won across the board. It wasn't about people struggling as much as it was racist masochists wanting to see a White man on the throne and any reminders that a Black man once held the presidency removed from the books.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus phones for all!

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Education is liberation of the mind.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Monster_user]

Employers do consider it, to a certain extent, but then let the free market figure it out and wash their hands of it.

Owning land, and renting are two different things, but both fulfill the needs of the employer by providing a place for the employee(s) to live.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep telling yourself everything is about race and that everybody who doesn't want what you want is a racist, if that's what helps you sleep at night.

For the rest of us, the world is a slightly more complex place.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Money hoarded is money not spent. Doesnt make sense to steal peoples means. land. health. environment. So why do you continue?

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

agenda of corps not people

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Bruha]

Land here is hundreds of thousands an acre.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

What a naive argument, the average person doesn't want to care about social issues, they will just spend their UBI on booze and then carry on not caring about social issues.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[tsa]

Rich and poor are usually measured relative to the people in your neighbourhood, not the people far way in totally different living comditions.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is doing quite fine with Libertarian values at the helm right now, being the only country in the world that has these. Contrary to certain opinions, the US is doing quite well, with the stock market at the highest in history.

Why are taxpayers responsible for paying for someone else's lifestyle? The BMW in my driveway is something I earned, not given to me by the government. Why should I have to pay for some loafer? Want stability? Do what we all do. Get a job and earn it, just like the rest of us. Jobs are not hard to find.

As for "someone else taking care of the working class", that is amusing. If some other country or organization wants to provide welfare services for the loafers, they can feel free. Otherwise, the US is living and thriving on Randian values. Don't like it? There are plenty of socialist states out there to move to. "The Dole" is a failed concept, failed in the 1920s, and failed now. Just like communism and socialism.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[N3wsByt3]

I largely agree, with the caveat, alas, that for most people panem et circenses IS what brings stability in their lives.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[N3wsByt3]

Hmm... You have some good point, but also some erroneous ones. this reflects in your last sentence too, for instance: what's going on in Venezuela is the direct result of socialism, not free market. People like Trump being elected is due to the poor education and typical red-neck mentality. Unless one wants to argue poor people are inherently too stupid to choose a better president. Which leaves social unrest, which, indeed, will not get better with a widening gap of rich and poor. that said, as the Romans have showed for hundreds of years: if you give panem et circenses to the masses, you can keep them reasonably pacified and tranquil.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[dave420]

So you are apathetic to the suffering of others; suffering you are indirectly responsible for by your lack of action. Gotcha.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Gr8Apes]

What's scary is the kids who used to hang out at the park now hang out on facebook.

That would be scary. Nowadays, those around here hang out on Instagram and Snapchat, although that statement may be a week out of date.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Mr D from 63]

I said that a few days ago and got modded troll when it should be insightful.instead of tryin to keep up with the joneses,maybe try just doing you and you will see it isn't so bad

I noticed they say "ISP"s, but this is really mobile providers, not cable ISP. Also, the plans themselves seem pretty reasonably priced, and provide users with choice. Seems to me like this is more a twitter reaction than a thoughtful one. Net Neutrality does not prevent services from separating traffic types, only from treating same type traffic different depending on the source.

Its also funny because there have been /. articles that are offended that the FCC in the US moved to credit mobile services as ISP access.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[N3wsByt3]

shanga, c'mon, you're doing this deliberately. You understood quite perfectly what the actual meaning of his analogy was. An analogy is never meant to be taken literally btw, that's why it's an analogy: it uses different examples to make the underlying reasoning more clear. Are you one of those guys that, when asked "Could you tell me where I can find the postoffice?" you just say "yes, I could." and walk away, satisfied you've correctly answered the question? If you really didn't understood it, you might have some problems in reading comprehensively. If food costs $20 in the first, and $0,02 in the latter, the latter is better off. Idem for housing and what not. (these are *examples*, to show you the basic reasoning, namely:) The basic point of the parent poster was, that absolute numbers are meaningless (in fact, he opened his comment with that, so you should certainly have understood). If you earn $50 in one country, and $5 in another, one might claim the first is ten times better off than the latter. But that is false, because it depends on the living expenses in each country. There is little sense to refute this basic premise, since it's true.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly believe that the working class has time to deal the suffering of other people's social issues? This is the same working class who can barely find enough time to do proper exercise routines because they have to commute for hours to their place of work. The working class only has enough time to organize their own families and you expect them to extend more than a passing thought to fight for the suffering of people outside of their main responsibility?

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. 20 years ago, you could buy a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment in Austin for $500 a month. Now, the same place costs $2500/month, and when your lease is up, you have to have the highest bid on your place, or else you get evicted. A house that cost $100,000 20 years ago, now costs seven digits. Salaries? They sure have not kept up unless you are lucky to work for a tech company. In fact, most people who work in Austin are having to commute from the outskirts of the city.

Please, check your facts. Your posts on Slashdot are highly relevant and worth reading, but this one is an aberration.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

By worldwide standards, the American poverty line puts you at about the 85% level of global income: They are "rich" by global standards.

Sure, but they'd have to move to a third-world country to realize it. I'm sure you understand that comparing the income of someone in a poor country to that of someone in a rich country is meaningless unless you also compare their costs of living and required expenses.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no where in the world where a "luxury apartment" rents for $2, and no where that $4500 will get you only a "hole in the wall".

LOL, have you seen the rents in Manhattan?

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, "paying attention to social issues" ought not to be a life goal in itself. That's really just code for "everybody SJW nao", and so not a worthy cause except to a very small loudmouth fringe group.

I take it you think Martin Luther King, Jr. was wasting his time. Or Susan B. Anthony. Or maybe you think that's all in the past, and that society is perfectly equitable for everyone.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of middle America feel like they're already paying too much in race. They don't want to pay more j7st so everyone can get another Obama phone.

Well, yeah. But that's because they have been successfully misdirected from recognizing the actual groups keeping them down. They think it's the people getting "obama phones" (not a real thing, actually) when really it's the guys buying congresspeople and lobbying for trade deals.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are taxpayers responsible for paying for someone else's lifestyle?

I ask myself that every time I hear about the carried interest tax deduction

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[conquistadorst]

BS. 20 years ago, you could buy a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment in Austin for $500 a month. Now, the same place costs $2500/month, and when your lease is up, you have to have the highest bid on your place, or else you get evicted. A house that cost $100,000 20 years ago, now costs seven digits. Salaries? They sure have not kept up unless you are lucky to work for a tech company. In fact, most people who work in Austin are having to commute from the outskirts of the city.

Please, check your facts. Your posts on Slashdot are highly relevant and worth reading, but this one is an aberration.

I would say neither of you are really wrong. There are a lot of economic forces there at work. What's true for Austin is not true for the entire US, what's true for the entire US (average) is certainly not true for Austin either. Anyone can pull up any city example and easily be countered with a different city with different conditions. I can bring up my location, like Western New York, which is your stereotypical rust belt city, and contradict everything you're seeing in Austin. Houses here are extremely affordable and jobs are few but pay "OK". I think this is your classic example of why we can't use national averages and look at everything as if it actually applies. There is certainly a national trend of many companies focusing their operations in dense cities (like Austin) for many good reasons instead of being more disbursed a tad more evenly around the country. Talent, infrastructure, innovation, tax benefits, etc. One painful side effect is this is creating an exponential feedback loop. More people, more jobs, less space. There are companies that are wising up to this problem but there are only very few willing to take the risk of moving/expanding operations in cities with fewer opportunities. Can we really blame them? So in major hubs, it's only going to get worse. I don't see how it's ever going to get better.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Rick Schumann]

You say "Trump went to folks who are just skating by and said he'd do something that matters to them". What that statement ignores is the fact that these people of whom you speak, I'm sorry to say in such stark and cruel terms, are not very smart to begin with, and did not realize what the consequences of their actions would be when they cast their votes. They apparently couldn't see past their own noses, or think beyond next week. Also, sadly, it'll take quite a blow to them all, personally, before they actually regret their decision.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[wisdom_brewing]

So roughly 2.5-2.6% per annum inflation in housing prices? That is not very high...

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

You see all those trees there champ, thats called a forest , and your missing it,

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

ganjadude, you need to smoke some ganja, it might help with your problem.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand - we're talking about people who are living paycheck to paycheck living in an apartment, buying food, utilities, medical insurance, and getting by with an 11 year-old car.

That's only at most a few percent of people, though. The group that thegarbz described is much larger. Also, if you can afford to own a car, you are by definition not poor.

They did NOT chose to be in that position. They were sold economic fairy tales of how globalization will raise everyone's standard of living up. Instead, most of the gains are going to the economic top.

That's simply not true. Most groups are much better off than they were a few decades ago, even more so in developing countries. Your country may be an exception, but what you describe is not typical for the rest of the world.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

His comments are little more then a modern day "let them eat cake."

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who cares if you're starving? You have an iPhone to tweet about how you can't afford food!"

You really sound this retarded, just so you know. "Doing better" is subjective, and just because poverty has increased five fold all over the world, having an iPhone does not negate that capitalism still continues to kill 100 million people every five years.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't care about social issues, and then complain when nobody cares about the social issues that directly affect you?

Please return to /. when you're out of kindergarten, kiddo.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

See, it's posts like this that make we wish you could filter /. posts by poster instead of just by mod points.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Or commuting 2 hours a day and taking care of kids leaving no time and no sleep to care. I agree democracy depends on a strong middle class with enough leisure and disposal income to participate.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[pnutjam]

Now pretend you get 0% to 1% annual raises.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[ArmoredDragon]

And how many of these people live in areas with a very high cost of living? Minimum wage in New York City or San Francisco is going to do that, but minimum wage in Memphis, Tennessee is quite sustainable. You may not afford expensive vacations, but you can certainly situate yourself so that you're never really concerned about money (find a studio apartment, or live with roommates - very cheap rent.)

Another reason people might live paycheck to paycheck is because they're big borrowers living beyond their means. You don't HAVE to have lots of credit card debt, car payments, big mortgage, etc. Save cash for a sub $3,000 used car, for example. I make a very good income, but I've never spent more than $8,000 on a car, and I don't feel the urge to.

Most people don't live paycheck to paycheck because they have to, it's because they've chosen to buy things or do things (or have kids) that they can't afford.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

No. When the doctor's appointment costs $500 w/o insurance, and $20 w/ insurance, it's because the insurance is paying $480.

Re:The trouble with Net Neutrality

[aussie_a]

Wrong. Middle America also hates those people pushing the free trade deals and seeing more and more of their jobs lost to the religion of globalisation. It's a big reason Trump got elected and those who smugly throw around phrases like "voting against your self interest" show just how out of touch they are with the rest of America.

Re: The trouble with Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years ago internet wasn't a human right. Somehow it is now.... so yeah first world problems.

Who writes your paycheck

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank your local lorcorpation. Jesus H Christ

Bologna.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pure 100% bologna disguised as an article.

Re: Bologna.

[Rujiel]

There's a screencap, wtf are you smoking?

Re:Bologna.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Bologna is in Italy; perhaps you meant Braga?

Not quite

[zakzor]

I'm from Portugal and yes... net neutrality is the way to go of course but this post gives a little misperception (as of many here). You pay more if you want not for accessing the services but to have more data to spend on them. The access to the services is never restricted.

Re:Not quite

[Joe_Dragon]

but when the basic data is like 10gb and overages are $10/GB but is that data meter tested to be fair like gas pumps are?

Re:Not quite

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm pretty sure that particular distinction is rather unimportant.

Re:Not quite

[Miamicanes]

The fundamental with net neutrality is not all traffic is equally cheap or expensive to transport.

Suppose I have VDSL2 with AT&T U-verse, and so does my friend who lives in my neighborhood (served from the same VRAD). If we open a peer-to-peer connection with each other, our traffic could theoretically run through the VRAD's local switch fabric without even touching its fiber backhaul. We could fully saturate our upstream connectivity to the VRAD without having the slightest impact on anybody else.

Now, take it up a level. Friend #2 is also a U-verse customer, but he's a few blocks away... served by a different VRAD, but both of our VRADs run fiber through the same central office 3 miles away. In this case, our traffic might have some impact on others sharing our respective VRADs, but it's still running entirely over AT&T's local loop, whose raw capacity vastly exceeds anything individual users could even fantasize about doing.

OK, now take it a level higher. Friend #3 is a U-verse customer who lives 10 miles away. Our P2P traffic goes from home to VRAD to CO, from CO to AT&T's regional NOC, to CO to VRAD to home. At this point, it might have a meaningful impact on other customers, but it's still likely to be trivial because it's still traveling entirely over AT&T's own local backhaul.

Time to get a bit more complicated. Friend #4 lives across the street, but gets his internet through Comcast. Our P2P traffic goes from house to VRAD to CO to AT&T NOC, then somehow gets to NAP of the Americas in Miami, where it gets passed along to Comcast, who relays it to THEIR regional NOC, sends it to my friend's neighborhood, and sends the final few thousand feet over coax. In this case, NOTA will pile on some charges of their own to exchange traffic between AT&T and Comcast, but they're still fairly low.

Now, let's assume I'm streaming video from Netflix. Netflix pays to bring their own fiber into AT&T's NOC and probably colocates their own server to further reduce and cache the amount that has to be backhauled from minute to minute. From AT&T's perspective, this isn't much different than the scenario with friend #3... Netflix has their own network connection into AT&T, so the only AT&T backhaul that gets used is from NOC to CO to VRAD.

Finally, let's suppose someone starts their own guerrilla VOD streaming service with a name like "Voogle". Voogle's datacenter is in Kansas City, and their network service provider has to either peer privately with AT&T (and Comcast, since my friends with Comcast watch them too), or they have to find some other mutual interexchange point. As I understand it, public exchange points (like MAE-EAST and MAE-WEST) no longer exist, and all exchange points (in the US, at least) are now privately peered & leave it up to the networks to negotiate their own traffic carriage agreements. So... Voogle's NSP has to negotiate peering and transport arrangements to AT&T and Comcast (because both are big enough to say, "you need us more than we need you"). If Voogle's traffic is light, their NSP probably won't charge them much. If Voogle is streaming 4k video to thousands of customers, their NSP is likely to charge them quite a bit.

In any case, the "Voogle" case is no worse than the scenario with friend #4... Voogle's traffic originates on NEITHER AT&T nor Comcast, and it's up to Voogle to figure out how to affordably GET their traffic to the regional datacenters of AT&T and Comcast (or at least, to network exchange points into which AT&T and Comcast have their own abundant connectivity). From the perspective of AT&T and Comcast, it's more expensive than the "Netflix" scenario (because Voogle isn't big enough to peer with them directly), but it's no WORSE than a peer to peer connection between an arbitrary AT&T customer and an arbitrary Comcast customer.

Things get messier with international traffic (say, between a Comcast customer in Miami and a server farm in London or Bangalore), but dependin

Re:Not quite

[swilver]

Of course, you have to boil the frog slowly.

Re:Not quite

[aussie_a]

10 GB is enough for anyone not wanting to play Wow all day and pirate the latest tv shows or watch cat videos. Believe it or not, but in many parts of the world people are more concerned with food and water than worrying about the Bachelor.

Re:Not quite

[Calydor]

10 GB? WTF?

The highest data plan I've been able to find in Germany sits at 8 GB. The average plan is 500 MB to 1 GB monthly.

Re:Not quite

[Calydor]

Not if this is a translation error. I don't speak Portuguese so can't go check, but is it possible the ISP is naming data cap tiers something like Messaging (200-500 MB/month), Social Networking (500-1000 MB/month) and Video (1 GB+/month)?

Re:Not quite

[cloud.pt]

The simple fact you have to bring piracy here shows the kind of interesta you seem to have on the subject. You are doing the same as ISPs are: being all judgmental on what's a fair internet use, and telling your own version of how decent people should use the internet. Big problem is you or nobody else shouldn't get to police around everyone else's type of use.

ISPs just assumed everyone would play the game where they get rich providing a bad service which gets cheaper with every tech bump, but they could still charge the same and keep that revenue flow constant. So sorry for that (not)

Re:Not quite

[cloud.pt]

It used to be, here in Portugal we had international vs national traffic quotas for at least 10y, and it was one of the main showstoppers of our internet usage patterns. This particular distinction was actually the most relevant back then. It was starting to become universally acknowleged as a censorship policy by unsavy users, and then big com corp had to change plans, especially since external ISPs (e. g. Vodafone) started entering the market and bringing international standards around. People wised up, and I'm hoping they will wise up again for this crap of service-based data caps

Re:Not quite

[cloud.pt]

I'm gonna give tou 2 examples on how this affected Portuguese use patterns:

P2P, online gaming, streaming video and music users users would concentrate use overnight in order to abuse the "happy hour" of international traffic de-cap that plans allowed. This is an example of what pundits will call "bad use so good riddance",which imho is hipocrisy.

Now I'll give you the example where there was impact to good practices: software as a service, such as cloud storage or remote machines never caught traction in Portugal until international data caps were made obsolete.

Re: Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. This graphic doesn't show what it is purported to show. Access to sites is not paywalled. This has to do with how much data you have for each service.

Re:Not quite

[Kjella]

The fundamental [issue?] with net neutrality is not all traffic is equally cheap or expensive to transport.

Not sure why you needed a full page to explain that, it's pretty obvious. Net neutrality means you pay the same whether you have a cheap or expensive mix of traffic. Note that this typically only means your half though, like if you're video chatting with someone in New Zealand you pay a bit to reach "the backbone" and they generally pay more because it's harder to reach. Still you have content services like Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and CDNs like CloudFlare and Akami who can set up local servers for really cheap traffic. So in theory, some consumers are paying a bit too much.

However, ISPs also have individualized costs maintaining your physical connection, there's users who use lots of data and others who use little data, peak and off-peak hours, there's burst use vs sustained bandwidth... really if you wanted to accurately meter the cost per byte, it would get really complex and nobody would really want that. And it's not like ISPs got no freedom, they can pick peering points and peering partners, refuse to upgrade expensive links, install caches and whatnot to manage costs. And on average they get their money. So why do they want to differentiate?

So that they can be the gatekeeper, you seem to be under the delusion that what the ISP would charge depends on their actual cost but you'd be auctioned off and pointed in the direction of the highest bidder. Either you get "free" bandwidth to service X because service X pays the ISP extra or they agree to sell you bandwidth with a 30% discount if the service installs a local cache reducing costs by 70%. They get to pick and choose and gouge every service, not for your benefit but for theirs. If you think they're doing this for the customer you're a fool, all those services will have to raise prices and they'll be passed back to you. In the end we'll all pay more not less.

Re:Not quite

[cloud.pt]

All the technicalities in that big explanation really showed where the point comes from, and I totally agree with the reply that in essence, ISPs want to be gatekeepers. They are using this gatekeepr powers not get the average revenue - they are trying to have competitive offers with their gatekeeping in order to acquire more users or more revenue and have an economy of scale that surpasses the average. Because that is the only thing their investors really care about: growing revenues. They are creating demand for something that should be standard but that they have the power to make it look premium

Re:Not quite

[slashmaddy]

That's how it starts. First use all the data but "pay for more of this specific data". Once "paying more" becomes the norm, then slowly (over several years) the regular access to that data will vanish and paying through the nose will be the only way to access that data. It's all about "conditioning" the consumers to think in a certain way.

We have experienced this first hand in the US. In the early and mid 2000s (before the iPhone), "unlimited" data plans used to be $20 to $40/month. With the iPhones, service providers couldn't have that. So, they slowly started phasing out the unlimited data plans and made it difficult for grandfathered plans to remain current with technology. Then once the population got used to limited data plans, now suddenly every cellular service provider offers "unlimited" data plans for only $80/month (what a deal!!! compared to $60 for just 5GB!). So, instead of just flat out increasing the price of unlimited data plans, the consumers were "conditioned" into accepting that as the new norm.

Even in the US, we already see the ISPs "helping" us by saying "if you do this, this and this on the internet, you need this tier of internet service, but if you do that, that and that on the internet, you need this tier of our internet service". And then slowly, there will be a small fee for the "other" kind of data and before we know it, paying separately for data on different protocols will become the norm. ISPs and cellular providers have already started their transition from being dump pipes to people who control the medium of communication.

Consumers are being treated like sheep and they are not only happy about it, but in some cases (like the first post "the trouble with net neutrality"), argue in favor of that treatment. Huh!

Re:Not quite

[Gussington]

If Voogle's traffic is light, their NSP probably won't charge them much. If Voogle is streaming 4k video to thousands of customers, their NSP is likely to charge them quite a bit.

That was way too much text to read, but this point is wrong. NSP's already have peering arrangements with each other, and the charges are generally based on net difference (upload/download etc).
When I worked for a large ISP, we used to offer free hosting to high volume services to balance out the peering numbers and reduce our peering fees because our downloads were much, much more than uploads.

Re: Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Comcast going to compensate me for all the data they send checking my services or that their ads take up? 10GB is bs considering a lot of data is taken up by the random network scans, ads, and other garbage floating on the tubes these days.

Re:Not quite

[akita]

This is nonsense, probably someone misread something.
My isp is meo, and there are none of these limitations or prices.
Not even limit for home traffic, data plans have limit of course (they're usually sold in a bundle)
Vodafone blocks way more sites and types of traffic.

Re:Not quite

[Joe_Dragon]

so just 1 os update and you are over? WTF!

Re:Not quite

[aussie_a]

There was an OR statement not an AND statement. I thought this was a site for geeks.

Re:Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile data plans typically include single-digit GBs per month in Germany. Calydor could have found a couple exceptions though. For example, for 35EUR/month, O2 offers "Free L" with 20GB and unlimited 1Mbps after that. T-Mobile has a truly unlimited plan, but at 200 EUR/month, it's not cheap. Landline internet access is typically unlimited in Germany.

Re:Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo. Now tell them what it actually costs. At Hurricane Electric (for example), you can get transit (i.e. global transport) 10Gbps for as low as $2500/month. That's $25/month for 100mbps at ISP scale, and you're not just allowed but actually expected to use that bandwidth continuously. I'm sure that L3 and Cogent offer transit even cheaper. If every bit of data in your examples had to be sent through HE's global network, it would still only cost an ISP $25 a month if a customer used a 100mbps connection around the clock to transfer 60TB/month, all to and from remote systems that require paid transit. That is why any and all net neutrality violations are just price gouging.

Re:Not quite

[cloud.pt]

Wait what? "believe it or not"? That's the only OR on your sentence. What are you implying?

Re:Not quite

[Ash-Fox]

You do realize that Portugal has net neutrality, right?

Re:Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people update the OS over their home network, which in the EU (or most of it) is not metered, you know...

Re:Not quite

[Mr D from 63]

Net neutrality means you pay the same whether you have a cheap or expensive mix of traffic.

Absolutely wrong. NN means all traffic of any given type is treated equally. "cost' of the traffic is not even considered. NN means all video traffic is treated equally, etc. It does not prevent treating video traffic differently than non-video traffic, nor bundling of traffic types.

Re: Not quite

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But if it's split by destination ("for each service"?), then, while admittedly better than complete blocking of the service, it's still worse than simply paying for amount of opaque data transferred.

Re:Not quite

[N3wsByt3]

"10 GB is enough for anyone" I would even say: 640 KB ought to be enough for everyone.

Re: Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Im from Portugal too and i believe you don't grasp the problem...
If you are given incentives to choose a platform (on the zero rate list) and not another newcomer, you put an end to innovation and create a market monopoly .
Also take a note that platforms from government or news are not on this list. What do you think is more important?
Dumbing down the individual to consume cat videos, or informed citizenship?

Re:Not quite

[aussie_a]

anyone not wanting to play Wow all day and pirate the latest tv shows or watch cat videos

I know reading comprehension has never been great among slashdotters. But Jesus H Christ.

Not the first

[thegarbz]

I remember Australian mobile phone providers starting with the social networking craze by offering "Free Facebook" as part of their crappy packages. Sucks if you're a Facebook competitor.

Re:Not the first

[JaredOfEuropa]

Same here recently with free Spotify streaming, etc. And mobile phone companies in particular still like to have us believe that mobile data is an incredible scarce resource that has to be doled out with great care.

Re:Not the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Many instances of this in South Africa as well, as usual it seems the americans are completely out of touch with the rest of the world.

Re:Not the first

[hairyfeet]

Its not just mobile, if your home service has a data cap? Might want to check your data usage and then download a bunch of Windows Updates and see what happens because at least on the ISPs in my area? Windows Updates don't count against your cap, Linux and Mac updates do.

Re:Not the first

[spire3661]

Because it is. Wired and wireless are NOT the same thing at all. The Net Neutrality argument mostly applies to wired/landline internet, not cellular links. After we settle wired Net Neutrality, we can then start to talk about load balancing and prioritization for mobile, but for now it is a scarce and finite resource. Cellular is still a luxury internet connection (due to it being a finite resource) and i think people forget that.

Re:Not the first

[Anonymous Coward]

In many parts of the world cellular is the only internet available to most with wired being a luxury, so perhaps you have it backwards.

Re:Not the first

[cloud.pt]

I'm from Portugal. This week I accidentally activated samsung cloud backup on my phone. Needless to say my photos and videos ate through my home data cap and now I get 2001 speeds until after tomorrow. Yet if I had used my provider's cloud backup plan, which just happens to be MEO, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FREE TRAFFIC. Now imagine I'm a user or a company that relies on backups for everyday tasks and is willing to pay for it, which service you think I will be purchasing since all I have is this ISP...

Re:Not the first

[GumphMaster]

This exclusion has been with us for a while regardless of whether data is metered on not. Facebook and Twitter already get free advertising on almost every news site on the planet through the insidious like/share buttons, including on Australia's non-commercial broadcaster ABC. With an extra click, ABC advertises Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Too bad if you are not on those lists.

Re:Not the first

[Gussington]

Cellular is still a luxury internet connection (due to it being a finite resource) and i think people forget that.

Depends where you live. Once you used to something it's no longer luxury.
Where I live we've had great cellular wireless for years, and is considered as essential as roads and electricity. Some other places might not be as advance so to them it still is. I know when I travel I feel like going back in time because some so called 'developed' countries still don't have ubiquitous 4G everywhere.

Re:Not the first

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's great if you're a cash rich incumbent and you've got a new competitor that's getting a bit uppity.
There's no incentive for either the ISP or the supplier to give YOU a good deal, until there's a competitor to squash.

Misleading

[ebrandsberg]

Based on what I can gather, the way this plan works is that they offer some amount of bandwidth to the base plan for the general internet, then for a small amount, you can have more bandwidth specifically for particular services at a discounted rate vs. the normal overage rate. This will inevitably lead to fully walled gardens, but it isn't quite there yet. I suspect that they are trying to prevent people from using random peer to peer streaming services that put a strain on every available upstream link, and instead trying to limit where the excessive bandwidth is coming, so they can manage things better. It isn't about access exactly, but billing and cost.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it matters much, in the scheme of things, if they say "you can only access X" vs "you can access anything, but you can only afford to access X".

Re:Misleading

[ebrandsberg]

The prices don't seem too unreasonable:

Smart net (the packaging at issue) gives you 10GB for 4.99 Euro
General bandwidth appears to be 2GB for 9.99 Euro or up to 30GB for 30 Euro

Clearly the "special" access plans are cheaper, but it isn't unreasonable the prices for the bandwidth without the smart packages.

Re:Misleading

[cloud.pt]

It is about access. From a Portuguese who is forced to use MEO in a not that secluded rural area, and has no other internet link available, it is nothing short of censorship.

But city cats will never understand because of their evolved ways of life on fiber optics. It's really easy to close your eyes to bad policy making in the comfort of your 200mbps 20 bucks plan.

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

One ISP has something like this here as well, you get free data in your most used app (not sure how they decide which servers are part of the app and which aren't). According to a friend with this subscription it works...

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like a violation of CFAA 7 (c):

(7) with intent to extort from any person any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any—
(C) demand or request for money or other thing of value in relation to damage to a protected computer, where such damage was caused to facilitate the extortion

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in the US, we have affluent and/or newly built subdivisions with access to synchronous gigabit fiber at ~$70/mo, within a stone's throw of older and/or less-affluent areas that are paying through the nose for (at best!) 20/3 DSL. This is within a metropolitan area.

Re: Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't about the prices being reasonable knucklehead it is about there being different tiers for different Internet services. Damn ISPs want to make the Internet the new cable TV and make you pay per website.

Re:Misleading

[argStyopa]

^ and THAT is the Net Neutrality discussion in a nutshell.

Misleading "stunning facts" spun in a very narrow context when they aren't outright lies.

I don't have a dog in this fight; I think both sides are guilty of spinning the shit out of this issue.

Personally, I believe the moment these ISPs start reviewing content, they should be treated no longer as 'common carriers' and thus no longer protected from the consequences of such content.

Right now, telephones are common carriers: we don't sue AT&T because some ISIS terrorists talked on their phone lines. That would be ridiculous. But the moment AT&T starts preferentially connecting some people over others, shouldn't they be legally held responsible for the results of those prioritizations?

First it was an idea.

[McFortner]

Now this is AT&T's wet dream.

Re:First it was an idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now this is AT&T's wet dream.

Have you ever seen the future?

You will.

Re:First it was an idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

And verizon and comcast and and and and...

The problem is simple actually. There is not enough competition.

With competition you end up with interesting packages. I remember the 'free ISP' crazy of the 90s. Why did that happen? Because ISPs were a dime a dozen. Now we have a small handful and they act like the monopoly they created. In the late 90s if I did not like my ISP it was dead easy to find another one. Now not so much.

What are the chances...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the chances that "Ro Khanna" actually looked at the page?
https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes-com-telemovel
All-uses internet is sold by the gig at the bottom.
I thought the EU had their own version of "net neutrality" anyway.

Re:What are the chances...

[cloud.pt]

Putting a discount price in discriminatory traffic is exactly the same as making indiscriminate plans prohibitive. Why does every single argument here states "oh but you have 60euro plans that will give you the same traffic for whatever service and not just those services?" Do you think the average portuguese makes 2k like in the US? We have a 2digit poverty rate and the paycheck you see the most people is the minimum wage (~500 euro). I think about 20% of employed populatiob makes minimum wage despite the average salary being around 1000 bucks

VPN+Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that still work to bypass this?

Re:VPN+Opera?

[GameboyRMH]

I'm guessing the VPN Package is the most expensive.

Re:VPN+Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could if the evil ISP does not determine the IPs/FQDNs in use and block them.

You can always set up a VPN/VPS with a host in a more reasonable area. You could set up a remote Linux desktop that you could RDP into and surf. There are many options. TOR is one, but it's dreadfully slow compared to the aforementioned desktop option. The question of VPNs is can you trust them. You can set one up easily and cheaply and know you can trust it. Don't log your traffic. If you really wanted to, you could set up a VPN/proxy and them another one and chain them together. Log nothing.

Set up SSH keys and Kerberbos in addition to the tunnel. Make it secure.

Re:VPN+Opera?

[Ash-Fox]

Would that still work to bypass this?

Yeah, that would bypass those packages and just switch to your metered connection rate. These are just addon packages for providing unlimited access to those services on top.

meo makes you ..

[Cederic]

I've, erm, encountered a German company called Meo too.

meo.de if you're feeling curious.

Re:meo makes you ..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Spanish, "meo" means "I pee".

Just thought I'd mention that ...

Textbook vulture capitalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them a freedom, and they'll use it to take away your freedom from their freedom. Because the only thing that matters, is profit... for profit's sake... and nothing else. No rights; no lives; nothing.

Corporations* are the natural enemy of the free market.
(* Not per se, but because any human group so far above Dunbar's number results in anonymity instead of human relationships, and that gives a natural advantage to psychopaths.)

Profit is the natural enemy of healthy capitalism.
Because it is precisely the income, that is not a fair and healthy deal of a working market. But leverage due to an unfair market situation. Aka the opposite of a free market.

Re: Textbook vulture capitalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are the example of the free market. I'm not a commie but this is exactly what they warned about. Capitalism ultimately ends up in imperialism. Communism/socialism ends up in dictatorships. We won't even go into the religious nutcases.

Here is the challenge for the new generations - come up with a new system that doesn't suck.

Except not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

That shows a mobile data plan not an 'isp'.
And mobile providers in the usa already fuck their customers over far far worse than that evil portuguese plan.

And i'm still not supporting this fake push for 'net neutrality'. Fuck you.

False advertsising

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the Internet when it has limited access.

Re:False advertsising

[cloud.pt]

It's a "smart" plan? Didn't you visit the link? It's for smart people that only need youtube and video streaming, and are smart enough that they get more by paying cheap. You can't be smart for every service though, because thay would require buying all plans for a lot of buck, and you can't also be non-standard because only those services are supported. Smart is falling in line these days, as defined by big com corps

Capitalism works

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally lost is the fact that you can get a wireless plan for $5 bucks a month with no government subsidies whatsoever. Sure it restricts the services you can use somewhat. But that isn't available ANYWHERE in the Net Neutral USA.

If you take all the services you get basically the same services at the same price as in the US. It just looks weird broken down like that a bit, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Re:Capitalism works

[cloud.pt]

Before you say without government subsidies, read my comment "juicy tale from a local"

Re:Capitalism works

[cloud.pt]

Oh and you missed a tibit there: you can only have these smart plans when already paying a monthly subscription that costs upwards of 25 bucks (for a miserable 3gb) with a 2y contract, or 50 for the same. So no, it's noy a mobile plan for 5 bucks... It's an add on

Re: Capitalism works

[Anonymous Coward]

nasty ideology youve got there. Citations?

Unbundling cable

[woozlewuzzle]

So, we demand that cable become unbundled so we don't have to get the channels we don't want, but when a mobile service offers what is essentially unbundling (cheaper access to just the sites you regularly use, still no restrictions on everything else) we complain we're getting screwed over.

Re:Unbundling cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly so, where in the US can you get a wireless data plan of any kind for $5 a month?

Re: Unbundling cable

[Anonymous Coward]

the net average monthly wage in Portugal is about 850-900 euro. That means they cannot possible increase the prices to US level and still have enough customers.

Also when Dutch providers started offering bundles like this it took only a few weeks before we had a net neutrality law. So it can be a good thing if providers start offering limited internet plans, if politicians react adequately that is.

Re:Unbundling cable

[Anonymous Coward]

That argument would only be applicable if websites in general (or major websites particularly) were to start charging ISPs for the privilege of carrying their traffic (rather than charging individual customers for premium services).

Re:Unbundling cable

[cloud.pt]

First, the economies of scale and the technical aspects of landline vs mobile are very different. Mobile is still a premium service for something that is actually easier to deploy to ISPs.

Second, this isn't unbundling. These smart plans are actually addons. You will need to have either a standalone monthly phone plan or a 5-play service with triple play at home, phone and mobile data, which usually costs 70e around here for, say 100 channels, 100mbs at home, 2gb mobile and unlimited national calls. So this is not unbundling - it's making the customer pay more for his communication bill than all other utilities combined, and thrn some

Re: Unbundling cable

[cloud.pt]

Actually my fellow countryman, the average might be that, but the paycheck 20% of the population gets is minimum wage (~500). They expect 20% of the population to pay their 30bucks phone+data plan with 2gb undiscriminate allowance, then force them to pay one of these add ons. And maybe after that they still have money for food, electricity, rent or mortgage. God forbid if you have kids that also need a data plan.

Re:Unbundling cable

[cloud.pt]

It's not a data plan, it's an add on. You will have to pay a hefty plan for a mere 1-2gb before you even get access to these "smart" add ons

Re: Unbundling cable

[Anonymous Coward]

the net average monthly wage in Portugal is about 850-900 euro. That means they cannot possible increase the prices to US level and still have enough customers.

Yet several countries with higher wages than the United States have mobile data prices much closer to Portugal's than to those in the US.

Looks more like a "Lack of Competition" issue

[anvilmark]

This kind of problem can only exist when there are functional monopolies.
Is this only being done by Portugal Telecom or is Sonaecom doing it as well? (I can't read Portuguese).

Re:Looks more like a "Lack of Competition" issue

[cloud.pt]

Everyone is doing it, but PT started doing it originally with their Meo Cloud, Meo Music and other services that never got traction when plans were cheaper and had more data.

Vodafone and NOS (SONAECOM) started doing this because PT has 50%chunk on mobile and a quasi-monopoly in rural areas, so they started playing their game and also using outrageously aggressive promotions in order to cope with ANACOMs protection of PT.

VODAFONE offers free Spotify premium on 12bucks/month mobile+data plans (unlimited calls and 10gb), while NOS has plans with 50% discount on Uber rides with basically no practical limit. Competition is a beautiful thing but having to resort to stuff like that really shows how it goes here

Re:Looks more like a "Lack of Competition" issue

[cloud.pt]

Actually, this whole shenanigans started with national vs overseas traffic a decade ago. When more players entered the market and ate through PTs monopoly since they didn't havr that cap, that's when ANACOM started protecting the (back then) state owned PT and allowing unfair game such as this. PT is no longer state owned (no majority nor golden share), but the buyers not only got solid protectionist clauses with the discount purchase, they also happen to be tight friends with the Portuguese pollitician community. ANACAOM goes so far as to ignore EU's policy advisory for not allowing PT's monopolist benefits

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

Trumpflakes get all fired up and confused when confronted with facts.

And why do they live paycheck by paycheck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are's giving a fuck about these things.

And because they are too fuckin' numb to get, that it's the mass of such "small potatoes" that add up to this!

(Neurons need a certain level of contrast, to fire. Small changes that creep in often fail to trigger anything big, as no neuron keeps its memory long enough so it can add up. ... What you need, is to surprise someone with all those things at once! Without overwhelming them, making them unable to accept, and causing disbelief and willful ignorance. ... Where it gets problematic, is in situation, where those situations overlap, and there is no middle ground.)

BEREC

[wisnoskij]

Pretty sure Portugal is still in the EU, and therefor has Net Neutrality enshrined in law. These packages seem specifically built to operate within the confines of those NN laws.

Re:BEREC

[Opportunist]

Not yet. It's still being worked on. And fought tooth and nail by, well, you guessed who.

Re:BEREC

[cloud.pt]

Yeap, these plans go leaps and bounds to not look discriminatory. But as I said elsewhere, communications still is something the EU tries to make universally policed, but in practice isn't. National regulators still have final say, with power so broad even local government has issues policing them. I am actually quite sure recent efforts to make it so are one of the top reasons so many britons ganged up for the brexit, but this is speculation

Re:BEREC

[cloud.pt]

Exactly, and Portuguese ISPs are top lobbyists in EU policy. Recently we had a big long cry about how the end of roaming charges would affect Portuguese economu the most. Somehow we did get roaming charges abolished, but somehow national ISPs got away with making plans behave MUCH different while abroad vs while in Portugal. Which is exactly the opposite of what was intended with the non-roaming charges bill...

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

Now now, don't get the trumpsters all fired up.

You mean better choices for consumers???

[SuperKendall]

It seems like once again, Slashdot NN proponents do not have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

Those plans are to choose which services you would like to not count against your data plan - you can still use ANY service you like even if you choose none.

Wouldn't it be nice if you planned to watch a lot of video to say, yes for $4.99/month don't count that against my data allowance? How is tha in any way a bad thing to let the consumer have more flexible access and payment?

If that's what the world is like without overbearing regulation, bring it on.

Re:You mean better choices for consumers???

[tepples]

Wouldn't it be nice if you planned to watch a lot of video to say, yes for $4.99/month don't count that against my data allowance? How is tha in any way a bad thing to let the consumer have more flexible access and payment?

What criteria does a video provider not on the list, such as your cousin's MediaGoblin server, need to meet in order to be added to the list?

Re:You mean better choices for consumers???

[woozlewuzzle]

Sufficient customer demand.

Re: You mean better choices for consumers???

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still watch MediaGoblin. The bonus is that YouTube won't count against your data. This is actually win-win.

Re:You mean better choices for consumers???

[cloud.pt]

Regulation is to be made by entities without conflict of interest, such as for-profits or owners of competing service in the included traffic.

If "video" traffic is screwing uo the medical and educational industry, or even the IRS systems, it has to be the state to mandate limits in "video" traffic. Is thay fair and clear enough for you?

Re: You mean better choices for consumers???

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are a new market entrant trying to compete against youtube. Then it is clearly anti-competitive, unless the ISPs just add you to the 'video provider' list automatically and without you having to reach a certain size or demand level first.

Life Imitates Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 2014, Bittorrent Inc, ran a pro-NN ad campaign predicting exactly this sort of outcome. Their parody pricing schedules aren't parodies anymore:

BitTorrent Shows You What The Internet Looks Like Without Net Neutrality

Re:Life Imitates Art

[cloud.pt]

Let's go a bit farther back and re-read that glorious book. Say it with me: nineteen eighty four.

It's amazing how easy media manipulation is making us forget the classics. And I mean classic basic human rights

Juicy tale from a local

[cloud.pt]

These PT/MEO guys, I got a cool story for ya.

(this is a long comment so beware)

PT/MEO/Altice (or whatever name they decide is less tainted this week) are basically our FCC's (ANACOM) golden boys, and have been for decades. But maybe the best description is to say ANACOM is PT's lapdog. I bet that's how the other 2 ISPs see it.

Initially, PT was the state's telecom, and they got state-sponsored everything including tubing, copper, fiber networks, you name it, paid by good ol' taxpayers money, mine and my parents' (because state worker salaries have been frozen since 2007 - first by seniority, then in 2010 by merits such as academic degree).

The country was sacked 2-3 years ago due to loss of soberanity to the Troika), from international handouts we got from them for our much over-hyped so-called bankruptcy. This induced in the sale of most state-owned companies, including PT/MEO to Altice.

International purchasers of our "on sale" country usually got cool perks on clauses, and we also got ourselves one of the top golden passports programs in the world in the process, so top level management could move money around tax havens easily. Shit like this is common practice here and not just on de-nationalization of stuff - when we build our state-of-the-art toll-highways, contractors, who pay something like 10-30% of the roads (remainder state-subsidized) get the revenue from tolls over the next 20-50 years as a benefit, while maintenance and toll collection are all still state's responsibility. According to my own very basic calculations, they get something like 10 times initial investment, while the state itself gets a very hard hit on anual budget.

Oh and guess what, we are one of the top countries getting hammered by the Panama Papers offshoring of cash.

But this was just an example. Let me tell you what ALTICE got when they purchased PT/MEO at discount, at least that I know off: total monopoly on rural areas, which ANACOM likes to name "non-competitive zones", and which for a country like Portugal is not a lot of land % but is near the 30% family houses. A 30% population, state-sponsored monopoly. FUCK.

So since my family lives in one of these areas and we are not happy with their service, I decided to contact PT/MEO through their client feedback page, mentioning some very knowledgeable, yet all public details about my actually not very common issue - I am from a village which has very old copper lines, sometimes not reaching the 1mbps, and with constant drops in service. We also have a 3g signal from the only provider that is reachable, PT/MEO obviously, who offer a data-capped service. The copper DSL service requires a 15euro fee just to have the phone line, which is mandatory, and we still have to pay 25€ extra for 24mbps DSL (read: 1mbps with drops). The 3g plan is 30€ a month, and it is simply unusable on primetime. None of these plans include a mobile phone plan or mobile phone data or cable or satellite TV, which is an extra 20-30€. My family's telecom bill goes beyond 100€ most months. RE-FUCK.

But here's the real kicker: WE HAVE FIBER ON OUR STREET THAT NOBODY WILL SELL US.

Before PT/MEO was sold, they were in the process of kick-starting state-sponsored fiber link called Redes de Nova Geração all over rural areas, operated by, guess who.... PT/MEO. This was done in a similar 30/70 scheme as the highways but instead of tolls, PT got to be the operator and re-sell fiber to our other 2 telecom carriers, so that it would be shared, just like in cities here, to induce in FAIR competition. When we have competition around here, things like a 25€ triple-play plan, like we have in EVERY SINGLE CITY IN PORTUGAL

Re:Juicy tale from a local

[Anonymous Coward]

U ser have stinky bott0ms!

I h0pe u vented, u smelly belly!

Serves u right for being born in such a third-world cauntry!

Gr33tings from @ryan heavin Scandinavia!

Re:Juicy tale from a local

[Anonymous Coward]

mete mais tabaco

Re:Juicy tale from a local

[cloud.pt]

Caríssimo, antes de vires mandar postas informa-te da sociedade em que vives

Re: Juicy tale from a local

[Anonymous Coward]

is that why scandinavia countries sell out their land, companies and means? Same 3rd world shit will come here too when everything is offshored.

Re:Juicy tale from a local

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from another European country, and let's just say that you're not the only place where this kind of crap happens. While it's possible that politicians are just greedy short-sighted bastards, I think there is a larger plan at work here. It has obviously been decided that no infrastucture or property of any value shall remain under government control, instead it is all sold to the highest bidder, or sometimes even for pennies. Also, borders are now old-fashioned, I hear *cough* NWO *cough*

There will not be a tiered internet.

[DalM]

The problem with the "tiered" internet plan is that data is not an ISP's biggest expense. It costs an ISP the same thing to deliver the entire internet as it does simple messaging services. An ISP has real, and very large infrastructure costs. This is why ISPs can make "bundling" look like such a good deal. You pay $50 for internet, which is probably pretty close to what it costs the company to give you service with a little bit of profit (probably less than 10%). But if they can upsell you on TV too for only $10 extra, then that is an extra $10 of pure profit for them because you are already paying for their data connection, and adding TV is just another form of data that you are already paying to be delivered to you anyway. That's why tiered internet doesn't really make any sense, from a commercial point of view. $5 for messaging doesn't come close to covering their cost of delivery, the lower tiers would have to be sold at a loss, which is unsustainable because a lot of people would actually sign up for that. Ultimately, the "top tier" full internet would be sold for probably the same price as what you are paying now anyway.

Why does it matter???

[SuperKendall]

What criteria does a video provider not on the list, such as your cousin's MediaGoblin server

Do you seriously still not comprehend? It doesn't matter because you could still watch any other video provider ANYWAY!! You can still hook into that mediagoblin server all day long, you may have to pay for a larger data plan, which is offset by not buying the package - it's called CHOICE motherfucker, do you speak it?

Guss not.

And if a lot of people end up watching the new video provider, then they will go on the list (though probably not that medigoblin server).

I just get so tired of arrogant Slashdotters not understanding basic human psychology, or economics, or seemingly ANYTHING do do with reality. Being on that list or not is NOT GOING TO MATTER TO ANYONE.

It simply means that if someone watches Netflix all the time, they have a way to pay for a lower data plan but also still be able to watch Netflix all the time... again how is this a bad thing, than some poor person gets to do what they like but still ahem full internet access? It just seems inconceivably stupid and evil and arrogant to argue against what people WANT to be able to do.

Re:Why does it matter???

[cloud.pt]

Making people WANT something is very easy when you control the prices of access to that something

Re:Why does it matter???

[Anonymous Coward]

As you have described it, it is clearly an anticompetitive barrier to market entry. And you seem to think that's a good thing.

Retard.

Re:Why does it matter???

[gnupun]

After looking at the Portuguese ISP's plans, I'm outraged that they are stealing from the websites. The ISPs don't run the servers that provide the services, they did not write the code that powers those sites. They did nothing, except collect money from someone else's work.

It's like the Apple app store or google play store, where Apple and Google collect 30% of all app purchases even though did not write the app. But that's okay because they own those app stores and the OSes the apps run on.

The ISPs don't own the internet, they cannot charge a distribution fee like Apple's and Google's 30% cut.

Do you think there should be a different phone rate/minute when you transact $100,000 over the phone and when you talk to your relatives or friends? I don't think so. We're paying to rent their equipment to send data from party A to party B, regardless of what that voice data contains.

Non-neutrality == theft/extortion from website owners and users.

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

When they go low, you go lowest.

Fake news ...

[angel'o'sphere]

Everyone with a few brain cells knows: Portugal is in the EU.
So yes: they have net neutrality, facepalm.

Re:Fake news ...

[cloud.pt]

In case you didn't know, communication technologies is one of the few things the EU has no direct control because it depends on ratification by individual states's communication regulatory authority (analogous to the FCC for the US).

In Portugal, I have seen first hand ANACOM giving the finger to European Comission AND the EU members regulatory association at the same time. One example is roaming charges, which thr EU will say Portugal no longer has, but we basically have a fraction of our mobile plans when we are abroad yet still inaide the EU. It's a joke

Re:Fake news ...

[angel'o'sphere]

Technologies is ot the same as net neutrality.

No idea about your roaming charges ... if you still have them, you should sue in an eu court.

Falsehood

[Anonymous Coward]

Had the writer of this story actually visit the ISP website, they'd learned that internet access is unrestricted. What you get is unlimited data for those specific services. Why is it so hard to read?

Re:Falsehood

[Opportunist]

And the difference is what now? If you get unlimited data to $content_provider_A and not even the option to pay for it for $content_provider_B, which one will you use?

Imagine you could get Netflix on an unmetered link but any content you get from Amazon Prime counts against your contingent. So which one will you get?

Re:Falsehood

[cloud.pt]

Had you experienced first hand Internet service in Portugal, you would very much know that this is discrimination of traffic.

We have data caps for traffic types. Before it used to be for international vs national traffic on land lines, now it's by io range or domain for "privileged" services.

Now, even someone reading Portuguese wouldn't get this from the article, but you come here and bash it so Im assuming you're an interested party

Re:Falsehood

[Anonymous Coward]

Data caps for fixed connections are common practice everywhere, not just Portugal. In fact, Portugal's getting better on this front while other countries are dead set on making it the norm. Net neutrality isn't about data caps, it's about restricting access to certain services while favouring others. None of this happens in Portugal. In the case of this mobile ISP (and the others, because they all do this), you are actually paying _more_ to get rid of data caps on those specific services. I'm pretty sure you can pay even more to completely lift the data cap on everything.

FWIW I haven't been with PT/Meo/whatever they are called now for about 15 years.

Re:Falsehood

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd find a different Internet provider.

Re:Falsehood

[Opportunist]

If that's an option to you, you're one of the lucky few.

Calling SuperKendall

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's SuperKendall to tell us all that this is what we actually want, because Freedom?

Very, very few people can take advantage

[rsilvergun]

of those opportunities. It requires a lot of skill and a brutal amount of hard work. If you're already working just to survive you're in no shape to fire off a start up. And nobody's going to give you the capital because odds are you're going to crash and fail. I don't mean that as a colloquialism either. 80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. And those are just the ones that got off the ground enough to be counted in the statistics.

Try telling somebody making $8/hr at Walmart who's only skills are blue collar ones that they can go off and be the next Zuckerberg. They'll actually agree with you because their pride won't let them admit that it's impossible; that ship sailed. But when that person goes to the polls and he/she's all alone she's going to pull the anti-NN lever because those folks are promising them jobs they know they can actually get and do. And that's sort of the problem. Folks like you look at the polls and see people support NN because they like the dreams you're selling, but they don't really believe in it. That's half of why Trump one. Millions of people who wouldn't admit they're gonna vote for him...

Re:Very, very few people can take advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't about taking advantage. It's about availability of exposure.

When almost ALL personal business transaction, is not only recommended online, but preferred, the physical visit is the out-lire at this point for those in the 45 demographic.

Online Banking? Check.
Online Utilities? Check.

Speaking past the necessities, this has to go back to availability. They have it but don't take advantage. SO WHAT! It's still available. Whose to say when they will start taking advantage. Is the suggestion to take it away, since they aren't taking advantage? It's a waste if they don't?

I never will understand the stance that, when it comes to information in general, and especially the Internet, which is the largest trove of available information provided to humanity in humanities history, that if some part of it isn't being used of access by any one portion, group, it needs to be removed in some fashion? The deafness in education, of that type of thought is absolutely staggering. It smacks of a 'Conservative' mindset, and 'Capitalism' run amok, in thinking. "I.e., if there was value there, people would use it" .... There's only so many hours in the day, when work, food, and having social life, may just come before, when delving into topics out of personal interest finally becomes a priority. And until then, shut that availability off.

This was and never is, about the blue collar worker being the next Zuckerberg. Those are, and have been, statistical outliers. And I say that with half skepticism, since Zuckerberg was already in a better position, being at Harvard. Was it that far fetched something would happen? Not in the slightest. For the McDonalds employee? It's the same as they playing the lottery. 1 in several hundred million chance they'll do something 'significant', technologically.

This is and always has been, about the stifling and monetizing of access to information, against a large segment of society to control just what they see. Those who CAN for to pay for it all, will. Those who can't, are left in the narrow information echo-chamber. Easier to control that way, no?

Net Neutrality == Free Market

[Opportunist]

Only on a level playing field new players can join, increasing competition and offering the experience of a truly free market. Anyone opposing net neutrality necessarily opposes a free market.

Re:Net Neutrality == Free Market

[Eldaar]

I'm not a fan of the term "free market" - for most people, they assume a free market means free of rules and regulations, and that this is somehow a good thing. Try playing a game of "free football" (no rules) and let me know how that works out. What I want to see air COMPETITIVE markets. That means yes, rules and regulations, because they allow us to make a market fair/competitive. For instance, without antitrust (anti-monopoly) regulations, you get monopolies. Without environmental regulations, your rivers catch fire. Without labor regulations, your workers are destitute and getting chewed up by machinery in the factory.

My point here is that net neutrality is a framework of additional regulations. Regulations that ensure ISPs are not allowed to charge you more money to visit particular content, and that ensure ISPs don't throttle traffic to particular content. Rules like these promote competitive markets, because they ensure all businesses have equal opportunity to an online presence.

So next time you hear someone talk about how great free markets are, maybe you can encourage them to think about how much better competitive markets are. And how net neutrality leads to more competitive markets.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how are we gonna make the internet just like cable TV without getting rid of net neutrality?

Happens in America

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at a flying J's. They offer basic and premium wifi.

Basic does not support streaming video, gaming, etc.

Premium does.

They both cost money.

We don't have net neutrality in Australia

[cheesyweasel]

I don't think it's been such a big thing here. However, subtle things like one of our biggest ISPs throttling Netflix (maybe because they half only cable tv network here), is probably also an example of what can happen. http://www.news.com.au/technol...

\o/

[easyTree]

stifles innovation

This should be right at home in the US.

Vote for Net Neutrality, write/call reps for NN.

[jbn-o]

it's a small potatoes issue when 60-80% of your people are living paycheck to paycheck

Net neutrality is a critical issue that will determine people's access to the Internet—a network that has gone from being largely unknown and unpopular to indispensable even for the poor (one might argue particularly for the poor). Lots of people with computers of any size will tell you that the number one thing they do with their computers depends on the Internet (they may not word exactly that way, but anyone who understands even a little about things actually work will quickly recognize that Internet access is critical). And it takes virtually zero time to get ordinary people to understand that they depend on the Internet now. Net neutrality is therefore a majoritarian value and we see this reflected across divisions on other issues.

We've got all sorts of problems, large and small, to contend with. We all suffer in various ways dealing with these problems. So we need to get on with figuring out solutions. Fortunately in this case the solution is largely laid out for us. Businesses should work within publicly-specified laws that exist to serve the public's needs. We can tell (based on the time and money opposing net neutrality) that big businesses know we want net neutrality and they're quite clear on what that means. So it's a matter of doing the political work to impress upon those in power that they serve at our pleasure and they should rightly fear doing what we don't want.

WRONG NEWS based on a bad interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't charge for _access_ to the applications, they charge an _extra_ so that data transmitted through those apps (/protocols) _doesn't count_ to the monthly cap.

You can still use whatever app you like, in whatever plan you subscribe. It's not even throttled as far as I can detect.

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

When they go nazi, kill the faggots.

A little reversal...silver lining?

[Vegan Cyclist]

Sweet Christmas, pay me $20/mo not to use FB or Youtube on my mobile? I'm already doing that, please sign me up and send me the cheques!!

It's not completely irrelevant

[rsilvergun]

just significantly less so. Good paying jobs are their #1 concern. The kind that you can do when you're good with your hands but not your head.

Re:It's not completely irrelevant

[rtb61]

Well, hmm, need jobs, how about more internet wiring, more bandwidth, greater access, the best infrastructure in the world how about fucking that instead of fucking American wars all of the fucking god damned place as a truly insane job creation scheme because a handful of psychopaths profit by it. The internet has become an essential part of modern infrastructure just like roads. It affects property values by between 5% and 10% and so it cost property owners tens of thousands of dollars difference for a connection that only cost thousands or even just hundreds of dollars extra. Towns a digitally economically destroyed for lack of access to real broadband. It is a critical issue, if affects employment, if affects property values, it affects the survivability of towns, it is a critical part of modern infrastructure that should not be left to psychopathic capitalism and profits first of monopoly corporations. Never forget it is the cheapest service in your fucking street. Cheaper than power, cheaper than water, cheaper than sewer, cheaper than the fucking street and even cheaper than you footpath (seriously) but myopic psychopathic corporate greed is crippling it, so that they can dig deeper into your wallet, control your digital life and control politics. Future generations will stagnate or thrive dependent upon the quality of digital infrastructure and the most corrupt countries are falling further and further behind. This done in the most self serving treasonous manner imaginable and you will be falling further behind for years to come, as long as they can keep the con going, decades, they do not care about anything but their own pockets being full of your cash.

Irrational healthcare pricing

[lenski]

Mod parent up...

My wife had some blood tests done a few years ago, which initially were not covered by insurance. Cost to us: $1047.00; the provider helpfully offered a payment plan.

After much discussion and expenditure of hours we don't really have to spare, insurance covered the blood tests. Cost to the insurance company: $44.00, our copay was $4.00

So if your name is "anthem", $44.00; if your name is "nobody", $1047.00.

23.8 to 1.

This system is beyond fucked, it is simple ordinary Mafia extortion: Your money or your life.

Very similar to the net neutrality question, where the golden rule applies: He who invests properly in congressional races makes the rules.

The 2006 Supreme Court ruling about campaign donations was a silver-plated invitation to the party for a few, and a red hot poker for the asses of the many.

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[jbengt]

Or, like in my wife's case, a CAT scan and a PET scan done pre-surgery were billed at over $30,000 total. But the insurance company got it down to around $8,000 total, of which we had to pay 20%. So without insurance, we might have been borrowing money to pay 3 to 4 times what the insurance company agreed to pay, and somewhat lesser ratios for the costs of surgery, doctor's visits, medicine, specialist pathologist, etc.

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a sandwich from scratch, it took 6 months and $1500. https://www.geek.com/news/maki...
This system is beyond fucked, it is simple ordinary Mafia extortion. This shows you the evil of Big Sandwich forcing me to eat their food by making it prohibitive to make my own damn sandwich from scratch.

So if your name is "anthem", $44.00; if your name is "nobody", $1047.00.

That is a good demonstration of economy of scales to me. How many healthy people that are apart of anthem that are subsidizing the $44? How many people is Mr. Nobody subsidizing?

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[Cro Magnon]

Or, like in my wife's case, a CAT scan and a PET scan done pre-surgery were billed at over $30,000 total. But the insurance company got it down to around $8,000 total, of which we had to pay 20%. So without insurance, we might have been borrowing money to pay 3 to 4 times what the insurance company agreed to pay, and somewhat lesser ratios for the costs of surgery, doctor's visits, medicine, specialist pathologist, etc.

Damn! Those medical costs are truly beastly!

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[rock_climbing_guy]

I know it shouldn't be that way, but you need to call the provider and discuss rates ahead of time. Many providers are very reasonable with cash-pay patients.

There are also good deals to be had on lab testing. The biggest providers like LabCorp and Qwest are criminal in their price-gouging. However, many doctors have pre-negotiated rates you can take advantage of if you lack insurance.

One more pro-tip here: If you need imaging or other hands-on lab work, providers who are not affiliated with a hospital tend to charge far lower rates than their hospital-affiliated counterparts, and in my experience, they have better service, to boot!

If your doctor recommends a CAT scan, be sure to shop around!

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

> How many healthy people that are apart of anthem that are subsidizing the $44?

Well, if they've got nothing to do with Anthem, presumably not a single fucking one.

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[pnutjam]

Your either a twat or intentionally mis-stating the issue. The actual. The health company was happy to gouge their customer for about $1k, just because we don't know any better.

Anthem steps in and says, "Wait a minute, that test doesn't cost you anywhere near that much. We'll pay a markup, but not a ridiculous markup." Thus the cost is reduced over $1k.

In every other country in the world, there is some central authority that would see this exorbitant price gouging and smack the pee-pee of whoever is doing it. In the US, we have to rely on our Health Insurance company to do it.
This is further complicated when you consider not all Insurance companies are as competent as each other. Humana might pay $500 for that same $44 dollar Anthem test.

To get a proper picture of US healthcare you have to understand all the layers.

Customer selects the care, with no idea what it will cost.
Health Insurance pays the bill, or whatever part of it is considered fair. The customer might pay what the Health Insurance company doesn't, but it will still be at the "reduced" health insurance rate. (It should be, but good luck verifying this discount is in place)
The customer's employer selects the insurance company. The employee gets no real say in whether it's a good insurance company, or a bad one. They might have some minor plan selections, but usually no way to discern plan differences besides cost. They don't know if one negotiated $44 tests and one pays $400.
The employer pays the insurance company, or part of it, the amount the pay varies with no real way for them to know what other companies are paying and no way for employees to know what other employers are paying.

You have multiple opaque areas, with no competition, and no ability to distinguish differing results.

Re:Irrational healthcare pricing

[pnutjam]

Wouldn't it be great if there was some way to subscribe to a service where a knowledgeable person could negotiate these prices for you? Someone who is familiar with price history, equivalent services, and how much allows a healthy but not exorbitant markup?

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

I was with you until "Snowflakes".

Net Neutrality: not what it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality is favored by entrenched mega corporations like Google because it gives them the ability to write the rules on their favor and thereby legislatively solidify their government-supported monopolies.

The internet is not an unlimited commodity. It is a physical resource which requires capital to produce. It is economically illiterate to treat the internet as if it were like oxygen. Government interference in the market therefore leads to entrenching government-favored monopoly firms (like Google and Facebook) to the exclusion of would-be competitors, giving consumers less choice in the end. It also leads to mispricing of goods and capital misallocation because the actual supply/demand structures are obscured and distorted.

The Portugal example is not a free market example. You cannot say something is free market when things like air wave access, fiber optics, satellites and other necessary components of providing the internet are heavily regulated. This is at best an amalgamation of heavy socialism with some light capitalism mixed in. Only a purely free market â" virtually non-existent in any country today â" can correctly price the infrastructure and provide for a monopoly-free internet experience. Net neutrality will harm us all immensely in the end.

I am poor

[BankRobberMBA]

You make a good point about how much better and more stuff we have than we used to, and even than most humans alive right now do. That's not the problem.

The problem is that people living hand-to-mouth are at risk of catastrophic loss because of minor incidents. A simple accident resulting in a broken leg can cause a family to lose a week's income, possibly more depending on the job. Losing a week's income can result in losing their car to repossession or their housing to eviction or foreclosure (most people aren't that close to the edge on their mortgage, but some are.) Losing a car dramatically increases the chances of losing the job permanently, and that can certainly cause loss of housing. When you lose your housing, you will also likely lose much of the nice stuff, because you have no place to keep it.

The closer you get to the bottom of the economic ladder the harder it is to create savings. The social safety net in the US is much weaker than in most developed countries. Small bad inputs can cause out-sized bad results.

We can debate whether people are responsible for their own position in life (or how responsible they are.) None of this changes the fact that poor people are vulnerable.

Re: FUCK YOU AJIT PAI AND CRIMINAL CREW

[Anonymous Coward]

When they go Communist, go Nazi.

(1) false (2) awesome

[doctorvo]

(1) First of all, Europe has net neutrality legislation, so Khanna's statement that this is the Internet with "no net neutrality" is false (makes you wonder whether he is simply ignorant or deliberately misleading people).

(2) Look at the prices: you can get unlimited packages for $5 for specific services. A cheap, small data plan plus $5 for unlimited Netflix+YouTube? That sounds awesome to me.

Will they follow themn on other issues?

[houghi]

What about leqalizing drugs? What about the metric system? What about heath insurance?

Ok, just that one that that is a bit wrong interpreted anyway? OK.

Outernet

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually, there will be an end-run around the restrictions. The Outernet is one already existing example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outernet
https://store.outernet.is/

Meanwhile in Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to try to keep up with points and counter-points in these NN arguments.
Like it would be a good thing to get to pay extra to have no data caps on certain services/websites. That's just odd.
In Finland we have no data caps. Yep, you read it right, no data caps. We pay for speed (with plans up to 1Gb/s in my region), not data.
This is the internet have been brought up with, and I'm used to using. Going abroad, and having to monitor mobile data, feels constraining. So you can imagine where I (we in Finland) sit on Net Neutrality.

Not portuguese

[eggstasy]

This company was bought by the French ISP Altice who introduced sweeping changes to everything and fired people etc.

Meo belongs to Altice

[Anonymous Coward]

Meo is totally owned by Altice, a french multinational company.

OMG! Halp! FCC, save us!

[eric_harris_76]

Without the FCC involvement, ISPs will offer terrible products!

And people will have no ability to buy better products from competitors, because the FCC limits customer choice of ISPs. (Let's let the FCC off the hook a little. Local governments are part of the monopoly- and oligopoly-granting, too.)

Gotta love it. Government coming to the rescue of people in a fix that government put them in.

And people are soooo grateful to their Congresscritter when they unsnarl a federal bureaucracy that screwed up their lives. As though that federal bureaucracy wasn't created and supposedly monitored by the Congress in the first place.

"Constituent service", they call it. I call it being grateful for being rescued from a dog -- owned by the "rescuer".

This Applies To CELL PHONES

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is everyone becoming stupid? I feel like the last person with knowledge of how things work.