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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."
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."
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, ....
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.
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.
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.