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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."
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.
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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.
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.
There's a screencap, wtf are you smoking?
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.
Now this is AT&T's wet dream.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
I've, erm, encountered a German company called Meo too.
meo.de if you're feeling curious.
It's not the Internet when it has limited access.
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.
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).
Trumpflakes get all fired up and confused when confronted with facts.
Bologna is in Italy; perhaps you meant Braga?
Ezekiel 23:20
Now now, don't get the trumpsters all fired up.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Before you say without government subsidies, read my comment "juicy tale from a local"
Everyone with a few brain cells knows: Portugal is in the EU.
So yes: they have net neutrality, facepalm.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Caríssimo, antes de vires mandar postas informa-te da sociedade em que vives
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...
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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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not yet. It's still being worked on. And fought tooth and nail by, well, you guessed who.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm guessing the VPN Package is the most expensive.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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
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...
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
This should be right at home in the US.
Requiem for the American Dream
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.
Digital Citizen
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
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
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...
Making people WANT something is very easy when you control the prices of access to that something
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
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!!
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.
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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.
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.
(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.
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This company was bought by the French ISP Altice who introduced sweeping changes to everything and fired people etc.
If that's an option to you, you're one of the lucky few.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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".
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.