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

[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]

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

[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]

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.