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Burger King Makes the Case For Net Neutrality (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: By now you've probably seen Burger King's spoof ad on the decision by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality. In the ad, Burger King customers are informed that there are now three "lanes" for ordering Whoppers -- each with substantially different prices and waiting times. The ad has already generated over a million views on Youtube and is lighting up Twitter. One thing I missed the first time is that while the Burger King "counter service" is clearly in on the act, the customers are apparently real; they learn of the cockamamie scheme at the counter in the style of the old TV show Candid Camera. Variety notes that the video "ends with an apparent dig at FCC Chairman Ajit Pai [...] as the Burger King character is shown drinking from an oversized Reese's coffee mug. That is the type of coffee mug that Pai uses at FCC meetings."
Totally agree with you. They need a 15 second after shot where it pans out to people trying to shop elsewhere and the assistant on thier phone tells them that this is the only place they are legally allowed to buy fast food from. If they don't like it they are free to sell thier house and move.
Despite the ridiculous amount of capital it takes, a lot. The number one place that there are issues is utility poles. Right now, most municipalities have regulations that you must wait for the incumbent player to move their cables to make room for yours. Typically, there is no required turnaround time, or it's a ridiculously long time like 90 days per pole and they can charge you whatever they want for the "service." Some municipalities passed what a are called "one touch make ready" regulations but, the incumbents have sued every time, with varied results but, if nothing else, you had to wait for the lawsuit to conclude before you could proceed. One touch make ready is a regulation that allows a new players to move aside existing cables to make room for their own on the condition that they do not harm existing cables or interfere with the competitor's service. Google fiber required that one touch make ready laws were passed before they would consider your city for their service.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
It's a subtle dig at the FCC/Ajit Pai. 6.33 = "FCC", based on where the characters appear in the English alphabet.
If you're paying for non-functional service, wouldn't that be a matter for the FTC? If you're not getting what you paid for, isn't that fraud?
Not now they've explicitly made it legal by abolishing NN. The ISP gets to decide what is functional, and if you don't like it, you can pay more — maybe. An ISP owned by a major news outlet might well just go ahead and make all other major news outlets load slower, and not give you the option to pay more to get them at the same speed, and it would be completely legal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're wrong. Burger King's analogy is that they'll let you pay more for faster priority access to their product. To accomplish this, they will artificially slow down access to those that are unwilling to pay the ridiculous premium. Those customers that were waiting forever for their burgers weren't waiting because there were many customers that pay the premium, they were waiting just because the premium option existed and they didn't pony up. That's the entire point of their analogy and is perfectly valid.
Not a big fan of this commercial, but only because I don't see an issue with paying for a bigger pipe. I think it's fair that I pay more for higher raw throughput for multiple streaming devices than my neighbour that only streams through one TV.
But add a "Fast Lane, sponsored by Coca-Cola" to the mix, where Burger King can push you to buy Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi, because Coca-Cola bid higher than Pepsi for prioritization privileges, and the real problem with repealing NN becomes apparent.
Did you miss the part about the chicken? If you bought a chicken sandwich, it was instant. If you paid for extra speed on the whopper, it was instant. If you did not, they had your sandwich, weren't doing anything else (your pipe was empty), but they just didn't fill the capacity of their pipe.