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Charter Launches Mobile Service, Throttles All Video To 480p (arstechnica.com)
Charter Communications launched its mobile broadband service on June 30, and it's throttling all video streams to DVD quality. From a report: "DVD-quality video streaming is supported. Video typically streams at 480p," Charter notes in the "Pricing & Other Info" section of its mobile sign-up page. The quality limit is similar to one just imposed by Comcast, which previously did not impose any video quality limits on its mobile service. Comcast is letting existing customers get 720p video streams "on an interim basis at no charge," and the company announced plans to charge extra for longer-term access to HD quality. But Charter hasn't announced any plans to let customers stream in HD over its mobile service, for free or otherwise. HD video "is not currently an option for Spectrum Mobile," a Charter spokesperson told Ars. Wirefly has a Spectrum Mobile review.
Google + Netflix do not get "free" internet.
They pay handsomely for their interconnects, infrastructure, caching edger servers + what not.
Consumer ISPs do not get to charge them twice for connections + data customers are requesting.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
How did this get modded up? Net neutrality is the principle of treating data equally regardless of originating source on the Internet. e.g. You can't throttle Netflix while prioritizing your own video streaming service.
What you're proposing is content neutrality - treating all data the same regardless of the type of data. If we mandated content neutrality, the Internet would die a horrible death as filesharing, spam, and DDoS attacks got equal priority to video streaming, web browsing, and online game traffic. The only reason the Internet is able to function despite the terabytes of illegitimate traffic being dumped on it is because ISPs and backbones are allowed to lower its priority via traffic shaping to give legitimate traffic first crack at the available bandwidth.
"Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers treat all data on the Internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication."