Despite Data Caps and Throttling, Industry Says Mobile Can Replace Home Internet (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon are trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission that mobile broadband is good enough for Internet users who don't have access to fiber or cable services. The carriers made this claim despite the data usage and speed limitations of mobile services. In the mobile market, even "unlimited" plans can be throttled to unusable speeds after a customer uses just 25GB or so a month. Mobile carriers impose even stricter limits on phone hotspots, making it difficult to use mobile services across multiple devices in the home. The carriers ignored those limits in filings they submitted for the FCC's annual review of broadband deployment.

Comments

Re:3 UK

[tepples]

Let me know when Three expands to other countries.

Actual limit much lower

[SuperKendall]

I have my mom on a T-Mobile hot spot because it's by far the fastest connection where she lives (other option is DSL that literally 10x slower).

However the data cap is absurdly low - 10GB, way less than the summary mentions. She could make do pretty well with 25GB (even streaming video) but 10GB is just on the edge where it often runs out near the end of the month, and there's no way to add more data when it runs out.

Re: Actual limit much lower

[Anonymous Coward]

So get T-mobile One and use an old iPhone for the hotspot. The 3g is unlimited after you burn the 32GB of LTE. The plus side is it is also a phone.

Re:Actual limit much lower

[ArylAkamov]

We're in the exact same situation. I find it weird that their phone plans cost less and offer more data compared to their hotspots, if I had done more research I would have gotten an old android phone, rooted it and use that for the hotspot.

Re: Actual limit much lower

[Anonymous Coward]

TMobile One will throttle your hotspot after 500MB. There is no addon/upgrade package to avoid that.

I still have a Simple Plan because I am not throttled until i hit my data cap of 17GB. It's easy to blow through it when not paying attention, but for regular travel support (i.e. not streaming videos, not downloading gigabyte isos) it's more than capable.

Verizon is now offering 5G Home with no data caps. If you can get in on that service package, you should just because that subscription will be worth its weight in gold in 5 years (when 100GB data caps become the norm)

Re:Actual limit much lower

[tgeek]

Try checking to see if the carriers servicing your area offer fixed wireless service. Basically, it's an LTE hotspot designed to be used in one place, usually operating on a less congested low band. In most cases it'll be similarly priced to an "unlimited" handset plan, but with more generous data caps and friendlier throttling policies. And, of course, no tethering restrictions. NB: As with any wireless/LTE connection data rates can vary anywhere from "awesome" to "why bother" depending on all the usual factors.

Re:Actual limit much lower

[SuperKendall]

I thought of that same approach but the hotspots had more reliable reception, whereas phones could just barely find a signal at her location. I keep meaning to ask if I can get a T-Mobile booster for that spot, then it would work...

However AFAIK the tethering limit (if you turned a phone into a hotspot) is 10GB also, so it's pretty much the same deal!!

Re: Actual limit much lower

[SuperKendall]

The hotspot already works like that.

The connection does not go dead on the hotspot when you've exceed 10GB, it just goes to 3G speeds. But for all modern internet use that is very nearly dead, and not useful even for most web browsing.

Re:Actual limit much lower

[Jane Q. Public]

My home internet connection caps at 1TB and I've come close to hitting that mark before.

I easily blow through 10GB in less than a day. Easily.

Re:Actual limit much lower

[kk5wa]

If you can't get enough signal on your phone to make it work, you can't get enough signal for a hotspot to work.

- lives in rural area with shitty coverage
- no cable or DSL
- satellite is pretty much the same service with the same costs and same limits as mobile

Re: Actual limit much lower

[tepples]

That depends to a large extent on what you include in "modern internet use". Turn on the tracking protection feature in the Firefox web browser, and a lot of data-heavy annoyances related to third-party snooptech on mostly textual websites will stop annoying you. If that isn't enough, the JavaScript Switcher extension lets you turn all scripts on and off for particular domains. Or you can use APK's solution of compiling and using a large DNS blocklist.

Of course they fucking say that.

[Narcocide]

Do you really think they hate overage fees?

Not even trying

[VeryFluffyBunny]

The big telecoms monopolies aren't even trying, now that they've pwned the FCC.

Immediate arrest

[Anonymous Coward]

Those responsible for the statements and supporting "evidence" from each of the respective companies should face immediate arrest for filing false claims with intent to commit fraud related to federal regulations.

Exactly as planned

[GrumpySteen]

You didn't think the industry spent billions lobbying against net neutrality without expecting to make it all back, did you? They want everyone to be tied to wireless so that they can throttle, cap and otherwise limit their connections in order to force customers into more expensive plans.

The goal is now and always has been to extract as much profit while providing the bare minimum service that they can get away with.

Re:Exactly as planned

[magarity]

You didn't think the industry spent billions lobbying against net neutrality without expecting to make it all back, did you?

Let's all repeat this until we can remember it: blanket throttling a given connecting device because it reached a monthly limit has nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is about not throttling per-content traffic at different rates.

Re:Exactly as planned

[stealth_finger]

The goal is now and always has been to extract as much profit while providing the bare minimum service that they can get away with.

Capitalism 101

Re:Exactly as planned

[smoot123]

The goal is now and always has been to extract as much profit while providing the bare minimum service that they can get away with.

Well, of course it is. Have you ever run or worked in a business? That's the nature of the beast.

Thing is, competition and customer freedom is what keeps "the bare minimum" much higher than the company would like. If AT&T sets their caps too low and T-Mobile doesn't, you'll see people flood to T-Mobile. So long as there are competitors, companies are compelled to provide better and better products.

That being said, have some perspective people. Remember the bad old days of, say, 2008? When you desperately hit the cancel button on your flip phone because you didn't want to pay for data service by the minute and by the megabyte? And how that changed overnight when Apple introduced the iPhone with unlimited data? Why do you suppose AT&T went along with that? Because they made a zillion dollars by offering a great service that people were willing to pay for.

Not if you want to also do "streaming gaming"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Not if you want to also do "streaming gaming". As for me, I'm happy I investing in MAME, Roms and standalone games early and often - the pay-as-you-go, loot box or online models seem like a PITA no one should have to deal with.

Re:Not if you want to also do "streaming gaming"

[HornWumpus]

Is that what they're calling piratebay these days?

It is getting close to the end of the month, better figure out what I'm downloading. Data cap is, use it or lose it.

Dunno about that.

[i.r.id10t]

I'm on 6mb DSL (768k up) and only got that recently after some fiber was run. Prior I could get 3mb DSL but I was on the edge of service for that, and S:N ratio kept me from having a decent connection - I'd loose connection every 5-10 minutes. So 1.5mb DSL.

While my phone co (Windstream) has been making massive improvements in connectivity where I am (mostly rural, N Central Fl) I'm still on the edge of connectivity for my AT&T cell/data. As in, I may have 3g, or 4g. Or LTE. I may have one dot on connection meter, or two. Or mostly none. Depending on where I am in the house or what part of the "yard" (5 acres) I'm in.

So no, when lack of density prevents cable or DSL from being available, you can't always depend on cellular - until AT&T et al start building more towers.

Re:Dunno about that.

[Scarred Intellect]

I feel your pain. I could either get 1.5mbps DSL, or fork over $75/mo for 5mbps/1.5mpbs fixed wireless. I opted for the fixed wireless. It could barely stream Netflix, which is about all my wife does at home (that's a lie, she does tons, I love you, honey!)

When I moved to another county on the other side of the river, similar choices. This time I'm lucky that an enterprising neighbor about 15 years ago started his own ISP off a nearby fiber backbone. I now get anywhere from 25-90mbps up and down, with no restriction, for a solid $40/mo.

He started this when he moved out for himself. Neighbors caught on, wanted in. He doesn't advertise, just maintains his little network. If you have the resources and know-how, look into it. Ask some neighbors if they'd be interested. His little network is more reliable than the larger commercial carriers around, though I have to ask to get access to some common ports, such as 80 and 443...

Re:Dunno about that.

[Mashiki]

So no, when lack of density prevents cable or DSL from being available, you can't always depend on cellular - until AT&T et al start building more towers.

Lack of density? How about when there's plenty of density. A friend of mine lives in a city of 41k people, if you want DSL the fastest you can get is 3mb/512k service. The other option is cable, but at least you can get up to 100Mbps service, and that's in one of the most densely populated areas of Canada(southern ontario). Rogers fought tooth and nail against opening the market to TPIA options and the CRTC had to sanction them with fines. It's actually bad enough that a local ISP has started laying their own fiber links, because Bell refused to do so and they're still on plain copper, not even FTTN.

Re:Dunno about that.

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm on 250Mbit cable Internet, $95/month now.

LTE peak is 50Mbit/s, and I pay $180/year ($15/month) for cellular with unlimited voice and SMS plus 2GB monthly LTE+ before throttling to 2Mbit.

I don't have a problem with throttling. Especially in rural areas, where you can get higher speeds due to lower saturation (one cable run out to a tower instead of running a ton of last-mile fiber is cheaper), having a 25Mbit/s with a 10Mbit/s throttle at something like 10GB for $20/month would be fine. We can regulate an increase in the data cap and throttling speed as technology improves.

Note that streaming HD is 4,000Kbit-8,000Kbit. 10Mbit/s allows for one HD stream at maximum quality. It's not much, but it's access. When 5G whatever comes, we'll have a talk about 4K streaming, throttling, and whatnot.

Of course, with all this usage, they'll need to put up more towers if density increases, or start running last-mile cabling to houses to get people off the cellular network. That's fine. The important thing is everyone has access to useful high-speed Internet and can watch streaming TV and telework reliably.

Time for a Rural Electrification Act, Part Deux

[CrimsonAvenger]

Back in the '30's, electricity wasn't to be had out in the sticks. Part of FDR's New Deal basically had the Feds pay for the wires to fix that.

It could be done again, if we wanted to spend a metric fuckton of money doing so.

Note, for those who want to blame a political Party for the failure to do so, it hasn't been done under Trump (R), nor was it done under Obama (D), nor Bush (R), nor Clinton (D). This has been a bipartisan "Yuck Foo" to the people who live out in the boonies (probably mostly because there aren't enough of them to matter come election time)....

Re:Time for a Rural Electrification Act, Part Deux

[HornWumpus]

We're still paying 1 billion a year for 'rural electrification'. All to rent seeking scumbags. Not a good argument for it, rather the opposite.

Re:Time for a Rural Electrification Act, Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, Clinton did give the telcos a $200B gift to wire the country fro high speed internet. They pocked the money and did fuck all.

Re:Time for a Rural Electrification Act, Part Deux

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Telecommunications Act of 1996?

No, that wasn't like the Rural Electrification Act. That bit of law was intended to create more competition among various service providers, NOT to guarantee the provision of such services to everyone and their brother....

offerers of fake unlimited plans

[presidenteloco]

should be throttled.

For blatant Orwellian abuse of the language, if for nothing else.

Good enough for the 19th century

[DavidMZ]

I guess mobile broadband is good enough if you don't need internet in your line of work... That probably excludes most professionals working from home and farmers who are more and more reliant on technology.

Re:Good enough for the 19th century

[smoot123]

I guess mobile broadband is good enough if you don't need internet in your line of work.

Well, that's what bugs me about this. Isn't "good enough" a really personal opinion? What's good enough for my dad wouldn't be good enough for me. Never mind that mobile and fixed internet are different products. I've got some IoT devices which I want connected all the time, not just when I'm home. No, mobile isn't good enough, not for that application.

What I really don't see is why the FCC needs to try deciding what's not good enough. Surely the person buying the service should be making that decision.

Why are they trying to argue...

[bjdevil66]

...this untenable position? Money, of course.

A: From the article:

If the FCC decides that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion, the agency isn't required to do as much to accelerate deployment or promote competition.

In other words, it's about cutting capital investment costs to increase profit margins.

The kicker is that they were just crying about how net neutrality was a terrible thing because they couldn't manage traffic better to keep mobile service running. They were also just crying about how mobile data caps are absolutely necessary to keep from "clogging the tubes" (an outright lie).

But they're trying to claim they want to claim that mobile is an adequate substitute for home/wired internet??

(This exact same argument failed in 2017 after Ajit Pai initially supported the idea but backtracked after taking a shit-ton of heat from the public and consumer advocates.)

Corporate executives don't deal in facts. They deal in their own malleable truth sundaes, sprinkled on top with factoids that they can sell in a different package at any time...

Yeah,

[gatfirls]

but your your were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Re: High speed noise

[coastwalker]

YouTube university lectures, public talks and many specialist podcasts are also worth having along with the books. All of human knowledge is out there for the cost of a broadband connnection and a PC with a decent sized screen. A mobile is basically a social media and shopping device designed for moneytization of the user. Tablets are for binge watching TV and Netflix but good luck getting a mobile deal that is good value for tethering.

Not exactly

[rsilvergun]

they want everyone to have both and to pay around $160/mo for the landline and $70/mo (+$35 for your phone) for the wireless.

Thing is, I don't think voters are going to do anything about it. Texas, for example, has a senate candidate (Beto O'Rouke) who refuses corporate PAC money but he's behind in the polls by 9 points. Nancy Pelosi beat her primary challenger and she's as corrupt as they come. So far the voters still vote for whoever has the most money, regardless of where that money came from.

Re:Unsurprising...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

... If you can take over the FCC, you can get away with offering less for more. That's kind of the point.

The Republican party has long been owned by Telco's, it seems.

I thought that deregulation and doing away with red tape was the Republican's ideology. Oh, wait, isn't that de facto what the Democrats do too?

It's time for "FUCK THAT SHIT!!!!"

[omfglearntoplay]

To hell with cell towers being someone's main internet. NO WAY NO HOW!!!!!!!!!

Re:Welcome to 2018 all in the USA.

[Fly Swatter]

Where is 'here'? You left out the most important thing about which upon you base your entire troll?

Not because wireless is good enough...

[QuietLagoon]

... but because wireless is easier for the industry to deploy. It doesn't matter if customers do not agree that wireless is good enough to replace broadband. All that matters is that the industry can convince an industry-friendly FCC to rule that wireless is good enough.

Break them up! Break them up!

[Anonymous Coward]

We need someone with guts to take a meat cleaver to these mega corporations. They have way too much power, and abuse it to the fullest extent of their capabilities. Standards are good. Lack of competition is not.

Re:Bend over and grab your ankles..

[BrianMarshall]

Hey! No orange-shaming!

This article seems a bit short sighted.

[sunking2]

I assumed they were really talking about home 5g service competing with cable/fiber. My hopes are that it does as it'll mean in a few years most people may have at least 3 high speed internet options. I see no real need for 5g on mobile devices for most people. The cable companies are going to fight tooth and nail to try to keep them out of the home internet game. This just seems like them strengthening their position. In the end cable and mobile phone companies will all morph into some new competing industry. Not sure what it'll be called but it won't be defined by tv or phone.

Re: 3 UK

[Synonymous Homonym]

It already has.

Re:Unsurprising...

[Mashiki]

The Republican party has long been owned by Telco's, it seems

Looks at open secrets, and finds out that telcos have predominantly even in this election year dumped money to democrats. Hmm....yep sure does look like republicans are owned by telcos. Just like the pharma industry, who've been throwing money at the democrats - especially after Trump forced through generics on a whole pile of drugs.

Been using mobile when traveling.

[Chas]

Have had tethering capability with my phone for a number of years now.
And it's saved me literally THOUSANDS in hotel Internet costs.

But, is it ready for prime time yet?

No.

Locational issues affecting signal strength still play heavily on it's utility.

Latency can also be an issue. I was an early adopter for Clear (which is now just Sprint) and had massive issues.

I had a tower less than a quarter mile from my location that'd give me 3 bars. Unfortunately, I was on the south face of an 8-story brick, concrete and steel building.

So even if they could FORCE it to that tower, it'd disconnect within 30 minutes and I'd connect to a tower directly south of me, almost 5 miles away, and get a single bar.

Now, I use an IP phone. So latency is kinda important. The latency with Clear was HORRENDOUS. Correspondingly, my IP phone connection quality was equally horrendous.

It's possible, after everything moves to 5G, that we could see WISP be something more than a "make do".

But not until.

Re:3 UK

[stealth_finger]

is the poor man's pay-as-you-go broadband. No caps after midnight.

Technically it's always after midnight.

Re: Unsurprising...

[Mashiki]

It's funny watching Americans pretend they have two distinct political parties.

It's funny watching anonymous cowards who are American, think that everyone is American.

Verizon 5G

[Deathlizard]

I'm already seeing Verizon 5G micro-towers going up in my area, Although they haven't announced availability in our area as of yet. Supposedly it's launching in Houston and LA in October.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/...

So far, they're claiming 300Mbps with a 1Gbps Peak, and no data caps at $70/month. Although they're not saying anything about no throttling, but I'm sure they'll have something in place to throttle heavy users at peak times or at a certain data cap.

If they can truly deliver those speeds, especially with a light to zero touch throttling policy similar to Verizon FIOS, they will give cable serious competition and pretty much own the rural market with little to no competition other then other future 5G carriers. If they run it like Verizon Wireless and cap/throttle, it's lip service.

Online Video Gaming

[kackle]

Isn't the video game industry huge right now (and its real-time, online component)? Mobile latency/ping will never compare to that of wired in quantity or consistency.

Re: 3 UK

[tepples]

But I haven't seen evidence that the United States, subject of the featured article, is among them.

Re:3 UK

[tepples]

If you can have no caps at midnight you can have no caps 24/7.

How is this the case? Caps are at least ostensibly used for congestion control. It sounds perfectly reasonable for a carrier to run the meter only when the network is congested in order to shift bulk traffic to periods when the network is not congested.

the price of data distribution is miniscule

In the wired case, this is true. In the wireless case, not so much.

You might as well shut off my water after a litre.

Your water use is metered as well.

Unmetered use in early mornings

[tepples]

In case you weren't just making a pedantic joke about imprecise colloquial language:

Satellite Internet providers tend to pause the meter from midnight to 6 AM local time or thereabouts. This window is intended for subscribers to download operating system updates, purchased downloadable games, and the like, so that they move these activities out of the most congested periods of the day.

Re:Unmetered use in early mornings

[stealth_finger]

A bit of both really, people always say after whatever time but they never say until when. At least they do that though because I downloaded a 9gb update for something the other day and that would wipe out some of these peoples connections in one go. But then I have a high speed actually unlimited connection where I live so it's not an issue.

Re:Unmetered use in early mornings

[webmistressrachel]

They throttle to 10% of normal bandwidth between 2pm and midnight, (but not on the upload!), if you hammer their network during the day (from about 9am).

It's very forgiving, and lots of very good reasons have been posted in reply to my FP (yay first!) as to why they do it this way. It's a blessing, as it never actually stops you from using the internet unless you take the mickey (I know someone who throws his SIM card away every few weeks because they often bar him, to be fair on them though, he does brag about watching crappy streaming movies all day on purpose just to be disruptive on the network, and has usage of 400 or so gigs racked up every time it happens to him).

I'm been known to clock up 300+Gigs in a monthly cycle with no penalty apart from the previously-mentioned peak-time throttling. And it doesn't always happen, either, I haven't seen it do that for months. There was a point when I couldn't watch anything online until after midnight, but it doesn't do that anymore, either, even if I do hammer it. Sorry for being longwinded, but you made a good point - they are vague about exactly what they are doing and when, but they seem to be the most forgiving about such things. Unlimited means "as much as we let you take per second" and they never cut me off or bill me more.

This is simple

[rickb928]

So my mobile data plan costs me about $20/month, truly unlimited (huge optional cap), but most would be $40-50. My home (fixed) data plan is $50/month.

A do it all mobile plan at $80 would combine both, save a little for most users, and as 4G-5G becomes even more capable (and it will, Band 71 anyone?) it will be a savings. Until the cable co. jacks the price of TV, since they will lose the revenue form selling the last mile twice as TV and Internet, and that has to be made up.

Than the mobile plan will include a wireless set top box, probably as a gateway that your mobile devices flip to when home, and all of this on one account, one plan. And the cable cos will get competitive.

It's not that cell service or Internet service in America aren't competitive, for they are not - they are different things. TV/Internet cable cos have no equivalent in the mobile space, though TMobile is coming on with Layer 3, others will have to try, and that makes the whole space truly competitive.

Then the blood will flow, as the content owners will be coerced by the incumbents to deny the usurpers. Disney on Layer 3? Mmmm, that would be one of disruptive events.

I've considered it

[Admiral_Grinder]

It seems like I'm paying double for just internet. Once through Spectrum, the second through Sprint. I don't really use the internet at home though when I'm not there (other than Dropbox pulling down photos from my phone). What would be awesome is if there was a device that I drop my phone into when I get home that would use it to provide internet to my computer network and possibly even power up land line phones. I guess I could use a Raspberry Pi to wireless gateway my lan using my phone's hotspot.

$80 for first 10 GB then $15/GB

[tepples]

Try checking to see if the carriers servicing your area offer fixed wireless service. Basically, it's an LTE hotspot designed to be used in one place

Verizon's LTE Internet (Installed) has what I would consider an unusably high cost per gigabyte. $80 ($10 for the line and $70 for the data plan) for the first 10 GB in each month and then $15 for each GB thereafter.

Re:$80 for first 10 GB then $15/GB

[tgeek]

You're right - that's a horrendous price. Then again, nobody ever accused Verizon of being a champion for the budget-conscious. Don't rule out the regional and tier 2 carriers. You only need to worry about the coverage in one specific location - usually your home. No need to fund Verizon and their ilk for their national networks.

The download costs more than software license

[tepples]

My mobile operator in the U.S. doesn't limit anything. But they actually expect me to pay for what I use.

If the price of a computer game is $40 for the game itself and $250 for the data plan to download it at $10-$15 per GB, how do either game publishers or ISPs expect customers to afford that?

Re:The 5G standards group should make no caps as p

[nitehawk214]

Are you kidding? They allowed 3G networks to brand themselves as 4G for marketing purposes. They are even more owned by telecoms than the FCC is.

Re:Good enough for the historians.

[tepples]

In the dial-up days, banks and the like didn't make heavily script-driven web applications that timed out if your connection was too slow.

Half hour a month

[tepples]

Seems to me that 40Mbps is plenty for most people

On a 10 GB/mo plan, you can transfer only 80,000 Mbit per month without hitting punitive overages. 40 Mbps will finish that off in 2,000 seconds, or just over a half hour. What size plan were you envisioning?

Re:Bend over and grab your ankles..

[Rick Schumann]

Except it's not working that way now is it? California wants to regulate some things the way it wants to, and the Trump administration (and Trump himself) keep threatening them over that. Trump and his administration only like the States doing things their way when it suits Trump and his administration. It's more bullshit and lies which is the way things have been since November 2016 with the son of a bitch. Do you really unironically believe he's 100% truthful, really honestly has 100% of the American peoples' interests at heart, and doesn't have a 'conservative agenda' and a 'corporate agenda', and is otherwise corrupt as fuck? If you really believe he's done no wrong and is doing no wrong then you're either stupid or you're as corrupt as he and his administration are. Which is it? Rhetorical question. I know the facts already, they're clear as a bell, and all that Trump has done in 'draining the swamp' is to make way to build a cesspool/toxic waste dump in it's place. If you voted for Trump and still defend him then you need to take a hard look at your decision-making process. Unless you're just an evil son of a bitch yourself, in which case you can drop dead, there's already too many of you in the world.

Re: They probably can with 5G

[AlanBDee]

Carriers in the US also collude but the argument I'm making is that with more competitors it's harder for them to collude. Right now it's not feasible to run your home internet from wireless carriers but I foresee that it might be after 5G is rolled out. What happens when other big players enter the field: Google, SpaceX, Apple, or Amazon?
Maybe they'll all still provide crap service, maybe we'll all still get shafted, I don't know.

Multi-gigabyte video game downloads

[tepples]

When a video game is in the tens of gigabytes, 'not being wasteful' would involve shipping the game on physical media (instead of as a download) and planning for not being able to release ongoing updates, or at least releasing them as expansions sold separately. But with optical drives becoming less common on PCs, I don't see how that can be made practical. BD burners were never nearly as common as DVD burners were. Or am I missing something fundamental about allowing video games to bloat to tens of gigabytes in the first place?

Re:3 UK

[tepples]

WTF? Water is metered, not capped.
[...]
Overages quickly double your bill, of course.

To me, the fee structure of overages is a clear example of cellular data airtime being metered.

Re:Bend over and grab your ankles..

[Rick Schumann]

Oh look the Trump supporters had mod points today and are reacting! How original!
Trump is a piece of shit and I wish he'd get glioblastoma brain cancer, and die, soon. He sure as fuck acts like he's got brain cancer, LOL.

A Truck is a Truck

[Kingazaz]

Sure, and all the Ford Rangers can easily replace the F150/250/350s that people have.

Re: 3 UK

[webmistressrachel]

Yes, I suppose you think you're a clever troll, "US-centric site" and all that, but I guess you didn't think of it like this...

Growing up in the UK with only pay-per-minute dial-up Internet, at 5.6 kilobytes per second, caused by the existence of the state monopoly British Telecom, was unbelievably frustrating for someone who was already programming at 6 and very lonely. Convincing my parents we needed the internet was like convincing them that we needed a large angry money-eating cobra roaming freely in the house. Fixed price connections were not available until long after I left home here in the UK.

I lost count of the amount of times I said to people "if only I lived in America, with free local dial up and BBS's and computer clubs and friends who are into computers..."

So there's quite some irony in the fact that I now have a portable battery operated server running linux, which can move several floppies per second, up or down, wherever I am, for a fixed fee, while you lot get gouged per Gig, isn't there??

That comment is VERY, VERY, ontopic and those who have moderated me "Overrated" are just dumb assholes who should instead be asking "Why has this happened to our Internet if that witty FP can tether as much as she damn well likes, with no contract, in the Land of the Rip-Off Internet, the UK?"

Re:Bend over and grab your ankles..

[DNS-and-BIND]

So fat-shaming is OK? You completely failed to address that.

So people who disagree with your political opinions are evil and should be killed? WTF? That's what a fascist would say. You know the Russians want us fighting with one another, right? You are fulfilling Putin's plan. This means either you're a paid shill, or nobody is paying you and you're a useful idiot. Which is it?