You're right. I'd much prefer if the government ran the show rather than profit seeking companies. How does that work out for innovation in the long run?
I've seen this Cringely $200B article linked to a lot whenever we discuss telecom. It's an interesting story, and clearly there's a lot of history with regulation and telecom. I won't deny that there was a lot of lobbying and deals cut for the telecoms to be able to tack on fees which ultimately made them profitable. I can't figure out how Cringely makes leap from Tele-TV (which was a technical failure) to the $2,000 tax subsidies that were given to the former monopolies (RBOCs). His words:
"Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it."
So an industry gets permission to charge higher rates, gets tax subsidies and effectively avoids $200B in taxes. I can't find any reference to those tax credits being tied to a higher level of broadband service. Can someone provide that reference?
Well, you did give up your right to choose when you signed a 2 year contract. The benefit you took was probably a phone subsidy. However, I would expect that any change would require a reworking of your existing contract (which probably allows 2GB-5GB-unlimited access to the internet). At the point where your contract needs to be reworked, you will most likely be able to opt out.
So when 50% of the subscribers have an option to make their monthly rates go down, you call that a slight reaming? This chart shows that more than 50% of the iPhone users can live under 200MB/month on their current data plans. All of them are eligible to go down a rate tier.
You did get a say over it! When your town negotiated with the cable company to grant right of way to dig up the roads and string the coax cable all over the place, your town probably got a public access channel, maybe a few HD cameras and funding for a park or a library.
Now, let's talk about mobility for a minute. When your federal government auctioned off the wireless spectrum in 2008 they earned almost $20B to fund various projects. The rest of the infrastructure, mobile towers and whatnot, are frequently based on private land. Land owners who grant the towers on their property are usually compensated fairly. T-Mobile would love to lease some land from you.
Wireless specifically is not monopolistic. I would estimate that you have the choice to buy service from no fewer than 4 large wireless companies that provide service in your area: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile. Each of these providers have similar service offerings, similar phones and you can probably switch from one to the other (and keep your number!) without much more than an hour in a store, or a few minutes online.
This is a wonderful point that proves the original point. No matter what one carrier does (AT&T charging more metered, Verizon capping at 5 GB) someone else (Sprint) is going to fill the niche of people that want to use 100GB of data on an unlimited plan. And good for them (and you). By the way, very impressive to use 100GB of data on a mobile device, since that's the equivalent of downloading about 1 Mbps for 8 hours a day all month.
I'm not conflating data rate caps with service-based packet tolling, I'm merely comparing them. When it first came out (several years ago) that a company would consider data caps, there was a considerable amount of outrage, specifically from sites like Slashdot. However, during implementation, it turns out that AT&T did a pretty good job with them. For instance, take a look at this chart. You'll see that most users fall below 200MB of data, the cheapest plan offered.
While service-based packet tolling sounds like a really nasty idea (and can be if implemented incorrectly) it can actually make the things better for all the users if implemented correctly. AT&T/Verizon/your telco is not in the business of making things worse for you. They have an incentive (your dollars!) to make things as compelling as possible for you to continue doing business with them.
The internet might be free to you and me after a flat monthly charge, but it hasn't been free for a long time. There are billions of dollars flowing into online advertising that are supporting nearly every site you go on. Aside from Wikipedia and state run sites (think *.gov) I can't name a site that I go to that doesn't have ads or a monthly subscription. Can you?
I never understood the side of the Net Neutrality argument that most commenters are taking here. Why shouldn't a company that has built out infrastructure (in some cases taking enormous risk) be free to charge what they want to access that infrastructure? I understand that your current contract may allow unlimited use of the internet, but the economics are changing and service providers should be encouraged to think up new business models, or there is no reward for them to ever upgrade their networks.
A small side comment: I remember a few years ago when people were livid that AT&T would consider going to a metered plan on their mobile data access plans. You know what? It worked. The plans they offered were competitive and people used what they bought. The price point for basic data access was lowered, more people got online with their mobile devices and AT&T got more revenue out of it.
Bioshock was a phenomenal game, that had absolutely no multiplayer (if memory serves) and it was wonderful. Sure, I would have loved a kick ass multiplayer component, but not at the expense of the rest of the game. Bioshock 2 has a bolt on multiplayer component and I haven't once even thought to load it up. I know it's bad. I know it's an uninspired waste because it doesn't "fit the game, the environment, the atmosphere" as the parent says.
Christopher Nolan (director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) has adapted Gotham to be Chicago. However, throughout history, Gotham is most closely recognized as New York City in the Batman comics. Wikipedia weighs in.. Search for Chicago.
Comics aside, one of New York Cities many nicknames is Gotham. Check the nickname sidebar. Quite a few businesses in NYC have taken this nickname as part of their name. Most famously, the Gotham Gazette and, more recently, Gothamist.
am I to assume that he either found or invented a form of human suspended animation and put himself in it until recently, when he was unfrozen, given a law degree, and started practicing law
Oh my, this sounds like a wonderful idea for a show. Former internet sensation gets frozen and given a law degree and then unthawed millions of years in the future. It would go something like this...
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes when I fly to Europe on the Concorde, I wonder, am I inside some sort of giant bird? Am I gonna be digested? I don't know, because I'm a caveman, and that's the way I think! When I'm courtside at a Knicks game, I wonder if the ball is some sort of food they're fighting over. When I see my image on the security camera at the country club, I wonder, are they stealing my soul? I get so upset, I hop out of my Range Rover, and run across the fairway to to the clubhouse, where I get Carlos to make me one of those martinis he's so famous for, to soothe my primitive caveman brain. But whatever world you're from, I do know one thing - in the 20 years from March 22nd, 1972, when he first ordered that extra nicotine be put into his product, until February 25th, 1992, when he issued an inter-office memorandum stopping the addition of that nicotine, my client was legally insane. And, for that reason, I ask that you find him.. not guilty. Thank you.
From the article: "Keep in mind, when it comes to the speeds reported in this story, SurfSpeed takes into account the complete, real-world download time of a Web page to a browser. We're not saying your own ISP's claims of double-digit megabit-per-second (Mbps) throughputs or more are false. But those are marketing numbers, based on direct downloads from their own servers, using some abstract math like the number of users divided by the theoretical line speed. The numbers in the SurfSpeed tests compare everything you get in the download of a Web page, not just a single, contiguous file, so the numbers are smaller than the data-rate numbers quoted by your ISP. They provide an example of the real-world throughput you're experiencing when you browse and with speeds comparable to what others customers of the same ISP would get."
Clearly a joke (Milgram died in 1984) or a different Stanley.
I did love that the guy points out: "See how the orientation changes as you turn? Of course, you shouldn't be reading while turning." Funny, Mom always taught me I shouldn't be reading while driving. I never knew her rules were only applicable for when you were turning.
Sure, maybe not for you, and in most ways, I agree with you. Getting destroyed by a 12 year-old dropping f-bombs is not necessarily a good time.
However, if someone enjoys multiplayer (be it online or in house gaming) and they spend multiple hours deriving entertainment from it, who are we to judge what value to put on that?
Let's say that a game only takes 10 hours to "beat", and then you don't enjoy it anymore. This is still about $6/hour per gameplay, assuming you paid full retail price - and assuming you don't resell it or something. That's still a very good rate for entertainment. Movies are about $6/hour ($12 for a 2 hour movie). Professional sports are about 3 hours long, and you'll be hard pressed to find a $18 ticket. Music concerts are 2-3 hours of entertainment and you'll pay over $10 for all but the very cheapest. Amusement parks are $45 for a day... you get the point.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. I'd much prefer if the government ran the show rather than profit seeking companies. How does that work out for innovation in the long run?
I've seen this Cringely $200B article linked to a lot whenever we discuss telecom. It's an interesting story, and clearly there's a lot of history with regulation and telecom. I won't deny that there was a lot of lobbying and deals cut for the telecoms to be able to tack on fees which ultimately made them profitable. I can't figure out how Cringely makes leap from Tele-TV (which was a technical failure) to the $2,000 tax subsidies that were given to the former monopolies (RBOCs). His words:
"Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it."
So an industry gets permission to charge higher rates, gets tax subsidies and effectively avoids $200B in taxes. I can't find any reference to those tax credits being tied to a higher level of broadband service. Can someone provide that reference?
You seem to have forgotten that when you "granted license to *our* frequency ranges" it was a public auction where the Federal Government raised $20B in revenue.
I think that spending $4.7B on spectrum, and another $5B (my ballpark guess) building out a 4G network qualifies as risk.
Well, you did give up your right to choose when you signed a 2 year contract. The benefit you took was probably a phone subsidy. However, I would expect that any change would require a reworking of your existing contract (which probably allows 2GB-5GB-unlimited access to the internet). At the point where your contract needs to be reworked, you will most likely be able to opt out.
So when 50% of the subscribers have an option to make their monthly rates go down, you call that a slight reaming? This chart shows that more than 50% of the iPhone users can live under 200MB/month on their current data plans. All of them are eligible to go down a rate tier.
You did get a say over it! When your town negotiated with the cable company to grant right of way to dig up the roads and string the coax cable all over the place, your town probably got a public access channel, maybe a few HD cameras and funding for a park or a library.
Now, let's talk about mobility for a minute. When your federal government auctioned off the wireless spectrum in 2008 they earned almost $20B to fund various projects. The rest of the infrastructure, mobile towers and whatnot, are frequently based on private land. Land owners who grant the towers on their property are usually compensated fairly. T-Mobile would love to lease some land from you.
Wireless specifically is not monopolistic. I would estimate that you have the choice to buy service from no fewer than 4 large wireless companies that provide service in your area: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile. Each of these providers have similar service offerings, similar phones and you can probably switch from one to the other (and keep your number!) without much more than an hour in a store, or a few minutes online.
This is a wonderful point that proves the original point. No matter what one carrier does (AT&T charging more metered, Verizon capping at 5 GB) someone else (Sprint) is going to fill the niche of people that want to use 100GB of data on an unlimited plan. And good for them (and you). By the way, very impressive to use 100GB of data on a mobile device, since that's the equivalent of downloading about 1 Mbps for 8 hours a day all month.
I'm not conflating data rate caps with service-based packet tolling, I'm merely comparing them. When it first came out (several years ago) that a company would consider data caps, there was a considerable amount of outrage, specifically from sites like Slashdot. However, during implementation, it turns out that AT&T did a pretty good job with them. For instance, take a look at this chart. You'll see that most users fall below 200MB of data, the cheapest plan offered.
While service-based packet tolling sounds like a really nasty idea (and can be if implemented incorrectly) it can actually make the things better for all the users if implemented correctly. AT&T/Verizon/your telco is not in the business of making things worse for you. They have an incentive (your dollars!) to make things as compelling as possible for you to continue doing business with them.
AT&T announced these probably within the last year. They are the only way you can buy data access from AT&T.
DataConnect 200MB
DataConnect 5GB
If the links don't work, you can navigate to it by looking at their rate plans from their homepage.
The internet might be free to you and me after a flat monthly charge, but it hasn't been free for a long time. There are billions of dollars flowing into online advertising that are supporting nearly every site you go on. Aside from Wikipedia and state run sites (think *.gov) I can't name a site that I go to that doesn't have ads or a monthly subscription. Can you?
I never understood the side of the Net Neutrality argument that most commenters are taking here. Why shouldn't a company that has built out infrastructure (in some cases taking enormous risk) be free to charge what they want to access that infrastructure? I understand that your current contract may allow unlimited use of the internet, but the economics are changing and service providers should be encouraged to think up new business models, or there is no reward for them to ever upgrade their networks.
A small side comment: I remember a few years ago when people were livid that AT&T would consider going to a metered plan on their mobile data access plans. You know what? It worked. The plans they offered were competitive and people used what they bought. The price point for basic data access was lowered, more people got online with their mobile devices and AT&T got more revenue out of it.
Why not get it straight from the Worcester T&G? Oh right, because the story died already.
Supposed Ban Over
I didn't think this was new. My algebra teacher used this theory to prove it to us 15 years ago (yikes, I'm getting old).
I was going to tell you that there hasn't been much inflation in the last 10 years. While I'm correct historically speaking, you're right in real terms. According to this calculator, from Jan 2000 to Jan 2010, the inflation rate in the US has been 28%! http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp#calcresults
Mod parent up.
Bioshock was a phenomenal game, that had absolutely no multiplayer (if memory serves) and it was wonderful. Sure, I would have loved a kick ass multiplayer component, but not at the expense of the rest of the game. Bioshock 2 has a bolt on multiplayer component and I haven't once even thought to load it up. I know it's bad. I know it's an uninspired waste because it doesn't "fit the game, the environment, the atmosphere" as the parent says.
Christopher Nolan (director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) has adapted Gotham to be Chicago. However, throughout history, Gotham is most closely recognized as New York City in the Batman comics. Wikipedia weighs in.. Search for Chicago.
Comics aside, one of New York Cities many nicknames is Gotham. Check the nickname sidebar. Quite a few businesses in NYC have taken this nickname as part of their name. Most famously, the Gotham Gazette and, more recently, Gothamist.
Yeah, like the time you gave them $40/month and all you got was an unlimited internet connection, just like they promised? The audacity of those guys!
am I to assume that he either found or invented a form of human suspended animation and put himself in it until recently, when he was unfrozen, given a law degree, and started practicing law
Oh my, this sounds like a wonderful idea for a show. Former internet sensation gets frozen and given a law degree and then unthawed millions of years in the future. It would go something like this...
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes when I fly to Europe on the Concorde, I wonder, am I inside some sort of giant bird? Am I gonna be digested? I don't know, because I'm a caveman, and that's the way I think! When I'm courtside at a Knicks game, I wonder if the ball is some sort of food they're fighting over. When I see my image on the security camera at the country club, I wonder, are they stealing my soul? I get so upset, I hop out of my Range Rover, and run across the fairway to to the clubhouse, where I get Carlos to make me one of those martinis he's so famous for, to soothe my primitive caveman brain. But whatever world you're from, I do know one thing - in the 20 years from March 22nd, 1972, when he first ordered that extra nicotine be put into his product, until February 25th, 1992, when he issued an inter-office memorandum stopping the addition of that nicotine, my client was legally insane. And, for that reason, I ask that you find him.. not guilty. Thank you.
U.S. States ranked by similarity of their name to the word "Mississippi":
1. Mississippi
2. All other 49 states.
From the article: "Keep in mind, when it comes to the speeds reported in this story, SurfSpeed takes into account the complete, real-world download time of a Web page to a browser. We're not saying your own ISP's claims of double-digit megabit-per-second (Mbps) throughputs or more are false. But those are marketing numbers, based on direct downloads from their own servers, using some abstract math like the number of users divided by the theoretical line speed. The numbers in the SurfSpeed tests compare everything you get in the download of a Web page, not just a single, contiguous file, so the numbers are smaller than the data-rate numbers quoted by your ISP. They provide an example of the real-world throughput you're experiencing when you browse and with speeds comparable to what others customers of the same ISP would get."
But we wouldn't expect you to read the article.
Clearly a joke (Milgram died in 1984) or a different Stanley.
I did love that the guy points out: "See how the orientation changes as you turn? Of course, you shouldn't be reading while turning." Funny, Mom always taught me I shouldn't be reading while driving. I never knew her rules were only applicable for when you were turning.
Very true. I those games need to offer better single players, obviously.
Sure, maybe not for you, and in most ways, I agree with you. Getting destroyed by a 12 year-old dropping f-bombs is not necessarily a good time.
However, if someone enjoys multiplayer (be it online or in house gaming) and they spend multiple hours deriving entertainment from it, who are we to judge what value to put on that?
Let's say that a game only takes 10 hours to "beat", and then you don't enjoy it anymore. This is still about $6/hour per gameplay, assuming you paid full retail price - and assuming you don't resell it or something. That's still a very good rate for entertainment. Movies are about $6/hour ($12 for a 2 hour movie). Professional sports are about 3 hours long, and you'll be hard pressed to find a $18 ticket. Music concerts are 2-3 hours of entertainment and you'll pay over $10 for all but the very cheapest. Amusement parks are $45 for a day... you get the point.