U.S. House Votes to Allow Cable Providers to Throttle Internet

[Acanthus]

Time Warner just hiked my rates on 12mbps to $57 a month. (for naked internet)

No notice given.

No competitors.

No increase in speeds or service.

 

[IKnoWhatsBest4U]

Clearly Congress isn't doing a good job at regulating.

We need a branch of government that nationally monitors internet service providers. Our internet access is much too important to be left in the hands of a few people.

 

[shortylickens]

Clearly Congress isn't doing a good job at regulating.

We need a branch of government that nationally monitors internet service providers. Our internet access is much too important to be left in the hands of a few people.

:hmm:
WWYBYWB?

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Meg Whitman disagrees with you.

The Unions which ran attack ads against Meg, paid to dredge up an illegal house maid who lied to her employer agency and who also helped fund her frivolous lawsuit would counter your point.

 

[spidey07]

I'm an experienced network engineer just like you

can you explain why in Europe and Asia ISP are moving away from the tiered business model and more to an all you can eat (unlimited or FUP) while in the USA we see the exact opposite. Can you explain why French ISP free.fr, can offer FTTH 100/50, 185 TV channel service and phone service for 35 euro/month and at the same time be very profitable (EBITDA margin is the highest in Europe, debt ratio 10 times lower then industry average). heck these guys are so profitable that they make their own DSLAM!!!!

Don't insult me with network engineer. I design this shit.

Population density and distance. Maybe you can explain the cost difference vs mileage as a network engineer as it relates to optics outside of the physical cable?

This board has no freaking idea.

 

[freegeeks]

Don't insult me with network engineer. I design this shit.

Population density and distance. Maybe you can explain the cost difference vs mileage as a network engineer as it relates to optics outside of the physical cable?

This board has no freaking idea.

bs, if population density was your metric then big US cities would all have 100 Mbps symmetric FTTH deployments for $20 (just like Japan, Korea and some Scandinivian countries). Millions of Americans live in big cities

yeah, and I read about your designs about running everything on one big interface in the networking forum. Maybe you should go back at being "just" a network engineer

waiting for your response regarding distance of fiber optics, by your reasoning the 8,5 million population of NYC should be enjoying their $20 100 Mpbs internet connections. To help you, I included a list of the most populated areas in the US, this whole "All Americans live in the countryside" is a myth. Millions of Americans live in very densily populated areas just like other Western countries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density

 

[xj0hnx]

Like most legislation this is mostly aimed at minorities.

The poor and college students who are increasingly using services like Netflix as a cheap alternative to cable, kids who game online, etc. Your average adult checking his email or shopping won't notice any difference. Those who espouse "free enterprise" will never know just how high a price they are paying for inferior service because there will be nothing to compare with.

It's the old magician's trick of distraction. Congress waves its hands about cutting the deficit, creating jobs, reducing taxes, and then nickel and dimes you when you aren't looking.

The loony left is magical in it's ability to turn even throttling of internet in a race issue :golfclap:

 

[wuliheron]

The loony left is magical in it's ability to turn even throttling of internet in a race issue :golfclap:

Not every minority is a racial minority leaving one to wonder if there is something bothering your conscience.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

In a modern society the internet is about as optional as access to public roads. The argument could easily be made that it should be government run, owned, guaranteed, like public infrastructure. Since lobbyists own the country, though, legislation does whatever they demand.

The government tends to screw up everything it touches; the lack of competition leads to poor decisions never being destroyed by lack of fit with environmental demands.

We have power deregulation in Texas, everyone of the providers pays a fee to a servicing company to keep the lines up; Sounds like this could work for fiber and copper.

105 euros = 143.6820 US dollars
And you make no mention of how many boxes you can get for 105 Euros. Like I said I have a separate box in 6 different rooms. And again I ask how fast is your internet(Upstream and Down) and what are the bandwidth caps?

1.) DVR for $3 a month? Let's just say that the slightly below average consumer isn't so "credit worthy"

2.) What premium stations are available in Europe? HBO, Starz, Show Time? These premium stations are expensive. There has been no fair comparison made

3.) "and phone". unless that "and phone" is a POTs connection then paying much of anything for someone to work VOIP for you is just silly (no marginal benefit)

4.) Cross country comparisons should be done using purchasing price parody; (how much does a whopper cost in relative terms in each country)

Don't insult me with network engineer. I design this shit.

Population density and distance. Maybe you can explain the cost difference vs mileage as a network engineer as it relates to optics outside of the physical cable?

This board has no freaking idea.

Population density on average has to be made up for some where.

When NYC has a lot of people per sqr foot and version is also trying to spread cable/4g across the great American bread-basket then yes, people in NYC are subsidizing the expansion of services across the more rural regions of the nation.

Maybe companies should charge higher prices for those that are more expensive to service and lower for those who are much less expensive to service... But then someone would be calling "exploitative monopoly" when they charge cost + require rate of return on that new line they just pushed 10mi out to service 1000 people.


I favor net neutrality (to the extent that it is now; of course net flix should pay something extra for all the data it sends out, but it shouldn't be any more expensive than anyone else sending out just as much data);

But there are a lot of poor arguments being made and I thought that pointing out these things would add to the discussion.

 

[Acanthus]

Adding provisions that clearly stifle competition from entering the market is not only wrong, it's not even free market.

The "capitalists" in this thread make me sick

 

[freegeeks]

Adding provisions that clearly stifle competition from entering the market is not only wrong, it's not even free market.

The "capitalists" in this thread make me sick

yep, telco industry is one of these domains where the RIGHT government intervention and regulations fosters competition and innovation bringing better products to consumers for a lower price. Lot's of people don't realize that the US is loosing it's competitive edge when it comes to broadband access because of the status quo (monopoly or duopoly in a lot regions). When there is no choice, consumers get screwed. This is evident in the communications market in the US and not only for fixed communications. The amount of money you guys have to pay for mobile communication is ridiculous. The amount of lock-in you have on the mobile market is also ridiculous (locked phones, long term contracts, ...)

This is not some kind of pissing contest between Japan, USA and Europe, bottom line is, you guys are getting screwed!!!!

Like I mentioned before, an excellent example is France, broadband was very expensive and they were at the bottom of the industrialized world when it came to deployment and price just 10 years ago. The govt intervened and opened up the market. They have now one of the most competitive markets in the world with lot's of choices and low prices BECAUSE OF COMPETITION!!!!

 

[dmcowen674]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Acanthus
Adding provisions that clearly stifle competition from entering the market is not only wrong, it's not even free market.

The "capitalists" in this thread make me sick

yep, telco industry is one of these domains where the RIGHT government intervention and regulations fosters competition and innovation bringing better products to consumers for a lower price. Lot's of people don't realize that the US is loosing it's competitive edge when it comes to broadband access because of the status quo (monopoly or duopoly in a lot regions). When there is no choice, consumers get screwed. This is evident in the communications market in the US and not only for fixed communications. The amount of money you guys have to pay for mobile communication is ridiculous. The amount of lock-in you have on the mobile market is also ridiculous (locked phones, long term contracts, ...)

This is not some kind of pissing contest between Japan, USA and Europe, bottom line is, you guys are getting screwed!!!!

But you see the posts by the Republicans on here.

They enjoy the getting screwed atmosphere here. Easy to do for them because they hate this country.

 

[wuliheron]

This is not some kind of pissing contest between Japan, USA and Europe, bottom line is, you guys are getting screwed!!!!

Americans take it for granted that everyone gets screwed sooner or later and the real question is how bad are you going to get screwed. Europe may have much better telecom prices, but their taxes can suck. Here, so long as the majority at least think they are doing well overall just about anything goes.

 

[freegeeks]

Americans take it for granted that everyone gets screwed sooner or later and the real question is how bad are you going to get screwed. Europe may have much better telecom prices, but their taxes can suck. Here, so long as the majority at least think they are doing well overall just about anything goes.

The thing is don't get in this discussion is that some of the posters here will use the "free market" mantra as much as they can in other threads but when it comes to telco, they are more then happy paying these inflated prices for inferior products served by their monopolistic overlords, this going against anything they believe in (free market, competition), the bottom line is that there is still not that much competition in the broadband market in the USA (in a lot of regions there is only 1 or 2 choices). As long as this status quo exist you will pay more for less!!!!!

To give you an idea, my own market is still considered crap compared with Holland and France but I can choose from at least 10 different ISP!!! All this is only possible because of regulations forcing the monopolies to open up the last mile and their CO to competitors

 

[wuliheron]

The thing is don't get in this discussion is that some of the posters here will use the "free market" mantra as much as they can in other threads but when it comes to telco, they are more then happy paying these inflated prices for inferior products served by their monopolistic overlords, this going against anything they believe in (free market, competition), the bottom line is that there is still not that much competition in the broadband market in the USA (in a lot of regions there is only 1 or 2 choices). As long as this status quo exist you will pay more for less!!!!!

It's just ideology and even smart people say and do stupid things in the name of ideology. Its when they stop screaming that the killing starts.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

this going against anything they believe in (free market, competition)

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. They don't really believe in that. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

 

[Engineer]

Thank god people who know and understand are advising our representatives and federal government.

I wonder if "we the people" were against this, if you would be spouting the same stuff or would it be "we, the elite networking gurus, know what's best for you and the internet". I suspect the latter and I also suspect that "we the people" are against letting the networks decide what to prioritize and throttle (haven't seen data yet).

 

[theeedude]

You cannot trust Republicans with any power, Americans will have to learn the hard way. Again. Idiots.

 

[dmcowen674]

You cannot trust Republicans with any power, Americans will have to learn the hard way. Again. Idiots.

Yep, America has no one to blame but itself.

 

[Throckmorton]

You americans are screwing yourselves with your corporate greed. The internet has worked just fine without throttling for the past decade and a half, so greed is all this boils down to. Your corporate owners want to make more money.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world isn't throttling their internet connections, and they're not metering them either, and you're already getting amongst the slowest and most expensive connections in the western industrialized world.

Heck, I get 5.5mbit/s data rate out of my iPhone, and my subscription plan isn't anything special and not particulary costly. Reason? I don't live in the US. If I did, I'd get less than half of that, like in Anand's Verizon iPhone article the other day.

In America your iPhone plan would also cost a lot more. We have to pay about $100 for minimal minutes and uncapped (really just a higher cap) data.

 

[Bryf50]

1.) DVR for $3 a month? Let's just say that the slightly below average consumer isn't so "credit worthy"

2.) What premium stations are available in Europe? HBO, Starz, Show Time? These premium stations are expensive. There has been no fair comparison made

3.) "and phone". unless that "and phone" is a POTs connection then paying much of anything for someone to work VOIP for you is just silly (no marginal benefit)

4.) Cross country comparisons should be done using purchasing price parody; (how much does a whopper cost in relative terms in each country)

I'm confused do you mean to ask me these questions or freegeeks?

 

[xj0hnx]

1,95 euro extra / box

and doing a straight conversion based on exchange rates is stupid, exchange rates go up and down

bottom line: you guys pay a buttload, but whatever, if you are happy paying almost $200/month, more power to you!!!!

already mentioned my bandwith
30 / 4,5
no caps

I pay about the same as you $133, and get half the speed, no caps, which is plenty more than I ever use, more channels, and also have 1000 minutes of international calling, and unlimited local, and long distance in the US. It would cost me $7 more per month to get a DVR, and $3 more per room after that, so not everyone here is getting poked like you are pretending.

 

[xj0hnx]

The thing is don't get in this discussion is that some of the posters here will use the "free market" mantra as much as they can in other threads but when it comes to telco, they are more then happy paying these inflated prices for inferior products served by their monopolistic overlords, this going against anything they believe in (free market, competition), the bottom line is that there is still not that much competition in the broadband market in the USA (in a lot of regions there is only 1 or 2 choices). As long as this status quo exist you will pay more for less!!!!!

To give you an idea, my own market is still considered crap compared with Holland and France but I can choose from at least 10 different ISP!!! All this is only possible because of regulations forcing the monopolies to open up the last mile and their CO to competitors

When I lived in Germany we had two choices, both sucked ass, or you could get satellite, and forget customer service if something was wrong with your service ...it didn't exist. Who care's if you have ten different choices if they all suck?

 

[freegeeks]

When I lived in Germany we had two choices, both sucked ass, or you could get satellite, and forget customer service if something was wrong with your service ...it didn't exist. Who care's if you have ten different choices if they all suck?

I was talking about my own country and France and Holland because I know the situation there first hand, I have no idea about German, seems like the situation is there just as bad as in the USA because of limited competition

 

[Zargon]

You have proved my point exactly. Nothing bad has happened without extra regulation. Much is talked about, very little actually gets implement, mean while service get faster and cheaper.

only if you are somewhere with competition.

my internet prices or cap havent changed in years for cable. actually the prices went UP. sure they 'upped my speed' but its nonsense, since my cap didnt change.

you metion this stuff about bottling services hasnt happened yet, but the legislation is just now laying the legal groundwork to prevent the lawsuits from happening