SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the would-you-like-YouTube^WNetflix^WFacebook^WAmazon-with-that? dept.
Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times writes about Portugal's Internet which shows us a world without net neutrality, and it's ugly. Basically, tiered services get in there through a loophole for zero-rating.
After paying a fee for basic service, subscribers can add any of five further options for about $6 per month, allowing an additional 10GB data allotment for the apps within the options: a "messaging" tier, which covers such services as instant messaging, Apple FaceTime, and Skype; "social," with liberal access to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on; "video" (youTube, Netflix, etc.); "email and cloud" (Gmail, Apple's iCloud); or "music" (Spotify, Pandora).
Portugal isn't the only country allowing tiering of internet services. In Britain, the internet service provider Vodaphone charges about $33 a month for basic service but offers several "passes" allowing unlimited video or music streaming, social media usage, or chat, at additional tariffs of up to $9.30 per month. [Ed's Note: This is not entirely accurate - Vodaphone's ISP home broadband offering (17Mbps) is £24/month unlimited usage, the additional figures quoted are for faster fiber connections (38 and 76 Mbps) where available. How you use your connection is irrelevant. This is the same for many European ISPs. Smart phone costs are entirely separate.]
Although both countries are part of the European Union, which has an explicit commitment to network neutrality, these arrangements are allowed under provisions giving national regulators some flexibility. These regulators can open loopholes permitting "zero-rating," through which ISPs can exclude certain services from data caps. That's what the Portuguese and British ISPs essentially are doing.
If the vote on the 14th of December repeals Net Neutrality then consumer options will be greatly reduced while increasing greatly in prices as we can see from Portugal's example.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cykros on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:42PM (4 children)
What would have worked, years ago before the POTS phone lines were all ripped out, was the old fashioned store-and-forward networks such as those we had on BBS systems back in the 80s and 90s (and still exist, but are usually connected to via the Internet now). In lieu of that method of connection, there's the possibility of perhaps using data over Ham radio for a backhaul to this kind of network, along with perhaps some local wifi to extend it to a smallish local area, all without needing to use a commercial ISP, and indeed, not actually ever connecting to the Internet at all.
That said, there are obvious glaring drawbacks here, such as the data speeds being small (like, dialup small), the unavailability of encryption (it's legally banned on Ham radio), and the fact that it is, at the end of the day, store and forward, rather than anything real time. If all you want is the ability to send mail around, you can have it this way. If you want a real network like the Internet you know and love today, you'll have to look elsewhere. It wasn't cheap or particularly easy to build even with the government helping, and it'll be a lot harder and more expensive to try to build with the government and corporations actively impeding your progress.
But, who knows. Maybe someone can figure out a way to utilize quantum entanglement in order to construct a new form of networking technology and get around the scope of the FCC entirely, or something equally far fetched but not impossible. I'd not hold your breath though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:01PM (1 child)
If it can work, somebody will figure it out. They will start a new business to roll out their technology and fund it with investor backing. The investors will demand a profit strategy, leading to finance becoming a primary concern of this new company. If they want their service to be free to end users, they will need to find another way to do it. This will almost certainly involve monetizing whatever centralized database was easier to set up than a peer-to-peer system.
The end result will look a lot like our current internet architecture, but with one major difference: Instead of a slew of international non-profits managing the core infrastructure like DNS, a Facebook-like for-profit corporation will be in charge of everything.
This, my friends, is how Marxist revolutions turn into Soviet Russia. There will always be leaders, and it will always be easier for the leaders to achieve their goals with centralized authority.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:47AM
One model would be a "cooperative". [google.com]
(I'm seeing a lot of things that appear to be something else but which registered a .coop domain.) 8-(
N.B. I know that there are a bunch of legit electricity cooperatives in rural areas.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:09PM (1 child)
Remember the goode olde daze of phone phreaking? Those were the daze! When you could whistle into a phone and smoke a joint and giggle with your stupid friends on a party line. Never mind the fact that you had no real need for free phone calls because your rich-as-fuck suburbanite parents were already paying your goddamned bill.
You dumb shits should have figured out by now how to hack your way out of tiered services and exceed your data caps and apply zero-rating to all of your data. Come on. Stop sitting on your dicks.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:06PM
The phone company, the FBI, and all of the internet companies that arose from nothing since phreaking days all got wise. Almost nobody leaves the equivalent of unsecured TELNET just lying around anymore like in the movie Wargames. You need madder skills these days, and probably a botnet and some social engineering skills.
The hacking domain has been taken away from nuisance kids, and now only multinational criminal organizations have the resources to be successful at it.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?