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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: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)
An example of government regulation that actually improved things would be nice to buttress you argument. One from the last fifty years better still since it avoids re-litigating a lot of historical debates. Because I can't really think of one, I'm inclined to oppose any attempt to increase regulation.
How many people die waiting for a new drug to go through ten plus years of BS vs how many would die otherwise. Assume we still have the trial lawyers. Then assume we reigned them in. Better or worse? Arguments can be made for both. We should be having those arguments.
How much did Obama promise everyone their health care premiums would go DOWN if we only trusted him and his merry band of regulators?
How long was FM radio locked in regulatory limbo by the incumbent AM radio lobby?
Now on the other side of the ledger, weren't we promised horrors if airlines were deregulated? Ok, we got some horrors but people who aren't rich can afford to fly so net positive. Now with TSA I wonder why anyone still wants to.... different debate.
Breaking the AT&T monopoly and generally deregulating telecom ended up helping kick start a revolution. Government commissions setting prices and service levels wasn't so great once people saw the alternative. Land lines are still highly regulated and are essentially dead, replaced by cheap less regulated cell service.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:17AM
Net neutrality. Comcast should not be allowed to throttle torrent traffic, for example; that is simply a behavior that is fundamentally harmful to a free and open Internet. Just like I see no reason we should allow companies to dump harmful chemicals into a river, I see no reason we should allow ISPs to violate net neutrality. I just don't see why that is desirable at all.
In other words, you're an ignorant automaton who mindlessly opposes any and all regulation.
There are bad regulations, so therefore all regulations are bad. How about all the times when corporations have screwed people over? Oh, and you can't escape from monopolistic ISPs, unless you want dial-up. Have fun!
Which of course has nothing to do with the fact that cellphones are far more convenient and portable than landlines. No, it's all because of government regulations.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:46PM
How about the Clean Air Acts [wikipedia.org]? Ignore carbon for a moment and think about soot and acid rain. We don't have those problems anymore, because the Clean Air Acts effectively eliminated industrial pollution from the air. Go to Shanghai and see what life used to be like without these government regulations - and you can bet that our regulations were a lot kinder to industry than what China is now doing to address the problem.
Of course there will be bad regulations. You want to know what makes regulations bad? The biggest thing in recent years is partisanship. The ACA has problems, but its primary purpose - making access to quality health care universal, standard, and affordable - is good. If Republicans had agreed to work towards that purpose, we would have ended up with a much better law. Instead, they refused the premise that the federal government had any role in improving health care at all.
But the ACA has fared even worse than it should have due to interference and FUD. Republican governors refusing free money for Medicaid created coverage holes for some of the most vulnerable and exacerbated the problem of people staying unemployed to stay eligible for their excellent government-funded healthcare. Republican legislators insisting that the ACA would be repealed, combined with lawsuits about the federal exchange and subsidies, created FUD in the insurance industry that lead inevitably to less investment and higher premiums. And now that Trump is in charge, it will be a miracle if any regulations are effective despite systematic efforts to undermine them.
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I'd love to break up the monopolies. I think that is a much better solution than more regulation, most of the time. But the corporations are slowly merging together into new, more powerful monopolies. And almost nobody is talking about stopping the flood of mergers and acquisitions.
I would never have called cell service "cheap", certainly not as the cell companies are becoming fewer and fewer. If things continue as they are now, we will end up with a choice between Verizon+Sprint+US Cellular or AT&T+T-Mobile, both costing substantially more than they do now for basically the same level of service (capacity may be nominally better, but so will load based on number of customers and increasing bandwidth demands for the same kinds of traffic).
Our options to avoid the failings of this future are 1) Reverse the tide of corporate mergers, breaking up corporations so that none of them can even dream of having anything close to government-level control over our lives, or 2) Grow the size and scope of publicly accountable government regulations to make sure the increasing government-level powers of super huge corporations are ultimately accountable to the people through the ballot box. If we do neither, we will get option 3: corporations eclipse the power of democratic government to control them and begin operating as unaccountable, dictatorial, globalist pseudo-governments.
After decades of political devolution and corruption on both sides, it may already be too late.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?