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Charter tries to convince FCC that broadband customers want data caps
Charter Communications has claimed to the Federal Communications Commission that broadband users enjoy having Internet plans with data caps, in a filing arguing that Charter should be allowed to impose caps on its Spectrum Internet service starting next year.
Charter isn't currently allowed to impose data caps because of conditions the FCC placed on its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable. The data-cap condition is scheduled to expire on May 18, 2023, but Charter in June petitioned the FCC to let the condition expire two years early, in May 2021.
With consumer-advocacy groups and Internet users opposing the petition, Charter filed a response with the FCC last week, saying that plans with data caps are "popular."
"Contrary to Stop The Cap's assertion [in an FCC filing] that consumers 'hate' data caps, the marketplace currently shows that broadband service plans incorporating data caps or other usage-based pricing mechanisms are often popular when the limits are sufficiently high to satisfy the vast majority of users," Charter told the FCC.
Or you could offer some kind of software that shows which users are hogging the network.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:30PM (28 children)
Comcast imposed the same 1.2TB monthly cap on ALL of their plans - regardless of how much you pay, the "cap" is the same, and the only effect of this "cap" is that you pay a (rather steep) penalty for going over.
They claim that "less than 1% of their customers exceed the cap" - we don't do anything unusual, no torrents or other heavy usage, just Netflix and Youtube for the kids, we run within 10-20% of that cap every month.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:16AM (2 children)
Steps to prepare customers for overage fees:
Step 1, Implement data cap.
Step 2. Offer option to "extreme" usage customers to exceed data cap for a fee.
Step 3. Redefine "extreme" using averages and percentages to force downward scope creep.
Comcast made similar arguments about data usage in the past. These companies absolutely know how percentages work and use statistics to couch their manipulations in an air of legitimacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:55AM (1 child)
"Step 3. Redefine "extreme" using averages and percentages to force downward scope creep."
It's not even just about forced downward scope creep. It's about the fact that, naturally, our bandwidth needs increase with time. Content on the Internet gets larger and larger. For instance you have 4K then 8K and then multiple devices, etc... windows updates end up taking more and more space (don't ask me why), files that you typically download get larger, etc...
They want to put a stop to this progress. They want to limit it to their convenience. and with an artificial lack of competition they can if only the government would not regulate their monopolies.
Plus all of the content that the Internet provides competes with their content (ie: cable). So putting caps would encourage people to buy their overpriced, commercial ridden, cable services.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:32PM
(plus android and iPhone/iPad/etc... devices take more space just for regular app and OS updates)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:05AM (8 children)
All 8K+ @ 120 fps, of course. :)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:23AM (7 children)
Actually we don't do high def (beyond maybe 720p) on anything.
The kids can be demons on the fast forward / rewind though, and I think that eats it pretty fast.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:28AM (6 children)
Could be.
Hey, I know, I'll invent a thing that will store the video locally in RAM and maybe in a temporary disk file, that way you can scrub through, rewind, play loop, whatever you want and not download extra redundant bytes. I'll call it buffeting. No, maybe buttering. Bummering. No, wait, buffering! That's it, buffering! Naa, won't catch on. Takes away from carrier's profits so they'll figure a way around it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:11AM (5 children)
Not just profits, might scare the DRM people too, piracy is destroying the economy you know.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:36PM (4 children)
Not just the economy, the entertainment industry is what keeps the medical world afloat. Can you imagine hospital rooms without TVs? Mass carnage and deaths! Oh the humanity!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:19PM (3 children)
What I've noticed about "blockbuster movies" since the piracy wave hit is that their quality seems to have increased dramatically. Granted, there are a lot more movies that center on a small number of actors than there used to be, but when you're paying big names $20M to show up, plus a cut of gross - what do you expect. If "pirates" are hurting the industry, first I'd go after the agents for the big name actors - bigger pirate impact there than the whole internet.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday August 14 2020, @10:11PM (2 children)
You're one of the few people I've heard that claims that the quality of movies have gone up. Most everyone seems to bemoan how formulaic, unoriginal, and boring movies are now compared to how they used to be.
Unless you mean things like production quality and special effects and stuff like that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:24PM (1 child)
Films from "the golden era" were breaking new ground, like Rock'n'Roll of the late 1960s->1970s - try anything: that's groundbreaking and innovative, Jimi Hendrix using feedback was a big deal, like the first director who said: "no, keep the lens flare - control it like this..."
CGI has progressively enabled films to be made that just wouldn't have been attempted before, like LOTR with full battle scenes, or 2001-style movies that actually show Saturn's rings. It's analogous to the first Star Trek animated series that told stories they never would have attempted with their live-action cast and crew - but you don't have to put up with visuals as wooden as Shatner's acting.
I'd say actors are better. Watch Casablanca, it's a classic, they are doing a great job, but... it is all a bit stiff. Even in the late 1970s, most of what qualified as summer blockbuster classics would barely pass grade as a slapdash extended TV series episode today.
If, by "quality of movies has gone up" you mean they're enticing me to go to first run showings at theaters more than I used to - well, no... and I don't think they'll ever win that battle, though I do still go - in part because the theaters themselves have been improving with bigger seats, wider row spacing, (usually) better sound and visual quality, etc.
Streaming format delivery means that I do "binge watch" quite a bit more than I used to, and there's a lot more selection available to binge watch than there used to be. In part, I think the frustration over "quality" of current movies has a lot to do with the sheer quantity of what's available. If you want to get into some original storytelling, continued innovation in directing, etc. you're going to have to step away from the monster-financed sequel machine and put up with some 1960s era production budgets. God knows they've expanded the topic base as the years go by, from modern topics like environmental/societal concerns, minority(black) heroes to indigenous peoples' issues to LGBQTDHSWF; no, I don't know what all those letters stand for, but I'm sure if you really go through Sundance and similar festival entries, they're all there and more... Go back to 1970 and find me a well known film that told deep authentic stories about minorities, or controversial issues of the time...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:26PM
"there's no accounting for taste"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:53AM (15 children)
Comcast now has an unlimited plan for $10 extra a month. My service is now $100 a month. That is with unlimited bandwidth and their highest speeds they offer, which is 110 Mbps Down and about 8Mbps up in my area.
From what I can tell, this is a brand new thing they started last month. No need to pause those 4k youtube videos anymore when I leave my desk!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:15AM (14 children)
I feel like the old cellphone "minutes" plan with the over-cap penalties they impose... funny how those "minutes" plans all went away when cellphone companies started actually competing with each other.
Right after the .com crash, there was a huge fiber installation boom/crash that put in an outrageous amount of long distance data haul capacity - like 8K 120fps streaming video to every eyeball in the country and then some capacity. We have the capacity, what we lack is the competition in providing access to it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:21PM (13 children)
i'm still on my old "minutes" plan from ~2002. 2 phones, 500 minutes shared between the two, ~$62/month all-in. that includes the 5-10 "junk" texts that cost $0.20 per.
i think we hit 300 minutes of use in a month, but only once. when we had our first kid and got lots of calls from family.
but we might switch over to one of those "old people" plans that feature the big numbers on the clamshell phones. those would save me ~$15-$20/month. but i don't like that they all (?) feature an "emergency" button that can't be disabled and tends to be "activated" when you keep the thing in your pocket.
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:50PM (11 children)
That's a cell plan? If so, I don't want to border on "shill" or "spam" so I won't mention the company, but I just got a prepaid phone plan that gives me unlimited talk and text + 5GB / month data for about $16 / month. All prepaid, no fees, no online payments. Nothing to even think about for the first 3 months I prepaid for, other than checking the phone for total data used, which is very tiny because I use WiFi most of the time. After 5GB, no $ penalty- data will drop to 2G speeds, so no videos / streaming at that point but you could still do email, simpler websites, etc.
And you can keep your number as long as your existing company will release it. I've read horror stories of that taking more than a month, but sometimes it's almost instant.
Next I'll buy their year-long plan which will be about the same $ / month. They'll work with pretty much any existing phone, and on any of the 4 major networks. I don't want to sound like a shill nor spammer, but there are many companies out there with equally inexpensive plans, or less, but less data too. Most are limited to a single carrier like T-Mobile, which is fine, but I wanted to keep my existing AT&T phones.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:23PM (7 children)
Warning: my wife had a SUPER cheap cell plan for a year... tried it month to month for a couple of months and it was brilliant, so paid for the annual plan which cost something like 9.5 months to get. Once she was on the annual plan, quality became spotty - data very unreliable, and even voice had major outage spots that would come and go.
I think these cheaper plans often rent "3rd tier" access from the cell towers, so are the first ones to suffer when tower capacity is getting stressed.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:18PM
that makes sense. when the storm hit last week, our cell reliability was unchanged. no loss of reception, no dropped calls. it would kind of suck for that to have dropped off when we needed it...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:10PM (3 children)
I'm of the ilk that if I buy 12 months (some sell 15 months ahead) and audio quality goes down, I'll persist until they either fix it or give my money back, including filing FCC complaints, and every other govt. hotline, media (TV station) help, governor's hotline, file lawsuit, etc. Somebody's got to clean up the mess! :)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:59PM (2 children)
Good luck with those windmills Don Quixote ... I don't know if they have the capacity to give you "preferential" service within their tier, but that's about all I think you would get in exchange for your squeaky wheel efforts.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:28PM (1 child)
Gee, thanks for the encouragement. /s
I suppose we should all just shut up and let corporations rule us?
I think a little too much of that has caused a lot of the problems in today's world.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 15 2020, @04:09PM
I find that complaining to the (insert evil character here) directly only educates them on how better to serve [wikipedia.org] you.
If you want to get some real traction against them, complain to their regulators, licensing boards, etc. Which is why cell phones and ISPs are such a lost cause... our regulators are actively screwing the customers in favor of the companies. To effect change there, we're going to need to start with the politicians who are appointing these foxes to guard the henhouses.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:48AM (1 child)
Was that the FreedomPop annual service?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 14 2020, @01:18PM
That's one of the ones I looked into but nixed quickly. Not only for voice quality and network access problems, but they fail to mention- NO voicemail is included. You can buy it separately though, but that puts the total price in line with most other much better plans, so why deal with horrible "service".
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:15PM (2 children)
not "shill" or "spam" - just "accurate". as i said, that plan is ~18 years old; price never went up or down. i'm sure i could go cheaper. the prepaid options i looked at a few years ago expired the minutes every month - which defeated the point of prepaid; haven't looked since
i used to love getting a new phone for "free" every 2 years with a re-up of the contract (that was baked into the plan). when they killed that, i got a bit grumpy - but my 5-year-old phone still holds a charge for 2 weeks, including light usage. the wife's 7-year-old phone holds a charge for a bit less, but still over a week, including light usage.
my family (including in-laws) are pretty much all on the same network, which is part of the reason my usage is so light; in-network m2m (and nights and weekends) do not count against minutes.
i know i should change, but i'm lazy :-)
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:06PM
Not at all. There are always many factors in decisions, including "it ain't broke so don't fix it". If it's working for you, keep it! :)
Very long backstory, but I couldn't keep my previous plan so I did a very intensive multi-week search and came up with a great plan. All good reviews. It's not the cheapest, but the 5GB / month is the most of any lower-tier plans. Audio quality is much better than before, but I need to qualify- I can't use the same phone (I have several) that I mostly used before because it's carrier-locked and getting it unlocked would involve me paying a lot of $ that I don't think I owe (because I never had a contract with the provider, and the people who did- my parents- are both passed away. There's more but not worth the time to type it all in.)
All that said, I did use current phone with old provider and audio quality was bad, so I blame carrier.
It turns out that cell plans and MVNOs are popping up everywhere, so competition is great.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:25PM
To clarify- I mentioned "shill" and "spam" because I didn't want to write the name of my new provider and get accused of shilling or spamming. But I will if someone asks. Let's just say the name involves a primary color that is not yellow nor blue, and also involves a thing typically made of cloth that's sewn into clothing so that you can put stuff in it like keys. :)
I think it was a cnet article that mentioned them, and after almost 4 weeks of very intensive research, including calling many customer service reps. about the many many other plans, and deducing many "gotchas", I settled on the aforementioned one. So far it's perfect!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:32PM
We're on GoogleFi, something like $60/month for 2 phones with our normal 4G data usage: no contract, unlimited voice and text. Such a plan was unheard of 10 years ago, I think it was T-Mobile that cracked first and all the other carriers were forced to follow suit.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:52PM (14 children)
This is really why all of the telcos/cablecos/Internet and cell phone companies wanted to merge. So they can increase prices and provide worse service.
Yet somehow Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, Netflix, etc... are the bad guys. The ones that actually provide competition.
If anti-trust laws were meant to be enforced in the public interest the first order of business would be to either break up or regulate the cableco/telco/Internet monopolies. Instead they are being used to go after the businesses that best serve the consumer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:51AM (12 children)
At this point, it's obvious that telcos will never be anything but corrupt and monopolistic. They should be nationalized under a mandate similar to USPS.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:07PM (10 children)
> At this point, it's obvious that telcos will never be anything but corrupt and monopolistic.
Well, they are machines of greed. Making money is job 1, any clever way they can figure out how to.
> They should be nationalized under a mandate similar to USPS.
Many called for that when the govt. broke up the old AT&T in the early 1980s. Of course what we ended up with was many smaller monopolies for local network connection, but some degree of competition (cough cough) in "long-distance".
IMHO, it all comes down to defining what is critical infrastructure vs. niceties. 100 years ago electricity was a nice to have, now you can't get a C of O (Certificate of Occupancy) for a house that doesn't have electricity (or running water, heat, etc.) Now those things (electricity, gas, water, septic, etc.) are heavily govt. regulated.
However, again IMHO, we don't get the lowest possible price because there's no competition, and the local provider petitions the govt. for rate increases, and you have no options unless you go "off grid" and you're allowed to drill your own well and install your own septic. There now is competition for electricity supplier, but you're still paying the local company for wire use and that's typically 1/2 of your bill (or more), and again govt. regulated (by what I consider a corrupt system of utility asks govt for a rate increase and gets it- nobody actually represents the public.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:36PM (7 children)
It took some time, but I think free unlimited long distance is a pretty good outcome from a few decades of that asthmatic competition. Nothing is ever perfect, but free unlimited domestic beats the hell out of the $20/hr we were paying for anything over 20-50 miles in the 1970s. And of course, with VoIP you've got effective free unlimited international now too, if you really need it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:39PM
That's true, but over that same time span they let all the pieces from that Ma Bell breakup remerge into what is essentially a monopoly again. They don't try to charge you for each POTS phone in your house anymore, and you are allowed to own your phones instead of renting them, but look at what we got now: charge you for every phone you own, which the majority of people don't own, they "rent to own" them on 2-year plans.
What goes around comes around. And they'll still merging.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:21PM (5 children)
You're kind of comparing apples and oranges. I'm referring to the "competition" in the 1980s and 1990s for "long distance" with the technologies of those days over land-lines. I put it in quotes because cynical me believes they all communicated and price-fixed. Oh, look at that, I actually knew people who worked in that industry who know such price-fixing communication was happening. (But Martha Stewart goes to prison...)
Yes, finally you could get unlimited N. America calling from the local landline provider. Not sure when that started- maybe 20 years ago? But it was a pretty expensive package-deal thing- like $100 / month, and probably still is that expensive.
And don't forget huge "roaming" charges on cell phones up until maybe 10 years ago (?).
But things are evolving. I've told several people to abandon their expensive land-line, which is price-regulated, and buy a cell-connecting landline module. You can keep your internal phones if you like them, but pay $15/month for the same service and more (data). I'm tempted because I live in a very weak cell area and I can't carry my phone around the house or it will disconnect. Landline cordless phones work well though.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:02PM (4 children)
Optimistic me likes to believe that without the breakup, we'd still all be using 56kBaud modems on twisted pair copper to the home, and paying $30+ per hour for domestic long distance - 'cause you know that copper isn't cheap since the Chinese started using it...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 14 2020, @05:21AM (3 children)
Naa, acoustic couplers for 300 baud- 1,200 if you're really lucky!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 14 2020, @10:47AM (2 children)
You do remember those rental phones: fixed to the wall with 2' handset cords...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 14 2020, @01:27PM (1 child)
I remember much longer cords though. Maybe they were an option? A friend of mine's mom recently passed away and she still has a working wall-mounted probably 1970s phone. I'll measure the cord and get back to you. It may be 2' coil retracted. Love or hate it, you have to admit that old stuff never broke ("never" being a close approximation in context).
But you reminded me: one place I worked mid-90s, landline times, did not allow personal calls on company phone lines. Maybe 80 total employees in 3 buildings, each building had 1 personal call phone line, the "big" building having several physical phones on that line. The company owner's wife, who headed HR and many administrative departments, had 4" coil cords (when stretched out) made for the wall-mounted phones. On each cord was a tag that said "Short wire, short call".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 14 2020, @02:21PM
Classic.
I'm remembering my Grandmother's kitchen phone, which was there on the wall by the fridge for the first 20 years of my life. She also had a desk phone in the bedroom which had a wire long enough that you could move it pretty much anywhere on the bed: luxury of choice and flexibility for then.
Even in 1995, we only had two dedicated lines for 6 employees to access the internet (via 38.4Kbaud modems), and we made up little switch plates that lit up when a line was in use, so you could select the other line for your modem. I think we finally got DSL and proper networked internet access at the office in 1998 - a few weeks after I got it at home.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:59PM (1 child)
I was a young adult then AT&T was broked up. Suddenly:
* cheap plastic phones everywhere, K-Mart, Radio Shack
* in every shape, size, color, style, and gimmick imaginable
* long distance rates got much cheaper, to the point where eventually long distance charges effectively disappeared from an ordinary home phone service
But the new gouging for outrageous prices was the then-new cell phones.
And then internet service.
It's all these guys know how to do.
How about this: Be the biggest, most bestest, fastest, dump pipes there ever was. At a reasonable price that enabled you to build and operate your system, with a healthy profit. Stop all the price gouging games. Hidden fees.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 14 2020, @10:50AM
No such thing... without pressure the system bloats with lazy pensioned line worker employees, multiple layers of high paid management, and shareholders that demand 10%+ annual ROI. Hell, even with average "free market competition" pressure you get most of that.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:00PM
You only need to keep the companies managing the wires and the companies running things on them separate. Do you remember the tons of dial-up ISPs? You could find whatever feature you wanted. With electric deregulation you can buy electricity from whichever generating source you want. If ISPs didn't have a stranglehold on your last mile you'd end up with a lot more ISPs and could freely choose between them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:33PM
Those statements are both not mutually exclusive and orthogonal to each other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:07AM (1 child)
Just because data caps are the least hated things about their service, that does not mean they are liked.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Booga1 on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:22AM
"Well, there's spam, egg, sausage, and spam. That's not got much spam in it."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:18AM (12 children)
Hey, if people can vote for Trump, I guess anything is possible...
People are pretty stupid. They bought into a cell phone service where they paid to receive calls! How dumb is that?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:52AM (7 children)
It would be pretty dumb if people had a choice. But that's the thing with telcos: they have a monopoly. And even when there is a choice, the competition is only an illusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:02AM (6 children)
They did have a choice, to steadfastly refuse to buy into such a corrupt system. Means doing without, but that's the price to pay to see that you don't get ripped off.
Most countries in Europe didn't rob people this way. So it's wasn't like there was no choice. People like pricey trinkets, and the rest of us pay for the next 20 years.
The real problem here is that rich people didn't have to care about the price and bought right in, and we got fucked, on the short run granted, but the top 20% control 80% of the consumer market. We pay their prices and get inferior products
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:11AM (5 children)
People in Europe don't get shafted as hard because the EU regulates telcos a lot more heavily.
Case in point: the EU finally told cellphone operators to drop the roaming charges ripoff [bbc.co.uk] in 2017. If that's not in the consumer's best interest, I don't know what is.
In the US, the ripoffs can go on unabated, because the state refuses to intervene.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:32AM (2 children)
Ironic that you link to the BBC reporting on how the EU stopped the roaming charges ripoff.
Lots and lots of Brits who voted leave are going to get a huge shock when they get back from their next Greek holiday, aren't they?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:31AM
No no, they're free to negotiate their own rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:01AM
That depends on whether the British government will use its regained full sovereignty to continue the practice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:06PM (1 child)
When I was traveling in Germany in the late 1980s, I could call around on my AT&T long distance card for rates similar to what I paid back home... which were quite a bit lower than they had been just a few years earlier. On the other hand, my friends' domestic phones made a little "peep" noise every time they charged you 0.20 for your time on the call, and when calling international it was hard to understand the other party due to the near constant "peeping" - effective charge rates were much higher than they ever had been in the U.S. both for international and longer distance domestic calls. Payphones without a calling card? Forget it, I think I paid 25DM for 10 minutes from Berlin to Canada.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday August 17 2020, @12:01AM
You need a walkman with a cassette tape with two minutes of blue beep (Commodore 64 program) quarter tones. Dial the long distance number and when it says you must insert blah for the first blah minutes, put your headphones up to the mouthpiece and hit play. Make sure to leave a few seconds between the tones, if you fuck up and play half of a tone the operator drops on the line immediately and says..... SIR!!!!! SIR!!!!!! You have to insert real money!!!! (Also happens when your headphones are turned up too loud and the tone distorts.)
One time that didn't happen I was calling Hawaii and played about two minutes of the tones into an operator's headset. (Just a story... totally didn't happen.)
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:54AM (3 children)
That came to an end pretty quickly. Now cell phones have larger free calling areas than landlines (what's a landline? Something you hang your laundry on to dry?)
You can ruin their business model - stop streaming shit. You won't die.
Or you can choose to be a slave.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:12AM (2 children)
I prefer to live in the gray between area. As in, option three. I could keep streaming shit and suffer (option one). I could stop streaming shit and not die, as you say. (Option two!)
Or I could "stream" it once. ..via bitorrent. After that, it's purely lan-traffic no matter how many times I re-watch it. For bonus points, the second-hand dvd/bluray collection can live in a box in my basement, without any damage-from-usage. They get paid, I get what I want, my physical copy stays pristine. everyone wins!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:04AM (1 child)
Except you possibly, because even if you have an owned physical copy, you are infringing copyright by uploading data to other people during your bittorrent.
Is it easy to rip Bluerays yourself, or do you need a specially hacked drive to do so?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:43PM
Let's be clear: I don't give a single fuck for their copyright. If the copyright owner disagrees with me, they're welcome to catch me if they can. The odds on that transaction are forever in my favor.
I make a point of paying for a physical copy because to my mind, that's the fair and right thing to do, and I sleep better knowing the books are balanced (balanced to my satisfaction, anyways; I'm sure the copyright owner would disagree). If someone else is getting copyrighted data uploaded from me to them during a torrent session, well, they can deal with their own sleeping problems, if any. None of my concern.
I can't be arsed to rip things myself, it's far less hassle to let a soi-disant 'expert' deal with the arcane bullshit of formats and encodings and aspect ratios and containers and codecs and so on and on etc. My sole exertion is to rename files to something that XBMC can parse while still being human-readable.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:41AM
Seriously, government backed monopolies shouldn't have shareholders. Utilities like Charter are required to have licenses to operate in specific geographic areas. Essentially, this monopoly exists in part due to regulations. Cable companies benefit from the use of public land to place their infrastructure. This is necessary because it's a limited resource and needs to be used responsibly, to serve the public. It's a matter of practicality, otherwise anyone could essentially seize public land for however they might want to use it. This places limits on the competition that can exist in such an industry. Some of the infrastructure is then built with public money in the form of subsidies. Both the cost of building the infrastructure and the regulatory hurdles are large barriers to entry, so there is absolutely nothing free or competitive about this market.
Charter is looking for any excuse to increase revenue, whether it's lying about broadcast fees or trying to break their agreement about data caps. But this revenue doesn't generally benefit the public. It benefits the shareholders. Charter isn't in good financial shape, but a lot of that is due to debt incurred acquiring Time Warner Cable, which again enriched shareholders.
Charter should not be enriching shareholders while benefiting from government backed monopolies and subsidies. There could be good alternatives like municipal broadband but companies like Charter fight these at every turn. Even if no taxes funded municipal broadband and the entire operating costs were covered through billing customers, Charter could probably operate at cost and be less expensive than the municipal option. Operating at scale allows Charter to reduce their costs in ways that a small municipal broadband service could not. But operating at cost wouldn't provide shareholder value, which is what this is about. Virtually without exception, companies like Charter place shareholders ahead of customers and the general public, even when they directly benefit from monopolies granted by the public. This is why shareholders must go. Fire the damn shareholders. In practice, eminent domain could be used to acquire the assets so shareholders and creditors would get a fair deal.
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:41AM (2 children)
Charter to judge: I didn't do nothing wrong, she WANTED it! I can tell!!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
I gave her three options... she chose this one.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:58PM
Were there Vikings singing of the virtues of caps at the next table?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:42AM (6 children)
Also taxes, cancer and anchovies.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:01AM (4 children)
Anchovies? You make me sick!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:41PM (3 children)
Anchovies are awesome, come on. I like them on pizza next to pineapple and onion, as the flavors work really well together.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday August 14 2020, @07:20AM (1 child)
Coming up next: Lunch!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @01:38PM
And maybe some of breakfast too...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:13AM
I think you should enjoy it any way you wish. Some people, however, are quite opinionated: https://fatpita.net/?i=19514 [fatpita.net]
:)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:04PM
Don't forget the most popular thing of all: Death
Death is ranked #1 most popular, based on the numbers alone, even ahead in popularity over Taxes, Cancer and Justin Bieber music.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:43AM (3 children)
I am a self loathing white person, who needs to make amends for being white! If I self flagellate, the cops will beat me, shoot me, and lock me up. But, I can punish myself with data caps, and it will be alright!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:02AM (2 children)
There's special therapists for people with problems like yours ready to take your call... 800-266-2278
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:49PM (1 child)
^That's Comcast's cuntstomer service number.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:05PM
I thought it was the pre-registration line for Hell.
But maybe they're the same thing.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:43AM (5 children)
So what is this? Bandwidth control by naming-and-shaming?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:51AM (1 child)
I saw something similar while looking for apartments a while back. There was this one place that advertised the entire building was powered by rooftop solar. Pretty neat I thought, maybe I'll call to get a tour. Then I read that there are monitors in the lobby/commons area that show how much power each unit is using. I passed it up.
Maybe Charter should advertise tiny green internet plans.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday August 14 2020, @10:44PM
Is that really that weird? All the apartments I have ever lived in did not include electricity, so I had to pay for my electricity from the power company. Hence somewhere in a public place, usually on the side of the building somewhere was a bunch of meters showing how much electricity each apartment was using. I guess a highly visible place like the lobby is a bit strange, but could be that's where they had to put it, particularly if they were retrofitted in later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:41AM (2 children)
If less that 1% use 1.2Tb/month... fuck it, that's almost nobody. What's the fucking fuss about?
(Score: 4, Touché) by jasassin on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:07AM
If less than 1% of the people use 1.2TB a month... fuck it, that's almost nobody. Why do they need data caps? What's the fucking fuss about?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:42AM
You should read the PDF's - the original petition, and the follow up. You may pick any number of claims in the petition. Two, five, ten, or all of them. Then, you might research those claims which you have picked. I'll tell you what you will find, in each case:
The claim is an outright lie. Both documents are false, from start to finish. The claim that they have invested money to build out the network - lie. That only 1% ever exceed caps - lie. That people LIKE their caps - lie. If there is a shred of truth anywhere in the work of fiction, I missed it.
Some of the lies may appear to be truthful, if you don't understand how they work. There was a claim that some % of households have access to multiple carriers of "broadband". If you are gullible, if you don't ask how those figures are arrived at, you might believe it to be true. What they don't tell you is, if one or more houses in a zipcode can access two or more carriers of "broadband", they count the whole zipcode as covered. Ten thousand households in the mail delivery area, and sixteen of those houses are located such that they can choose between two carriers. Tell me then, is the claim honest, or is it a lie?
I don't want you to just accept what I'm saying. Read the PDF's, then do some research for yourself. Please let us all know if you find any claim that is true.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jasassin on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:56AM (2 children)
If the FCC asked people "Do you like data caps?" the answer would be one of the following:
1. No.
2. Am I being punked?
3. What's a data cap?
DAAAAAAAAA (slaps limp wrist against chest repeatedly) sure, please cap my data! While your at it DAAAAAAAA could you cap my intimate relations to 1.2 per month? DAAAAAAAAAA...
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:13AM
I'll take a data cap if you raise my intimate relations to 1.2 per month.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:07PM
People would complain: I can't wear my Data Cap and my MAGA cap at the same time!
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:24AM
Good old time warner leading the way on fucking over their customers.
They are even playing both sides of the coin to fuck us over. They even managed to create a 'we vs they' political fight out of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:20AM
The Ministry of Truthe reports that "broadband users enjoy having Internet plans with data caps, in a filing arguing that Charter should be allowed to impose caps on its Spectrum Internet service starting next year" thus everyone will remain happy with their 14.5 hour work days and mandatory human composting if participation drops below 75%.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:03AM
North Korea reports that people enjoy starving to death, based on it being the most popular hobby in the country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:51PM (1 child)
Why don't websites like Stop the Cap host their own petitions?
A lot of organizations, like the EFF, public knowledge, Techdirt, Soylentnews, ACLU/ACLJ, Freedom of the Press Foundation, etc... should host their own petitions that people can sign (and some seldom do). and I get it, having to go through the process of verifying signatures is a hassle/expense that some organizations would be better positioned to do than others. Soylentnews probably wouldn't be an ideal organization to do this for instance. Still, petitions can bring attention to various subjects and websites and their values as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:10PM
Are there any open source petition frameworks that can be quickly and easily implemented? That is a problem SN might be able to meaningfully help with.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 13 2020, @05:48PM
In other news, Charter employees are enjoying working in the office during the current pandemic:
Charter employees beg for work-from-home rights during pandemic [arstechnica.com]
Sounds just like their customer perspective.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:11PM
How about cutting the monthly price by 40%? That is really popular with customers.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday August 14 2020, @01:57PM
Using the connection I paid for isn't fucking hogging. Don't sell the service if your hardware can't handle what you told your customers they are entitled to.