Look Forward To Per-Service, Per-Page Fees 400
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "[Two] companies, Allot Communications and Openet — suppliers to large wireless companies including AT&T and Verizon — showed off a new product in a web seminar Tuesday, which included a PowerPoint presentation (1.5-MB .pdf) that was sent to Wired by a trusted source. The idea? Make it possible for your wireless provider to monitor everything you do online and charge you extra for using Facebook, Skype or Netflix. For instance, in the seventh slide of the above PowerPoint, a Vodafone user would be charged two cents per MB for using Facebook, three euros a month to use Skype and $0.50 monthly for a speed-limited version of YouTube."
scary for net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
One wireless carrier alone like Verizon couldn't implement such a net-killing feature: their customers would abandon them cold. And if all the US carriers adopted that together, that would be the best case to start an antitrust investigation and shake the wireless landscape once and for all.
That being said, you got to look a slide #6: it's one of the best expression of greed I have ever seen.
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Foundrs.com: have you signed up your co-founders yet? [foundrs.com]
Yeah, but it's a free country... (Score:5, Insightful)
...where corporations are free to fuck you in the ass.
Disneyland Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time, not so long ago, when a good business strategy was to make you product as appealing as possible so that everyone would want to buy it. That's exactly the opposite of today. Today, the business models for the major carriers all focus on just how much they can screw us for before we yelp. They are literally destroying their own market. The reason the internet has been so successful is that once you have paid for access, where you go has been mostly free. This is like Disneyland going back to a ticket system. The only real question is, who will be the "E" ticket rides...
Re:scary for net neutrality (Score:2, Insightful)
Populist Revolt (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah, but it's a free country... (Score:5, Insightful)
No no no!
You misunderstand libertarian thought entirely.
You are free to disconnect from the internet and build your own internet. This is obviously fair, and your freedom to do this will clearly keep folks who want to gouge you from doing so.
Re:Populist Revolt (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Because in many/most cases, the company did *not* take any risk whatsoever - or if there was risk, it was still highly mitigated at the taxpayers' expense.
Shaking in my boots... (Score:2, Insightful)
OMG, I'm scared to death that they are going to start charging me for this stuff. But, but, but, wait a minute, I only look at my Facebook page once every couple of weeks, certainly don't use it as a twitter substitute (which I also don't use). I only rarely look at a YouTube Video and am unlikely to download NetFlix videos over the net until they support Linux. And then there is the fact that I've only got a Net10/LG NTLG300GB cell phone without one of those fancy displays that is on an expired usage contract [1].
So as far as I can tell, the only "newsworthy" aspect of this is that the evil phone companies are attempting to tax (cough extort) money from those wealthy enough to own (or have a contract) that supports a "fancy phone" habit and/or those who have nothing better to do than waste time updating their Facebook pages or watching NetFlix on their phone [2].
God, I hope that some liberal congressperson gets wind of this and arm twists the FCC to stop this evil corporate activity which would apparently discriminate against those in the 10-20 y.o age group.
My net. This appears to be a "lottery"-like tax on those who don't have better things to do with their time/money. YMMV.
1. Means I have to go down to Walmart or BestBuy and buy some minutes to reactivate it.
2. Because surveys have found that most "engineers" (aka those who have better things to do with the time like actually build something) view Facebook as a complete waste of time and the only Netflix videos they are interested in watching would be the new update to Tron to see if it lives up all the money being spent advertising it.
Re:Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the cellular carriers should not be omitted from any type of net neutrality rules put into place by the FCC. And this is why the Republicans actions to prevent the FCC from issuing net neutrality rulings needs to be prevented. See http://slashdot.org/story/10/12/17/2045244/Republicans-Create-Rider-To-Stop-Net-Neutrality [slashdot.org]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to do with net neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Like so many others, you don't seem to understand what Net Neutrality is actually doing. The regulation as I understand it is about controlling the speed and access to various hosts - as in, they al need to be able to be accessed at exactly the same speed (no traffic shaping for VOIP for example) and you will not be blocked from any host (well, except possibly the ones the government doesn't like - that would come later though).
Net Neutrality doesn't say anything about the ISP's altering what you are charged based on the host you are accessing. You see, that's the problem with creating a tool or regulation to solve a problem that doesn't exist, is that when the real problem comes along you have nothing to stop it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)