Verizon Announces Pay-Per-Use 'Turbo Boost' For Smartphones 129
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renek writes "In one of the most brazen attacks on net neutrality to date, Verizon has announced it will offer a so called 'Turbo Boost' for smart phones that run on its wireless network. 'Verizon will publish an API that could allow consumers to 'turbocharge' the network bandwidth their smartphone apps use for a small fee, executives said Tuesday. Verizon anticipates that a customer running an app on a smartphone will have the option to dynamically snatch more bandwidth for that app, if network congestion slows it down, said Hugh Fletcher, associate director for technology in Verizon's Product Development and Technology team. The app, however, must be running what Verizon referred to as the network optimization API it is currently developing, and hopes to publish by the third quarter of 2012.'"
If... (Score:4, Informative)
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It favors those who pay more. That's the whole problem that net neutrality is against.
Essentially, it promotes monopolies by ensuring that big, established companies can degrade the (relative) quality of competing services by smaller companies, who can't afford to pay for the privilege.
Re:If... (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? You don't pay your ISP more for more bandwidth today? It's not reasonable/acceptable for an ISP to charge on that basis?
If anything, this seems like a good thing, since it's granular, and pay-as-you-go -- instead of simply paying for monthly bandwidth you may or may not take advantage of, simply buy a minimal level of bandwidth, and pay more as needed.
Finally, you're wrong. Net neutrality is all about preventing service providers from charging unfavorable rates for access based on the service (especially competitive services, e.g. charging more for Netflix bandwidth than for a cable Internet provider's own IPTV offerings). There's nothing to indicate that is the case in this instance, that they would charge less for increased B/W to their own services than other ones.