Verizon Announces Pay-Per-Use 'Turbo Boost' For Smartphones 129
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.'"
How is this different... (Score:3, Insightful)
...from an ISP offering (for example) 1Mbps and 10Mbps connections at different prices?
It's actually better for the consumer, since you can buy the increased speed for a small amount of time as opposed to being forced to buy for a month or even multiple years at a time.
As long as this API is open to all developers, it's not a violation of Net Neutrality.
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bullshit for quite a few reasons.
Re:If... (Score:4, Insightful)
And all of a sudden.. (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting deal (Score:5, Insightful)
As many already said, this has nothing to do with net neutrality. However it has everything to deal with fraud.
You, as a customer, are buying a cell phone and a plan that comes with it. You are expecting certain performance of the wireless link, and you are getting it for the moment. But later the cell operator decides to sell your bandwidth to the highest bidder! In the end everybody pays the "turbo" fee to get any bandwidth at all, but everybody is back to square one... except the cell company who has now more money. Time for the "hyper-turbo" sales campaign then, to fleece the sheep once more?