Verizon Wireless Wades Right Back Into the Net Neutrality Debate With Fios Deal (theverge.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Verizon is taking a page out of AT&T's book by zero rating its Fios cable TV service for all Verizon Wireless customers. That means that if you purchase your mobile data plan from Verizon Wireless and your cable TV plan from Fios, you can now use the Fios Mobile app to stream live channels and on-demand shows and not have it count against your monthly data cap. (It should be noted that Verizon Wireless and Fios are separate subsidiaries, but both are owned by Verizon Communications.) This builds on Verizon's previous decision to zero rate its Go90 mobile app for customers of its own wireless service, which net neutrality advocates see as prioritizing its own products to the detriment of those from competitors and upstarts. One notable exception here is for customers with unlimited mobile data plans. Streaming Fios Mobile content will in fact count toward the unlimited plans' 22GB a month cap, after which Verizon will cap speeds. This caveat is not made clear in Verizon's marketing language, and instead is found only in the App Store release notes.
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The neutrality of the US internet will remain endangered as long as the interests of its users clash with the moneyed interests of corporations.
Thank goodness we have a caring, representative government to protect us...
Unlimited?! (Score:1)
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After 22GB, your connection may be throttled if you are on a congested cell. So you can continue to use data so it's still "unlimited" for some definitions of the word.
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*to 3G speeds.
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Throttle applies only to hotspot and tethering use after 10GB.
In which case it's throttled to 600kbps calling it 3G speeds is an insult to 3G my cellphone tops out on EVDO rev A and it can do 1.55Mbps.
The distinction between throttling and deprioritization is very important.
With deprio your speeds will be relatively slower if your are in a congested area.
With throttle your totally fked for the rest of the month no matter what.
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Has the rest of the world broken the laws of physics? Due to finite bandwidth and finite time no plan could ever be unlimited.
If you understand Channel Capacity then you'd know that even with infinite bandwidth you can't transmit infinite data unless you also have an infinite signal-to-noise ratio.
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unlimited
adjective
not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
"the range of possible adaptations was unlimited"
synonyms: inexhaustible, limitless, illimitable, boundless, immeasurable, incalculable, untold, infinite, endless,
bottomless, never-ending
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Exactly. We are already applying a less-than-literal definition of the word "unlimited" to this particular situation. Discussing to what degree the word is less-than-literal is to engage in a pissing contest.
Not really a problem (Score:1)
The problem isn't really zero rating. The problem is lack of competition. Net neutrality is just a way to keep the ISPs honest if you insist on letting them keep their local cable/phone monopolies. If you get rid of the monopolies and allow competition, then you don't need to enforce net neutrality because any ISP wh
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If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con', whats the opposite of 'progress'?
Split the pipe from the content (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality is just a way to keep the ISPs honest if you insist on letting them keep their local cable/phone monopolies. If you get rid of the monopolies and allow competition, then you don't need to enforce net neutrality
You will never get competition in last mile delivery because the economics of it make it impractical.
What needs to happen is that the companies providing the pipe should have an arms length relationship with any content providers. Comcast should be able to provide me a pipe to my house or to provide me content over that pipe but not both. Comcast cannot both own NBC and transmit its content over Comcast data lines. Given that it is economically impractical to have more than 1-2 data lines coming into any given dwelling it is unlikely that the local phone/cable monopolies will ever disappear. For economic reasons they are a natural monopoly because competition actually increases costs plus building and maintaining such a network is prohibitively expensive to new market entrants. So the dividing line should be pipe or content. Pick one and never cross that line. Collusion between pipe providers and content providers should be explicitly illegal and prosecutable under anti-trust laws.
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You just described Pebble Beach, CA.
IF only we could get FIOS. . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
. . . . Verizon has been promising to expand FIOS to my area. For 10 years. And hasn't expanded coverage area ANYWHERE near me for 8 years.
And for some obscure reason, their expansion stopped right at the border of Comcast, Charter, and Time-Warner coverage areas.
Funny, that. . . .but, of course, nothing will ever be proven. . .
Zero rating (Score:4, Insightful)
... and this is the problem with "zero rating". When T-Mobile makes makes a whole bunch of music and video services free without a clear and obvious bias for a particular company, people asked, "What's wrong with that?" and it was harder to point to a clear problem. For many consumers, those services being free seemed like a benefit with no real downside.
But I think it becomes much more clear when a wireless carrier starts zero-rating their own pay services. It's a private company leveraging its own control over public infrastructure to push people into using the services *they want you to use*. Make FIOS video streaming "free" so you will pay for that service, and then why would you pay for Netflix, Hulu, or whoever else? With those services, the data usage costs money when you use them on your mobile.
Though it may not be technically/legally an anti-trust violation, this move is ant-competitive at it's core. It violates the "free market forces" that would allow consumers to pay for the best service based on its merits. This is why people in favor of free markets should also favor net neutrality.
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Not an example of net neutrality problem (Score:2, Interesting)
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No. both are examples of net-neutrality principle violation. One is just worse than the next. It is not all or none.
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The real problem is ... (Score:2)
All phone call/text/data plans are scams.
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