5 ms·

They don't have to keep careful records of where and when. They just have to spend a lot of money buying devices which are manufactured and certified by someon

They don't have to keep careful records of where and when. They just have to spend a lot of money buying devices which are manufactured and certified by someone other than themselves that they are fit for purpose. If the power company isn't allowed to make their own meters then why should Comcast be allowed to? The moral hazard is pretty substantial.

eli 11y ago
All other things being equal I would prefer my ISP to not even have the equipment in place to determine whether I'm downloading from Spotify or Youtube.
- mindslight 11y ago
  I agree, but why would you assume they don't already? Transporting bulk bits is a commodity race to the bottom, which is why the idea is so technically successful. Now that there's proven demand, telcom raises profit margins by decommodifying opaque bits into specific value-priced services.
- msandford 11y ago
  I agree completely. But your power meter doesn't know what device in your house is using electricity, it just knows you're using X amount of electricity. Yes it would be difficult to make a data meter that's intentionally blind to where the packets are going to and from, but it's not as though the data isn't available for intercept a dozen other places on a telco's network. If they want to spy on you and your data is on their network there's little you can do. The point of this independently certified metering device is that it'd be expensive. Hopefully nobody would sell them, only rent them. So if a carrier wants to charge overages they're more than welcome to, but the people supplying the meters are going to get a huge cut of their business. And once a telco is on the receiving end of a racket instead of on the giving end, perhaps they'd change their tune about data caps and spend that money and energy upgrading their network instead of using it to clamp down on their "customers" who have little to no alternatives.

eli 11y ago

All other things being equal I would prefer my ISP to not even have the equipment in place to determine whether I'm downloading from Spotify or Youtube.

mindslight 11y ago
I agree, but why would you assume they don't already? Transporting bulk bits is a commodity race to the bottom, which is why the idea is so technically successful. Now that there's proven demand, telcom raises profit margins by decommodifying opaque bits into specific value-priced services.
msandford 11y ago
I agree completely. But your power meter doesn't know what device in your house is using electricity, it just knows you're using X amount of electricity. Yes it would be difficult to make a data meter that's intentionally blind to where the packets are going to and from, but it's not as though the data isn't available for intercept a dozen other places on a telco's network. If they want to spy on you and your data is on their network there's little you can do. The point of this independently certified metering device is that it'd be expensive. Hopefully nobody would sell them, only rent them. So if a carrier wants to charge overages they're more than welcome to, but the people supplying the meters are going to get a huge cut of their business. And once a telco is on the receiving end of a racket instead of on the giving end, perhaps they'd change their tune about data caps and spend that money and energy upgrading their network instead of using it to clamp down on their "customers" who have little to no alternatives.