4 ms·

How long did it stay blocked? I bet they unblocked it as soon as customers complained. Definitely an interesting example though. Nothing like that has ever hap

How long did it stay blocked? I bet they unblocked it as soon as customers complained. Definitely an interesting example though. Nothing like that has ever happened in my country without net neutrality, but then we have a fairly competitive market where a single carrier trying that would lose their customers very quickly.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
> How long did it stay blocked? Nearly 2 years.
- RyanZAG 9y ago
  That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? EDIT: After reading more replies, it seems like you guys actually have no choice. Serious red flag that it sounds like net neutrality was covering up. I think you will be better in the long run with it removed, but you all need to get active and fix your ISP problem and create a free market.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    > That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? Lucky you, having a no-contract plan and alternatives that don't have worse policies.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    In many regions in the U.S. you don't have any other ISPs. Cable & telecom companies have de-facto monopolies in most places; your only competition is often a reseller that uses the exact same pipes as the local telecom and so is subject to the same throttling. Internet speeds are also ridiculously slow. In the heart of Silicon Valley, I'm on 5 MBPs/sec, even though the equipment can easily do gigabit. (How do I know this? Because if you pay several hundred bucks a month, they will upgrade your speed to gigabit without anyone coming out.)
    - RyanZAG 9y ago
      Yeah you definitely have bigger problems than net neutrality. I'm in the middle of Africa, 30km from the CBD of a small city, and I have 1gb local / 100mb international fiber with no caps or throttling for the equivalent of ~$85/month. Plus I can WhatsApp the tech support if something goes wrong and they'll drive over and fix it within 30 mins or so. I also have a choice of about 8 different ISPs offering me fiber lines to my door who seem to be in a price war with each other at the moment. I don't have net neutrality though. But surely the problem you're facing is ISP/government monopoly related, not the net neutrality bit? Or do you think it's something else causing the ISP issues there?
      - nostrademons 9y ago
        It's totally ISP/monopoly related, but convincing the government to keep net neutrality regulations is generally viewed as easier than convincing them to break up monopoly telecoms. It was hard enough getting them to block the AT&T/T-mobile merger. The last time a company's been threatened with being broken up was Microsoft in the late 1990s, and they got off with a slap on the wrist (albeit one that made them reluctant to enter new markets, which opened the door for Google & Facebook, and Apple's resurgence, in the early 2000s).
      - Jach 9y ago
        Is that 100 up as well as down? How's the roundtrip latency to get a packet to a US server and back? In any case you have better internet than me for cheaper, and I'm two miles from downtown Bellevue, WA USA not out in the sticks of a flyover state. :( Generally speaking though I'm also not particularly sad that this NN regulation has been repealed, I agree with the assessment that our problems are not from NN, lack of NN is merely one of many unpleasant possibilities with the current system so even if it was fully fixed there's still all the other problems, most of which have no workarounds. Lack of NN has a workaround. The fact that many employees at many businesses require using a VPN to work from home means that most ISPs will have no choice but to accept extra money to give those people unthrottled / uncensored lines that they take for granted right now as part of the base fee.
  - __jal 9y ago
    > but you all need to get active and fix your ISP problem and create a free market. I, for one, think this is excellent advice and eagerly await the United Stated dedicating itself to becoming a free market someday.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    I think this is true, but it also ignores the fact the U.S. does not have nearly as strong anti-fraud and competition law as in Europe.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  > That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? The vast majority of people in the US only have access to a single broadband ISP. I live in NYC and only have access to one. My other options are slow DSL (under 15Mbps download and under 1Mbps upload), dialup, or using a hotspot that is generally limited to 15GB download (3 Netflix movies) for $90 a month.
- jtuente 9y ago
  > And This Doesn't Apply To Google Wallet > The thing is, these rules don't even apply in the case of Google Wallet, because Verizon isn't blocking anything. Why'd I bother explaining them, then? So you can see exactly how they don't apply. > Unlike the tethering app that requires root access, Verizon isn't actively preventing the Wallet app from being installed on phones. That's all Google. If Google wanted to make the Wallet app compatible for every Verizon phone in the Play Store such that you could download and install it, it could. There is absolutely nothing to stop that happening - but the app wouldn't actually work. [0] - http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/01/a-brief-history-of-verizon-and-google-wallet-and-why-the-carrier-is-still-allowed-to-block-it/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/01/a-brief-history-of-v...

JohnTHaller 9y ago

> How long did it stay blocked? Nearly 2 years.

RyanZAG 9y ago
That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? EDIT: After reading more replies, it seems like you guys actually have no choice. Serious red flag that it sounds like net neutrality was covering up. I think you will be better in the long run with it removed, but you all need to get active and fix your ISP problem and create a free market.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? Lucky you, having a no-contract plan and alternatives that don't have worse policies.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  In many regions in the U.S. you don't have any other ISPs. Cable & telecom companies have de-facto monopolies in most places; your only competition is often a reseller that uses the exact same pipes as the local telecom and so is subject to the same throttling. Internet speeds are also ridiculously slow. In the heart of Silicon Valley, I'm on 5 MBPs/sec, even though the equipment can easily do gigabit. (How do I know this? Because if you pay several hundred bucks a month, they will upgrade your speed to gigabit without anyone coming out.)
  - RyanZAG 9y ago
    Yeah you definitely have bigger problems than net neutrality. I'm in the middle of Africa, 30km from the CBD of a small city, and I have 1gb local / 100mb international fiber with no caps or throttling for the equivalent of ~$85/month. Plus I can WhatsApp the tech support if something goes wrong and they'll drive over and fix it within 30 mins or so. I also have a choice of about 8 different ISPs offering me fiber lines to my door who seem to be in a price war with each other at the moment. I don't have net neutrality though. But surely the problem you're facing is ISP/government monopoly related, not the net neutrality bit? Or do you think it's something else causing the ISP issues there?
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      It's totally ISP/monopoly related, but convincing the government to keep net neutrality regulations is generally viewed as easier than convincing them to break up monopoly telecoms. It was hard enough getting them to block the AT&T/T-mobile merger. The last time a company's been threatened with being broken up was Microsoft in the late 1990s, and they got off with a slap on the wrist (albeit one that made them reluctant to enter new markets, which opened the door for Google & Facebook, and Apple's resurgence, in the early 2000s).
    - Jach 9y ago
      Is that 100 up as well as down? How's the roundtrip latency to get a packet to a US server and back? In any case you have better internet than me for cheaper, and I'm two miles from downtown Bellevue, WA USA not out in the sticks of a flyover state. :( Generally speaking though I'm also not particularly sad that this NN regulation has been repealed, I agree with the assessment that our problems are not from NN, lack of NN is merely one of many unpleasant possibilities with the current system so even if it was fully fixed there's still all the other problems, most of which have no workarounds. Lack of NN has a workaround. The fact that many employees at many businesses require using a VPN to work from home means that most ISPs will have no choice but to accept extra money to give those people unthrottled / uncensored lines that they take for granted right now as part of the base fee.
- __jal 9y ago
  > but you all need to get active and fix your ISP problem and create a free market. I, for one, think this is excellent advice and eagerly await the United Stated dedicating itself to becoming a free market someday.
- cmurf 9y ago
  I think this is true, but it also ignores the fact the U.S. does not have nearly as strong anti-fraud and competition law as in Europe.
JohnTHaller 9y ago
> That's crazy! I'd have cancelled and swapped ISPs after a week. Guess people didn't really care? The vast majority of people in the US only have access to a single broadband ISP. I live in NYC and only have access to one. My other options are slow DSL (under 15Mbps download and under 1Mbps upload), dialup, or using a hotspot that is generally limited to 15GB download (3 Netflix movies) for $90 a month.
jtuente 9y ago
> And This Doesn't Apply To Google Wallet > The thing is, these rules don't even apply in the case of Google Wallet, because Verizon isn't blocking anything. Why'd I bother explaining them, then? So you can see exactly how they don't apply. > Unlike the tethering app that requires root access, Verizon isn't actively preventing the Wallet app from being installed on phones. That's all Google. If Google wanted to make the Wallet app compatible for every Verizon phone in the Play Store such that you could download and install it, it could. There is absolutely nothing to stop that happening - but the app wouldn't actually work. [0] - http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/01/a-brief-history-of-verizon-and-google-wallet-and-why-the-carrier-is-still-allowed-to-block-it/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/01/a-brief-history-of-v...