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If an ISP is the only game in town, and they zero rate their streaming service but put a cap on Netflix it is anti competitive. The problem with your roads ana
by bb88 8y ago
If an ISP is the only game in town, and they zero rate their streaming service but put a cap on Netflix it is anti competitive.
The problem with your roads analogy is that there's more than one road to take. Not all roads are tolled.
And the cure isn't getting rid of data caps, the cure is increasing competition on a local level.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThe physical RF spectrum is the local road. There are no more roads to take. No amount of economic policy supporting competition is going to bend the laws of physics, unless you're willing to shovel herculean amounts of resources into microcells (even smaller than 5G cell sites) to reduce contention (essentially replacing fiber and wifi).
- dzhiurgis 8y agoNational network + eSIM. Retailers compete on providing better internwtional traffic (pretty much as it is now with broadband in many countries).
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYour suggested solution does not address the local cell network contention issue zero rating attempts to mitigate.
- Firadeoclus 8y agoHow does zero rating "attempt to mitigate" local contention issues? Zero rating does not reduce local network traffic.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoForcing lower bandwidth versions of video and audio streams reduces local spectrum use. Do I really need anything above 480p on my iPhone? Probably not, so the carrier incentivizes me with zero rating.
- gsich 8y agoAnd how do you know there is congestion? The ISP won't tell you.
- Retric 8y agoCell companies can more or less directly translate $ = bandwidth with no meaningful limit. You have effectively unlimited RF bandwidth assuming ever smaller cell locations. Bluetooth is the equivalent of a new cell in under every 10 meters. And that’s with a tiny slice of the RF spectrum.
- bb88 8y ago> The physical RF spectrum is the local road. But how does that affect the anticompetive argument? I don't think it does. It still holds if you're the only game in town.