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That's an interesting analogy. While a power company doesn't necessarily differentiate based on alarm clocks and toasters, they will bill you differently based

That's an interesting analogy. While a power company doesn't necessarily differentiate based on alarm clocks and toasters, they will bill you differently based on the impact your load has on their delivery system even if the kwh is the same. Given two loads of equivalent kwh most power companies will charge you a different price based on the power-factor of the load.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
> Given two loads of equivalent kwh most power companies will charge you a different price based on the power-factor of the load. Or in other words: They will bill you based on the amount of kWh they are actually transporting for you ... which is precisely what network neutrality is about?
shkkmo 8y ago
The matching analogy to kwh is data usage. The matching analogy to power-factor of the load is bandwidth, not traffic source. Thus charging more for higher bandwidth during high traffic periods is both reasonable and allowed under NN. Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN.
- mlindner 8y ago
  > Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN. ISPs would never charge customers depending on the product because measuring that is practically impossible. They never even wanted to do that nor advocated doing so (this was a major source of misinformation put out by the pro-net neutrality camp). What they do want to do is bill the service, namely very large companies that use tons of data, for example earlier Netflix, for the cost of the infrastructure build out they need to do. They're not interested in small companies that produce small amounts of data, nor the end users. They're interested in recouping infrastructure costs from those that drive it upward, which isn't end customers.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    > ISPs would never charge customers depending on the product because measuring that is practically impossible. They never even wanted to do that nor advocated doing so (this was a major source of misinformation put out by the pro-net neutrality camp) That is exactly what zero rating is. Some data costs more than other data. Also, Netflix the company isn't using the data, Netflix's customers are using the data.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago

> Given two loads of equivalent kwh most power companies will charge you a different price based on the power-factor of the load. Or in other words: They will bill you based on the amount of kWh they are actually transporting for you ... which is precisely what network neutrality is about?

shkkmo 8y ago

The matching analogy to kwh is data usage. The matching analogy to power-factor of the load is bandwidth, not traffic source. Thus charging more for higher bandwidth during high traffic periods is both reasonable and allowed under NN. Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN.

mlindner 8y ago
> Charging more for higher bandwidth or data usage because of the application is not allowed under NN. ISPs would never charge customers depending on the product because measuring that is practically impossible. They never even wanted to do that nor advocated doing so (this was a major source of misinformation put out by the pro-net neutrality camp). What they do want to do is bill the service, namely very large companies that use tons of data, for example earlier Netflix, for the cost of the infrastructure build out they need to do. They're not interested in small companies that produce small amounts of data, nor the end users. They're interested in recouping infrastructure costs from those that drive it upward, which isn't end customers.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  > ISPs would never charge customers depending on the product because measuring that is practically impossible. They never even wanted to do that nor advocated doing so (this was a major source of misinformation put out by the pro-net neutrality camp) That is exactly what zero rating is. Some data costs more than other data. Also, Netflix the company isn't using the data, Netflix's customers are using the data.