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First, thanks for writing this post. I find it very hard to understand because you don't say what you think net neturality is. It sounds very different from min
by bo1024 8y ago
First, thanks for writing this post. I find it very hard to understand because you don't say what you think net neturality is. It sounds very different from mine.
My definition is roughly "price you pay only depends on how much data you want and how fast you want it, not what that data is or who it comes from."
So metering the internet is totally in line with net neutrality, as long as you don't discriminate and meter some websites at a higher price than others. In fact, this definition pretty much fits everything you say is good and avoids everything you say is bad. But you seem to say net neutrality does the opposite. Now I don't know the details of this exact bill but can you explain what you think it's doing and how that relates to your post.
- wmf 8y agoThere's a significant group of people adjacent to and overlapping with net neutrality advocates who are opposed to any form of bandwidth metering. https://stopthecap.com/ https://stopthecap.com/
- AnthonyMouse 8y agoThis is largely because metering is a precursor to network neutrality violations. The vast majority of an ISP's costs are independent of usage. The actual incremental bandwidth cost is below $1/TB of transfer and is constantly declining. And if that's what they were charging, probably nobody would care. But if that's what they were charging then they would probably make less doing the charging than it costs to do the accounting. Also, customers hate metering in general and will happily pay $5/month extra to not have to worry about it even when their actual metered bill would only have averaged $1/month extra, which across all customers more than pays for that one guy who pays the extra $5/month and then uses $100 worth. But that isn't why metering is imposed, and those aren't the prices charged. Because the point of metering is to exempt things from it, as a way to favor those things. If you have to pay $10/GB of transfer for Netflix but not for cable TV, advantage cable TV. If it wasn't for that, metering wouldn't be used on wired connections.
- bo1024 8y agoThanks, that's a helpful explanation.
- kevin_b_er 8y agoThe key in your last statement: "as long as you don't discriminate and meter some websites at a higher price than others." But they will and do. Bandwidth caps and overage charges are a key way corporations like Comcast put fear uncertainty and doubt on watching things like Netflix. What if you go over? You can't with their Cable TV offering, but you can with Netflix, a competitor to Comcast. What you will see is the corporations, and their proxies, will scream about the inability to "innovate". What they mean is the inability to find new ways to discriminate and double-dip. They explicitly do NOT want a water bill system, when they can charge you much much more for water that comes out of the bathroom faucet than the garden hose.