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We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streami

We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited Plus" which will increase your soft cap to 40GB a month and your video streaming quality to 1080p. It'll also bundle in Netflix's basic level and give you 6 months of Apple+ for "free".

0xy 3y ago
How is that remotely the same thing? The infographic above and others clearly claim that ISPs will be blocking services then requiring you to pay for them separately. Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, and for example has been regular practice all across Europe (which has "net neutrality"). Isn't it just shifting the goal posts after the original claims of NN campaigners were discredited and never materialized in any remote fashion after NN was abolished? Let us not forget that net neutrality campaigning was primarily pushed by Netflix, who refused to pay Verizon for infrastructure upgrades as per industry standard going back decades. The standard is that the disproportionate data user pays to upgrade the ports, equipment and/or line infrastructure. This is absolutely fair. A parallel is electricity capacity for homes and businesses, if you require more electricity than the local street infrastructure can provide you pay the power company to upgrade it to accommodate you. Only fair, the heavy users pay. The movement carried water for deadbeat corpos. Netflix wanted to saturate internet links and balked at paying Verizon for new switches and pipes -- so they got their subscribers to complain.
- UnlockedSecrets 3y ago
  > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, and for example has been regular practice all across Europe (which has "net neutrality"). UPS doesn't care if it is a Nike shirt or a Gucci shirt in a box, They just deliver the box where it is meant to go. Why should it be any different for an ISP?
  - thehappypm 3y ago
    UPS certainly does care, a Gucci shirt is going to have more insurance, maybe require a signature.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      Which is a specialty service offering set up and agreed upon by buyer and seller of the service using the dumb pipe. So, opt-in versus required. Net neutrality certainly allows special pipes and protocols to be set up where desired, if you desire to stretch the analogy beyond its intent.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - viraptor 3y ago
      UPS doesn't care. The sender/receiver care and may want to use the insurance option. But UPS knows the value / type of passage, not the contents.
      - thehappypm 3y ago
        UPS literally asks you what it is! They ask if its a weapon, has lithium batteries, etc. This analogy is bad.
        InitialLastName 3y ago
        UPS cares if you are shipping something that is a physical or legal hazard for them, because they are responsible for the safety of their employees, facilities, and the other packages. If you can make a reasonable argument that one kind of data or another creates a meaningful hazard for the pipe that carries it, please do.
        thehappypm 3y ago
        I just think this analogy sounds like someone who has never actually shipped something. There are many rules for shipping—-it is silly to say that UPS just takes the box and ships it without a care. UPS cares if the content is fragile, illegal, dangerous to ship, overweight, alive, high value, perishable, tobacco, magnetic.. the list goes on and on.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, Excluding some services from bandwidth cap is perhaps slightly less extreme than throttling specific services, which is itself less extreme than blocking those services outright. All are violations of net neutrality. The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it. They do that. If your plan has, say, a 1 TB cap with no services that are exempt from the data cap you can pick any 1 TB from any mix of services you want without hitting your cap. If your plan has 1 TB cap but say Netflix is exempt from the cap you can still pick the exact same 1 TB from the exact same mix of services without hitting your cap.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      A 1TB cap really hides the issue. Let's reflect on the impact with a more restrictive cap, say, 10GB. If my ISP gives me 10GB from any service that isn't big_video_streamer but unlimited data from big_video_streamer it's immediately obvious that while they're not 'deciding' how I use their connectivity they're definitely 'coercing' me into going with big_video_streamer if I want to stream videos, which isn't their job as - ideally - a neutral conduit for traffic.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      >but say Netflix is exempt from the cap That's obviously and blatantly them putting their thumb on the scale. It'd be like if Burger King were to pay car manufacturers to make it so that the second half of the gas tank only works for driving to Burger King drive-throughs. That's not how cars should work and ISPs shouldn't pull the same kind of shit.
      - tzs 3y ago
        A closer analogy would be that its like if you go through a Burger King drive-through they also give you gas to bring your tank back up to what it was when you started on your trip to Burger King. You said that "The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it". My point is that if you have paid for a fixed amount of data per month, and you are going to use under that amount when you decide entirely on your own how to use it, then whether or not the ISP also gives you some free data with usage restrictions doesn't change that. If your ISP does not have any exemptions and then adds some and you miss the announcement you would never even notice, except maybe if you track your usage throughout the month to make sure you aren't going to go over and you notice they are reporting lower usage than you expect. Yes, it is putting a thumb on the scale, but I don't see how this is really different than any of the other ways companies often give free access to third party products to try to make the company more attractive to customers. That may be anticompetitive, but if so it should be dealt with under antitrust. Network neutrality should just cover things that restrict what you can do with the network.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality Erm... Exempting a service's traffic from a restriction is the literal textbook definition of 'against net neutrality' Weird misinformation here. Just to clarify for the benefit of the audience: Net Neutrality is when a carrier treats all data packets as equal, without regard to origin, destination, or provider. I believe 'fair' QoS is exempted (you're allowed to prioritise low-latency traffic such as VOIP) but only if you throw all VOIP packets into the same 'high priority' queue regardless of software, provider, destination, etc. If you charge on a per-byte basis but exempt some traffic from those charges, you're absolutely violating net neutrality. If you have a data cap but exempt some traffic from that cap, you're absolutely violating net neutrality.
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  Netflix pays their upstream ISP to saturate the link they pay for. Why should Verizon, Comcast and others demand payment from Netflix? They are connecting customers to the internet, and should be peered to IXs that can feed what their customers need. Netflix even offers to put caches on the ISPs network to lighten the burden on their IX uplink. It will get untenable if every random ISP charges each content provider.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Netflix shouldn't pay their ISP and some other ISP to deliver traffic. That's unreasonable. But if Netflix connects directly to Verizon, Comcast, etc, it's not inheriently unreasonable for Netflix to pay for that connection. Verizon, Comcast and many other telcos and cablecos are national transit ISPs as well as residential ISPs, and paying a transit ISP to get packets to the ISP's customers (and peers) is totally normal.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      This is conflating two different things. If Netflix connects to Comcast in Los Angeles and wants to deliver traffic to Comcast customers in New York, they're using Comcast as a transit network. If Netflix connects to Comcast in Los Angeles and wants to deliver traffic to Comcast customers in Los Angeles, they're not, and getting the traffic between their house and the IX in Los Angeles is what Comcast is charging their own customers for.
      - toast0 3y ago
        What other transit ISP gives you a discount because the traffic is local? Do you or your customer get a discount when you're both only connected with a transit ISP? No, both parties pay for connection to the transit ISP (even if it's the same). Traditional wired telephone networks are almost always caller pays (although cellphones in the US are caller pays toll, callee pays for wireless segment), but IP networking has always been both end points pay. It's not some new thing Comcast (or whoever) invented in 2006 or whenever. If you want to connect to customers behind ISP A, you typically need to pay an ISP that's connected to ISP A, or pay ISP A, or qualify for peering with ISP A. If you and ISP A are both paying ISP B for that data, then there's motivation for you an ISP A to peer; if not, ISP A says we're happy to take your traffic through peering with these ISPs or you can pay us for a direct connection. Maybe a bit less cost for 'paid peering' vs a full transit connection. In the old days of dial-up, all you needed to start an ISP was two T1s, one for your uplink, one for your modem pool. Once you got a little bigger, you'd look to see what content networks you could peer with to reduce your transit budget. After the move to broadband which has a bias towards only two, maybe three companies running wires to homes, and the FCCs abandonment of mandatory line sharing from the telecom act of 1996, we run into the situation where there's a handful of residential ISPs nationwide, and they almost all run transit networks, and there's no longer an economic incentive for them to peer with content networks --- they can justify peering with most other transit ISPs, so there's no cost savings from peering; and they have no competitive need to offer better service. The solution isn't mandating 'neutral treatment', it's mandating competitive local access markets via mandatory line sharing[1], and splitting up the national transit business from the last-mile business, ala 1984 AT&T. [1] But with tighter regulations, so that incumbents can't cross-subsidize retail prices to be lower than wholesale pricing as was common in the early 2000s before mandatory line sharing ended; building out new wiring where line sharing was infeasible was another common loophole. It'd be way more competitive if the wiring providers weren't permitted to offer retail services, but that might be a bit too meddlesome.
- Angostura 3y ago
  > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, It certainly sounds exactly as if it is. It is preferring one service's data over another.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality What, in your perspective, is the difference between "I'll charge you more for A than for B" and "I'll charge you less for B than A"? Or a difference between "Charging more for a 'website' such as Yahoo" vs "Charging less for a 'service' such as Netflix"? ----- Further, all the utility analogies you provide feel inapplicable to the point of being disingenuous. The "Heavy users pay" is "I need a bigger pipe" and is the segregation of internet service tiers by bandwidth ($10 for 100mbps, $100 for 1gps, or whatever). The "I will then, on top of that, charge you extra for arbitrary content that I don't produce, and you will have no choice as I have an effective government approved monopoly", has limited parallel that I'm aware of. A person using more electricity will pay more. A person needing more bandwidth will pay more. Those are valid analogies in my mind. Other shenanigans such as IPSs blocking certain websites, injecting ads or weird stuff into your pages, asking more money for certain websites (or less money for other, which is equivalent), imposing their own DNS, spying on you, etc, are fairly unique to this industry I think.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >The "I will then, on top of that, charge you extra for arbitrary content that I don't produce, and you will have no choice as I have an effective government approved monopoly", has limited parallel that I'm aware of. It has limited parallel because it's nuts. It'd be like BMW/Toyota/whoever charging you an extra monthly fee if you want to drive your car to work and otherwise the car just refuses to go there. For a slightly closer analogy, the car would be leased rather than owned, but it's an extra clause in addition to the mileage limit.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > The infographic above and others clearly claim that ISPs will be blocking services then requiring you to pay for them separately. Exempting your own and partner services from a data cap that effectively limits use of other services is functionally the same thing, but with only one package available that is mandatory for purchase. > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, IIRC, it would have on generally violated the most recent set of US net neutrality regulations and violates the broad principles articulated for net neutrality, whether or not it violates specific regulatory franeworks existing in Europe.
  - rsingel 3y ago
    This is correct and zero rating is now banned in the EU as a form of economic discrimination. It's also largely outlawed in Canada, the EU, and California.
- rsingel 3y ago
  Zero rating has been banned in the EU because two court rulings found that zero rating's economic discrimination was just as bad as technical discrimination. You can't find or subscribe to a zero rating plan in the EU any more. Except in Portugal where the equivalent of the FCC has so little power the telecoms do what they want without any fear.
2devnull 3y ago
Didn’t arbitrary data caps start back in the day when torrenting was a big problem? The ISPs started cutting people off because only piracy could explain such heavy usage. That was in the early 00’s iirc, prior to the net neutrality debate.
- cptskippy 3y ago
  That was the guise to justify the caps but Comcast was setting caps around the data usage of someone streaming Netflix. The overage charges were ridiculous as well, if you used 2x your data cap it would cost you 100x your regular bill. I had some Nest cameras in addition to Streaming and ended up taking them down because I kept going over.
  - josephg 3y ago
    In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat price for internet sounds similar to having flat price for electricity or water - where your grandma (who turns off all the light switches whenever she leaves a room) would pay the same for electricity as a frat house mining bitcoin in the cupboard. Sure, customers pay for speed. But residential internet is overprovisioned based on 'reasonable' usage patterns. Thats a good thing - internet would be much more expensive, or forced to be much slower otherwise.
    - cptskippy 3y ago
      The rub is that ISPs, at least in the US, do not charge a fair rate for data and under provision the service because it can compete with their other service offerings. Consumption is a huge problem until you subscribe to their triple play packages, all IP based, then it magically goes away.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
snickerbockers 3y ago
Is this worse than the pre-NN system where they would just throttle everything after 25GB/month with no exceptions?
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  It's worse for competition, yeah. If I want to start a music streaming service, I'm evaluated not on the quality of my service but the fact that I don't have a deal in place with these carriers. If it's technically feasible not to limit the bandwidth for some services, it's technically feasible to at least reduce the throttling for everyone.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  1) Yes. 2) We're not in the NN system as it was repealed so the implicit idea in your post that the current system is from NN is false. 3) We wouldn't need NN though if we actually had anti-trust enforcement; zero-rating is a monopolistic practice. It's akin to having preferential treatment on rail lines so consumers can't get other's goods as easily.
  - snickerbockers 3y ago
    >1) Yes. well i guess everybody is entitled to their own opinion but i personally prefer the one that lets me use more data even though ideally i would be able to use more data for any online service and not just some of them. >We're not in the NN system as it was repealed so the implicit idea in your post that the current system is from NN is false. I definitely did not say the "current system" is from NN, and neither did the OP i was replying to. "pre-NN" system is having a datacap where any additional bandwidth usage beyond that datacap is throttled or outright denied. "current system" is having a datacap but certain services are not counted towards that datacap, and all other services are throttled or outright denied once the datacap is exceeded. >We wouldn't need NN though if we actually had anti-trust enforcement; zero-rating is a monopolistic practice. It's akin to having preferential treatment on rail lines so consumers can't get other's goods as easily. rail lines are not equivalent to ISP zero-rating. Datacaps are a policy adopted by ISPs of treating bandwidth as a consumable resource when it is in fact not a consumable resource. Datacaps are idiotic and arbitrary[1] but they predate the FCC's decision to repeal net neutrality by at least half a decade. Offering an exception to a datacap for a given service would be akin to the train being able to carry additional cargo beyond its capacity with no increased fuel consumption or inertia but only for a specific class of cargo. [1] if ISPs actually cared about their stated goal of reducing network congestion then they would weight traffic based on overall network congestion so that consumers are incentivized to download more data during non-peak hours but i digress.
brightball 3y ago
Mobile providers are a different beast because there’s a limit on radio spectrum. Throttling is necessary.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  But throttling only the competition is not.
- _fat_santa 3y ago
  Eh, I'd argue it's still a business decision. It's still possible to find "true unlimited" data plans with some companies. I've got one with Cricket Wireless.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Those still throttle after a soft cap.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    They do mess with your data connection though[0]. For instance, they automatically downgrade video and appear to compress images "on your behalf"[0] regardless of what plan you're on. I'm somewhat dubious on the idea that their Cricket More plan is actually unlimited, but I'm pressed for time and can't read their more dense terms of service around the plan, but I'm assuming they have a congestion clause buried in there, despite what the linked FAQ claims [0]: https://www.cricketwireless.com/legal-info/mobile-broadband-information.html https://www.cricketwireless.com/legal-info/mobile-broadband-...
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      I know how they do that with video, but how do they extra compress images when most traffic is https? It works with video because all video sites automatically adjust quality based on throughput so they just figure out when you’re streaming video and then throttle. But most websites don’t automatically change image quality based on throughput and pages load more quickly and are harder to shape…
vel0city 3y ago
In a more potent example, AT&T did a similar thing with streaming TV service, but they only exempted their own TV service. Using Hulu? Data cap. Fubo? Data cap. AT&T TV Now? Highest quality, no cap.
- rsingel 3y ago
  Yup, and that ended when California's net neutrality law went into effect. Verizon still does it, except for in California.
- frumper 3y ago
  I just signed up for AT&T fiber in California and they've completely removed data caps for it.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I've got AT&T fiber in Texas and yes there are also no caps. I was speaking of their mobile service. I'm not sure if they still do this zero rating or not now that they no longer own the TV service.
- giantg2 3y ago
  And that's no "cap".
throwaway092623 3y ago
This doesn't have anything to do with the repeal of the FCC's net neutrality. You can see from the appeals court case[1], page 16 and 17, that mobile networks were exempt from the anti-discrimination rules: > The anti-discrimination rule applied only to fixed broadband. Id. According to the Commission, mobile broadband warranted different treatment because, among other things, “the mobile ecosystem is experiencing very rapid innovation and change,” I have to agree with the other posts. The disaster scenarios we were told would happen didn't happen. Now people are pointing to things completely unconnected to the repeal of net neutrality as evidence that it caused problems. I uncritically trusted the claims of activists when the debate first started, but in the years since I've begun to feel foolish for doing so. It seems clear a lot of them are peddling misinformation. This whole thing has lead me to question some of the extreme doomsday scenarios people are pushing in other areas as well. [1] https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3F95E49183E6F8AF85257FD200505A3A/$file/15-1063-1619173.pdf https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3F95E491...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vxNsr 3y ago
My understanding of the previous NN rules was the exempted mobile anyway bec they called it necessary network management to ensure a smooth experience for everyone. So unless they also change that (which is unlikely) these rules won’t really fix or change anything, except possibly introduce regulations that will either a) push some polical agenda, or b) create a higher regulatory burden for small players and prevent new entrants.
- mlindner 3y ago
  There's no "previous NN rules". It's the same rules it's always been. The Obama era rules were an attempt to change the status quo.
- rsingel 3y ago
  The 2015 federal protections and the California law apply both to fixed and mobile.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
>We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Misinformation. Under all previously proposed NN rules, throttling is always allowed for network congestion and mobile actually does have a legitimate network congestion issue. I personally would rather T-Mobile make a promise about the speeds for the first 25GB rather than say "UNLIMITED*" and make that asterisk any time they feel like it. Likewise, they could always make allow-lists in throttling, they just couldn't make block-lists. Nothing in your example would be better under NN rules as actually defined.
- malfist 3y ago
  There's a difference between throttling with the network is at capacity, and throttling youtube at 480p because you offer a different service. Or just simply throttling video. Data isn't being treated as just data.
- seizethegdgap 3y ago
  You didn't address anything after the first two sentences. > Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited Plus" which will increase your soft cap to 40GB a month and your video streaming quality to 1080p. It'll also bundle in Netflix's basic level and give you 6 months of Apple+ for "free". What they are saying is, even in times of low/no congestion, select services are not being counted against a consumer's data cap.
billy99k 3y ago
I don't really see a problem with this. Bandwidth is finite and if you have a little more money, you should be able to pay for it. The alternative is that everyone has data caps
- rlpb 3y ago
  One problem is that it's anti-competitive in the sense that a new video streaming service cannot compete because an ISP will charge extra to use them but not for (eg.) Netflix. > Bandwidth is finite and if you have a little more money, you should be able to pay for it. That's fine, but there's a difference between paying for bandwidth and having different rates for bandwidth depending on the destination.
YeBanKo 3y ago
Playing devil’s advocate here. But why is it so controversial that not all the traffic is the same. It is much easier for an ISP to serve Spotify very efficiently if they patterns, data centers and even have some private links in place with Spotify. The issue I have with it is they should not be calling it unlimited.
askiiart 3y ago
How do carriers supposedly cap streaming quality? As long as the data is encrypted, isn't it impossible for the carrier to tell what quality a video is? I'm limited to standard definition streaming, yet can stream 1080p just fine on mobile data.

0xy 3y ago

How is that remotely the same thing? The infographic above and others clearly claim that ISPs will be blocking services then requiring you to pay for them separately. Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, and for example has been regular practice all across Europe (which has "net neutrality"). Isn't it just shifting the goal posts after the original claims of NN campaigners were discredited and never materialized in any remote fashion after NN was abolished? Let us not forget that net neutrality campaigning was primarily pushed by Netflix, who refused to pay Verizon for infrastructure upgrades as per industry standard going back decades. The standard is that the disproportionate data user pays to upgrade the ports, equipment and/or line infrastructure. This is absolutely fair. A parallel is electricity capacity for homes and businesses, if you require more electricity than the local street infrastructure can provide you pay the power company to upgrade it to accommodate you. Only fair, the heavy users pay. The movement carried water for deadbeat corpos. Netflix wanted to saturate internet links and balked at paying Verizon for new switches and pipes -- so they got their subscribers to complain.

UnlockedSecrets 3y ago
> Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, and for example has been regular practice all across Europe (which has "net neutrality"). UPS doesn't care if it is a Nike shirt or a Gucci shirt in a box, They just deliver the box where it is meant to go. Why should it be any different for an ISP?
- thehappypm 3y ago
  UPS certainly does care, a Gucci shirt is going to have more insurance, maybe require a signature.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Which is a specialty service offering set up and agreed upon by buyer and seller of the service using the dumb pipe. So, opt-in versus required. Net neutrality certainly allows special pipes and protocols to be set up where desired, if you desire to stretch the analogy beyond its intent.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - viraptor 3y ago
    UPS doesn't care. The sender/receiver care and may want to use the insurance option. But UPS knows the value / type of passage, not the contents.
    - thehappypm 3y ago
      UPS literally asks you what it is! They ask if its a weapon, has lithium batteries, etc. This analogy is bad.
      - InitialLastName 3y ago
        UPS cares if you are shipping something that is a physical or legal hazard for them, because they are responsible for the safety of their employees, facilities, and the other packages. If you can make a reasonable argument that one kind of data or another creates a meaningful hazard for the pipe that carries it, please do.
        thehappypm 3y ago
        I just think this analogy sounds like someone who has never actually shipped something. There are many rules for shipping—-it is silly to say that UPS just takes the box and ships it without a care. UPS cares if the content is fragile, illegal, dangerous to ship, overweight, alive, high value, perishable, tobacco, magnetic.. the list goes on and on.
thfuran 3y ago
>Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, Excluding some services from bandwidth cap is perhaps slightly less extreme than throttling specific services, which is itself less extreme than blocking those services outright. All are violations of net neutrality. The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it.
- tzs 3y ago
  > The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it. They do that. If your plan has, say, a 1 TB cap with no services that are exempt from the data cap you can pick any 1 TB from any mix of services you want without hitting your cap. If your plan has 1 TB cap but say Netflix is exempt from the cap you can still pick the exact same 1 TB from the exact same mix of services without hitting your cap.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    A 1TB cap really hides the issue. Let's reflect on the impact with a more restrictive cap, say, 10GB. If my ISP gives me 10GB from any service that isn't big_video_streamer but unlimited data from big_video_streamer it's immediately obvious that while they're not 'deciding' how I use their connectivity they're definitely 'coercing' me into going with big_video_streamer if I want to stream videos, which isn't their job as - ideally - a neutral conduit for traffic.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >but say Netflix is exempt from the cap That's obviously and blatantly them putting their thumb on the scale. It'd be like if Burger King were to pay car manufacturers to make it so that the second half of the gas tank only works for driving to Burger King drive-throughs. That's not how cars should work and ISPs shouldn't pull the same kind of shit.
    - tzs 3y ago
      A closer analogy would be that its like if you go through a Burger King drive-through they also give you gas to bring your tank back up to what it was when you started on your trip to Burger King. You said that "The job of the ISP is to provide network connectivity, not decide how I use it". My point is that if you have paid for a fixed amount of data per month, and you are going to use under that amount when you decide entirely on your own how to use it, then whether or not the ISP also gives you some free data with usage restrictions doesn't change that. If your ISP does not have any exemptions and then adds some and you miss the announcement you would never even notice, except maybe if you track your usage throughout the month to make sure you aren't going to go over and you notice they are reporting lower usage than you expect. Yes, it is putting a thumb on the scale, but I don't see how this is really different than any of the other ways companies often give free access to third party products to try to make the company more attractive to customers. That may be anticompetitive, but if so it should be dealt with under antitrust. Network neutrality should just cover things that restrict what you can do with the network.
15457345234 3y ago
> Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality Erm... Exempting a service's traffic from a restriction is the literal textbook definition of 'against net neutrality' Weird misinformation here. Just to clarify for the benefit of the audience: Net Neutrality is when a carrier treats all data packets as equal, without regard to origin, destination, or provider. I believe 'fair' QoS is exempted (you're allowed to prioritise low-latency traffic such as VOIP) but only if you throw all VOIP packets into the same 'high priority' queue regardless of software, provider, destination, etc. If you charge on a per-byte basis but exempt some traffic from those charges, you're absolutely violating net neutrality. If you have a data cap but exempt some traffic from that cap, you're absolutely violating net neutrality.
jasonjayr 3y ago
Netflix pays their upstream ISP to saturate the link they pay for. Why should Verizon, Comcast and others demand payment from Netflix? They are connecting customers to the internet, and should be peered to IXs that can feed what their customers need. Netflix even offers to put caches on the ISPs network to lighten the burden on their IX uplink. It will get untenable if every random ISP charges each content provider.
- toast0 3y ago
  Netflix shouldn't pay their ISP and some other ISP to deliver traffic. That's unreasonable. But if Netflix connects directly to Verizon, Comcast, etc, it's not inheriently unreasonable for Netflix to pay for that connection. Verizon, Comcast and many other telcos and cablecos are national transit ISPs as well as residential ISPs, and paying a transit ISP to get packets to the ISP's customers (and peers) is totally normal.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    This is conflating two different things. If Netflix connects to Comcast in Los Angeles and wants to deliver traffic to Comcast customers in New York, they're using Comcast as a transit network. If Netflix connects to Comcast in Los Angeles and wants to deliver traffic to Comcast customers in Los Angeles, they're not, and getting the traffic between their house and the IX in Los Angeles is what Comcast is charging their own customers for.
    - toast0 3y ago
      What other transit ISP gives you a discount because the traffic is local? Do you or your customer get a discount when you're both only connected with a transit ISP? No, both parties pay for connection to the transit ISP (even if it's the same). Traditional wired telephone networks are almost always caller pays (although cellphones in the US are caller pays toll, callee pays for wireless segment), but IP networking has always been both end points pay. It's not some new thing Comcast (or whoever) invented in 2006 or whenever. If you want to connect to customers behind ISP A, you typically need to pay an ISP that's connected to ISP A, or pay ISP A, or qualify for peering with ISP A. If you and ISP A are both paying ISP B for that data, then there's motivation for you an ISP A to peer; if not, ISP A says we're happy to take your traffic through peering with these ISPs or you can pay us for a direct connection. Maybe a bit less cost for 'paid peering' vs a full transit connection. In the old days of dial-up, all you needed to start an ISP was two T1s, one for your uplink, one for your modem pool. Once you got a little bigger, you'd look to see what content networks you could peer with to reduce your transit budget. After the move to broadband which has a bias towards only two, maybe three companies running wires to homes, and the FCCs abandonment of mandatory line sharing from the telecom act of 1996, we run into the situation where there's a handful of residential ISPs nationwide, and they almost all run transit networks, and there's no longer an economic incentive for them to peer with content networks --- they can justify peering with most other transit ISPs, so there's no cost savings from peering; and they have no competitive need to offer better service. The solution isn't mandating 'neutral treatment', it's mandating competitive local access markets via mandatory line sharing[1], and splitting up the national transit business from the last-mile business, ala 1984 AT&T. [1] But with tighter regulations, so that incumbents can't cross-subsidize retail prices to be lower than wholesale pricing as was common in the early 2000s before mandatory line sharing ended; building out new wiring where line sharing was infeasible was another common loophole. It'd be way more competitive if the wiring providers weren't permitted to offer retail services, but that might be a bit too meddlesome.
Angostura 3y ago
> Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, It certainly sounds exactly as if it is. It is preferring one service's data over another.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
> Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality What, in your perspective, is the difference between "I'll charge you more for A than for B" and "I'll charge you less for B than A"? Or a difference between "Charging more for a 'website' such as Yahoo" vs "Charging less for a 'service' such as Netflix"? ----- Further, all the utility analogies you provide feel inapplicable to the point of being disingenuous. The "Heavy users pay" is "I need a bigger pipe" and is the segregation of internet service tiers by bandwidth ($10 for 100mbps, $100 for 1gps, or whatever). The "I will then, on top of that, charge you extra for arbitrary content that I don't produce, and you will have no choice as I have an effective government approved monopoly", has limited parallel that I'm aware of. A person using more electricity will pay more. A person needing more bandwidth will pay more. Those are valid analogies in my mind. Other shenanigans such as IPSs blocking certain websites, injecting ads or weird stuff into your pages, asking more money for certain websites (or less money for other, which is equivalent), imposing their own DNS, spying on you, etc, are fairly unique to this industry I think.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >The "I will then, on top of that, charge you extra for arbitrary content that I don't produce, and you will have no choice as I have an effective government approved monopoly", has limited parallel that I'm aware of. It has limited parallel because it's nuts. It'd be like BMW/Toyota/whoever charging you an extra monthly fee if you want to drive your car to work and otherwise the car just refuses to go there. For a slightly closer analogy, the car would be leased rather than owned, but it's an extra clause in addition to the mileage limit.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> The infographic above and others clearly claim that ISPs will be blocking services then requiring you to pay for them separately. Exempting your own and partner services from a data cap that effectively limits use of other services is functionally the same thing, but with only one package available that is mandatory for purchase. > Exempting services from data caps is not against net neutrality, IIRC, it would have on generally violated the most recent set of US net neutrality regulations and violates the broad principles articulated for net neutrality, whether or not it violates specific regulatory franeworks existing in Europe.
- rsingel 3y ago
  This is correct and zero rating is now banned in the EU as a form of economic discrimination. It's also largely outlawed in Canada, the EU, and California.
rsingel 3y ago
Zero rating has been banned in the EU because two court rulings found that zero rating's economic discrimination was just as bad as technical discrimination. You can't find or subscribe to a zero rating plan in the EU any more. Except in Portugal where the equivalent of the FCC has so little power the telecoms do what they want without any fear.

2devnull 3y ago

Didn’t arbitrary data caps start back in the day when torrenting was a big problem? The ISPs started cutting people off because only piracy could explain such heavy usage. That was in the early 00’s iirc, prior to the net neutrality debate.

cptskippy 3y ago
That was the guise to justify the caps but Comcast was setting caps around the data usage of someone streaming Netflix. The overage charges were ridiculous as well, if you used 2x your data cap it would cost you 100x your regular bill. I had some Nest cameras in addition to Streaming and ended up taking them down because I kept going over.
- josephg 3y ago
  In Australia my first broadband internet connection worked like that - though when you went over, your bandwidth was heavily throttled until the end of the month unless you upgraded your plan for the month. As inconvenient as it is, honestly I think data caps are fair pricing. The load difference between a light internet user and a heavy user is orders of magnitude of capacity for the ISP to deal with. Having a flat price for internet sounds similar to having flat price for electricity or water - where your grandma (who turns off all the light switches whenever she leaves a room) would pay the same for electricity as a frat house mining bitcoin in the cupboard. Sure, customers pay for speed. But residential internet is overprovisioned based on 'reasonable' usage patterns. Thats a good thing - internet would be much more expensive, or forced to be much slower otherwise.
  - cptskippy 3y ago
    The rub is that ISPs, at least in the US, do not charge a fair rate for data and under provision the service because it can compete with their other service offerings. Consumption is a huge problem until you subscribe to their triple play packages, all IP based, then it magically goes away.
  - vlovich123 3y ago

snickerbockers 3y ago

Is this worse than the pre-NN system where they would just throttle everything after 25GB/month with no exceptions?

NoraCodes 3y ago
It's worse for competition, yeah. If I want to start a music streaming service, I'm evaluated not on the quality of my service but the fact that I don't have a deal in place with these carriers. If it's technically feasible not to limit the bandwidth for some services, it's technically feasible to at least reduce the throttling for everyone.
lesuorac 3y ago
1) Yes. 2) We're not in the NN system as it was repealed so the implicit idea in your post that the current system is from NN is false. 3) We wouldn't need NN though if we actually had anti-trust enforcement; zero-rating is a monopolistic practice. It's akin to having preferential treatment on rail lines so consumers can't get other's goods as easily.
- snickerbockers 3y ago
  >1) Yes. well i guess everybody is entitled to their own opinion but i personally prefer the one that lets me use more data even though ideally i would be able to use more data for any online service and not just some of them. >We're not in the NN system as it was repealed so the implicit idea in your post that the current system is from NN is false. I definitely did not say the "current system" is from NN, and neither did the OP i was replying to. "pre-NN" system is having a datacap where any additional bandwidth usage beyond that datacap is throttled or outright denied. "current system" is having a datacap but certain services are not counted towards that datacap, and all other services are throttled or outright denied once the datacap is exceeded. >We wouldn't need NN though if we actually had anti-trust enforcement; zero-rating is a monopolistic practice. It's akin to having preferential treatment on rail lines so consumers can't get other's goods as easily. rail lines are not equivalent to ISP zero-rating. Datacaps are a policy adopted by ISPs of treating bandwidth as a consumable resource when it is in fact not a consumable resource. Datacaps are idiotic and arbitrary[1] but they predate the FCC's decision to repeal net neutrality by at least half a decade. Offering an exception to a datacap for a given service would be akin to the train being able to carry additional cargo beyond its capacity with no increased fuel consumption or inertia but only for a specific class of cargo. [1] if ISPs actually cared about their stated goal of reducing network congestion then they would weight traffic based on overall network congestion so that consumers are incentivized to download more data during non-peak hours but i digress.

brightball 3y ago

Mobile providers are a different beast because there’s a limit on radio spectrum. Throttling is necessary.

HumblyTossed 3y ago
But throttling only the competition is not.
_fat_santa 3y ago
Eh, I'd argue it's still a business decision. It's still possible to find "true unlimited" data plans with some companies. I've got one with Cricket Wireless.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Those still throttle after a soft cap.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  They do mess with your data connection though[0]. For instance, they automatically downgrade video and appear to compress images "on your behalf"[0] regardless of what plan you're on. I'm somewhat dubious on the idea that their Cricket More plan is actually unlimited, but I'm pressed for time and can't read their more dense terms of service around the plan, but I'm assuming they have a congestion clause buried in there, despite what the linked FAQ claims [0]: https://www.cricketwireless.com/legal-info/mobile-broadband-information.html https://www.cricketwireless.com/legal-info/mobile-broadband-...
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    I know how they do that with video, but how do they extra compress images when most traffic is https? It works with video because all video sites automatically adjust quality based on throughput so they just figure out when you’re streaming video and then throttle. But most websites don’t automatically change image quality based on throughput and pages load more quickly and are harder to shape…

vel0city 3y ago

In a more potent example, AT&T did a similar thing with streaming TV service, but they only exempted their own TV service. Using Hulu? Data cap. Fubo? Data cap. AT&T TV Now? Highest quality, no cap.

rsingel 3y ago
Yup, and that ended when California's net neutrality law went into effect. Verizon still does it, except for in California.
frumper 3y ago
I just signed up for AT&T fiber in California and they've completely removed data caps for it.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I've got AT&T fiber in Texas and yes there are also no caps. I was speaking of their mobile service. I'm not sure if they still do this zero rating or not now that they no longer own the TV service.
giantg2 3y ago
And that's no "cap".

throwaway092623 3y ago

This doesn't have anything to do with the repeal of the FCC's net neutrality. You can see from the appeals court case[1], page 16 and 17, that mobile networks were exempt from the anti-discrimination rules: > The anti-discrimination rule applied only to fixed broadband. Id. According to the Commission, mobile broadband warranted different treatment because, among other things, “the mobile ecosystem is experiencing very rapid innovation and change,” I have to agree with the other posts. The disaster scenarios we were told would happen didn't happen. Now people are pointing to things completely unconnected to the repeal of net neutrality as evidence that it caused problems. I uncritically trusted the claims of activists when the debate first started, but in the years since I've begun to feel foolish for doing so. It seems clear a lot of them are peddling misinformation. This whole thing has lead me to question some of the extreme doomsday scenarios people are pushing in other areas as well. [1] https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3F95E49183E6F8AF85257FD200505A3A/$file/15-1063-1619173.pdf https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3F95E491...

deleted 3y ago

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vxNsr 3y ago

My understanding of the previous NN rules was the exempted mobile anyway bec they called it necessary network management to ensure a smooth experience for everyone. So unless they also change that (which is unlikely) these rules won’t really fix or change anything, except possibly introduce regulations that will either a) push some polical agenda, or b) create a higher regulatory burden for small players and prevent new entrants.

mlindner 3y ago
There's no "previous NN rules". It's the same rules it's always been. The Obama era rules were an attempt to change the status quo.
rsingel 3y ago
The 2015 federal protections and the California law apply both to fixed and mobile.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

>We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Misinformation. Under all previously proposed NN rules, throttling is always allowed for network congestion and mobile actually does have a legitimate network congestion issue. I personally would rather T-Mobile make a promise about the speeds for the first 25GB rather than say "UNLIMITED*" and make that asterisk any time they feel like it. Likewise, they could always make allow-lists in throttling, they just couldn't make block-lists. Nothing in your example would be better under NN rules as actually defined.

malfist 3y ago
There's a difference between throttling with the network is at capacity, and throttling youtube at 480p because you offer a different service. Or just simply throttling video. Data isn't being treated as just data.
seizethegdgap 3y ago
You didn't address anything after the first two sentences. > Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited Plus" which will increase your soft cap to 40GB a month and your video streaming quality to 1080p. It'll also bundle in Netflix's basic level and give you 6 months of Apple+ for "free". What they are saying is, even in times of low/no congestion, select services are not being counted against a consumer's data cap.

billy99k 3y ago

I don't really see a problem with this. Bandwidth is finite and if you have a little more money, you should be able to pay for it. The alternative is that everyone has data caps

rlpb 3y ago
One problem is that it's anti-competitive in the sense that a new video streaming service cannot compete because an ISP will charge extra to use them but not for (eg.) Netflix. > Bandwidth is finite and if you have a little more money, you should be able to pay for it. That's fine, but there's a difference between paying for bandwidth and having different rates for bandwidth depending on the destination.

YeBanKo 3y ago

Playing devil’s advocate here. But why is it so controversial that not all the traffic is the same. It is much easier for an ISP to serve Spotify very efficiently if they patterns, data centers and even have some private links in place with Spotify. The issue I have with it is they should not be calling it unlimited.

askiiart 3y ago

How do carriers supposedly cap streaming quality? As long as the data is encrypted, isn't it impossible for the carrier to tell what quality a video is? I'm limited to standard definition streaming, yet can stream 1080p just fine on mobile data.