Consumer data consumption has increased exponentially in a little over a decade. According to broadband insight reports from OpenVault, monthly household data usage has skyrocketed from an...
  •  Hot Saucerman   ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) 
    15•1 year ago

    What’s going to stop the forms being filled out by industry-controlled bots this time?[1] Last time the FCC took public comment, anti-net-neutrality comments were being made under the names of dead people and people who would later claim they never participated in making comments to the FCC.

    Otherwise, it’s going to be the same dumb shitshow as last time.

    1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/43a5kg/80-percent-net-neutrality-comments-bots-astroturfing ↩︎

  •  FiveMacs   ( @Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ) 
    15•1 year ago

    $$$ and because the ISPs don’t get charged for unethical and blantly illegal activities…

    The real question should be why is the internet not a public utility yet…? Huh FCC/CRTC…?

    •  pingveno   ( @pingveno@lemmy.ml ) English
      25•1 year ago

      In short, the Administrative Procedure Act. It sets out the procedures that have to be followed before policy decisions get made. If the FCC doesn’t follow the APA’s procedures exactly, that gives the industry grounds to sue,. Even if the industry eventually looses, it would still mean a stay on the new policies during which they would continue to exploit consumers.

      The APA isn’t a bad thing, but since it forces federal agencies to be deliberate in making policy decisions that could have far reaching consequences. That said, it does make the government even slower to react to situations that often change quickly. But it has tripped up this administration and previous administrations when they have tried to make hasty decisions, including Trump with his “Muslim ban”.

    •  underisk   ( @underisk@lemmy.ml ) 
      6•1 year ago

      Because they have no intention of correcting it. They’re either doing this to keep up the charade of consumer protection, or gearing up to enshrine the practice in regulation.

    •  Clairvoidance   ( @Clairvoidance@kbin.social ) 
      3•1 year ago

      They are asking ISPs to lay out their best justification so that they can decide whether it’s valid or not. Judging by their wording, they want a good explanation. It’s good to gain understanding of something before we gut it and who better to ask for the ‘best argument for’ than those who enforce it?

    •  BluePhoenix01   ( @BluePhoenix01@lemmy.ml ) 
      2•1 year ago

      Over here, I’m getting the Cox… last bill was $99 a month, now my “promo period” expired, and it is the full $170 a month thanks to “unlimited”. It’s pretty gross, but it is the only plan that gives the “amazing” 30 mbps up. :|

      EDIT: This is for home internet, 1000 down/30 up, unlimited data

    •  0xD   ( @0xD@lemmy.ml ) 
      1•1 year ago

      God damn. In Austria I’m paying 35€ for 250/250, and am still looking over to the Romanians with longing eyes. Data caps are only on mobile - which is still questionable in my eyes.

          •  pingveno   ( @pingveno@lemmy.ml ) English
            1•1 year ago

            It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re just trying to reach them and don’t care about bandwidth, wireless is the way to go. It’s why more developed countries lagged behind developing countries on the transition to wireless phones. But when you’re trying to deploy shear amounts of bandwidth, nothing beats fiber. It’s incredibly fast, has low latency, and doesn’t get interference.

            And I suppose I should say that I think unlimited is a bad idea in general. I favor paying for what I use. People who use expensive infrastructure sparingly should pay less than people use it a lot.

  •  tal   ( @tal@kbin.social ) 
    0•1 year ago

    The infrastructure over which that data travels isn’t free. If you have a resource and it has any kind of scarcity, you want to tie consumption to the cost of producing more of it.

    You can reduce the transaction cost – reduce hassle for users using Internet service – by not having a cap for them to worry about, but then you decouple the costs of consumption.

    Soft caps, like throttling, are one way to help reduce transaction costs while still having some connection between consumption and price.

    But point is, if one user is using a lot more of the infrastructure than any other is, you probably want to have that reflected in some way, else you’re dumping Heavy User’s costs on Light User.

      •  tal   ( @tal@kbin.social ) 
        1•1 year ago

        Like, what kind of costs exist? Lines, network hardware, putting up the tunnels and poles that hold up lines, the network admins who deal with issues on them. Your ISP can’t just push a button and instantly provide 1Tbit bandwidth capacity at no cost to themselves to every subscriber.

        •  Hot Saucerman   ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) 
          6•1 year ago

          Oh you mean like the $400 billion the industry has taken to adopt Fiber-optic high speeds, but somehow Fiber access has never materialized in most US cities? You mean like that infrastructure? That we’ve already fucking paid for through grants and other federal programs handing money to the ISPs?

          Are you having a laugh or do you work for these fuckers?

          I’m not disputing the costs, I’m disputing that they already have money to cover the costs (taxpayer money, I might add) and they’re bilking the consumer on top of it.

          •  tal   ( @tal@kbin.social ) 
            1•1 year ago

            I’m disputing that they already have money to cover the costs

            Federal subsidies to telcos were not intended to provide Internet service for free, but to reduce costs.

            You could argue that a subsidy should reduce prices relative to what they should have been, had no subsidy existed.

            But you cannot argue that pricing should be decoupled from consumption as a result of that.

            •  Hot Saucerman   ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) 
              4•1 year ago

              And I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that it’s clear that pricing has been decoupled from consumption, but in the other direction, where the ISP’s are setting prices arbitrarily. That’s been a choice on their part, and a big reason why people like me are distrustful of any data they claim shows their case. They have been caught lying so many times before. I’m old enough to remember Comcast paying homeless people[1] to stuff a courtroom to make it seem like more people supported them (once again if they don’t have money to cover infrastructure costs, why are they instead spending their money on things like this?). There’s also issues like when they bundle unnecessary services, essentially consumers paying for nothing, like when the AG of Washington State sued them in 2016.[2] I could go on for pages about shit like this going all the way back to illegally shaping traffic with Sandvine targeting BitTorrent traffic.[3] I honestly don’t wish to and maybe you ought to do more research on how much money these companies ream the American consumer for before acting like there is any connection between pricing and consumption here.

              1. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Cable-giant-Comcast-hires-seat-warmers-to-pack-3226430.php ↩︎

              2. https://fortune.com/2017/12/24/washington-comcast-service-plan-fraud/ ↩︎

              3. https://consumerist.com/2007/10/27/damning-proof-comcast-contracted-to-sandvine/ ↩︎

            •  Monkey With A Shell   ( @ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com ) 
              3•1 year ago

              It’s funny that I have symetical LAN Gb all over my house and beyond the initial cost it costse pretty well $0 per month to operate and maintain. My ISP gives me a limited use Gb line outside the house (and a tiny fraction of that speed on the uplink side for arbitrary reasons) and somehow it costs upwards of $100/month. That has no rational correlation to reality in terms of cost to provide the service.

              Massive enterprise systems are on a daily basis maintained by reletivlely small teams of specialists, most of who never have reason to physically touch a piece of gear. That happening in dynamic environment always looking for the next big step. An ISP has a comparativly simple task to direct traffic flows for the most part dictated by automated protocols.