nothing. absolutely nothing. people on this isps regular plans can access netflix the same as anyone else and use up as much of their monthly data cap as they want. their plans are no different than any other isp in that regard.
with cheap mobile phone plans the data is usually limited, and overage cost a lot, so the they offer really cheap additional data plans to certain heavily used services at a much reduced cost. One can still buy regular data add ons as well that are to anywhere at the regular rates, but if they want to save money, they can buy additional data to just a subset of services.
they aren’t doing anything remotely close to what the article construes.
The facts make it a completely different thing than described in the article, the same thing everyone has, but with a few extra options. this has been discussed and immediately clarified in other forums as a non-story.
it is only a gross misunderstanding and misinformation and misrepresentation that make it a concern.
Okay, so on what basis should an ISP get to decide it will cost less to use Netflix than some-other-service? Is there some criteria that everyone can agree on and use to audit any decision?
This sets a precedent that large companies with capital get to decide what other large companies with capital get to enjoy easier access to a market, just because they’re large. While the Netflix example is contrived, it would not take too long to construct a scenario where this two-tiered market prevents some new services from being able to compete and grow to a point where it too is popular, to the detriment of society.
ETA: Here’s a scenario. Fox Networks Group partners with Comcast and AT&T to provide free no-cap access to all Fox shows to all of their customers! All your favorite shows including Archer, Bob’s Burgers, oh and Fox News! The wonder of capitalism!
I guess the gist of the article is still true, though. Right now, if the regular data part of the plan is enough for you, fine. But everybody’s monthly mileage has been steadily increasing eversince. You will start to see the all-purpose data part of plans as this Portuguese one stagnate, while flashy “extras” will increase in importance, and cost.
BTW, neutrality would be if you hadn’t already reached the basic assumption that it is okay to pay extra for video streaming not to count against your bandwidth. Given the choice between this and simply offering you a plan that’s large enough for your media consumption, your ISP has made a choice, and they know they can earn more by selling video bandwidth as a privilege.
How can you describe a ‘feature’ where an ISP charges more for some bits than others depending on whether or not they are for approved uses as ‘in no way related’ to net neutrality?
That’s exactly the sort of behavior that raises net neutrality concerns; just with the phrasing adjusted for marketing purposes(nobody likes to here “unrestricted data costs more”, so you just define the price of unrestricted data as the base price and advertise restricted data as zOMG savings! but the pricing tiers are identical either way). And. of course, the telco’s own services are ‘free’, which isn’t even slightly alarming in the context of telcos that also have media arms and makes a bit of a mockery of the theory that the charges have any particular direct relation to the actual costs of internet service.
Plus, as with most good cellular pricing schemes, it’s a mechanism to raise the effective price by making it harder to evaluate what you’ll end up paying: if you just sell overage data for X/GB, the user may or may not have a good idea of exactly how fast they are eating through data; but that’s the extent of the uncertainty.
If you sell ‘messaging’ and ‘social’ and ‘music’ and ‘video’ and ‘email’ separately; you can quite easily end up paying two or three times for what would otherwise be a single block of overage data if you don’t know ahead of time exactly how your use will break down, since even having almost all of your ‘messaging’ quota remaining apparently won’t send a single email, you if you find yourself needing to do that, you’ll get to purchase two flavors of overage data, even if your actual use is only a fraction of either one of them.
It’s especially indefensible(but also especially common) in the cellular case, since most of the scarcity of data is down to spectrum congestion or tower backhaul; not ISP peering costs; so it is minimally likely that the favored services are actually less architecturally costly to provide; unlike the wired case, where things hosted or cached on the ISP’s network might be somewhat cheaper
That isn’t what they are doing. Please try and understand what it is this specific ISP is doing and how that is different than this article depicts, and most your questions will be answered. Although I do hear your concern, my ISP already bundles streaming tv to certain channels for free, and their streaming tv service doesn’t count against bandwidth, and i do agree that is problematic when taken to its extreme logical conclusion. That isn’t what this ISP is doing though. My disagreement is with the misrepresentation of what this ISP is doing, not the core tenants of what you are discussing, those i all agree with.
They offer those as well, these are the budget plans.
They offer larger plans, and generic data addons.
This is what all cell/mobile providers already do, you have 200 anytime minutes, and for $5 extra you get unlimited nights and weekends, or $10 extra you get unlimited anytime north america calling. You don’t have to use those, you can just buy extra minutes. People who choose them do so to try and save a few dollars by working within the budget package addons. This is the exact same thing. Not a replacement for standard packages and addons, not limiting certain services, nothing related to net neutrality or what these people can use their internet for. They can optionally pay extra to use more of these services for less, that is all that is happening. it doesn’t break the net.
I’m not so much advocating this model of service as I am pointing out how cory’s article misconstrues it to be something that it isn’t which has lead a lot of people in this thread to misunderstand it.
I’m 100% an advocate of Net Neutrality and if this in any way affected it, or even was deemed a “slippery slope” i’d be worried. Once one understands exactly what this it they’ll laugh off the misunderstanding, just like everyone did in the reddit thread this was repackaged from.
If they were doing that, I’d certainly be worried. What they are doing is not nearly as nefarious. I do fully agree about plans becoming confusing and transparency and all all your insightful valid points. personally i think unlimited plans are the only way to roll where available. i don’t think this company is doing what the article misconstrues them to be doing otherwise i’d also be alarmed.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Personally i worry that easily debunked fake new arguments in Net Neutrality and DRM hurt these causes that I care about far more than they help. I’d like to think that these arguments can be won based on factual reasoning, not resorting to the same crap the misinformation side pulls…
That’s what cory says they are doing, and that would indeed be very bad. That isn’t what they are doing. If they were doing what the article claimed, i too would be outraged. The two sides of this discussion seem to be divided between people working off of what cory said, versus those looking up what the company is actually doing for themselves. Most of us seem to be on the same page for Net Neutrality. at least that is my take on this thread for whatever it is worth.
They are restricting access to them, though. They’re charging more to access the open internet, they’re just framing as a discount rather than an added fee. Classic marketing trick.
If they can provide you 10GB of Netflix data for €5, they can provide you 10GB of anything for €5, because that’s how the internet works. It doesn’t actually matter what’s in those gigabytes, a gig is pretty much a gig as far as an ISP is concerned. This is a key matter to understand - all the commotion around Net Neutrality won’t make sense if you try to think about the internet and ISPs using metaphors of other business models.
Instead of giving you the €5 rate for everything though, they’re charging a higher rate to use services which aren’t their favored corporate partners. They are limiting your access to non-favored sites by charging a higher fee to access them.
“Make X cheaper” and “Make not-X more expensive” are functionally identical over all but the shortest timeframes. The problem isn’t how you frame the sale, it’s the advantage given to X in terms of totally expected effects on expected user behavior and market dynamics. Is it better than literally blocking other sites? Yes. Is it better than literally slowing down traffic to certain sites (or identically, speeding up traffic to certain others)? Yes. But it’s still enough non-neutrality to have the same ultimate negative outcomes.
And to add to this: “Don’t make not-X cheaper over time” counts among these, too. What you pay per GB has always been decreasing on average. This average is being kept, only distributed unevenly to your ISP’s favorite partners. In other words, when in some years a quick 50GB download is nothing special, it might turn out to be indeed something special if it’s not from [corporatePartner].
“Hey Bob, it’s One Brown Mouse here”
“Oh, hi, OBM, haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Yeah, been pretty busy online. But I just wanted to check in with you occasionally because you are one of my backup RL friends that I’ll need if the Net implodes.”
This is still very much the fear with net neutrality. It’s sold to you as A Good Thing™, but still hinders competition.
It goes something like this. You pay for your 5GB flat-rate, and you pay an extra €5 for extra traffic to … youtube, netflix, twitch, and I don’t recognise that 4th. As a netflix user, this seems like a deal. Easy.
Where it ruins competition is that if I created a new video service tomorrow, you wouldn’t use it. Not because it was worse, not because it didn’t offer something new. Not because of anything I could solve. But because it would eat your data limit quicker than those extras.
Competition is meant to be good because everyone’s on a level playing-field, so all any competitor can do is create a better offer than its competition. The streaming video services should be falling over each other trying to see who can offer more content, higher quality, and lower costs. If you will never consider another service because it’s not “blessed” by extra data at your ISP … that doesn’t happen, and the offer stagnates.
Far too often we act like we should be taking sides with companies. We treat Apple vs Android like we’re supporters of a football team. But we shouldn’t - we want to play them off against each other, so each has to offer more and more. If either actually wins, the consumer loses. Here, the ISP picks the winners, and the fight is over.
You do know that being anti-net neutrality is being pro-control of the market, don’t you? Or is it libertarian-capitalist doctrine that it is OK to be anti-free market just as long as you are not the government? That would explain a lot.
Don’t you understand? If ISP’s can’t double charge people (since they already charge for access bandwidth to both ends), you’re literally taking bread out of the mouths of billionaires children! You don’t want to them to starve or be forced to suffer the indignity of only having a third house do you?
this has been discussed and immediately clarified in other forums as a non-story.
The wonder of capitalism!
Personally i worry that easily debunked fake new arguments in Net Neutrality and DRM hurt these causes that I care about far more than they help. I’d like to think that these arguments can be won based on factual reasoning, not resorting to the same crap the misinformation side pulls…