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Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

meo.pt

21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#23
It’s funny that this all comes from a misunderstanding based on language differences. A data cap on your web use is pretty common in mobile phone providers. With these packages you can surpass the data cap (10gb) for select services (that you can select your own)..

Say you use a lot of spotify but you don’t surf that much this is ideal.

Nothing gets blocked or censored, it’s just that you can buy additional MB’s.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#24
post #12

We have this in the UK too. But I don't see this as an attack on Net Neutrality, you're just charged differently for what you use. Nobody will stop you using Facebook when you have a Music subscription, nothing is throttled.

> But I don't see this as an attack on Net Neutrality, you're just charged differently for what you use. Nobody will stop you using Facebook when you have a Music subscription, nothing is throttled. Doesn't the OP show that you need to have the social media subscription to use facebook, implying it'd be blocked otherwise? EDIT: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691506/portugal-meo-in... > But based on Meo’s websi…

> you pay around $8 a month to specifically get more “Social” data, so you can use your regular allotment for everything else

The problem with this is that this creates an incentive for the operator to lower the regular allotment so they can sell more of these packages.

> I still don't understand why the endpoint being connected to matters at all.

It doesn't matter, it's just a way of extracting more money from customers.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#25
That example shows zero rating, not "pay $5 to access certain websites", as most people assume once it circulates through the NN debate. Still problematic, but not as quite as those who share it make it seem. "Pay $5 to use social media" and "pay $5 to use your data plan for anything you want and have additional data specifically for social media" is not the same.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#26

Even if you bought every package possible, it's still cheaper than most packages here. You're not really helping your case here buddy.

Whoever claimed that the threat to net neutrality was an economic one? The problem is that you give companies the power to decide what information people will have access to. And ISP can say: 'A review website that has many bad reviews about us? Lets throttle the global traffic to 1Kb/s. There, problem solved. A website with opinions about abortion that do not match the views of our CEO? Lets throttle those to 1Kb/s. Wait a minute, the KKK wants us to let customers access websites of members at full speed? Ok, lets do that.'

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#27
At least here it's the user deciding what to use and how much to pay for it. It's explicit that this is not full internet but limited.

The big assault on the internet is when you pay for full internet, and your ISP decides to throttle Netflix or Youtube because they don't also pay the ISP for your internet connection.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#28

As Ben Thompson of Stratecherry said here: https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/ There are the Euros and Portuguese you would expect, but in this case perhaps it was the language difference that introduced its own issues: Congressman Khanna seems to have missed the text at the top (under ‘+ Smart Net’) that clearly stated that the packages were for an additional 10GB/month of data; in addition to…

> So to recount: one Portugal story is made up, and the other declared that a 10GB family plan with an extra 10GB for a collection of apps of your choosing

Which is still terrible. If I create a slightly better social media, video, or image platform, it's possible people won't use it because it's not part of their 0-rate plan. That is a problem, and one of the main problems with the lack of net neutrality.

Moreover, what happens as datacaps go down in relative or absolute terms and people are forced to use predominately "packaged" services instead of the ones they chose?

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is there no network access at all other than these apps? I don't see that clarified on the page. Personally, I wish Comcast (being the only high-speed option for much of the US) followed this model for TV, where I only want 2 channels but can't pay for less than 80 or so.

scroll down the page. those are addons to the basic internet package.

That's what it seemed like to me, but wasn't sure. So basically non-established players are actually free, but established players require additional money? i.e. the opposite of what the parent comment was saying?

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#30
post #25

That example shows zero rating, not "pay $5 to access certain websites", as most people assume once it circulates through the NN debate. Still problematic, but not as quite as those who share it make it seem. "Pay $5 to use social media" and "pay $5 to use your data plan for anything you want and have additional data specifically for social media" is not the same.

It's still terrible. Just slightly less terrible for consumers, but perhaps even moreso for small businesses.
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