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Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

meo.pt

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#41
post #17

These also exist in Spain and I love them. I hope they don't remove them.

You love them because you are not a startup that plans to compete with other services or a customer who wants to use apps outside of the selected ones for which you can use dedicated data. What if one day you'd like to use a new emerging service that is better than WhatsApp|Viber|Any-other-app-that-you-currently-use but that is not in a bundle for which your provider has plans that give extra dedicated data? Will you make the switch and consume your regular data or will you stick with your current one that makes you use dedicated data for which you paid those extra €5?

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#42

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…

There is no reason whatsoever why sending 10GB of data to one IP would be more expensive than sending it to another. So if they are offering 10GB for free if you connect to one service they’d be able to offer it for free for connecting to anyone.

If they refuse that means there is no competition. It also means they are meddling in content so they are no longer common carriers and are responsible for what happens on the line.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#43
post #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.

Depends on how big is the data cap. Sure, if your package is 10GB, it's fine, but what if the data cap was 250 MB and you could surpass it with a "Netflix" package?

Assuming that package is cheaper and the people who choose it are only interested in Netflix anyway, it's fine. What matters to me is that paying customers are treated as customers, and that we get to choose what we want, rather than ISPs secretly throttling stuff behind the scenes in order to coerce extra money out of Google and Netflix.

I don't want to be ammo in their trade war.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#44
It is quite simple realy. If I pay x€ for y GB/Month, the ISP should not dictate what over the top services I spend that budget on, nor favor its own services (or those of 'partners') by selective exclusion of that traffic from limits that other are held to, or by hindering traffic from the non-partnered services in any way.

Now for the 'complicated' part. In practice it is not difficult to create a situation where everything is degraded. You just under-provision on a choke point. If you then sell alternative routes, or allow edge caches beyond the choke point, you technically didn't 'hinder' any traffic, you just provided such a lousy service to begin with that any not otherwise enabled service provider doesn't stand a chance of offering a decent experience on your network.

But just pointing to a technical situation where it is hard to write a general 'rule' that in any arbitrary case can unequivocally objectively and automatically say whether a certain criterion was fulfilled, and then saying that because it is hard or even impossible to specify the whole regulation should be scrapped, that is disingenuous. The spirit of the regulation can be perfectly fine, even though case-by-case judgement may be required to determine compliance.

Those that will say 'but you can vote with your wallet', I can see where you come from, but the reasoning is flawed. In practice telecoms is not an open market, and many households have near 0 meaningful choice. Strong economic network effects are inherent, and lasting competition has only been present under very strict regulation.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#46

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…

Your reasoning does not add up. On the one hand you are saying that American ISPs are worse than those in Portugal and on the other hand you are saying 'never fear' they are only charging extra on the high end connections. Shouldn't you be saying: "Look, in the US ISPs are already overcharging and throttling connections, even for high prices plans. In Portugal the prices are a lot more reasonable, but even those less…

> In Portugal the prices are a lot more reasonable

According to [1], the average monthly net salary in Portugal is €846 ($993), or €1,158 ($1358) gross. For comparison, [2] lists median US individual gross income as $32,140 yearly ($2678/mo, not sure what the net works out to).

Accounting for income disparity, the Portuguese prices are not as reasonable as you think.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#47

I am a Portuguese speaker (from Brazil) and I fail to see what the problem is or even how it undermines Net Neutrality. You pay 4.99 euros, get 10Gb and also get free traffic in one of those uses that provide plenty of competition, no privileges for a specific provider. Seems quite a good deal to me. Kudos to Portugal. Here in Brazil, net neutrality is protected by law. If I could get one of those Portuguese plans in…

How do they determine what sites get the free traffic? If I start a social networking site tomorrow, how does it get the free traffic that Facebook gets?

Fair question, the page doesn't say it.

But it is important to notice that, for networking, they also have Facebook competitors like Twiter, Snapchat and LindedIn. This seems quite the opposite of privilege to providers.

It is quite possible they also have other sites less famous in Portugal (e.g.: HN, Reddit).

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#48
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the same but a little thought exercise proved me wrong, if you ask the question: what happens if the general datacap goes down, even maybe to 0? I'm from Portugal and the different telcos/ISP's don't see others offering this product as a chance to offer a better product they see it as a missed chance to get more while giving less so they don't compete they collude. And this is just looking at it as a…

> what happens if the general datacap goes down, even maybe to 0? Then I get a subscription with a bigger data cap. The big problem with a lack of Net Neutrality is when there's a lack of competition and ISPs use their monopoly over their users as a product with which to strongarm the web services I want to use out of extra money. As long as they keep treating us as the customers and not the product, and make it clea…

>The big problem with a lack of Net Neutrality is when there's a lack of competition

You just summed up the exact situation in the US. Most areas have a giant ISP and some smaller ISPs serving more limited areas. There's effectively no choice for consumers though, since many of the smaller ISPs have to use infrastructure of the local ISP monopoly to deliver service.

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#49

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…

There is no reason whatsoever why sending 10GB of data to one IP would be more expensive than sending it to another. So if they are offering 10GB for free if you connect to one service they’d be able to offer it for free for connecting to anyone. If they refuse that means there is no competition. It also means they are meddling in content so they are no longer common carriers and are responsible for what happens on t…

Not all IPs are equal. If facebook peers directly with your internet provider, your internet provider doesn't have to pay for that traffic.

Netflix allows internet provider to peer with them for free at exchange points.[1]

[1]: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

Re: Net Neutrality already attacked in Portugal

#50

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…

There is no reason whatsoever why sending 10GB of data to one IP would be more expensive than sending it to another. So if they are offering 10GB for free if you connect to one service they’d be able to offer it for free for connecting to anyone. If they refuse that means there is no competition. It also means they are meddling in content so they are no longer common carriers and are responsible for what happens on t…

>There is no reason whatsoever why sending 10GB of data to one IP would be more expensive than sending it to another.

This statement is false. It most certainly is more expensive to send packets to places like Australia than to Europe (Australia has 20x higher transit pricing). You could claim the cost is pennies either way however that doesn't address the fact that some packets are more expensive than others.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world...

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