51–60 of 72 posts
When did HN turn into sensationalist clickbait stuff? Basically Reddit Especially when it's posted by new accs
Ending Net Neutrality might be bad. But the deal offered by this Portuguese operator has none of the evils associated with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
How can there be competition on the internet if people are encouraged to only use "approved" websites and platforms?
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.
What if you listen to a lot of Pandora?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
These are all 800lb gorillas in the social networking space. If there was a new Facebook competitor it would not be on that list until it was relatively huge. Notice that ello, Mastodon, and other upstart social network are missing even though they've been around for a while now.
The problem is that now a new social network is not just fighting the network effects of Facebook (already a huge hurdle), but also economic incentives from ISPs to keep using Facebook, since you get cheap data for it. If this becomes the norm, I think it's only a matter of time until services like Facebook offer ISPs incentives to zero rate their traffic - especially on limited mobile plans.
Arguably the most problematic category there is not "social networks", but "video". The volume of traffic that streaming video uses on mobile dwarfs just about everything else. If I wanted to compete with Youtube on mobile how could I do it in an environment where Youtube gets special treatment from ISPs and I don't?
When did HN turn into sensationalist clickbait stuff? Basically Reddit Especially when it's posted by new accs
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…
When did HN turn into sensationalist clickbait stuff? Basically Reddit Especially when it's posted by new accs
I totally agree with you. This whole thread sounds like an hysterical witch hunt, people condemning without understanding. Ending Net Neutrality might be bad. But the deal offered by this Portuguese operator has none of the evils associated with it.
So yes, this kind of deal absolutely is "evil", as it will hurt innovation on the web in the long run.
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.
Nope. That's a bad argument - they're mostly the same, and in some ways zero rating is much worse. At my trailer, I get "Water Service". I don't get: "Drinking water service" "Dishwashing water service" "Washing machine service" "Bath/shower service" "Pool/jacuzzi service" "Toilet water service" And upcharging/downcharging per "type" of water isn't done, at least on residential. Now, there may be rates of peak times…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I want more bandwidth for Mastodon. I don't see Mastodon in the "social networks" plan. So my options are: 1) pay more for "general" bandwidth, 2) use Twitter instead. This is the choice that customers will have to make when evaluating new internet services and it's not good for anyone trying to compete with Google/Facebook/Microsoft.
These are just addons to your regular package, they allow you to customize your plan according to your needs. The regular packages have different tiers that go anywhere from 500Mb to 10Gb of data included, which is more or less the same amount of data that the other ISPs in the country provide. There are no unlimited mobile data packages in Portugal, in any ISP, except the special plans for 4G personal hotspots. These addons just mean that if you pay more, the data from the services /apps that you use more often wont count to your regular data cap, to a limit of up to 10Gb per month.
In my case (I'm with another ISP), I pay 4€ per week and have 5Gb of "regular" data to use per month, plus another 5Gb just for video platforms (like Youtube and Twitch), and then there are several apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Skype, Spotify, etc, that don't consume any data from the plan, they're free to use. They also provide a premium Spotify account for free, which is nice.
For me, as a client, this is actually good, even tough it's far from neutral. I never go over the data cap, and I rarely use Wi-Fi even when I'm at home, because the apps that I use more often are "free" and I still have 5Gb of data to use on whatever else I want. If anything the problem in the original link is that that particular ISP is charging for something that the other ISPs provide for free.
It's also important to notice that Portugal has a communications regulatory authority (ANACOM), similar to the FCC, but that actually works, and defends the interests of the consumers. Just today they announced that all the ISPs will be fined in excess of 1 million euros, and face a possible class action law suit due to increasing prices without an explicit permission from the costumers.
So yeah, where actually doing good here.