Earlier quoted context omitted.
Odildo? Cant be truth in a country where almost all people speak english!
It's actually Odido but everyone I know calls it Odildo :P it was really a stupid name choice
Spanish: jodido
The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
101–110 of 337 posts
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#102ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a glass of water than a toilet flush.
Well they sort of do already — typically you pay less for water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it’s not going down the drain). In places like Florida however irrigation water is reclaimed and not treated the same was as drinking water and has totally separate plumbing and metering (and pricing).
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Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to take the L on going with the flow there. It's impossible to build a case that repeal of net neutrality was apocalyptic.
That the potential of a future FCC reinstating it precluded ISPs' baser instincts? Their goal was to avoid excess, so maybe they could argue that net neutrality wasn't a good idea anyway, so they could gradually introduce new revenue streams from apps/platforms.
That repeal lasted five years, with virtually none of the visible effects people predicted. By contrast, when the Trump administration started tearing down environmental regulations, mining companies jumped on the occasion within months.
If ISPs are playing the long game, they're being incredibly patient about it.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#104The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
I lived in Tennessee when Google Fiber was announced there. At the time Chattanooga (and a few small towns) already had fiber internet that were offered by the utilities companies.
It was an absolute shitshow. Actually, a shitshow would have been cleaner.
Immediately AT&T rolls out gigabit internet, but not everywhere. I was in one of the small towns with gig and the previous renter had AT&T. AT&T literally cut the lines into the apartment instead of disconnecting them, causing me to have a $50 install fee (the technician was clearly also annoyed).
Then Google, AT&T, and Comcast got into a big fight and it got political. Politicians would talk about how Google coming in was preventing competition (I shit you not) and attacking the little guys. Then a judge ruled that Google couldn't operate on telephone polls because Google would "cause danger to employees" and "be a union violation" (not the unions saying these things, it was AT&T. Obviously this made people think the unions were blocking things and continued to get mad at unions)[0]. So basically one of a Comcast and AT&T technician had to be there while Google would place in fiber and you know how it goes.
It was a literal circus and the whole while it was politicized and misinformation was spreading like wildfire. Big Tech screwing over the little guys. Big Tech coming after the public utilities (never happened). Unions making everything impossible. Something about Big Tech and liberals/trans/gays taking over at some point. Like the on the ground conversations that would happen were mindbogglingly dumb. It actually was hard to figure out what was actually going on because every person and news article would have a unique story to tell. But the weirdest thing to me is about how nearly everyone I knew was a self-proclaimed Libertarian who hated government yet was licking their boots ad propping them up because they didn't want those gay/liberal/furry/godless/ techies rolling in decreasing competition and destroying the free market. That's when I truly started to believe that there's no such thing as a Libertarian (or any other cleanly encapsulated idea, but Libertarians are in your face), it's just a label. Because I watched anti-government free market devotees bend over backwards to protect monopolies and not even have a clue of the cognitive dissonance. It also made me really pay attention to how this happens more often than we care to think (including how we ourselves do it).
[0] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-rule...
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#105ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a glass of water than a toilet flush.
I find it interesting how nobody blinks an eyelid at the massive profits raked in by companies like Google, Facebook etc. but as soon as the ISPs that create the infrastructure that makes all this happen (and innovate massively in the process) want some piece of the cake everyone cries foul. Now I actually strongly support net neutrality and maybe ISPs don't really need a piece of the cake, but it is still interestin…
Reminds me of how maintaining essential system like the banking systems are seen as cost centers and run on a tight budget, but if some young men make a webpage that barely works venture capitalists are tripping over themselves trying to shove millions into their hands.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than $200/mo. You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and that's fine and probably correct, but you're still getting slower speeds for…
> but you're still getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should And what is your solution to that?
Not vote for politicians that are ardently anti-consumer and anti-infrastructure? We’re talking about what exists, not who you can call to upgrade your internet :/
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#107The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
>In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap.
there were such offers. about 10 years ago, but they are illegal EU-wide.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and to a lesser extent Canada's Not to turn this into a pissing contest, but Canada's internet is far more shite and far more captured by an oligopoly. Independent ISPs are harder to find than competition up here in the North.
Canada isn't so bad off when it comes to wired service. Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest. And many more are co-operatives owned by the customers. The mobile space is more challenging. A number of those co-ops and government ISPs were running mobile service back in the mid 2000s, but they never found the customer base and most of them eventually shut it down, Tbaytel…
>Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest
That's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of people who aren't served by such ISPs. Population of...
Saskatchewan (Sasktel): 1.1M
Bruce County (Bruce Telecom): 66.5k
Thunder Bay District (Tbaytel): 146k
Prince Rupert, British Columbia (CityWest): 13k
That makes up a total of 1.3M, against Canada's population of 37.0M.
Moreover, looking at Sasktel's website[1], their prices don't look too competitive. They're asking for $105/month for 1G (promotional offer, regular price $150), which is actually worse than what corporate ISPs offer, eg. $110/month for 1.5G (promotional offer, regular price $130)[2].
[1] https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Internet/Inter...
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than $200/mo. You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and that's fine and probably correct, but you're still getting slower speeds for…
If by "the rest of the world" you mean a cherry-picked selection of the most advanced countries, then yes, the US is behind on internet access (and everything else). It never makes sense to me when people say how the US ranks last among developed countries on a bunch of metrics. Of course, that just means the US is indeed... less developed than those countries. If it's not fair to compare the US to Somalia, it's not…
How, exactly, are you supposed to compare if not to other countries? There’s no bar for “this is what a developed country’s internet should look like” so the only way to compare is to do it against other countries roughly in the same range as the US.
It’s also entirely factual to say that in comparison to other developed countries, the US lags in internet.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#110The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality Regulation 2015). > In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. They do that because speeding up/slowing down apps is illegal and they are using loopholes in the law to get arou…
> Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality Regulation 2015).
Why do these have to be in contention?
Regulations are a critical factor in ensuring competition in markets. Without regulations monopolies quickly come to power because your power and influence is not linearly (or sublinearly) correlated to your size (even excluding lobbying power). A free market is a ,,well'' regulated market. A laissez-faire market is only free in passing.