241–250 of 337 posts
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We don't disagree. I just thought it was obvious enough that an over regulated market isn't free that it need not be stated explicitly. Especially since this is the general belief.
Sorry for not clarifying. I do agree with your initial statement and wanted to add something to it, not criticize it.
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The only reason utilities are regulated are because they are natural monopoly. It doesn’t make sense to have more than one utility company with right of way to dig up streets to create the needed infrastructure. To an extent, cellular is a natural oligopoly. Each carrier needs enough spectrum to have decent service. But it isn’t a monopoly.
Agriculture isn't a natural monopoly either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have food safety standards.
But even if it were, it’s #199542 why HN commenters don’t understand what a “monopoly” is and why utilities that require physical infrastructure which are natural monopolies aren’t the same as cellular where there are three healthy competitors.
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Transparency is part of the problem. It makes the anti-competitive practice easier to carry out because customers don't know they're getting screwed. But there's still a potential anti-trust issue even with perfect information. Suppose Facebook doesn't want anyone using their competitors, so they subsidize the cost on some ISPs that then block their competitors. The customers of those ISPs are 15% of the market, and…
I think it's much more likely people stop using Facebook in that condition. People may be "stuck" with Meta because everyone is on it but the situation you're describing is a big difference between zero friction to make an account and join everybody else and change your ISP so you can talk to your grandma and look at cats on instagram. I'd rather have choice and transparency and see if the situation you've described…
You've failed to understand the example. Nobody would have to change ISPs to use Facebook because Facebook paid off the ISPs for some form of exclusivity. It is Facebook's competitors who would struggle wity user acquisition because not only do you have to convince users to change ISPs to use your competing platform, but you have to convince all your frienda and family to switch too if you wanna be able to call them.
> It sounds completely unrealistic
You are incredibly naive then. This sort of thing regularly happens all around the you. Kickbacks, exclusivity and companies colluding for competitive advantage is commonplace, not unrealistic.
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Transparency is part of the problem. It makes the anti-competitive practice easier to carry out because customers don't know they're getting screwed. But there's still a potential anti-trust issue even with perfect information. Suppose Facebook doesn't want anyone using their competitors, so they subsidize the cost on some ISPs that then block their competitors. The customers of those ISPs are 15% of the market, and…
I think it's much more likely people stop using Facebook in that condition. People may be "stuck" with Meta because everyone is on it but the situation you're describing is a big difference between zero friction to make an account and join everybody else and change your ISP so you can talk to your grandma and look at cats on instagram. I'd rather have choice and transparency and see if the situation you've described…
For the US, looking at iMessage's example, I'd say the trend would go the other way and Facebook getting way more power.
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I don't think any company should be able to buy QoS access. They should simply qualify for it on the basis of their use case. E.g. "video streaming" or "real-time telecom"
I agree. What do you think about fair use policies? Things like having 250GB/Month kind of limits. The internet infrastructure was built with certain utilization and speed in mind. Instead of owning up to the fact that it’s not as good as it used to be, these companies are selling quality of service products. Otherwise it’s too much of a publicity hit if they admit it.
"Unlimited" plans have always irked the hell out of me, because they rarely are.
I think capped totals (ideally without overage charges and with slow-lane bandwidth until reset) are perfectly fine.
But I'm 100% against named exclusions that don't count against a cap -- that's unfairly preferring an existing incumbent, and doesn't benefit the consumer in the larger/competition sense.
The 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…
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...
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I pay $50/month for 300/30 in the middle of nowhere. Symmetric gigabit is available for $80ish/month in small cities around me. Unlimited phone data is widely available and fairly priced. It's not impossible for things to be acceptable for the vast majority of use cases just because some predicted apocalyptic event which was hyped up by certain large players (and not out of the goodness of their hearts) didn't come t…
Wow, that is very expensive
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I immigrated from China to Canada and I'm not sure if monopoly is the root cause. In China, ISP is state-controlled and 100% monopoly, yet the plans are dirt cheap compared to those in Canada. I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV = 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR) The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TV…
I lived in China for 9 years and always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow. Like sure you have 5G, but the overall internet trunks are just saturated and not built out enough. Maybe it has gotten better since I left Beijing in 2016? It was definitely cheap and affordable. But I always felt a huge speed bump (along with easy access to foreign web sites) when I went to Thailand…
Did you have your VPN / proxy on? That might be one of the reason as Chinese internet is only fast for traffic within its borders. Traffic that crosses borders are super slow in terms of throughput AND latency (if not blocked altogether). If you have your VPN / proxy on, your request basically crosses the borders twice before it reaches the destination web server.
Another reason I can think of is the mobile ISP incompatibility. For some ridiculous reasons, most "foreign" phones' (iPhones exempt) do not have full radio coverage when connected to CMCC.
The 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 this mode, video streams will be limited to 480p but will not count against your bandwidth cap.