The Cellar - View Single Post

Undertoad · 07-18-2017, 11:19 AM

Those fees are because your service includes legacy telephone and/or TV cable. A lot of those fees are old-school hidden taxes, like tariffs and 911. If someone were to provide you with Internet service alone, none of those would be on there. Anyone can just deliver you bits, the problem comes with dealing with local and state governments, and the systems they put in place decades ago.

At the same time, all ISPs now want to be video providers. They have a desperate need to get you enough bandwidth so that you can consume their high-priced cable services with a set-top box. That's where the big bucks currently are. Enormous bucks. That means enough bandwidth to stream porn until you get into the 4K stuff, at which point you'll have to download the videos and view them later, instead of streaming. (It'll be worth it though)

It also means it's very hard for them to block things. Impossible to block anything low bandwidth, for both technical and competition reasons. 3G service is so cheap and ubiquitous that it is built in to devices like the Kindle and people can just assume it works without paying anything. The cost is built in, but it's so low that it's invisible.

Nobody has ever outright blocked websites AFAIK. Throttling perhaps but not blocking, please list counter-examples if you have them. Here is a case where if the tech geeks can do it, you can do it. If Reddit were to be blocked I could give you a virtual private network that could access it for free. The mere fact that it's trivial for geeks makes it impossible for large networks to do. If I can make $1 selling you Reddit, Verizon cannot make $30.

And, part of the reason is that vireless is solving the last mile problem, and competition solves the net neutrality problem. And all that is possible only if the FCC handles allocation of freqencies well, and permits a marketplace to happen. Voila a problem that the FCC was actually created to solve and one it's completely allowed to work on. Nobody seems too concerned about that, I wonder why. It's a much bigger problem then net neutrality. But, once the bogeyman is here it is all we will think of.

07-18-2017, 11:19 AM	#9
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Those fees are because your service includes legacy telephone and/or TV cable. A lot of those fees are old-school hidden taxes, like tariffs and 911. If someone were to provide you with Internet service alone, none of those would be on there. Anyone can just deliver you bits, the problem comes with dealing with local and state governments, and the systems they put in place decades ago. At the same time, all ISPs now want to be video providers. They have a desperate need to get you enough bandwidth so that you can consume their high-priced cable services with a set-top box. That's where the big bucks currently are. Enormous bucks. That means enough bandwidth to stream porn until you get into the 4K stuff, at which point you'll have to download the videos and view them later, instead of streaming. (It'll be worth it though) It also means it's very hard for them to block things. Impossible to block anything low bandwidth, for both technical and competition reasons. 3G service is so cheap and ubiquitous that it is built in to devices like the Kindle and people can just assume it works without paying anything. The cost is built in, but it's so low that it's invisible. Nobody has ever outright blocked websites AFAIK. Throttling perhaps but not blocking, please list counter-examples if you have them. Here is a case where if the tech geeks can do it, you can do it. If Reddit were to be blocked I could give you a virtual private network that could access it for free. The mere fact that it's trivial for geeks makes it impossible for large networks to do. If I can make $1 selling you Reddit, Verizon cannot make $30. And, part of the reason is that vireless is solving the last mile problem, and competition solves the net neutrality problem. And all that is possible only if the FCC handles allocation of freqencies well, and permits a marketplace to happen. Voila a problem that the FCC was actually created to solve and one it's completely allowed to work on. Nobody seems too concerned about that, I wonder why. It's a much bigger problem then net neutrality. But, once the bogeyman is here it is all we will think of.