It would work like the wireless carriers. They do not throttle you. I use my data all day long and not think twice about it. What I dont do is watch pointless videos all day long. I am not a fan of this solution, however this is what the consumer are pushing the ISP's to do. This was nearly 20 years ago. Fiber was very expensive and in its infancy. It was given to the telco's. Sadly this is yesteryears news and long passed. There have been billions more in grants given and those are slowly coming to fruition. Google Fiber is running on old grant initiatives. Fiber is not easy to run. It doesn't fundamentally work the same as copper. Sadly, fiber in itself costs about the same as cable. Who's fault is it? Yes, I primarily blame the consumer. They are the ones who are placing the demand. They want their cutsey kitten videos fully streamed in 2 seconds. I also blame our free market system which encourages businesses to destroy other thriving business models. I dont hold ISP's blameless, however to meet your expectations, they will be bankrupt in no time.
Yeah we totally need to go back to dial-ups. Because you know it's probably cheaper for ISPs. Can't mess with the profits. Everyone knows the motto. Customer is always wrong. Cash rules everything around me dollar dollar bill y'all. Bolded is quite simply the most anti-capitalist, pro-monopoly statement I've ever seen.
Are you denying that is the case? I am not here to argue who is right and who is wrong. I am telling you how it is. So feel free to huddle up in your corner and wait for Google Fiber to come save you.
It plays a huge part. If the ISP's can throttle the bottle necks (Netflix, Youtube, ect...), then data caps wont be a problem. If ISP's are required to let all day through freely, data caps is a way to prevent people from using up all the bandwidth. Lets put it in perspective: A 4k movie is about 150Gbs A 1080P movie is about 2Gbps Grandma who checks her FB and email uses less than 1Gb per month. All three want to pay less than $50.00. Fair? Again, this is the reality of the situation. Its easy to throw on a pouty face and demand your ISP to fix the problem but never offer a solution.
I believe that I am next up on the grill here. As soon as the Comcast & Time Warner merger is completed, I will be dropping TW and going to Verizon FIOS.
This is how capitalism works. Being a thriving business does not guarantee you a successful perpetual business. Horse carriages were thriving before cars were invented. Telegrams were thriving before the telephone. We should be encouraging change when it benefits the consumer. I wouldn't mind usage based billing if we had actual competition in the market place. Since there isn't, prices will trend towards whatever makes Comcast more money. The reality is the grandma would still pay $50, the user streaming 1080P pays $100, and the 4k streamer pays $500. There is no net gain by the grandma. Comcast effectively increased the cost of the internet to non-grandmas, boosting revenue/profits all time high. If the future is 4k, then Comcast damn better well upgrade their networks to support it or quit the business because it's too hard for them to handle.
On one side, you applaud capitalism and then you turn around and denounce it. Capitalism doesn't always breed innovation. This is not a horse/car comparison. Horses did not have a monopoly on the roads to prevent cars from driving on them. That is not the case with cable and dsl providers. They have monopolies over the copper roadways. They obtained these monopolies through decades of work and expansion. Cable companies are capitalists. Why would you expect them to play nice with other providers and whittle away their customer base? Why would you expect them to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in upgrades and bankrupt their companies? And that billion dollars they make a quarter... it goes to a lot of places, including your 401k portfolio. What you're asking for is a socialistic approach. It took cable and telco decades to roll out their infrastructure, however you want fiber to your house yesterday at no additional charge to you. Are you failing to see the instant gratification issue at hand? What reality is this? Data caps??? I would much rather a 10Mbps connection over data caps. I can wait a few extra seconds to get my kitty video. Quit it? Thats hilarious. Who is going to take its place?
Monopolies aren't compatible with capitalism. Cable/Teleco providers obtained regional monopolies through regional and local government agreements. They continue to maintain that monopoly through lobbying and leveraging decade old agreements, not through product or customer service (obviously). Yes, it took investment to build out infrastructure, but they've also had 30-40 years of monopoly status that I'm sure they've made their return on investment. There are communities out there trying to PAY FOR THEIR OWN FIBER OUT OF THEIR OWN MONEY (not at no charge), and cable companies actively blocking them while not providing them the product (high speed fiber) that they are looking for. The reality is prices will not go down for the average user even with data caps in place. I have no idea why you champion the idea. There are already speed prices built in to "manage" throughput. That's how the market is now, not sure why you mention 10Mps.
Utilities are a monopoly. They always will be. Although internet is not labeled a utility, it falls under that category. The reality is that you can not expect half a dozen companies to lay their own fiber lines down. Just as you can't expect that from teleco services, or gas or power or roadways. It simply costs too much. Cable companies can't deny competition. They do not have a legal/legislative monopoly to the internet. However, since cable companies are capitalistic, they do not have to play ball. If they have easements and right of ways, they by no means have to allow others to use it. This is what "deem it so" people fail to realize. Its easy to demand the cable companies to run fiber when one has no idea what it takes to get it there. Companies like ATT and Verizon already own or have a lot of these rights, so they can do it cost effectively. The poor internet in the United States goes far beyond greedy ISPs. I am not sure where you thought I said prices will go down. I did say consumers expect prices to go down and quantity and quality to go up. Prices will never go down unless a person opts for lesser quality...the way it should be. I stated I would rather lower bandwidth over data caps.
In return for the massive perks and tax breaks they have enjoyed over the years, I think a little governmental arm-twisting is the way to go on this. However, doing away with net-neutrality is NOT the way to go. In any case, I think some use of Eminent Domain, or some threat of nationalization of the lines already down might just do the trick to make these guys play some fair ball. It's ridiculous that this country generally has worse internet than many many other countries. And this isn't just about money - we place our nation's citizens at a competitive disadvantage vs other countries when we do not have technology equal to or superior to theirs. Just like the feds own land and lease it to oil companies and such, and how the feds 'own' certain frequency ranges and lease those out to companies, so too could they claim domain over fiber lines 'for the common good' and let the providers buy into them. Now is that saying I trust the Feds any more than anyone else? Nope. But the THREAT of such a thing might work to enable competition and infrastructure advancement.
I completely agree we need to socialize the last mile, just as we do with the roads. The "last mile" is very vague. Usually is the last few hundred feet that is the most expensive. What I would like to see is a four tier system. Tier I and Tier 2 do a decent job of bandwidth utilization. Tier 3, "the last mile", should be a transport tier only. This would be heavily subsidized by the government and regulated. Tier 4 would be broadband resellers. It would then be required for the individual to bring the connection from their house to the public road or front of the subdivision. Tier 4 providers could offer this as a fee or whatever they want to do.
You seemed concern that low usage users were subsidizing high usage users. Wasn't that your pro-cap statement? Also, they do deny competition: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hu...ith-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-smothers-city-run-broadband Has nothing to do with easements, access right of ways, but actual laws or non-compete clauses with every regional/city government. Some more for you to chew on SpaceGhost about Netflix clogging up the tubes: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...caps-have-nothing-to-do-with-congestion.shtml http://bgr.com/2014/07/18/verizon-netflix-congestion-issues/
I am very familiar with municipal dark fiber. You are making a blanket statement for a very specific situation. Yes, ISP's have been for years trying to prevent cities from providing broadband. They have been successful in some states and continue to battle in the remainder. This has gone on for years. ISP's have a very valid argument, however I dont agree with it. Cities and counties have the most easements and rightaways. They have rights to all the property along city and county roads that they can use w/out having to ask anyone else. I for one, am all for them using them to roll out better fiber (just as Kansas City and Provo, Utah did, and in turn give them to Google). However I have concerns because the cities and counties can then make it very difficult for competition to move in if they end up sucking. You really should start your own ISP since you have all the answer. Netflix and Youtube are not saturating the Tier 1 providers. The issue with Tier 1 providers and Netflix have been routing issues. Netflix is saturating many of the tier 3 providers and the poorly ran tier 2 providers. And are you going to tell me 4k streaming is going to be a non issue?
That's wrong. Throttling does not change the size of content, only "slows" data rate of retrieve. Apple to oranges, data caps have nothing to do with throttling. Just plain wrong. This is also wrong. Gbps is a data rate and GB in this context is a file/content size, Gbs doesn't mean anything actually. I'm not sure you understand what you're explaining here. The current pricing model is based on the fact that Granny can check her FB and email just as fast as someone watching Netflix. Granny is not getting short changed.
