How many ways do I have to say it?

[trinityvixen]

This is just not a good idea.

The internet providers are not doing it for the benefit of the 95% of the customers (their number) who don't down/upload terabytes of data. If they were worried about the extreme cases, they would set the data-limit packages with much higher limits to really target those who are doing nothing but downloading and uploading huge files with a computer they apparently never turn off.

I don't know how many ways they can sell this bullshit and expect people to swallow it. They can't say this:

The company says it is not fair for average users to subsidize heavy users.

And then say this:

most customers in the Beaumont experiment will not pay much more than they did under the old plan.

And pretend that they're doing anyone but themselves a favor. Look at the wording in that last bit: customers aren't paying less, they're paying more for the "privilege" of having to keep track of how many YouTube videos they watch or iTunes songs they buy. If you're trying to sell this horse manure as a service to keep the average user from being screwed by the mega-downloading-evil-intertubes-clogging-pirate-men-monsters, you have to make it so it's cheaper for them to sign on. If it's more expensive, it doesn't matter how much more. You're making them pay more for less, more money, less access.

There should be a revolt. Instead, The New York Times sees it as the customers who are being greedy, dangerously so:

Customers are reacting like patients whose doctor has put them on a strict diet. Some are looking for tools to restrain their Internet use; others are hoping to find another doctor with a more liberal attitude toward vanilla Swiss almond ice cream and prime rib.

The metaphor isn't even accurate. It's more like customers have been going to a quack doctor because he's the only guy in town and he's trying to keep them from getting a peek at the phonebook where they might find another doctor and learn how badly he's being screwed. This isn't a case of the people using the service doing anything bad for them as a result of more access; this is a case of the telecoms acting like a bad date--agreeing to pay for a meal and then not liking that the consumers can eat whatever they want and not ever be glutted even though it's all-you-can eat.

There's also this:

A few companies say that Internet networks are being clogged by legitimate video services like YouTube.com, Hulu.com and Apple’s iTunes, which use more bandwidth than the illicit file traders.

So, not only does the move to pay-as-you-amass-gbs not save you money so you're not paying for the evil pirate monster men, but the evil pirate monster men aren't even the problem in the first place! YOU ARE.

Why aren't people revolting? Seriously, if this experiment in nowhere Texas proves not to raise hell, they'll use the incredibly disproportionately small sample size (2000 census pop for Beaumont: 100,000; 2008 number of people in the US using the internet: 220,141,969, making Beaumont's representative slice about 0.005%) to argue that it benefits people everywhere. And they'll only pay slight more for that "benefit"!

What was the lesson we learned from iTunes? Make it easy for people to do it legally, they'll do it legally. Complicate the process, and they'll jump ship faster than rats. What happens when people start stealing bandwidth from neighbor's unsecured networks? I guess it just sucks for them, doesn't it?

Will it really take cutting into things that are legal and free like iTunes before someone raises a goddamned stink about this? I mean, I trust that once iTunes' revenue stream is curtailed, they'll do some fit-pitching, but we have to let it go that far? What about the green aspects of this? Costs a helluva a lot of gas to get things delivered that we could just download, especially when we only want the one song, episode, whatever. Guess that doesn't matter so long as the almight internet providers say it doesn't.

I seriously cannot believe that a group of rich-ass bastards is so cheap. No, I take that back. After all the financial institutions collapsed this and last few weeks, I can believe that. I just can't believe we're still not looking into this robber-baron behavior.

Comments

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Oh look, a new and exciting way that Comcast is going to screw me. I thought it was getting near that time of year again.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

God. Where's that old lady and her hammer when you need her?

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Though actually, there is a beacon of hope in this: While Comcast, Time Warner and the other providers are big companies, so are Google, Yahoo, and many online content providers. They want us to use as much data as possible, and know that this scheme will curtail that. In a battle of greed between big companies, we can actually come out okay. It's just the one-sided big companies vs. us where we get screwed.

(Actually, I'd think Time Warner would be internally squabbling over this. You know what sucks up bandwidth? Online TV viewing. You know what Warner Brothers has on their "big new initiative" slate?)

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention that. Part of the concern for the cable companies is that all this online video will eat into their cable TV customer base. Similarly, the phone companies would love to put a crimp on VoIP service over their DSL lines. In either case, they have to claim that that has nothing to do with it or the FCC (and possibly the FTC) will come down on them for being anti-competitive, but IIRC some of it did come out in Comcast's recent FCC hearings. I'm just glad I have a business connection at home, for which that sort of thing wouldn't fly (not that Verizon has tried it with FiOS, at least yet).

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Do you think they can prove they're disinterested enough not to take the desires of their cable branch or the telephone companies into consideration if it got that far? Because Time Warner I know has a digital phone service they'd be only too happy to sell you at a rate of $30-40 extra month. It's in their interests to restrict bandwidth if it means Skype suddenly costs the customer in bits if not in phone minutes. How can they claim that's not a conflict of interest?

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

"How can they claim that's not a conflict of interest?"

Honestly? I think it just...sort of...doesn't come up. But like I said, I believe it did in the recent FCC/Comcast dustup. Or maybe it only did in an article about it.

The thing is, these days, data is data. Phone, TV, Internet - it's all digital data being pushed around by a lot of the same equipment. And a lot of the same regulations need to apply to all three. All are critical services in the 21st century, that need to be deployed in rural areas and inner cities. All allow a lot more competition than in the past, which is very important. The FCC needs to catch up, not just to get wise to schemes like Comcast has been pulling, but in general to the new way of things. They do seem to be making progress; I guess we'll see how it goes from here.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I guess crossing my fingers is as good a method as any. ::sigh::

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, see, I recognize that it will come down to a battle between giant companies making money off the consumers. I just worry that it will take a while to get to that point as everyone does the hold-their-breath, wait-and-see dance.

[avram]

Also: Some say that citizens in some other countries routinely get much faster, unlimited service for lower prices. Really? Some say that? Maybe you could have looked into that, Mr Wayner, and reported it as an actual fact rather than dismissing it as a "some say".

This isn't as issue of fairness -- there's not a big media provider in existence that gives a rat's ass about whether a policy is fair to their customers.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Of course it's not about fairness. It's about how they squeeze more money from a system without spending a dime on infrastructure. They believe, and I think they do so erroneously, that people will tolerate meter-checking and higher rates more than internet slowdowns. I don't know about them, but even at my most frenzied, I've never gotten madder about having to wait an extra few seconds on a page. I have, however, gotten pissed about extra fees I've paid for going over an arbitrary limit set to make more money off me because I don't frequent text-only sites.

The problem with this is that they're probably going to get away with it because people aren't always cautious with checking bills and expect periodic increases in service price rather submissively. They also tend to ignore brochures stuck in bills letting them know about changes because those bills usually just justify the price increase and let you know that it's legal for them to do it and fuck off if you don't like it. People are going to think they don't have a choice.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Another aspect of this is that companies have long come under fire for selling more bandwidth than they have. It's not ultimately the *amount* of data transfer they're trying to limit; they're hoping that if they cut down on the totals, that will help decrease peak usage.

But companies sell access packages that promise unlimited data transfer at speeds of x, y, z, at multipliers of what their infrastructure can actually handle. Consumers rightly point out that "you sold me a package for this much, and I'm going to use it all," and the companies fear that something disastrous will happen when it comes out that um, well, you see, actually, we weren't expecting that everyone would want to use this service, see...