An example would be some provider like Disney saying that in order for Comcast (or some smaller operator) to be able to carry their TV channels they must also zero-rate streaming from their sites. Or Hulu and Verizon do a deal in which Hulu content doesn't count toward a cap on Verizon phones. These things are becoming more common, and I think the difficulty of figuring out which bits count and which ones don't (especially when they all come from the same CDNs) will prove to be more trouble than it's worth.

it used to be backhauling access traffic was expensive (think T1s to cell phone towers). well, those days are long behind us. a little less profit taking and a little more infrastructure investment would solve bandwidth problems in duopolist markets.

Obviously they could be using very old equipment that can't, but whose fault is that?

Also a large amount of coax spectrum is for video tv service.

The real curiousity is why Verizon fios can't deliver near 1gbps. It's already has a fiberoptic network. I'm guessing it's the hardware at the nodes.

And that's just the "assume they are not acting in bad faith" stance; we know they are willingly not upgrading the interconnects to (eventually) Netflix and others, who their customers are requesting more and more data from.

It's actually a decent system - for eg. one local mobile operators provides unmetered/uncapped 4G between 22-6 for a small premium - if you don't have access to a landline it's a great deal.

So the pipe is normally shared equally between requests, but a heavy user might get only half a normal share. That way, they optimize against the real scarcity (in peak time usage, not total downloaded) but no one has to worry about overage charges, and any throttling is to the benefit of other users.

I understand that this is because the one is more marketable than the other, but that isn't really very comforting.