If there isn't ample competition or near perfect legislation, it doesn't matter what you pay, the service will eventually be held by a monopoly that can do almost whatever they damn well please.

You don't fight monopolies by paying more money, because as long as that's your only focus, the bar to entering the market will continue to rise until eventually you can't afford the `good guy`.

Right now, one network is pulling this throttling bullshit. If you don't like it, there are other choices. If you say "I wish I could switch but T-Mobile is cheaper" then what you're actually saying is that you don't care about the issue enough to pay for it, and that means the providers have no reason to care about it.

They're all doing something major that violates Net Neutrality.

Sprint's compresses images and throttles video https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... They just don't advertise compression/throttling as a "feature", so it doesn't get the publicity. Sprint also does zero-rating for music.

AT&T has "Sponsored Data" and throttles 'unlimited' plans, and Verizon has their ad-tracking-injection mess.

Whoever I pay is going to get money for "pulling bullshit". I love the idea of voting with your dollar, but all of the major cell networks are anti-Net-Neutrality in multiple ways, so the whole thing is almost a false choice.

The comment I replied to mentions Project Fi, do they avoid all this?

Aside: not that this really makes it better, but AT&T's list of Sponsored Data providers is full of hilariously obscure companies:

http://www.att.com/att/sponsoreddata/en/index.html

It's one of the examples given during the FCC's bright-line guidance ( https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-332260A1.p...):

However, the network practice must be primarily used for and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management and not business purpose. For example, a provider can’t cite reasonable network management to justify reneging on its promise to supply a customer with “unlimited” data.

But if the carrier chooses to throttle an "unlimited" data plan and thus degrades the delivery speed outside of "network management" contexts (such as congested network conditions) then they are now subject to additional punitive fines arising from net neutrality regulations that they are now subject to, on top of any (successful) fines related to misrepresentative advertising.

This falls under the category of willfully "impairing, or degrading" an existing service motivated by business interests related to the specific subscriber, instead of driven by purely technical network management justifications which would apply to a wider geographic area (i.e. not subscriber-specific), and this is one of the bright-line examples given by the FCC when they issued their press release.

As a side note, I believe the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection handles deceptive advertising enforcement, while the FCC handles net neutrality enforcement.

It's even cheaper if you don't opt out of BingeOn and can tolerate DVD (480p24) quality video streaming on your wireless device.

So, if you currently use 5-10 GB/mo on one carrier, the theory is that you'll use less - possibly significantly less - on Google Fi.

That's SIGNIFICANTLY different from what you can see reported about how you manually configure the WiFi you have used today.

Also, there is the whole security issue of connecting to public APs automatically.

So, if you currently use 5-10 GB/mo on one carrier, the theory is that you'll use less - possibly significantly less - on Google Fi.

I don't think there is any "partnership", the "Wifi Assistant" feature just joins open wifi networks. It does do two neat things: first, it establishes a VPN tunnel through a Google controlled endpoint. Second, they seem to have a database tracking the quality of wifi networks. It won't join networks that are known to be slow, and if a network gets too slow it will automatically disconnect.

In practice though, almost every open wifi network is slow. Much slower than LTE, and certainly not something you could reasonably make a voice call over.

Overall I'm relatively happy with Fi. The service is a little better than T-Mobile (still not as good as AT&T) and the management interface is dead simple. Its what a software startup would build if they went into the cellular carrier business. And for my level of usage (3-4GB/month) the price is similar to T-Mobile.

But don't expect it to save you bandwidth.

(I migrated from Verizon to Project Fi, and live close to Canada, so, consider that I am used to turning my phone off when out of the country or near the border, because of Verizon's very unreasonable rates for international calling and text.)

I don't think you can order a Project Fi account as a non-domestic resident, though.

See Fi's rate card here: https://fi.google.com/about/rates/