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Re:Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data duri... by blub on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @01:34AM (#17816548)
No, how can you say that omitting information the "most honest" way to market it? The obvious honest way is to give several performance indicators for the different circumstances.

Apple does specify two clock speeds when configuring Macs for instance. Battery life is not a good example, since that's normal and expected to vary under load.

Re:Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data duri... by rayiner on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @02:33AM (#17816787)
Who is talking about omitting information? The hypothetical here is whether you market something as a "50 mbps" service with the caveat that it's best-effort, or "as a 200kpbs plan with 50Mbps bursts." At the end of the day, you have to pick one metric as the headline and relegate the others to parentheticals, pop-ups, or the TOS.
Re:Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data duri... by wtallis on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @04:36AM (#17817255)
> The hypothetical here is whether you market something as a "50 mbps" service with the caveat that it's best-effort

It's already been explained to you that the "unlimited" plan at issue was clearly not best-effort after the limit was reached. The throttling that Verizon applied was around-the-clock and resulted in the fire department's device getting a tiny fraction of the speed that personal devices at the same location were getting. The throttling was not happening as a result of congestion, it was an artificial limit on a plan advertised as "unlimited". All theses arguments you're making about best-effort service are irrelevant distractions. A plan that stops being best-effort part way through the billing period cannot be honestly sold as "best-effort" any more than it can be honestly sold as "unlimited".

Re:Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data duri... by TheCoelacanth on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @09:32AM (#17818537)
I'm fine with selling a 50mbps best-effort plan as "50mbps". A "200kpbs plan with 50Mbps bursts" is not that. If you are throttling people to 200kbps after a short burst, that is not best effort. A best effort plan would vary with the overall congestion, it would not drop off specifically based on your personal use of the connection.