This argument is bizarre because it’s already a thing! Just not in the US. For example, Telcel Mexico offers unlimited “social media” plans[1].
It’s not clear why US carriers have not moved forward with similar plans. Perhaps they’re waiting for the patchwork of state net neutrality laws to be repealed/overturned. But this isn’t some purely hypothetical business model.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03085...
What does this mean?
The idea that moving from <1mbps-10mbps to basically decent quality fiber speeds on your phone will result in reduced access to networks (via finely controlled interception and inspection) sounds stupid to me. And as I said it only makes sense in the developing world where there are actually customers who would buy such a thing, and even then only a tiny niche. But in the western world, to expect the entire market to be so anti-consumer and roll backwards like that, that still sounds like a fantasy to me.
I'm not dumb enough to say that giant oligopolies won't try but I highly doubt it will go beyond speculation let alone ever become anything close to 0.1% of the marketshare within the country, let alone globally. It's not a serious threat that can't be dealt with by existing means, even those that roll out well before it ruins anything real.
Meanwhile Indian scammers, who for a significant number we already have the addresses and names of and who use American phone services (as shown in the sublinked video) make hundreds of millions off westerners and literally nothing is being done by the US to a real and active anti-consumer threat that exists today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le71yVPh4uk
I will be concerned about US net neutrality when and/or if it actually becomes anything close to a real threat and I mean that (ie, companies proposing a serious rollout with pricing and other specifics instead of very broad speculation that they need it to capture more value from the market, which some dumb politician buys into).
Look up "network slicing"
Doesn't mean it was ever a practical idea.
I've always said we can make laws when or if it actually happens. Because in the meantime we've all been getting upset and wasting time over highly impractical scenarios... and net neutrality has had a serious force and backing, which is good. But in regards to the FCC there's so many more important things to be spending our hacker concern-resources on IMO. For example the FCC (or FTC) should be looking into the millions of Indian (et al) call scammers which are wrecking havoc across the western world - which is an obvious and very real epidemic of fraud that is happening right now and very few western gov are doing anything about the millions of older people getting scammed every day. Much of which transits through legit American infrastructure and web services.
Then wake me up when a single ISP or mobile operator does anything close to what people have been claiming they will do.
Also this is a symptom of a bigger problem.
You want the FCC to focus on problems which you feel are more serious. That's fine. I agree. The FCC should do something. Anything. The problem is the FCC is weak as hell and not willing to take meaningful action on basically anything at this point.
Now it is nation-wide.
I get slightly more speed than I did back then, but I'd trade that extra speed for no bandwidth cap in a heartbeat. Obviously usage depends on person and plenty of people won't notice cap but I can easily drop 1/10th of my monthly bandwidth budget on a single game on steam these days.
Because not all variables are well-defined and outcomes known is not a reason to do nothing. You don't always just wait until you're neck deep in the consequences to begin considering the solving it.
If there's a well-established tendency for a problem to occur, it's prudent to consider measures that may prevent it and/or have contingencies ready for such events. Especially when there is documented historical precedent AND potential solutions.
Moreso when it is regarding a resource that having reasonable access to can have very real, material effects on people's lives. The obvious examples being clean water, electricity, and various means of communication, reliably and affordably available. It's hardly a discussion at this point as to whether internet access is one of those resources, so it seems entirely acceptable to risk overshooting on protecting access.
What this has evolved into this year is that telcos now get to charge marketers extra money for the ability to send to their customers. For example: https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041687274...
Previously, you just made sure a message was compliant with regulations and paid the usual rate to send it. Not anymore, pay to play with each carrier!
Many ISPs are monopolies in their markets. You may have the privilege of choice where you lived, but I’ve been in a state capital city where if you wanted broadband cable internet you had to get it from one provider, since they owned all the infrastructure.
You could try to make your cell phone act as a hot spot (or buy a mobile hotspot that used cellular reception from a different vendor), but that was hit or miss depending on your proximity to a tower.
Your statement would make sense where people had a legitimate choice of a provider. But for many people, there is only one choice for broadband in their market.
This is politics baseless future-promises 101 stuff, just at a new completely not-giving-a-shit level. Which is only mildly interesting.
The question of whether the deregulation will do anything at all is still open to be seen. I've long said that tiered ISP pricing will never be a thing (ie, Comcast offering a "movies and social network package" vs a normal broadband monthly deal or mobile operators doing the same), regardless of lack of FCC protection, because it just doesn't make any sense as a business model or service, not to mention it would face a big industry backlash - an industry the whole arrangement relies on. But I got downvoted plenty before on HN early on by people who think we need it written down into law and enforced by FCC, regardless of its practicality, which I guess is fair.
But I still see very little (or almost zero) industry movement towards any of those scenarios people were claiming was going to happen a year or two ago during all the hysteria over the move to "deregulate" the FCC.
There was always far more in the way of those anti-net neutrality worst-case scenarios becoming reality than the FCC, IMO. The proposed scenarios only vaguely make sense in the developing world, not in the US, in places where you could bottom out pricing for access to networks, but it's already so cheap and established I don't see how any company could survive legitimately offering artificially limited internet access (beyond government protected oligopolies like we have here in Canada all agreeing to do it at the same time, which is again a huge stretch and nothing to do with the FCC).