FCC slams banhammer on 5G fast lanes with final net neutrality text The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the final text of its net neutrality order, adding changes that appear to rule out so-called "fast lanes" for applications that some advocates feared would undermine it. America's telecoms regulator voted last month to adopt an order to reinstate net neutrality rules …
Most people figured out by now that there never were any "fast lanes"! "Fast lanes" are nothing but providers applying resources (network management!) to slow down everyone, unless they pay a premium to NOT be throttled. This is no less than fraud! Gatekeeping. Tolling.
After decades of technology providing miniturization of network equipment and exponential increase in bandwidth speeds, the providers kept whimpering about "rising cost of business" FORCING them to jack up their prices!
Obviously, when a single rack now replaces a data center full of older equpment, while handling a million times the former bandwidth, it is far cheaper to run. Less energy to run and cool. Less staff to hover about addressing issues. Obviously, with 66% of deployed fiber remaining dark, and ALL of it capable of 1000x faster speeds now than their designers anticipated, there is NO SHORTAGE of connections. With their profit margins exceeding 95% in some markets like NYC, It's like printing money, friends.
I would like to know why the press still hasn't written an article exposing how things really work, instead of continuing to politely use the vocabulary and logic of the carriers themselves, even when mildly hand-wringing about the poor customers.
because most of the press doesn't understand any more than what the suppliers PR is telling them.
And most of the public won't understand/care about the technicalities. It's sort of like how we buy cars (as an example). If it looks pretty and sharp and I can afford it today, then let's go! A year or so down the road it is crap - restart the process.
Yes if anything, it COSTS MORE to throttle everyone's connections... but the throttled service is what providers mean to offer as the discounted tier.
And a word about how major networks bill and credit each other for data crossing to each other's networks; obviously they don't bill bandwidth at the actual cost of providing it. They bill it at a price that is sufficient to KEEP OTHER PLAYERS from joining! These people are just inventing new kinds of monopoly which skirt the legal definition of it (if it's even illegal in their area).
For example, Provider-A and Provider-B tend to exchange around the same amount of data with each other. So if they bill and credit each other $100 per Megabyte, they come out about even. Provider-C would like some backbone access please, but they're a last-mile provider (who also ban their customers from hosting servers) so most of their data travels inbound. This is the "expensive bandwidth" which your residential ISP frets about. They have to pass this arbitrary cost on to end customers.
And I have to point out that the actual cost of maintaining an idle network is the same as maintaining a busy one. The miniscule impulses of energy carying the data are trivial compared with rent, utilities, maintenance, licenses and advertising. So data itself shouldn't even be measured! Networking isn't storage. People should only be billed by the capacity of their firehose over a given billing period.
But providers/ISPs want to be in a position to bill people in speed and quantity tiers, when they sometimes can't even physically provide the contracted service. I had ATT DSL once and they weren't interested in throughput issues unless we could prove to them we were getting less than 50% of our "as high as" speed.
And we all know "as high as" catagorically means they don't have to actually provide that full speed. The word "overprovisioned" surfaces more and more often now, which describes most of these ISPs. They accept and bill more high-speed customers than they can actually serve, and if there's even another ISP to go to, they're playing the same game.
Providers/ISPs don't want to be in a position of having to upgrade their network to support all those high-speed tier customers, so they maintain an ARTIFICIAL SHORTAGE and jack their prices up in a wholly-manipulated market system.
Visible is a new Verizon spinoff. They have two plans Visible and Visible+.
"Visible runs on Verizon's award-winning 5G & 4G LTE networks. Typical 5G & 4G LTE download speeds are 9-149 Mbps. Video streams in SD. In times of traffic, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic."
"Visible+ gives you unlimited premium data on Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, the fastest 5G network access we offer — up to 10X faster than Verizon’s median 4G LTE speeds. Premium data means no data slowdowns due to prioritization."
"Visible+ also gives you 50 GB/mo of premium data on Verizon's award-winning 5G & 4G LTE networks when 5G Ultra Wideband is unavailable. Premium data means no data slowdowns due to prioritization. Typical 5G & 4G LTE download speeds are 9-149Mbps. Video streams in SD. After 50 GB, in times of traffic, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic."
We have plenty of hills around our house so domestic cell reception has always been a bit spotty. The cellphone providers do what they can but the sheer number of cell sites combined with the way cell towers give us all cancer (and put the hens of laying etc.) makes it difficult to keep adding them in residential neighborhoods. Not a problem, though, because our phones work just as well using our domestic WiFi.
At least that was the case for years, until relatively recently, when WiFi calling became unreliable. It wasn't the WiFi itself -- we're not a densely populated neighborhood and I for one use wired connections for anything that streams. But, coincidentally, our ISP started offering cell service about the same time -- attractive rates, bundled with internet access etc. Its the sort of thing that you don't really notice, just the cellphone starts being unreliable, a "trick of the light", perhaps. Its odd how things that work reliably for years seem to get a bit wobbly when business conditions change.
We got a picocell from our cellphone provider. It fills the gap. However, I'm expecting WiFi calling to pick up almost as if by magic....
Reg, Thanks for the link in the article to the actual fcc doc
A very small amount of the doc relates to open internet. It is mostly about control and why they need it and it try’s to dispel anyone’s reasoning that they don’t have the right to take control.
An example is the remark about it will give them the right to require the isp to monitor and provide them access to who you are and what you are doing. All in the name of national security.
Another is the statement that they can force an isp to disconnect any connection to another isp such as those outside of the US. In effect controlling all connections coming and going from the US
I implore you to read the doc in the context of what power they have over you personally, your employer and your ISP if they don’t like what you believe or think.
Keep in mind these are the guys that have the power to stop robocalls, but don’t.
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