Re: Thank you
Here is what we all want :
We pay $x for x speed at x reliability at less than x latency.
... If they slow down another providers content, it is a breach of contract and theft. Sue them. ... Class action lawsuit and BAM problem solved. And not just with AT$T, the other carriers did not try it after that either.
Big problem with that, all the provider has to do is sell you a target speed 100Mbps service - but only guaranteed to be minimum of 10kbps; and with latency target of <1ms - but only guaranteed to be less than 10s; and with target availability of 99.999% but with no guarantee of any availability.
Great you say, no-one would sign up to that rubbish. Correct, in most of the UK we have a choice of real providers and someone trying that crap would find few takers. But AIUI the state of internet provision in the USA, people would still buy it on the basis that it's better than no connection at all - having the choice of one incumbent since the cable industry did such a good job of carving up the market into several monopolies.
So having signed up to such a service, you are not going to be able to sue because it's unlikely that they'll fail to provide what they guaranteed.
This is where Pai's arguments fall down - backed up by the FCC's blatantly false reporting of the market situation to the government committees that oversee such things. If there's no market, then simply requiring transparency won't help - all it means is that the local monopoly would have to describe their bad service accordingly while people would still be forced to buy it. If there were a true market then it would deal with the situation - the cable co's would find themselves competing with providers who didn't throttle (eg) Netflix, and losing. But there isn't, so they won't.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
