I’m confident that the fox will find out just who is stealing those delicious chickens.
You know at first blush, I see this as more capitalism than net neutrality:
What’s important about this is that their “sponsored” data plan means that companies will pay AT&T in order to have their content streamed on AT&T customers’ devices without hitting against their data plans.
But then I recall with horror how much bandwidth all these ads are consuming and how pissed I am that I can’t throttle Youtube content and everything just consumes more and more.
If I could somehow restrict how much ads and autoplay clips consume my bandwidth, I’d be a bit more tolerable about bandwidth caps/slowdowns, but we as consumers are now paying for the ads served up to us through bandwidth monitors.
Could just… use an ad blocker. I haven’t seen an ad on Youtube, Twitch, or almost any website in years and its’ glorious.
Not to mention it’s been proven time and time again that even Youtube can serve malware in ads, and the whole ad industry is a security nightmare.
All it takes is for enough people to believe this. And bye bye NN forever.
The article about the repeal becoming law was on LinkedIn. I read the comment section, thinking hey - most of these people are forward thinking folks, many of whom probably got where they are by NN rules helping them, right?
Oh dear god.
We’re screwed.
Ugh, yes, this is becoming an enormous clusterfuck. I really do feel for groups like, for instance, sex workers in the midst of all this. Whether or not what they do is legal, they do it, and the internet was a reliable source of information on how to do it (relatively) safely and securely, and now most of those sources have gone dark in a matter of weeks.
The CEO of AT&T announced a new skinny bundle for consumers during testimony in the antitrust trial.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-to-launch-low-cost-streaming-service-1524190779?mod=e2tw
Charter offers TV choice, you get 10 of 65 channels to pick from for around 22 plus all their bullshit fees and taxes… it’s like 2-3 dollars a channel. They’re nuts.
I’m currently on Youtube TV and kinda loving it for the NBA Playoffs. Lots of channels for not lots of money.
Non-paywalled story: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/20/17262446/att-tv-streaming-subscription
And googling the story didn’t work, when I clicked through Google, WSJ still blocked the story and told me to subscribe.
Oh look, comcast will only give you faster speeds if you buy their bundles.
As shitty as that is, how does it relate to Net Neutrality - would this not have been possible for them to pull previously?
Kinda sucks, but it’s also understandable:
Comcast says speed increases will kick in automatically without raising the customers’ monthly bills—but only if they subscribe to certain bundles that include both Internet and TV service.
When you bundle services you typically get some kind of price break. Internet only will usually cost more than the charge for internet when bundled.
I’m just projecting baby steps that they are testing the waters.
Oh, you want good latency as a gamer? Then you have to sign up for super-mega-gamer-bundle to get any latency lower than 100ms.
My Comcast internet just got a free boost from 100mbps to 150mbps but I’m in a decently competitive location where CenturyLink also provides gigabit service.
I subscribe to the “Internet Plus” deal or whatever it’s called. So I technically get Internet + TV + HBO, but the TV is local channels only, no DVR, and not even HD. So I just have that bundle for the included HBO and fast internet, and get my TV over-the-air.
It’s not clear to me from the Ars or Houston Chronicle article whether or not Internet-only subscribers can pay for a speed increase. If they can then I don’t see this as a new issue, (shitty) business as usual in trying to force bundles.
I’m glad I don’t do multi-player except once in a blue moon. But still, I’d rather not take a day to download a game from steam nor watch something on Netflix in three second bursts because of buffering.
If it affects all destinations equally, then it’s not a net neutrality violation, it’s just them giving out generally bad service unless people pay up because they know most of their customers don’t have a choice.