comcast does, they have a ceiling limit, now its something obnixious that Ill probably never hit but people have.
Actually, I forgot about this but you're right. Its actually one of the things people for Net Neutrality point to when suggesting that the telecomms will all move this direction, and continually more restrictive, if given the opportunity. This is the kind of thing that either shouldn't be happening, or worse expanding.
and that fine by me i just wonder if the public outrage is properly informed or driven by misinformation. The idea of comcast controlling ANYTHING traffic wise if a solid argument cant be made that it hinders over all traffic quality is not OK with me BUT neither is random EXTRA charges. So im kinda stuck and I also my be misinformed not having deeply researched.
I imagine some of the outrage is based off poorly informed people...but that's true of just about every issue.
Now, some examples to show why its not a stretch to think that...if given the option or power too...the telecomms will move in the direction of severe limitations.
First and foremost, you look at the history of other forms of media. The tight control and the movement to mega-corps of various types of media...print, radio, television...is historically evident. The ability for fledgling entities to make any kind of realistic dent in those markets now is significantly less then prior to them being massively controlled and filtered by corporations.
Second, you have the words of many of these telecoms. Take this gentleman from Bell South
The Washington Post said:
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.
This is the first step of a tiered system, where certain sites that work with the telecom you have to use get "good" connections while others get worse. This stifles growth and the individuality of the internet. For example, say you use Cox and Yahoo! pays Cox money to give "better" speeds to their Political message boards in hopes of growing them. So access to the fledgling, independently ran and financed Debate Politics is far slower than Yahoo Politics, ran by Yahoo!, moderated by Yahoo!, etc.
Or how about this comment:
Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg told the Wall Street Journal said:
We have to make sure they don't sit on our network and chew up our capacity. We need to pay for the pipe.
Again, clearly indicating an intent and desire to begin to specifically limit how much people use "their pipes" and that those using it need to "pay" for it. Ignore the fact those "pipes" were subsidized by the American tax payers with the understanding that the telecoms would reinvest in BETTER pipes so that there wouldn't be these kind of congestion problems, which most telecoms did not do.
Third, look at some actions. Your comcast cap from 2008 is one such example of a telecom attempting to limit what you can do with that bandwidth you pay for. Other examples?
- In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
- In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned EchoDitto -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
- Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose -- driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.
- In 2007 Comcast throttled bit torrent traffic, significantly downgrading speeds if not outright stopping connections
- In 2008 Time Warner attempted trial runs of a new pricing plan that charges more based on the amount of service you use
Time and time again the telecoms actions show that they will attempt to start charging for the content we use their bandwidth for if they are allowed. That they will continually attempt to thwart our access to legal uses of the bandwidth. That they will try and shut out other competitors to force people into their service.
Fourth, finally, you have other companies actively trying to work towards giving the companies the ability to do these things. The reason there's a market for this, logically, is that the cable companies are wanting it. Consider this recently leaked slide:
This was a slide being sent out to AT&T, Verizon, and other companies that was part of a presentation detailing how software can be used to charge individuals based on the websites they go to. To allow them to determine what service customers are using and charge accordingly. This isn't just hyperbole either, that's pretty much what the presentation stated:
[We use] a number of different methods to accurately identify the application -- methods like heuristic analysis, behavioral and historical analysis, deep packet inspection, and a number of other techniques. What's key is that we have the best application identification available on the market, which means that even applications that are encrypted or use other methods to evade detection will be correctly identified and classified... We essentially feed this real-time information about traffic and application usage into the policy and charging system. Each subscriber has a particular service plan that they sign up for, and they're as generic or as personalized as the operator wants.
Now this is aimed at phones right now, because right now phones are able to operate in the way many telecoms have attempted to want to go towards....a system where data intake is charged rather than a fee being paid for data speed. However, should the telecoms start going that direction there's no reason similar pushes won't occur for them as it is for the cellular industry now.
The idea of where the telecoms would like to take things isn't an imaginary idea, but one rooted in a number of legitimately observed actions.
This thread is not about Amy Goodman. Stick to the topic of this thread.
