S_engineer
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL
 ·Comcast
| reply to KrK
Re: Excellent.....
Your right KrK, this is a consumer protection law and should be touted as one. This will be maligned by the carriers and their lobbiests, and Congressmen with huge pockets will look away. But if this argument is framed as consumer protection, then it will be harder for Congress to vote against this. This law as its written has components that look like laws that govern utlilities.
This should be expected for a platform that is now integrated into our economy in so many different ways.
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BF69~~~Please stop suffocating gerbils! |
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RJ44
join:2001-10-19
Nashville, TN
| said by S_engineer  : This law as its written has components that look like laws that govern utlilities. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but I can't think of any utility that DOESN'T have metered billing.
Let's see...electric, water, gas, check. What else? |
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jp10558
Premium
join:2005-06-24
Willseyville, NY
| Well, yes, but NYSEG isn't saying $50 a month for the line and up to 100KWh included, then $5/KWh over ... It's more like $10 for the hook up and some smallish amount $0.20 per KWh from the start IIRC...
I think the general consensus is that caps are a horrible idea, but a reasonable line fee (say like the line fee for your phone... $7/month in rural NY) and then a reasonable per GB charge ($0.25??) would be ok.
But the carriers want it both ways... Grandma pays $50 for internet and her 5GB, heavy user pays $50 + $2 per GB over... And the overage charge is just crazy high in relation to the cost of transfer, which as the article notes keeps going down...
And this would also allow night rate pricing which might actually help congestion when of course caps *don't*.
And the really huge downloaders would actually pay more for more use while the really light users would save money. But that would be fair rather than just sneakily raising rates for everyone.
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Opera 9.62(Build 10467); Windows XP Pro SP3;Intel C2Q6600; 3GB DDR2 1066; 1M/128k DSL; Antivir Personal; Comodo Firewall Pro 3;Proxomitron 4.5j Sidki 2008beta,GPG ID:0x0A1C6EE3 |
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Michael Chaney
@natinst.com
| reply to RJ44
What you're overlooking is the fact that comparisons to utilities like electric, water and gas are inappropriate. Data is not a limited natural resource.
A better comparison would be to roads or copper telephone service. The cost is in building and maintaining the road, or installing and maintaining a telephone line to your home. Whether you drive on the road or not, or use the phone or not, the cost is still there. Now business models such as toll roads or per-call charges are ways of recouping the fixed costs (as would be a flat-rate monthly bill or tax), but are not in anyway related to the actual cost structure. The same is true for Internet service. Your ISP pays to provide and maintain the connection to your house, and that cost for the most part is fixed. If we were to incorrectly apply the utility analogy, then if I turn my computer off for a month, I should get a bill for $0, but I don't. They can't do this because the connection cost them whether heavily used, partially used, or not used at all.
The only fair comparison you can make to a utility is when discussing the infrastructure. Because the hurdles and obstacles in providing a wire to your house for a broadband connection are very similar to those faced when providing any other utility service to your house.
How many of those utilities over came these hurdles is by establishing a common carrier status to the physical infrastructure. That's how different phone companies can offer competing service over the same copper lines, or how different electric companies can do the same of one set of power lines into your house. Ultimately the best solution is to have a municipally or privately owned broadband infrastructure that allows for ISPs to compete over that common infrastructure. But that change will not be quick or easy. In the meantime we need legislation that will prevent those monopolizing the infrastructure from abusing their position for money grab schemes. |
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