WOW Data Caps

[poochyena]

I just canceled my WOW internet a few months ago and switched to google fiber after I found out WOW increased my monthly bill without notifying me. again.

46 minutes ago, Vanderburg said:

You realize the regulation allowed the regional monopolies, right?

Thats why you change the regulations to promote competition.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

America officially has the shittiest internet. So much for capitalism and "market will regulate itself". It's shit. Data caps on fixed internet shouldn't be a thing.

They weren't originally. @home network then imploded and all the cable companies had to build their own stuff. It's been literately two decades and ISP's still haven't learned their mistakes from Napster, Kazaa and Bittorrent.

 

If things were being fair, you should only be charged for the pipe-width, not what goes over it. If you charge for both, you're effectively double-dipping. If you only need a 10mbit connection, then you should be entitled to minmax it. If you have a 1gbit connection, again, you should be entitled to minmax it. But if you are paying only for data (eg a connection that doesn't use significant bandwidth, and when it does it's extremely bursty, eg a remote system backup once a week) then you should be on the highest pipe size but paying for data from the first GB over the initial connection tariff. None of this "included data" nonsense that Wireless companies use.

 

Wireless companies should charge for data, because they have no control over the pipe size or congestion, so you want to discourage users from minmaxing it because it impairs the entire wireless sector they are in. You can't make the sectors small enough to eliminate congestion, and and some places, particuarly rural ones, one user can quite literately congest the entire downtown core.

 

Wired connections, particuarly DOCSIS cable, can still be congested, but if a cable company is charging for data after 2015, it's because they:

a) are greedy

b) are not building their networks fast enough and are using it as an excuse for bandwidth management.

 

Basically an ISP charging for data over a wired line, is a bad ISP, and for many western countries like the US and Canada, the "pipe" and "the bandwidth" are from the same company, and the ISP's want to triple-dip (pipe to the customer, bandwidth and pipe to the bandwidth provider) to crush their third party competition using their same wires.

 

[Letgomyleghoe]

4 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Yeah if you're bad at staying anonymous 

just wait till you think you're anonymous then the government will prove you wrong, no ones better at violating your privacy then the government.

[HomeBoi]

What dark ages are you living in for that to make sense? Like data caps have not been a thing in our country since ye old dial up modem, well we still have some data caps on mobile data but that is slowly also going away with most plans offering 30-100 GB per month now.

[Drama Lama]

9 hours ago, Donut417 said:

we'll automatically apply increments of 50GB for $10

oof

[CarlBar]

4 hours ago, poochyena said:

Thats why you change the regulations to promote competition.

 

This, most of the infrastructure in the UK is owned by BT, but regulations mean they can't refuse to sell usage of it to other companies, even competitors. Each company doesn't have to build out it's own infrastructure unless it really wants to. It has some downsides, (Virgin Media's own infrastructure fibre is far superior to BT's for example), but it makes it impossible for one company to establish a hard monopoly by freezing out the competition.

[BuckGup]

8 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

just wait till you think you're anonymous then the government will prove you wrong, no ones better at violating your privacy then the government.

At this point most people are protected by resource allocation limits by our government. As it's simply impossible to prosecute everyone. 

[Lurick]

4 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

This, most of the infrastructure in the UK is owned by BT, but regulations mean they can't refuse to sell usage of it to other companies, even competitors. Each company doesn't have to build out it's own infrastructure unless it really wants to. It has some downsides, (Virgin Media's own infrastructure fibre is far superior to BT's for example), but it makes it impossible for one company to establish a hard monopoly by freezing out the competition.

That there good sir is commie-nisms! We'll have none of that in freedom land!

/s

 

Seriously though, having community broadband efforts and other municipal efforts goes a long way to this as well but so long as we have companies that can literally write legislation, hand it to lawmakers, and get it passed, we're fucked, and yes this has actually be documented in some states, the most recent that comes to mind is Tennessee with AT&T.

[Donut417]

9 hours ago, poochyena said:

Thats why you change the regulations to promote competition.

Well its useless at the Federal Level. The only way to regulate now is at the states. The issue is, some states are not regulation friendly. As in they dont believe in regulations, like Texas for example. 

[PocketNerd]

Internet has become an essential service (especially with the pandemic), time to take all of the infrastructure public and/or highly-regulate private corps to the benefit of the consumer.

 

Edit: And by "infrastructure" I mean all of the ISP-type stuff. Not website hosts and datacenters or w/e