EU takes a dump on others. Net neutrality is law: no roaming charges

[Meresgi]

http://consumerist.com/2014/01/30/ka...-google-fiber/

The Kansas state legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit municipalities in that state from building out their own municipal broadband networks. Completely coincidentally of course we’re sure, Kansas City is home to the country’s first Google Fiber municipal network.

Kansas City laid out significant incentives for Google to come hook up their city to a speedy, reliable network. Existing broadband providers like Time Warner Cable did not particularly appreciate Google’s receiving those incentives

Awwwww Time Warner wasn't happy

[Serra]

I'm sure google's lobbyists/lawyers will have a say before such a bill is passed. In unrelated new, I read that TWC lost like 7% of their customers last year.

Also, as far as Verizon's price, they've never been interested in being a cheap network. I think there's an interview where their CEO flat out says competing on cost has never been their interest.

[Meresgi]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...and-in-kansas/

Another write up as well on the same thing.

I think there's an interview where their CEO flat out says competing on cost has never been their interest.

I don't doubt it, seeing as they also believe that unlimited data should not exist, and these are the same people who believe that using the internet is like taking pieces of a pizza, and once they are all gone they are gone. So you gotta pay for those pieces out the ass!

[Jakson]

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post mentioned Comcast in the context of this week's court ruling. However, under the terms of its merger with NBC, Comcast must abide by the Open Internet rules regardless of the court decision until 2018. The author regrets the error.

Well, at least there is some comfort for Comcast users.

[kuronosan]

Kansas is monopolized by Time Warner and AT&T. Of course they don't want other cities getting free high speed internet.

If there's any state full of backwards lobbyists, it's this one.

[Meresgi]

Kansas is monopolized by Time Warner and AT&T. Of course they don't want other cities getting free high speed internet.

If there's any state full of backwards lobbyists, it's this one.

Not much different then the other 49 most likely. New York was monopolized by Time Warner, down here in Maryland it's either Verizon or Comcast. It's great that we have so many choices in this country.

[djzombie]

Wanna choose your isp? Just pick up and move to a different state! It really is that is easy!

[Meresgi]

Wanna choose your isp? Just pick up and move to a different state! It really is that is easy!

haha, its like the same people who say "Well if you don't like it here, just move to another country!"

[hey]

haha, its like the same people who say "Well if you don't like it here, just move to another country!"

I fucking wish i could move to another country. Too bad it's completely impossible unless you have a lot of money, or a useful skill that you can get a job with.

[kuronosan]

I fucking wish i could move to another country. Too bad it's completely impossible unless you have a lot of money, or a useful skill that you can get a job with.

Let me put you in touch with Mike Rowe.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I fucking wish i could move to another country. Too bad it's completely impossible unless you have a lot of money, or a useful skill that you can get a job with.

don't forget age! you have to be young, too. nobody wants old farts who are just going to retire soon. my parents looked into New Zealand; shits ridiculous.

[Odin'sLaw]

don't forget age! you have to be young, too. nobody wants old farts who are just going to retire soon. my parents looked into New Zealand; shits ridiculous.

a friend of mines parents wanted to move there but they was to old (by like 2-3 years) so she applied to go with her parents and because she was 19 at the time they let the whole family move (great for the family but she lost all her friends and her job here and hasn't had any work for a couple years :/)

[Meresgi]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...pe=blogs&_r=2&

The issue has come to the fore now that a federal appeals court has ruled that the Federal Communications Commission can no longer stand in the way of AT&T, Verizon and other Internet service providers that might want to create Internet express lanes.

Count on it: This battle isn’t over yet. On Friday, President Obama said the F.C.C. was considering an appeal with the goal of maintaining “a free and open Internet.”

[kuronosan]

Good. Fuck these companies. Their only interest is in squeezing as much money out of capped plans as they can before people realize that the laws of physics don't prevent people from having unlimited data.

Damn morons.

[Meresgi]

http://support.verizonwireless.com/s...mobile-ad.html

In addition to the customer information that's currently part of the program, we will soon use an anonymous, unique identifier we create when you register on our websites. This identifier may allow an advertiser to use information they have about your visits to websites from your desktop computer to deliver marketing messages to mobile devices on our network.

http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__...here_we_go.gif


http://readwrite.com/2014/02/03/att-...ov0CJU3gPAk0CW

In the midst of a raging debate over whether carriers should be allowed to charge more for certain types of data, or let favored developers offer users apps that don’t count against their data caps, AT&T has applied for a patent on a credit system that would let it discriminate between “permissible" and “non-permissible" traffic on its network.

[notorious bum]

The floodgates are opened, we'll see how much damage is done before the appeals process begins.

[arus2001]

What's the feasibility of Obama using an EO on this? I know reps are basically scared shitless of him going kenyan commie tyrant on the nation and would most definitely accuse him of meddling with free market here, but I think the whole "you can choose your ISP" thing is pretty damning with respect to how out of touch the decision is.

[Meresgi]

http://bgr.com/2014/02/05/verizon-th...ix-amazon-aws/

Have U.S. Internet users’ worst fears just been realized? A new report from iScan Online programmer David Raphael claims to confirm that Verizon, which you might recall helped lead the charge against net neutrality regulations, has begun limiting the bandwidth utilized by certain websites for its FiOS Internet subscribers. In a blog post on Wednesday, Raphael shared a troubling account of issues that his company had been experiencing with service slowdowns. After digging into the problem he finally contacted Verizon customer support, which seemingly confirmed that the ISP is throttling bandwidth used by some cloud service providers including Amazon AWS, which supports huge services including Netflix and countless others. As BGR has learned, however, this is in fact not the case.

[ringthree]

The floodgates are opened, we'll see how much damage is done before the appeals process begins.

The funny thing is that the FCC has been trying to avoid regulating the ISP's as common carriers because it favored the ISP's, but this pretty much means that common carrier designation is inevitable, which will make the ISP's unable to do things like this. This is a simple designation change that the FCC can do at any time (if the FCC actually cared about consumers, they would have done it long ago), and the FCC has been trying to prevent screwing the ISP's but the ISP's are so fucking short sighted that they thing they can lobby their way into anything.

Obama needs no XO. The FCC has complete regulatory control here, and as the Tea Party recedes the likelihood of FCC exerting control of the situation grows. Everyone knows this is bullshit, and while the court made fallacious arguments about the state of the market, there is some indication that the court wanted to do this to force the FCC's hand on the issue of how they will regulate ISP's.

To me, this is complete proof of the failure of the free market to do the best they can. The free market is like a vacuum in the old adage about nature abhorring a vacuum. Its just like socialism. Perfect in concept, horrible in practice. Companies hate the free market, they hate competition, because they hate lowering prices, they hate having to worry about maintain profits, and they will always find the path of least resistance, which in this case is not engaging in what the free market should encourage better products and lower prices, but creating a oligarchic system that abuses government regulation and avoids the free market.

[GoggleHead]

The free market is a goddamn fairy tale. Anyone who's familiar with American history should know exactly how that plays out. We've already learned these lessons, but for some reason we've collectively forgotten them.