Wallstrip's Julie Alexandra talks about the impending struggle for bandwidth freedom as Internet providers consider charging users for heavy Web use. Watch below:
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The corporate robber barons are about to find out that the turnips have already bled to death due to high gas prices.
Great idea - because what the US really needs is to fall further behind Asia and Europe in broadband accessibility.
Greed incarnate, nothing less. Back in the day (1993) when AOL & its long gone competitors offered dial-up, they charged by the minute. It was expensive and few users spent a lot of time online. Only when AOL lead the way and began charging a flat fee did internet use explode. Now the ISPs want to go back to usage charges and rake in mo dough. Maybe they need a course in economic principles where they'll learn about price elasticity of demand. And with economic times being tough for most of us, a drop in usage may be swift. No doubt many users will take it lying down, but not this consumer warrior. Time Warner already charges too much for the amount of usage I get. The first time my bill exceeds the already excessive $45.99 per month charge, I'll drop them. I'll make limited use of my employer's connection for important things like online banking, but that's it. I'll miss you Huff Po.
We used to run SETI w/top of the line hughes.net service. Then hughes.net limited our access under their "fair use" policy. So then we limited SETI to between 3 & 6 am when hughes.net said it was unlimited. Well that had to come to an end too, as we were still limited. Score one for big business, zero for science! Sorry, SETI.
As if telecoms didn't make enough money. This isn't going to fly. Users of the internet are a new generation, and they will simply not tolerate being charged for use. And this is just another way to limit access based on income. It's a non starter.
....with consumer pressure by the US... we can make them keep a flat rate...just how alot of mobile companies are turning to companies like www.metropcs.com
mobile companies are changing to conform to the user... ISPs should be no different and keep their charges the same...
I'm sorry, I'm not going to watch that video: it would raise my bill too high.
In fact, I'm going to filter out every scrap of advertising that Huffington Post or anyone else may offer, because I don't want to raise my bill too high.
I'm going to start using the telephone again to contact companies, forcing you to hire more employees from places other than Bangladesh.
You don't WANT to attach a meter to the Internet, nor to allow anyone else to do so. Don't kill the hen that lays the golden eggs and that never cackles.
To me the ISP are looking for a way to make big money and profits from all those movie, TV show and music downloads, many of which are illegal. For years, many ISP's have gone after customers who were using their home accounts for heavy commercial use and they have told them to get a more pricey commercial account. I suspect that 'metered' service will come around soon much in a form like cell phones accounts - your time/bandwidth will be limited at 'prime times' and not at off-peak times.
Sadly, charging for time will have a devastating effect on the public's ability to gain news and information from alternative sources. With the growth of the internet, it has become harder and harder for network news to control the message.
Greed, greed, greed, greed.
They'll eventually push people too far one day. Then we will be treated to the glorious sight, of hundreds of thousands of greedy corporate crooks, and their enablers, hanging from light posts across the nation.
Ahhh... I can hardly wait.
So if we have been light users all these years; When do we get our REFUNDS?
...something in the telecom immunity bill about that...no refunds...ever.
If only we can get Net Neutrality pass and we wouldn't have to worry about this stuff.
As for the filesharing Bullsh@#T, a lot people don't know to much about it.
Check out the news-blog site torrent freak.
http://torrentfreak.com/
This is the greed-around to net neutrality. Since they can't charge Apple or Google for "expedited" packets, they will charge the clients. Look for the follow-up, a cable-esque monthly rate which gives the customer unmetered bandwidth for content purchased or rented or streamed from the telecoms own stores.
40GB/mo?
These "small town testers" must be emailing with telnet.
What BS. -- Hey, ever hear of a pyramid scheme?
Guess what. It's ILLEGAL in the USA!!!
Illegal? How do you account for the stock market then? It's nothing but a Ponzi scheme.
*snark* *snark*
Does that make the Tokyo Stock Exchange a ponzu scheme...?
Here in Australia, we know nothing other than user pays bandwith.
Sure we have unlimited plans, but our unlimited plans have a 'Fast Speed' cut off.
For instance, I'm on an umlimited internet plan that provides me with upto 30mbps download and 1000kbps upload speed. This costs me $69.95AUS per month, but once I reach 12gig, my speed is shaped down to dial up proportions which if you all remember, is 64kbps...
Sad, hey...
Over here in monopoly land, where there is no phone number to call if your net connection goes down (love that Comcast on-line only support!), I still get slowdowns at 5 AM local time. Still trying to figure that one out...
So let's ban all internet advertising. Watching unsolicited commercials is eating up bandwidth. Same for pop-ups and the rest.
After that, we'll ban crime.
...and stupidity.
Firefox with Noscript is your friend.
That won't work. Websites rely on advertising for revenue, and taking away their money would only cause them and the ISPs to retaliate.
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| 07/17/08 05:12 AM