Internet Wars, Chapter IV: FCC A New Hope For Consumers

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Wouldn't be surprised if they somehow manipulate the bit rates for video, so no matter what cap you buy, you always come close or exceed it without any real change to viewing habits. Taking off the tin foil hat now.
 
Instead of calling it "fining ISPs" they should call it "taxing consumers" because that is the end result.
Instead of fines they should pursue criminal prosecution for crimes as that would better deter them, and save the consumer the money of paying these fines in their bills.
It sounds like the FCC thought some fine print would be a good excuse to take some private money.
The internet is so much freer now that the gov can arbitrarily harvest money from service providers 😛
 
Instead of calling it "fining ISPs" they should call it "taxing consumers" because that is the end result.
Instead of fines they should pursue criminal prosecution for crimes as that would better deter them, and save the consumer the money of paying these fines in their bills.
It sounds like the FCC thought some fine print would be a good excuse to take some private money.
The internet is so much freer now that the gov can arbitrarily harvest money from service providers 😛
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Exactly. This is just like the EU fining MS and Google. The government is raking in cash from private companies and pretending to be the good guy. I don't see them sending checks out to the consumers! So where does the money go? Same place all your taxes go... into the bottomless pit of waste and fraud.

Anyway as you point out, in the end the costs will just get passed along to the consumer one way or another.
 
I love it they throttled my unlimited plan to .30 KB/s rofl I couldn't load ANYTHING. I called and complained to every manager they would escalate me to. I even use a microcell that using my own wifi because ATT doesn't have service and I live in LA and they still throttled me through my own internet connection. I was so irritated and they told me it was impossible to remove the cap because it was part of the network protocol and no one has access to change it. Very funny guys enjoy your 100 million dollar fine, now it's possible to remove the cap.
 
Are you guys as excited as I am looking forward to seeing my ISP bill go down now that the government has taken control! That is so cool!
 
I hope the FCC throws enough weight around to get this internet frontier of shady corporate behavior gotten rid of. I thinks its incredibly unacceptable that all this shady corporate business practice is considered normal. I honestly would prefer harsher fines get the monopoly buster out and break these corporations up that will bring make them take notice.
 
I don't see them sending checks out to the consumers! So where does the money go? Same place all your taxes go... into the bottomless pit of waste and fraud.
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Because nobody uses public roads, public libraries, municipal water/garbage/electricity services, or public schools. And nobody uses the internet (formerly ARPAnet) or eats food e.g. milk, meat, grains, fruits, vegetables that has all been greatly subsidized with federal funding.

The government can do no good, ever, and everything listed above is just superfluous "waste" spending that either doesn't really exist or is not used by anyone ever.

I find it difficult to believe anyone can trust the government given that it's an ambiguous existence made up of collective robots manufactured who the hell knows where with 0 transparency to the public. It'd make so much more sense if our government was made up of human beings either voted into office or selected by individuals voted into office. It'd also be nice if these "public servants" took part in publishing financial expenditures of the government like with a bill called:
The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (S. 2590)[2] is an Act of Congress that requires the full disclosure to the public of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds
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that could be tracked on a website called USAspending.gov

But sadly we don't live in that world. Government is a faceless evil entity that can do no good and does it all with 0 transparency /sigh.
 
$100 million sounds like a lot of money, but, during 2014, AT&T had a net income of $6.518 billion. That is roughly 0.015% of its income.

For comparison, if you make 30k in a year, that percentage would equal $450 dollars. While it's nothing to sneeze at... if that is the cost of doing business, you're going to keep doing it.

 
Good, it's more things like these that need done. I don't even get how could oppose what the FCC is doing here. They are clearly taking action against abuses of service providers. I know personally I would like to know if my data speeds slowed down after a bandwidth cap. But then again, people on here always will hate whatever the government does blatantly rather than picking out the positives and negatives of government action. No one can ever be the orange juice, they always got to be the core or skin.

Next, they need to take action against Time Warner Cable. They raise the bills for no reason at all, and only if you go in there and ask they will legitimately lower your bill (ours got lowered $50 and our speeds updated when we questioned the billing).
 


I am hoping they and Time Warner get fined. I also hope that some day Internet bandwidth will be labeled in bytes instead of bits Many people with 30Mbps think they are getting 30 megabytes per second rather than megabits per second. In megabytes it would only be 3.75. Because really, who talks about bits? People always talk about bytes, so ISPs use megabits to trick vulnerable customers. Not that it's an abuse but it should either be labeled as "Megabits per second" instead of "mbps" or just changed to megabytes.
 
People are moron sheep. Some politician makes promises and they cheer for joy and trust the government. They don't know what the government actually does or history. The government will save us! Yeah right. Wise up.

Social security trust fund, gone, robbed by government.
Federal debt, massive, but don't worry what could happen there?
Postal service, running billions in debt per year.
Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, going great, not.
FCC invading the internet? I'm sure that will go well (baa baa more taxes and rules please).
 
Because nobody uses public roads, public libraries, municipal water/garbage/electricity services, or public schools. And nobody uses the internet (formerly ARPAnet) or eats food e.g. milk, meat, grains, fruits, vegetables that has all been greatly subsidized with federal funding.

The government can do no good, ever, and everything listed above is just superfluous "waste" spending that either doesn't really exist or is not used by anyone ever.

I find it difficult to believe anyone can trust the government given that it's an ambiguous existence made up of collective robots manufactured who the hell knows where with 0 transparency to the public. It'd make so much more sense if our government was made up of human beings either voted into office or selected by individuals voted into office. It'd also be nice if these "public servants" took part in publishing financial expenditures of the government like with a bill called:


that could be tracked on a website called USAspending.gov

But sadly we don't live in that world. Government is a faceless evil entity that can do no good and does it all with 0 transparency /sigh.
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I find it interesting that you're willing to overlook government warrant-less searches of personal data, police seizing and selling private property for profit, taxes that are many times higher than ever before, foreign governments making donations to people like Clinton who then want to rule America while claiming to only care for the little guy.

I feel your giving way too much trust and control to people that simply do not have your best interest at heart. There are zero redeeming qualities to bloated and self serving government.

By the way...my roads are in deplorable condition, my public libraries have been closed and consolidated, my electric rates have gone up year after year, and my public schools are turning out under-educated, unemployable, ill mannered fools.
 
Any word on how they decided on AT&T's $100 Million ? Or is it just a nice round number they pulled out of their hats figuring it would look good in the press releases.

I think AT&T could make a pretty good case that "Unlimited" in this context amounts to hyperbole and puffery that "a reasonable person would not believe or consider to be material" especially if the throttle down point was disclosed and customers were not charged additional fees. People understand that nothing can be 'unlimited" but if the throttle points were set where they only effect a small number of "powerusers/overusers" then it is pretty defensible. If they are hitting everyone who watches some youtube then it's less defensible.

I don't trust the big corporations to always operate in my interest but I don't think a monopoly government bureaucracy levying fines willy-nilly in a shakedown fashion is likely to advance the general consumer interest much more. Especially when the end results of the "fines" are a "settlement"cooked up by the corporate/government lawyers rather than a judgement measured against a democratically set legal standard.
 
I was one of those customers that got my connection throttled every time it was reaching over 3 gigz on my 5 Gb dataplan. I got so sick of it that I switched to Crickett Wireless, they offer a much better plan, although I do believe it has been bought out by ATT silently and we never heard a word and an outrage about that.
PS: those carriers charge a ridiculous amount for an internet plan compared to France for example.
 
People are moron sheep.
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indeed they are, they keep getting shafted by companies that operate shadily and refuse to compete but insist that the free market will save them.
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Yup. Poor fools, expecting contracts that say exactly what they are paying and getting. That can't be changed unilaterally at any time.

It's so much better and efficient for big businesses to take care of all those silly details for us. And they can do it more cheaply, too, as they scale up into giant monopolies. Yea!

Naughty government children for trying to spoil it all. How can they expect anyone to accomplish anything, when they won't even have the same people involved after 4 or 8 years? Leave wise old Grandma AT&T alone, and go off and play somewhere else.
 
fine them till it makes more sense to upgrade infrastructure, better yet, build a municipal internet.
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america is capitalist, we do not subscribe to the communist nor fascist/socialist (same thing) economic policies of ponzi scam and pyramid scheme for the future generations to be forced into slavery or war for freedom because resources and time and the money they are traded with are finite, & most of which do not grow on trees in an endless supply to meet the full demands of all in a timely manner.
other wise we would all have apple pie and orange juice laying around in piles in every home in america as well as the world.
most people do not work for free or as slaves to reach these utopian/nihilistic goals.
 
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