Verizon To Start Throttling All Smartphone Videos To 480p or 720p (arstechnica.com) 188
Verizon Wireless will start throttling video streams to resolutions as low as 480p on smartphones this week. Most data plans will get 720p video on smartphones, but customers won't have any option to completely un-throttle video. From a report: 1080p will be the highest resolution provided on tablets, effectively ruling out 4K video on Verizon's mobile network. Anything identified as a video will not be given more than 10Mbps worth of bandwidth. This limit will affect mobile hotspot usage as well. Verizon started selling unlimited smartphone data plans in February of this year, and the carrier said at the time that it would deliver video to customers at the same resolution used by streaming video companies. "We deliver whatever the content provider gives us. We don't manipulate the data," Verizon told Ars in February. That changes beginning on Wednesday, both for existing customers and new ones. The changes were detailed today in an announcement of new unlimited data plans. Starting August 23, Verizon's cheapest single-line unlimited smartphone data plan will cost $75 a month, which is $5 less than it cost before. The plan will include only "DVD-quality streaming" of 480p on phones and 720p on tablets.The new Verizon cell phone plans can be compare side by side here, along with all of Verizon's existing plans.
Net neutrality anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Surprisingly, not really. Put this way: they're throttling "video", not "Netflix".
Now if they pushed their own (or a paying partner's) video service and throttled everyone else's, then you'd see a violation of net neutrality.
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Net Neutrality is not only about throttling one particular company. It's about applying any filter that causes some data to be treated differently to another.
If I suddenly can't download certain files as they're hosted on the server, because the ISP deemed them filter worthy, that certainly is a violation of net neutrality.
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Blackholing http-based DDoS packets would violate your definition of net neutrality, so maybe you shouldn't try to be so absolutist? Sometimes throttling *types* of packets is a good thing (now in TFA's case, that's up for debate.)
Also, NN is based on not discriminating based on source, as opposed to based on type. For instance, Coho.net (a local Pacific NW Fixed-wireless ISP) specifically filters out and blocks as much BitTorrent traffic as it can detect, and says as much in their policy. They've done this for years now, through various FCC Net Neutrality pronouncements and rulesets, and have yet to see any issues with the FCC over it.
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"This ISP does it, therefore it doesn't violate net neutrality" is a strange argument to make. The bottom line is that it prevents you downloading certain types of data. That's EXACTLY what net neutrality is meant to prevent.
To be network neutral, an ISP is meant to act as a dumb pipe. It's then up to me to discard packets that I'm not interested in.
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Correct - and that's actually one of the exact arguments the ISPs used against it - it would degrade the quality of some services due to not being able to prioritize them.
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
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So Net Neutrality does not allow for QoS?
It allows for using QoS information, but not for changing it. If either of the endpoints (or devices under their control) marks the packets with a QoS, they are free to act on that.
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Net Neutrality is not only about throttling one particular company. It's about applying any filter that causes some data to be treated differently to another.
The "Net" refers to networks. As in, I'm neutral as to how I treat packets from network A and network B.
You may want ISPs to be neutral about how they treat packets on criteria other than their source and destination, but that isn't Net Neutrality. That's something else entirely.
ISPs can throttle and apply QoS polices to traffic and maintain network neutrality as long as the selection criteria isn't based on src or dst.
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No - "net" refers to networks. As in the network is neutral as to how it treats all packets.
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Try again. This is the document that coined the phrase "Network Neutrality".
http://www.jthtl.org/content/a... [jthtl.org]
What you're talking about is "Application Neutrality", which is also discussed.
There may be good reasons to have Application Neutrality, but you don't get to re-define Network Neutrality because you have your own misunderstanding of the phrase.
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Again, time for an FTC, not FCC, argument. (Score:2)
It is also a consumer fraud, at lease on current users, since they are providing less service than what their advertising would be understood by customers as claiming.
The FCC is not good at regulating this. This kind if thing is exactly what the FTC (the federal government's primary consumer protection watchdog) handles, and often handles very well.
IMHO this kind of regulation (as well as the anti-competitive behavior of vertically integrating ISPs into content provision conglomerates and then treating the
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it's probably all lies, I'll explain why. (Score:2)
well not really. it's not a net neutrality thing, however if they did it like they describe then it's 100% against privacy and it's 100% against using https.
youtube defaults to https. they can't intercept that and re-encode it.so what tools do they have in their possession to do it?
however, they can just throttle it to say 1mbps or whatever they think that 1mbps is, which seems actually much more likely than anything else - that they throttle all long tcp connections. MAKING THEIR ENTIRE HIGH SPEED SALES PI
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THIS. Thank you.
If you're streaming video over https and Verizon throttles it, then that throttling decision was made based on very limited data:
* source (youtube/etc)
* destination (you)
* port (443 / HTTPS, which does not signify "video")
* connection age (how long the connection has been established... but this would actually be easy to work around by just re-establishing the connection every few minutes)
* usage (how much has been transferred in how much time)
I take issue with anyone saying they throttle vi
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Will thi saplly to Verizon Channel on USTREAM?
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
On the contrary - it is against net neutrality since it is treating some internet traffic (videos) differently to all other internet traffic (not videos). It is applying some kind of filter in the middle if and only if the ISP deems the data to look a certain way. That means that it becomes impossible for me to download certain types of data over this connection.
This is almost the exact case that net neutrality hopes to prevent.
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The first paragraph goes like this:
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.[1] The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003, as an extension of the longstanding concept of a common carrier, which was used to describe the role of telephone systems.
So I tend to agree with beelsebob.
Re:Net neutrality anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are correct, but the current Net Neutrality rules for the USA do allow for this sort of thing to prevent network congestion.
Net neutrality =/= net neutrality rules, so this creates some confusion.
Cell phone networks have always been given more leeway with net neutrality rules to begin with, and targeting streaming video (a huge bandwidth hog) over the cell network is an obvious choice for preventing network congestion. As long as they treat all streaming video equally regardless of the source, It's not that big of an issue. Sure, I'd like better descriptions of the rate limits in the naming of the packages they're offering, but it's a reasonable measure. I'm betting it's easy to circumvent with an encrypted VPN as well -- at least until they start throttling all VPN connections if that becomes a popular solution.
Remember one of the reasons they're allowed these exceptions is that they are also an e-911 service, and those 911 calls must be routed quickly and get priority over all other traffic. Sure, a simple phone call doesn't take up much bandwidth, but there can be hundreds at any time in an area & if the network is congested with 4K video, that'd be a problem.
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Remember one of the reasons they're allowed these exceptions is that they are also an e-911 service, and those 911 calls must be routed quickly and get priority over all other traffic. Sure, a simple phone call doesn't take up much bandwidth, but there can be hundreds at any time in an area & if the network is congested with 4K video, that'd be a problem.
I don't think that creating a VoIP VLAN on a provider network is against the Net Neutrality rules. Technically speaking, the VoIP VLAN is not the internet. So using QoS after overprovisioning the broadband link by as much as the reserved VoIP bandwidth is not in any way a breach of Net Neutrality.
So with this very simple and inexpensive (and mostly already adopted by VoIP providers in Canada) network engineering trick, you can totally saturate the Internet VLAN with 4K videos, but your calls will still be
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The neutral internet is really, really great â" for ....
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Ã" ??? I meant -
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wireless carriers are allowed to throttle and process internet traffic as they want
According to this [wikipedia.org], this goes against pure Net Neutrality.
To quote the interesting part:
[...]Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.
I'd say this kills wireless replacing broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
Game of Thrones (Score:2)
So long as the wireless vendors continue to stick it to their customers with artificial constrainst and service downgrades, wireless is not going to be the replacement for fixed-line Internet access that many have been predicting.
This is also a really bad marketing move right before the Game of Thrones finale. My guess is Verizon has been losing too much money with every Game of Thrones episode.
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They're not losing money. They don't get charged per-byte for backhaul or peering. They are doing this to allow them to delay network upgrades and to provide a competitive advantage to their own product. https://www.verizonwireless.co... [verizonwireless.com]
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And... wait'll the cocksuckers do this with fixed-line internet access.
I give 'em two weeks.
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cable companies have not prevented competition, government has via franchise laws
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You have obviously missed the court cases and the purchased laws that appear to prevent competition in the footprint of many established cable companies franchises.
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You have obviously missed the court cases
Contract disputes between the municipality and the company. The municipality signed the contract. Thats the government.
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Not since the federal government outlawed exclusive franchises in 1992 [wikipedia.org].
Now the government prevents competition by not allowing companies to steal fiber and enslave labor and tresspass on peoples's property. If you try and do it legitimately, well, Just laying fiber in Kansas City cost Google over $1 Billion to reach 80% of the city, not counting the final connections to the houses. [recode.net]
Not even Google has that much money lying around in their couch, which is why they've stopped
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Prevaricating (Score:2)
We deliver whatever the content provider gives us.
Just not fast enough to be of any use.
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Can you tell the difference between 480p and 720p on your tiny 4.5" or 5.0" screen smartphone? I doubt it.
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True. But I can tell when I'm using my phone as a hotspot for my laptop, and I can tell when I'm outputting directly from my phone using a slimport adapter. So the issue is, unlike T-Mobile's plan, you can't opt out.... AND they were selling their unlimited service stating that the video wouldn't be altered, so anybody who got a contract up until now should be able to freely cancel their plans.
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Verizon started selling unlimited smartphone data plans in February of this year, and the carrier said at the time that it would deliver video to customers at the same resolution used by streaming video companies. "We deliver whatever the content provider gives us. We don't manipulate the data," Verizon told Ars in February.
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Just give Verizon time to scrub the Internet of that statement and everything referencing it; then the PP will be technically correct, since there will no longer be any pages, cached or otherwise to cite.
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Verizon advertised that they wouldn't molest video streams. It's not a customer's fault that they expect to use the service they were sold.
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I'd love to be a lawyer on that case. They are absolutely manipulating the data by messing with the bandwidth. Less data is coming across. If they're not altering the data, where is the rest of it? I see both arguments but it's clear they're acting in bad faith. They're advertising something that they can't deliver.
Text-heavy videos through HDMI out (Score:2)
Can you tell the difference between 480p and 720p on your tiny 4.5" or 5.0" screen smartphone? I doubt it.
When it's docked to an external display through HDMI out or Chromecast, I can tell the difference, especially for text-heavy videos such as screencasts from a desktop or laptop PC. Each&Everything's tech support scam investigations [youtube.com], for instance, are just barely readable at 480p and more comfortable at 720p.
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Can you tell the difference between 480p and 720p on your tiny 4.5" or 5.0" screen smartphone? I doubt it.
My tiny 5.0" smartphone is 1920x1080, and when I stream a 1080p stream, that's what I expect to get. I also expect to get data like embedded sideband captioning.
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How many of those pixels is the eye actually seeing, and how many are optically blended together before they hit the retina?
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4600 px/radian compared to fovea's 3400 (Score:2)
Let me rephrase it more rigorously: A 5-inch 1280x720 pixel display has sqrt(1280^2+720^2)/5 = 294 pixels per inch. When reading printed text, a user holds the phone about 15.7 inches away.[1] This is 15.7 * 294 = 4615 pixels per radian, which exceeds the commonly accepted 60 pixels per degree[2] or 3400 pixels per radian resolution of the center 5 percent of the retina.
[1] "How Close Do You Hold Your Smart Phone?" [wolterskluwer.com]
[2] Understanding Pixel Density and Eye-Limiting Resolution [blogspot.com]
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Thanks, Trumpers (Score:1, Insightful)
Trump supporters are dumber than cattle
Makes sense (Score:2)
Particularly on a mobile device, even with "retina" display quality, I doubt there are many people who will notice any difference... except of course, geeks and those of us who concentrate really closely.
It's like the difference in mp3 between 192kbps and 128kbps encoding - most people won't be able to tell the difference, except musicians and audiophiles.
I'm sure they conducted a small scale research to see if anyone noticed.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they already performed a/b testing against exi
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Up until a few months ago I was using Netflix at the lowest setting on my 10 inch table (1080p resolution) due to bandwidth concerns and to tell you the truth I really didn't notice much of a difference once I got unlimited internet and started using high quality streams. I mean, there was a difference, but for stuff I watch on my tablet I really couldn't care. I had a separate profile for the TV where I used high quality for the small number of movies I really wanted to experience in HD.
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You and the post you were responding too are absolutely correct about resolutions and streaming quality on smaller devices, it's true, but if you are using your phone as a hotspot for your laptop (mine has a UHD display), or you're using slimport (also up to 4K) to display on a full size TV, the issue is you can't opt out or change a profile (unlike T-Mobile's version of this, which is the only thing that makes it acceptable). I'm not saying I personally actually use my phone that way (at this point, I don
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Don't forget that Netflix is not re-encoding their content on the fly, it's prepared with fine tuned encoder and maybe 2 or more passes to get good quality for all the devices and formats.
On the other hand, what do you think your ISP will do if it starts re-encoding videos on the fly? It will output crap quality and that is very noticeable! It's not comparable at all.
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They aren't re-encoding video on the fly. They are limiting the bandwidth of the connection to make the video content provider send a lower quality stream.
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And when a content provider doesn't switch to a lower-bitrate stream, what then? Endless buffering? It's not always automatic. Also, will downloads be restricted to streaming rates? It would be quite annoying, to say the least, to be made to wait for hours when you could have downloaded any other file of comparable size in a fraction of the time—provided it wasn't video.
At the very least it would be fraudulent to advertise a higher Internet access speed than the throttled video rate. Per the ITU's def
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Most DJs I
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Say a carrier offers two plans. The normal plan guarantees no interference. The cheaper plan includes an optimizing proxy, which requires the subscriber to install a root certificate or VPN application on each device that connects. Then you have it both ways: the carrier does not "interfere with [non-interference subscribers'] data in any way," and those who don't care about interference enjoy a discount.
Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I totally agree that as long as it's in the interest of network health, sure, do what you have it.
However, living overseas currently, my perspective would be more along the lines of, this is unacceptable. Invest in your infrastructure and support your additional users and their usage.
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As for your comment about 10mbps being sufficient for a 70 inch television, that really just shows you don't understand the difference between resolution and sheer size.
I watch Netflix streams on my 70" TV all the time. It is not a 4K TV but it is a HD TV, I am not watching at 480p, I am watching at 1080. Network bandwidth is typically under 10 Mbps when I am doing this. Is the quality as good as when playing directly off of a Blu Ray player? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Would it be good enough if I was watching it on a 10" screen at the same resolution? Absolutely.
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You don't know what you're talking about. bitrate is different than resolution.
Netflix 1080HD averages out to 5mbps on average bitrate. a 1080p bluray is 40mbps. can't remember the bandwidth for the new UHD standard, but it's more than 40.
you can have 1080p at 1mbps bitrate and it will look like crap. idiots who rip blurays and compress them at full compression do this all the time.
the new 4K streaming standard is 20mbps bandwidth
Verizon limiting video to 10mbps is already twice that of what Netflix gives y
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Is it good enough? Yes.
Your personal standards being low enough to not mind this doesn't make it any less of a bad thing. Some people care more about these things than you do and they pay a premium for quality. When you sign up for an unlimited plan, you expect it to be unlimited so you can enjoy these higher quality streams, especially when the provider explicitly stated they wouldn't be throttling when you signed up for it. It's a basic bait and switch, customers were sold one thing and now they're being given another, there's
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It's a bad thing because they call the service "Unlimited", and by that they mean limited. It's also bad because mobile broadband is recently being considered as a substitute for fixed-line internet service to rural and remote areas. It's a bad thing because it's stupidly expensive.
But maybe you're right, as long as they downgrade their own video options as well it's not a net neutrality issue. It's unlikely that net neutrality is going to survive though, and it's even more unlikely that VZW will downgrade
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They need to upgrade their networks (Score:2)
Well if they can't handle it they need to upgrade their networks. If they can't, they need to plan a more sustainable long-term budget. If this is how they handle increased demand from consumers then they will eventually hit a wall.
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Well if they can't handle it they need to upgrade their networks. If they can't, they need to plan a more sustainable long-term budget. If this is how they handle increased demand from consumers then they will eventually hit a wall.
I'd agree with you completely if we were talking about fiber or a wired network, but there is a finite amount of spectrum to go around, and an ever-increasing number of people using it. Such networks inevitably do hit a wall, and the only solution is more spectrum, which means higher frequencies -- both because the lower bands are already allocated, and because the higher bands physically enable more bandwidth. On the up side this means smaller antennas (which is why phones no longer appear to have them), a
This was inevitable... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ever used the free WiFi in an airport - the dopey kids sitting across from you are streaming some mind-rot and killing the bandwidth for everyone else. So the kids get the lolz, and you can barely get your work emails.
That's just poor bandwidth management. The operator shouldn't be throttling the video just because it's video, much less because they consider it "less important". Instead, available bandwidth should be divided equally between all active users. Given a properly-configured traffic-shaping router, your work e-mails should get through without any issue and without any noticeable impact to the other users of the network. If the system is simply oversubscribed then that is indeed a problem, but in that case it s
how is this progress? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont use Verizon. Every time I try to send a picture to someone I know using Verizon, I get a message that the image is too big to send because Verizon has image size caps. Now they are going to cap video resolution. This is not progress. This is a step backwards.
I suppose they (Verizon) will make the argument about screen size and perceived quality. But it should not be their decision but left at the hands of consumer.
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But it should not be their decision but left at the hands of consumer.
I think this is the key of the discussion. It's not about throttling or QoS - it's about who controls it, and how.
It would be far better if Verizon offer a "QoS panel" where they even would left some throttling on by default, but leave in the user's hands the option to control it or even turn it off. The company would transform a big problem in an useful feature, especially in limited data plans, where the customers would actually want to control their own data usage.
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Other carriers don't have image size limits?
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* Unlimited data plan (Score:5, Insightful)
On those phone screens, 720p is plenty (Score:2)
I might see a use case for phones with maybe a 7" screen, but the typical 5-6" screens in most phones (tablets are a dying thing) 720p is just about as razor-sharp as you'd ideally want and for 4" phones 480p video is again about as crisp.
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Sorry but no. I can see the difference between 720p 1080p and the native 1440p that my phone supports, and can most definitely see how shitty 480p is. If you can't it might be time to get your eyes checked.
The other problem with most streaming services is how compressed they are. id wager that a 1440p stream is probably in reality similar quality to a 1080p OTA, cable or satellite channel. Sure you might get the rated resolution for a static still frame, once you add motion and artifacting to it, your visua
I don't like Verizon either, but... (Score:2)
I'm not the hugest fan of Verizon for some of the shady things they are doing, but the cries that this runs afoul of Net Neutrality are a bit alarmist. Unless I'm reading the article incorrectly, they are throttling bandwidth such that 720p will come through ok, but 1080p will not. I'm reading that as a global throttling, not just for video. Am I wrong?
Which is it? (Score:2)
Ars is not giving us a straight story - they say on one hand that video will be throttled to 10Mbps, and on the other that it will be throttled to 480p on phones and 720p on tablets.
For starters, they won't know what resolution the video is if it's coming across HTTPS (which more and more is). And if they're just going on bandwidth and capping it at 10Mbps, that's not going to have a huge effect, because you can get a solid 1080 HD stream in 5Mbps using H.264, and you can get a pretty decent 4K stream under
Does VZ throttle VPNs? (Score:2, Insightful)
If VZ doesn't throttle VPNs, then just get a VPN account which averages a few bucks a month if you buy a year of access up front, then stream all your video though the VPN, they'll have no way to identify the video traffic to throttle it.
Thank you, FCC Chairman (Score:2)
Now that you've decided that 10Mbps is going to be considered a "high-speed" internet connection, the ISPs are able to dumb down all the available content to fall within that definition. 4K video over the 'net? Who cares. Doesn't work worth spit on our [ahem] "new" high-speed connections so you won't want it. Who cares if the US falls even further behind the rest of the world in technology. As long as our ISPs don't have to upgrade their equipment, more profits can go to the shareholders. Investment in infr
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There's a tethering "bucket?" Why would someone even want Verizon?
Because the other cellular ISPs also have tethering quotas.
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Customers don't like data limits because they find it hard to understand and control how much data different things use but adding more data capacity to mobile networks is difficult and expensive and once you give a customer an unlimited plan they won't make any attempt to control their data usage.
So this is where things end up. The main data category doesn't have a traffic limit but certain potentially high-traffic activities are either forbidden, throttled or placed in a seperate non-unlimited category.
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No, you voted for this, when you signed up for Verizon. You have the complete ability to switch to any number of different providers, any time you want. Vote with your dollars, and leave government out of it.
Re: Trump voters (Score:1)
Why don't you post that comment under your real name, fucking chicken shit. You're just like those cowards who wear masks when they attack people in demonstrations, you're a disgrace not a social vigilante.
Spectrum is not a free market (Score:3, Informative)
If all lessees of suitable FCC-owned spectrum do this, it's not a free market.
SMS price collusion in 2008 (Score:2)
Are you suggesting the phone companies are in collusion with each other?
The U.S. carriers do collude in some cases. In 2008, all major U.S. carriers raised the price of each sent text message and the price of each received text message from 10 cents to 20 cents within a few months of each other. (Source [cnet.com])
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If you like your plan you can keep it. Period.
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Obama shouldn't have made promises he couldn't keep.
The average savings per family that was promised didn't pan out either. Not even close.
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It was cloudy during the eclipse - DAMN YOU TRUMP!
Those in the know use satellite imagery to avoid clouds. And Trumps budget cuts $500 million (about 20 percent) from NOAA's satellite division. So, while Trump isn't to blame for cloudy conditions during this eclipse, he might be to blame for cloudiness during the next eclipse...
Trump’s budget cuts could mess up your next solar eclipse viewing [newrepublic.com]
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No, it's really not a good thing. Granted, most people don't care or won't notice, which is why T-Mobile's auto-opt-in, but with the choice to opt out, makes T-Mobile's version of this "throttling" acceptable.
It sounds like Verizon sold a lot of unlimited plans with the understanding they would not modify video, and now they are not even giving their customers a choice. That alone warrants a lawsuit, or at least letting customers cancel plans with ZERO penalty (maybe even a kickback to pay for a switch to