How can Comcast or Verizon claim to offer you X MBps if they refuse, or are unable, to provide downloads from the Internet, including from Netflix, at X MBps? How is that not fraud or a breach of contract?
If billing rates were by volume of data transferred, just like every other utility, that would incentivize ISPs to maximize data flow. But as things stand they're not incentivized to increase bandwidth because they make the same money whether you check email once a week or stream Netflix 24/7. This seems obviously broken to me, but apparently most people can't stomach the idea of paying by volume, so we're stuck with the current system.
The problem with pricing by volume is that the average consumer can't really manage their volume.
Would the consumer be responsible for paying for:
-DDOS (not only can you knock them offline, you can cost them big money)
-Spam (Both received and botnet sent)
-Retransmissions for traffic the ISP dropped due to congestion
-Ads (adblockers could reduce bandwidth costs by a third)
I personally would love volume pricing. But I also would not want to provide tech support next time my parents get hit by malware and get hit with a $1000 isp bill.
Definitely valid concerns, but they don't strike me as inherent problems with the idea, rather technical problems that can be overcome with some ingenuity and incentive.
It's the incentive that's lacking at the moment. My machine may send out bursts of spam at 3am, or a website ad may weigh 10MB, but as long as I can still check Facebook what do I care? But I would care if I were billed for those transfers. I'd start shopping for devices that helped me self-throttle. I'd start caring whether websites were bloated. That would pass the incentive on to those providers, etc.
The architecture of the Internet can only offer a 'best effort' class of service so it's impossible for ISPs to guarantee speeds. At best they can offer an SLA to give the customer concessions (free/discounted service) if they fail to meet the terms of the SLA.
That's true. But in this case the ISP isn't even making a good-faith effort to provide X Mbps worth of transport across their own network.
I get that once the traffic hits the broader 'net that all bets are off. That's true and nothing can be done about it.
But in this case the ISPs aren't even making a "best effort" on their own network. They're deliberately not upgrading congested links where their peering counterparties are willing to upgrade. That is not a "best effort" class of service.
And the only way to break that claim is to give MORE MBps than that. I think the fcc is saying "ok, let's be realistic, your 'up to' is gonna be held to a standard higher than rando48 on hacker news saying I personally guarantee internet downloads of up to 1 billion MBps to ever citizen on earth."
