A couple things that occurred to me: -> cellular network operators are being squarely placed in the same group as all other network providers (cable, etc.). -> isn’t AT&T also a cable TV company? Verizon also does both, and Comcast just started offering a cellular service. All of them want to entice customers to sign on to a complete package of cable/cellular networking by offering cost incentives and integrated services (like the ability to control your cable box/DVR and maybe even stream video content to and from your cellphone.

This would cover things like Skype, but it also in general prevents carriers from engaging in a strategy of blocking the use of or throttling the bandwidth of one service (let’s say, a mobile version of Hulu, if it came out) in order to promote their own, similar service. This is important in the sense that carriers have envisioned charging money for things like video services as a way of making money from their network. The new regs would force any such offerings to be in free competition with other available services.

I wouldn’t be fooled by the response of telcos to the new net neutrality provisions. The responses seem to go as follows: ‘We welcome the fact that the FCC continues to support net neutrality. We also want net neutrality, because we’re American companies in full compliance with existing net neutrality provisions. However, these changes may result in our having to manage network resources in a way that is detrimental to application and service development.’ In other words, both the FCC and telcos are claiming that they want the same things. But while the FCC is proposing rules and guidelines to promote the desired endpoint, telcos say that those very rules will have the opposite effect.

The fact is that there is a definite limit to cellular networks. Some have already proposed that we will reach that limit sooner rather than later.

The end cost is a wash only if you restrict your thinking to one iphone and one rate plan, and that all users must carry both plans. That is flatly not true, as a quick visit to AT&T’s site will show you. AT&T offers many different combinations, including data plans without voice, voice plans without data, and voice and data plans without SMS, wired internet plans, and many in between.

If we grant your dubious assumption that you AT&T is giving you lower data prices because of revenues from voice and SMS, then the voice and SMS rates must be generating enough excess revenue to allow AT&T to lower their data prices. Since, as you say, the revenue has to come from somewhere, and not out of the goodness of AT&T’s heart, then logically that revenue must be coming out of the pockets of those customers who pay more for voice and SMS plans. Q.E.D.

Again I dont see the difference. You cant just get data without voice, even if you want to use Skype etc. So whats the difference if they charge $40 for voice and $30 for data or $30 for voice and $40 for data? Either way you still have to carry both options, making the end cost a wash.

They arent just going to lower data costs out of the goodness of their hearts, theyre a business after all. Increased data use means increased prices.

And if people think tiered data in the amounts some use now will be easily affordable, it wont be.

You are right, I don’t have any idea. Like you, I agree with you that data is data is data, and money is money is money. Unlike you, I happen to think that in a free market, those you use the product are the ones who should pay the money for it. You seem to prefer a situation where SMS and voice users pay exorbitant (or at least outdated) rates on their services in order to subsidize your own use on another service. That is about as anti-free market as you can get.

ok since you claim to think its too high, what are ATT’s cost per customer? You have no clue and no one here does. its relatively impossible to calculate. You ASSUME you pay much too much over cost, but have no basis to say what that cost really is to determine profit per customer.

And I agree data is data, but the difference is porn isnt an ATT service, VOIP takes on the voice side. When voice usage drops and data usage increases since each of those minutes is now a data packet, how do you not think data cost will not proportionally increase?

why is it 20 a month now? with att wireless subscriber base tripped or doubled.

last i checked stuff that’s out a long time, gets cheaper not more expensive.

You seem to think that AT&T is entitled to $90 in revenue. In a free market, they are not. It boggles the mind that you think any entity (producer or consumer) should be insulated from change and entitled to revenue stream at the expensive of consumers or other producers.

In your own words, changing one symbol:

“Who cares where it comes from! Is 40 MB VOIP + 30 MB PORN + 20 MB online banking (90 MB) NOT EXACTLY THE SAME as 30 MB VOIP + 10 MB Porn + 50 MB online banking? 90 MB is 90 MB is 90 MB!”

good one kiddo…

that mommy’s basement comeback is priceless. your one dumb fuck

you cry you want to pay less then hogs, then cry over that net neutrality will do this?

pick a stand. drop your sac and pick a side already.

net neutrality is good. period.

sorry telco’s need to grow up and evolve with changing times. same as cable tv and others.

see the problem is not net neutrality. its the telco’s them self. even cable companies.

competition reduced prices. but heck you can get verizon dsl for 10 a month? do you think they really make money?

my house phone 10 years ago was 80 lowest 140 avg. now its voip through my isp and its 34 a month call 50 countries in the world packet shaped for priority over the dsl line so i can be an internet hog and my phone will always work.

telco’s dont want to change they just want money for nothing.

its been even show, if att wireless took a 1% pay cut for 1 year they could cover all of the usa in full 3g from that. greed?

maybe open you’re eyes, telco’s failed due to people being tired of being fucked by just 1 company, when other could offer service they jumped ship and didnt know how to handle it.

its more interesting how they sell unlimited as 5 gig cap, that is limited no? why are you not crying over that?

Again, very rational replies.

People dont seem to get when you start this VOIP thing, yo use data packets! Sure its not intensive as say streaming video, but a 2 hour phonecall which used to be free N/W is now sucking data packets.

And on a tiered data system, the only way itd be under net neutrality, youd be paying just as much as having current voice and data costs in the end! I dont see any cost advantages for the people.

Sure, now you can VOIP and slingbox, but youll be paying out the ass for it! Yet people complain about current pricing…

Clearly youre about 17 years old and probably some little teenie bopper streaming youtube and going on myspace idiot sucking data and your mommy pays your bill so you dont care what anything costs.

Get lost idiot and grow up. Next time YOU bring up a topic dont be shocked when an actual intelligent response comes.

EXACTLY my point.

Revenue has to come from somewhere, and as soon as people start lowering their voice and text plans for VOIP and other services, bet your ass that data prices will skyrocket to compensate.

dear idiot, you’re crying over people using what they purchased?

you clearly need to see a shrink.

you’re like the moron going to an all you can eat buffet and crying you paid the same and only ate one plate to the fat kid eating 3.

net neutrality is not about teir data prices for usage, aka 1gb 2gb 3gb.

tier pricing as in stacks, as att been doing for years.

go get a phone not an iphone, get a samsung and try using pandora, its 10 bux a month on att.

att wants teir prices vs tcpip stack. what protocols can / cant get to you since you pay or dont pay. this is what net neutrality comes down to. not bandwith usage but what protocols you can get cant get and how much they charge per protocol.

youre clearly an idiot who has to call people tools to make any type of logical point. YOU BROUGHT UP TIERED DATA MORON, so clearly you have no clue what youre talking about.

Pay up cheap ass if you want to suck data. Its about time the abusers get whats coming to them and the “average” user shown to use 4-800mb/month pay LESS.

Who cares where it comes from! Is $40 voice + $20 text+ $30 data ($90) NOT EXACTLY THE SAME as $30 voice +$10 text+ $50 data? ($90). $90 is $90 is $90.

Its semantics.

dear tool, no i want an isp to be just that, route my tpcip traffic to me.

what protocols, where i go, what i do is non of there buisness.

what i do with there connection is not for them to decide.

oh and fyi you tool,

“Explain why people like myself and a lot of others, who use less than 1gb a month should pay more because people abuse the system and use 3,4,5,and more GB of data?” wtf does this have to do with net neutrality?

what att wants is teir pricing, as in you stupid fuck, you goto youtube it can charge you more for the tcpip stack for video vs browsing a website.

its the same crap they pull with pandora, why do people not on an iphone need to pay 10bux a month? its not even there servers, service or associated in any form to att.

do you even understand what is meant by net neutrality?

go look it up in the dictionary.

If you have say 13500 min and $30 data and $20 texting ($118 total), and then people start using VOIP and Google Voice for free texting, etc.

People start dropping to 450 min, no texts, and data at $70. ATT loses that $48 per customer, BUT these customer’s data use increases 2 fold.

How will data continue to be $30 when everyone’s usage goes up? That’s an unreasonable expectation since they lost all of that revenue from these other companies now.

Then people will start btching even more about data costs, when they already btch enough as is at $30.

So your defense is that AT&T is gouging your for voice and SMS, and using excess profits to subsidize data rates? And…you are OK with that? Ethics aside, that is perpetuating a huge market inefficiency that just delays and makes worse the eventual correction.

Ok, so you want ATT to lose revenue to services piggybacking their data service, yet people wont accept a raise in data costs to offset this.

So where does this magical money come from then? You cant negate voice with VOIP and other ATT services like texting, and then expect data to stay at $30. Revenue comes from ALL of their services combined, and there’s no way data prices wont climb when companies start taking away from that other revenue to offset the data.

LOL. Because you want all you can eat for as little as possible?

Explain why people like myself and a lot of others, who use less than 1gb a month should pay more because people abuse the system and use 3,4,5,and more GB of data?

Sorry bud, time for people to pay for what they actually use.

You are totally off base here.

You think there are data issues now? Wait until anyone can do whatever they please with it and see how fast your service will degrade.

Nothing in net neutrality says you get unlimited bandwidth.

All Net Neutrality says is you can do any legal thing that you want with the bandwidth you pay for.

If you want to avoid long distance charges to foreign countries you can call your friends overseas using skype on your iPhone without ATT saying NO.

Skype is not bandwidth intensive and does not cause problems, but ATT says NO Skype on their 3G. Some other carriers and ISPs also block skype (especially when those ISPs are telcos).

Net neutrality is not about letting you hog bandwidth to your hearts content like the carriers would want you to believe. Its about letting you run anything over the bandwidth you pay for.

Net neutrality is not a pipe dream. It is what we have had all along!!! Its the way the net was until about 5 years ago.

Its only recently that the carriers have decided they can make more money selling you Minutes if they block things like Skype.

You need to do some reading on this subject because you are totally off base here.

out of all the companies verizon, and comcast, want net neutrality is shocking.

as for att, go to hell with your teir pricing. diaff.

You think there are data issues now? Wait until anyone can do whatever they please with it and see how fast your service will degrade. There will be no way, billions in profits or not, that the carriers will be able to keep up with the demand.

Money ISNT the only issue here, things take time- permits from cities, land leases, tower construction, equipment upgrades, etc. Outside of money, expansion and upgrades take TIME. People seem to forget this and ONLY focus on the profits the carriers are making.

Dont think for a second the day net neutrality hit that youd have better service. Actually itd probably be pretty poor for quite a while until the carriers caught up- years.

Im sorry, but strict net neutrality is a pipe dream and not realistic. Some of the concepts should be adopted, but being strict to the theories is impossible.

You know who you are.

What will you idiots have to say then?

The reason for the “managers only” reply is that US federal law specifically bars companies from encouraging hourly workers to vote for a specific candidate, while allowing such encouragement for management and executives. That same set of laws also allows “dissemination of information” to all employees as long as it is not advocacy.

While it is unclear whether those laws apply to federal policies as well as elections, with that reply AT&T is trying to send a message that they are obeying the strict letter of that law in either case.