Consumer data consumption has increased exponentially in a little over a decade. According to broadband insight reports from OpenVault, monthly household data usage has skyrocketed from an...
And I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that it’s clear that pricing has been decoupled from consumption, but in the other direction, where the ISP’s are setting prices arbitrarily. That’s been a choice on their part, and a big reason why people like me are distrustful of any data they claim shows their case. They have been caught lying so many times before. I’m old enough to remember Comcast paying homeless people[1] to stuff a courtroom to make it seem like more people supported them (once again if they don’t have money to cover infrastructure costs, why are they instead spending their money on things like this?). There’s also issues like when they bundle unnecessary services, essentially consumers paying for nothing, like when the AG of Washington State sued them in 2016.[2] I could go on for pages about shit like this going all the way back to illegally shaping traffic with Sandvine targeting BitTorrent traffic.[3] I honestly don’t wish to and maybe you ought to do more research on how much money these companies ream the American consumer for before acting like there is any connection between pricing and consumption here.
Federal subsidies to telcos were not intended to provide Internet service for free, but to reduce costs.
You could argue that a subsidy should reduce prices relative to what they should have been, had no subsidy existed.
But you cannot argue that pricing should be decoupled from consumption as a result of that.
And I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that it’s clear that pricing has been decoupled from consumption, but in the other direction, where the ISP’s are setting prices arbitrarily. That’s been a choice on their part, and a big reason why people like me are distrustful of any data they claim shows their case. They have been caught lying so many times before. I’m old enough to remember Comcast paying homeless people[1] to stuff a courtroom to make it seem like more people supported them (once again if they don’t have money to cover infrastructure costs, why are they instead spending their money on things like this?). There’s also issues like when they bundle unnecessary services, essentially consumers paying for nothing, like when the AG of Washington State sued them in 2016.[2] I could go on for pages about shit like this going all the way back to illegally shaping traffic with Sandvine targeting BitTorrent traffic.[3] I honestly don’t wish to and maybe you ought to do more research on how much money these companies ream the American consumer for before acting like there is any connection between pricing and consumption here.
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Cable-giant-Comcast-hires-seat-warmers-to-pack-3226430.php ↩︎
https://fortune.com/2017/12/24/washington-comcast-service-plan-fraud/ ↩︎
https://consumerist.com/2007/10/27/damning-proof-comcast-contracted-to-sandvine/ ↩︎