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by p49k 2836 days ago
> It is like saying that UPS should deliver to everywhere on earth in one day for the same price

No, it's not like that at all. UPS makes it clear to the customer in advance what the cost is, how long it will take, and the customer agrees. Also, UPS is not held responsible for delays that they couldn't reasonably prevent (bad weather, etc).

It's also an exaggeration of the situation; it's essentially saying "If we can't achieve perfection, then we might as well not have any standards and we can't hold anyone accountable for anything." The fact is that those speeds are obtainable in most of the common situations that people actually need them, and the throttling only occurs out of unwillingness on the part of ISPs to negotiate agreements that would allow those speeds; it's greed and/or laziness, not physical or technical limitations.

1 comments

You can have whatever opinion you want on what the Internet should be, just like I can. But the Internet today is different networks settings their own policy. Google can say "connect to us and we won't charge you for YouTube traffic", but that doesn't stop someone else from saying "no, pay us for access to our networks instead". It doesn't really matter if something is available or not as such because the whole model is based on exchanging access to infrastructure.

At the end of the day what you are describing is some sort of regulated nationalized Internet backbone. Which would to a larger extent support such features. As it is now if you don't like the "mix" of access you are getting, you should change providers (which could of course be a problem, but that is another issue).

It doesn’t have to be nationalized, it could alternatively be honestly priced and advertised. Most other businesses work this way: Starbucks doesn’t say “sorry, we only can give you half the coffee you paid for because our suppliers want more money and it would cut into our profits.” Instead, they work behind the scenes to make sure they can serve their product as advertised, and raise the price if necessary. I don’t know why you think the internet is any different; it’s a set of negotiations like any other business.