

“Future, can you hear me now? Good.” Death of the ‘phone’ company. - joshwprinceton
http://joshrweinstein.com/post/26444725848

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Smudge
A friend once complained to me about how all of the "unlimited" plans are
secretly capped (at, say, 3GB), which makes it very frustrating for anyone who
would regularly go over the cap, as there are often no other options. He told
me he would much prefer a pay-per-use model, which is apparently much more
common in his home country (despite internet being much more expensive there).

At first, I was against this idea -- my gut told me that uncapped service is
what enables us to use the internet to its full potential, and as soon as you
start enforcing limits, you limit that potential -- but when I thought about
it a bit more, it makes sense. You are paying for what you get, and if you
need more, you pay more.

With all of this in mind, there is something to be said for treating
everything as data instead of charging for 'minutes' and 'texts' and other
abstract services on top of the data. (After all, it's data all the way down.)

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Josh2600hz
This is a terrible article written without any grasp of the underlying
realities of delivering the services the author discusses.

Applauding Verizon for instituting Draconian bandwidth practices may increase
value for shareholders, but it is antithetical to the nature of development on
the web and in the world. Can you imagine how development of the Internet
might've fared if caps had been instituted in the 80's?

Capping wireless isn't the answer, and the author is ignorant to pursue
justification through the lens of progression. Capped data plans are not an
evolution, they are a regression.

~~~
joshwprinceton
I'm not advocating for 'capping' data plans, I'm applauding the company's
focus on charging customers by data plan instead of their call/text usage. As
an aside, texting and phone use are not 'capped,' in the way you are defining
it.

I also don't think this is Draconian by any means, it is a pay-per-use
model...is github's pricing model Draconian in your view?

