
Uh Oh, Internet: Basic Mobile Video Will be YouTube-Only With MetroPCS Plans - shawndumas
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/uh_oh_internet_basic_mobile_video_will_be_youtube-.php
======
motters
Blocking sites because they're "not on the service plan" is likely to be much
more acceptable in western countries than explicit censorship, as in Iran or
China. It's authoritarianism dressed up as commercialism. In the post-
Wikileaks era my bet is that governments will either encourage, or at least
not do anything to hinder, the erection of walled gardens which make it more
difficult for the average internet user to get access to unauthorised sources
of content. The next decade could see a return to the Compuserve-like internet
services which existed in the 1990s.

~~~
grantheaslip
Oh come on, do you _really_ think that governments are so shook up over
WikiLeaks that they might encourage ISPs to turn the internet into a series of
walled gardens? For that matter, do you really think that they're that evil?
Obviously they're not happy about WikiLeaks, and I'm not saying that
governments or ISPs are perfect, but some perspective is badly needed here.

What you've written screams hyperbole and is veering dangerously into
conspiracy theory territory. Net neutrality is a real issue, but it's got
nothing to do with WikiLeaks. Governments aren't as dastardly or hell-bent on
destroying your freedoms as you (and many others on HN) seem to think. It's
actually quite disconcerting that so many on HN think this way -- hackers (in
the good sense) could have a lot of influence on the future of democratic
nations, but this kind of anti-government slant has the ability to really hurt
our credibility and keep us on the sidelines.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Despite your sneers, the governments of the World, and especially the U.S.
government, have shown a strong bias towards information control, and walled
gardens are controllable. The Internet as a whole is not. Wikileaks is merely
a small example of governmental distaste for informational
freedom/transparency.

~~~
bpodgursky
If you seriously think the US government is doing than most "governments of
the World" to control information, you need to be better informed.

------
tjsnyder
This is actually huge news as it marks the beginning of what many of us feared
and destroys future entrpeneurship. I have no idea why the FCC decided mobile
Internet should allow these practices.

~~~
tzs
There is competition in mobile internet, whereas for non-mobile many people
only have one or two realistic choices. That could be why mobile gets less
regulation.

~~~
trotsky
Sprint usb type mobile broadband plan: $59.99/mo for 5 gigs on 2 year
contract.

Verizon usb type mobile broadband plan: $50/mo for 5 gigs on 2 year contract

AT&T usb type mobile broadband plan: $60/mo for 5 gigs on 2 year contract

T-mobile usb type mobile broadband plan: $39.99 for 5 gigs no contract

So yeah, it seems rather unlikely that any cartel like cooperation on tiering
would evolve in this market.

(EDIT: Updates, thanks for the pointers. I was cribbing from a dodgy web page
it seems <http://mobile-broadband-services-review.toptenreviews.com/> )

~~~
tzs
That's misleading in a couple ways.

First, you have omitted other providers whose prices are not similar to those
above. Clear, for example.

Second, competition is about more than just price. It is also about features
and restrictions. The provider that this thread is about is offering a lower
priced plan WITHOUT a contract, but with restrictions on what you can do with
it.

(EDIT: continuing, as I thought of another significant factor)

Another problem is that you are looking at mobile USB internet access plans,
rather than mobile phone access plans. Most users don't have a strong opinion
(or any opinion at all) on which particular dongle is hanging off their
laptop. Hence, given several mobile USB internet providers offering similar
level of service (e.g., 5 GB/month) and similar terms and conditions (2 year
contract), the _expected_ result in a competitive market is for them to all
charge about the same price.

Of course, in a non-competitive market dominated by a cartel, the expected
result is ALSO for them to all charge the same price.

Net (no pun intended) result: your examples provide no evidence one way or the
other on the question of competitiveness in mobile internet.

~~~
trotsky
I wasn't trying to provide a comprehensive mobile services price comparison, I
simply chose a service I knew to have comparable terms across the 4 national
carriers that own their own towers. MetroPCS and Clear both provide
significantly different services being online only in certain metros.

I had skipped handset service because when fully loaded they have service
tiers that make it difficult to do direct comparisons, probably intentionally.
However:

AT&T unlimited voice: $69.99/mo

Verizon unlimited voice: $69.99/mo

T-mobile unlimited voice: $59.99/mo

Sprint 900 minutes (max): $59.99/mo

and:

AT&T ala carte SMS: $0.20 per

Verizon ala carte SMS: $0.20 per

T-mobile ala carte SMS: $0.20 per

Sprint ala carte SMS: $0.20 per

Considering the radically different cost basis of the two programs it's hard
to believe there isn't some de-facto price coordination going on.

------
mortenjorck
I really wouldn't mind this at all if it weren't being sold as _Internet_
access.

Mobile YouTube? Fine. Mobile Facebook? Great. If it's a walled garden, call it
that and discount it accordingly. But once you have "Internet" and _"more
Internet,"_ something's gone terribly wrong.

~~~
nooneelse
Indeed, at some point filtering and traffic shaping crosses over into false
advertising if the output doesn't go by some other name than "internet
service". It would be like paring down a luxury car until it is little
different from a golf cart, and trying to sell it as a Lexus.

------
rue
I'm more stunned by the price: I pay 20€ for unlimited and unrestricted data
access with a double SIM (one mobile broadband, other for phone). _And_ they
want to charge more for other video access?

~~~
dansingerman
Mobile data seems very expensive in the US compared to Europe, but the States
seem to be cheaper in most other areas: e.g. Petrol/Gasoline - $3 per gallon
in the States, over $8 per gallon in the UK now.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Most of Europe taxes gasoline very heavily to encourage alternatives and
discourage use.

Here in Finland, roughly 75% of the price of gas at the pump is tax. Or in
other words, we have a 300% gas tax.

------
Sidnicious
We're going to be the crotchety old men and women calling carrier tech support
in just a few decades:

 _"Back in my day, you didn't need some big corporation's_ permission _to look
at pictures of naked folks on the internet…"_

------
baggachipz
And so it begins. The only way this won't run rampant is an immediate consumer
backlash.

~~~
jrockway
They already solved that problem. Backlash-ing costs you $250.

~~~
malchickhome
Is that the cost of an early termination fee?

~~~
mcritz
No. It’s $350 for an “advanced device”. So, backlash costs a great deal more
than you think.

------
jsm386
Remember the leaked slides for differently priced mobile services that leaked
out a few weeks ago? [http://blog.grouptexting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/dip....](http://blog.grouptexting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/12/dip.jpg)

That seemed like a worst case scenario that we might expect down the
road...not within days of the FCC giving mobile broadband a pass on net
neutrality. Hopefully this move backfires and forces the FCC to revisit their
ruling ([http://gigaom.com/2010/12/28/who-wins-and-loses-under-the-
fc...](http://gigaom.com/2010/12/28/who-wins-and-loses-under-the-fccs-net-
neutrality-rules/))

------
mcritz
Mobile broadband is becoming mainstream. Congress & FCC really screwed this up
at the worst possible time for consumers.

------
abstractbill
Well that really sucks.

I wonder how they'll be implementing it, and how plausible it will be for
other video sites to make themselves unblockable.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I wonder how they'll be implementing it, and how plausible it will be for
> other video sites to make themselves unblockable.

Yes, I'd like some information on this as well. Will it be possible to
circumvent their block using encryption? The article says only the videos
themselves will be blocked, not the websites.

~~~
rmc
It will almost certainly be possible for technical folks like us to bypass
their filters but that will still exclude about 99% of their customers. That
99% will probably grudgingly pay the few dollars more and complain about phone
companies screwing them again.

~~~
w1ntermute
If they complain loud enough, it might be possible to get them to reverse
their stance. From my POV, the problem is that only technical people are
complaining, and no one else cares.

I'm guessing that people will respond the same way most people in China do to
censorship - with relative apathy. They have better things to do than worry
about whether the internet is censored or not.

------
dfj225
This needs to be stopped. Wireless will increasingly become consumers primary
Internet connection. If this becomes standard practice for wireless providers,
freedom to access what content the user chooses will be effectively destroyed.

------
peterpaul
Has anyone actually located where MetroPCS makes sets these rules? I have not
been able to find them in the TOS

~~~
madmaze
here:
[http://www.metropcs.com/presscenter/newsreleasedetails.aspx?...](http://www.metropcs.com/presscenter/newsreleasedetails.aspx?id=1)
"The $40 service plan offers unlimited talk, text, 4G Web browsing with
unlimited YouTube access."

~~~
kin
How does that limit video to Youtube only? You sure this isn't just a
marketing phrase? Is there concrete proof that other video players will not
work?

------
detst
It seems to me that lowering phone prices[0] -- making subsidies, and thus
long-term contracts, uninteresting to consumers -- and LTE compatibility
across networks will create a more competitive market, lowering prices and
forcing these tactics out the door.

Obviously, the carriers will do everything in their power to prevent the
commoditization of their networks but am I crazy in thinking that's at least a
path we are inevitably moving on?

[0] [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/the-smartphone-
explosion.htm...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/the-smartphone-
explosion.html)

~~~
wmf
_lowering phone prices making subsidies uninteresting to consumers_

I doubt it; irrational consumers will still choose "free with contract"
instead of $100.

 _LTE compatibility across networks_

I doubt this too due to frequency incompatibility.

~~~
metageek
> _I doubt [LTE compatibility] too due to frequency incompatibility._

Are you sure? AT&T and Verizon both have frequencies in the 700 MHz range; I'm
sure they don't have the exact same frequencies, but I'd bet that the same
hardware can support them. At least, it's more likely than having one phone
that can support, say, 1700 and 1900 MHz.

Last I heard, the lurking problem with LTE compatibility was that nobody had
agreed on how to do _voice_ over LTE. We might wind up with a situation where
you can roam from AT&T to Verizon (it's all IP), but you can't take an AT&T
phone and activate it for Verizon.

------
aw3c2
If Google would like to make a big stance for Net Neutrality, they could block
connections from them. But I think that would be a big issue by itself.

------
jawee
They have Android smartphones... I'm very much wondering how this service will
ever be able to work between the plentiful applications, including third-
browsers (plus Flash support on 2.2). I imagine that the power user, at least,
will have no trouble getting around it; the block won't be total either way.

~~~
minalecs
OS has nothing to do with what ISP can block. The only thing someone maybe
able to do is run all their connections through a proxy or private vpn.

~~~
jawee
It said the site would load but the video would not in the original article,
which was part of where I was coming from. Plus, features like Opera Turbo
inside of Opera Mobile, for instance, would make such proxies transparent to
the user.

------
mindslight
How is this scary new development? The budget option of proprietary bundled
services has always existed, with the upsell being the unfettered internet.
Youtube and facebook are not "the internet", but proprietary services that
have been developed upon it. Surprise surprise, network providers used to
bundling services look for a lowest common denominator for their base product
line. That these services happen to deliver over IP is of little consequence.

However, don't think that I'm advocating for walled gardens - the important
part is to keep innovating and creating a wide demand for _The Internet_ at
large so that carriers are unable to presume that most customers only want
bundled discrete services in the first place (thereby pushing competition on
generic bandwidth. bittorrent+RC4 has done wonders for wired net neutrality).

------
sdh
hmm, I'd better find those America Online CDs....

------
maeon3
Facebook Fee: $.95

Youtube Surcharge: $1.53

blogging package: $.25

Roaming charge (non approved sites): $5.21

Wikileaks download penalty: $10.00

Destroying net neutrality, killing what made the Internet great in the first
place: priceless.

~~~
JonnieCache
Potential cost to the establishment of forcing all the hackers onto darknets:
who knows?

~~~
roc
The ssh and vpn charges will predictably be outrageous and seriously curtail
the popularity of darknets. Similarly with any alternatives that are
centralized by service or protocol. It'd be an awfully tall technological
order to create a distributed Tor-style traffic relay to the darknets.

Or are you suggesting pirate wireless carriers?

That said, if such a too-difficult-to-effectively-filter Tor-style relay came
into being, that certainly would be a Big Deal.

~~~
JonnieCache
<http://www.i2p2.de/>

If they start banning the protocol from routers, we can tunnel it through
other protocols. You can push anything you want through an HTTPS link. Good
luck banning that protocol.

Or we can do the wireless-mesh thing. There are a lot of people working on
mesh-based peer to peer routing layers and DNS. Wish I could remember what the
projects were called...

~~~
roc
I've always liked the idea of wireless mesh networks. [1] But it would limit
exposure to ideas, code and data by physical distances. Even expanding out
Bacon-style along the social graph as people move about, it would be a huge
step back for unfiltered communication. [2]

[1] It's a rather romanticized attachment, that originally hinged on people
one-day realizing that having all your data primarily on other people's
computers probably isn't a great idea.

[2] Though that, too, triggers appealingly romanticized notions of 'place',
'dialect' and 'local culture'. Which is to say: it would all make for great
cyberpunk fiction atmosphere; I'm just pretty sure it'd still suck compared to
the current state of affairs.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> physical distances_

I imagine we can just bounce VHF off the sky or something. People solve harder
problems every day.

Also, never underestimate the bandwidth of a hard disk in the mail :)

