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Comment Re:I wonder why... (Score 2) 193

"Neither of those professions require specialized drivers licenses"

No, they don't spend "just as many hours on the road." Both involve trips ancillary to the principal occupation, so the amount of driving is less. Neither of them involve the carriage of strangers for money.

Would you suggest that other forms of commercial driver's license are also unnecessary, such as those required for driving a passenger bus or hauling hazardous materials?

Comment Re:New patent strategy (Score 1) 101

I think Dr. Suess has a claim to that style of invention:

Say!
I like green eggs and ham!
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!
And I would eat them in a boat!
And I would eat them with a goat...
And I will eat them in the rain.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree.
They are so goodm so goodm you see!

So I will eat them in a box.
And I will eat them with a fox.
And I will eat them in a house.
And I will eat them with a mouse.
And I will eat them here and there.
Say! I will eat them ANYWHERE!

Comment Re:I hope this wasn't a trojan horse (Score 1) 599

I believe there's room for more nuance in net neutrality rules. As long as a transport provider isn't interfering with any content which is within the contracted bandwidth/allowance, there should be room to offer premium transport above and beyond.

One example might be a customer who only desires a low level of Internet access for email and light web browsing, but also wants a video streaming service. They should have the opportunity to contract for a low cost basic service, and have the streaming service pay for bandwidth above that basic service (they would pay for it indirectly via the streaming provider). Or, there might be a desire for preferred QoS treatment to support VoIP or other latency/jitter sensitive streams.

The problem is how then to ensure that ISPs don't simply skew the market with pricing - $10/mo to the customer for 64 kbps of basic service (+ provider paid bursting), but $300/mo if a customer wants 100 Mbps service as a means to push costs onto content providers which compete with the ISPs own offerings.

A bona-fide separation of content and transport providers might be a solution, where the traffic is tariffed to prevent an ISP from giving preferential pricing to a closely affiliated content provider.

But, as a first cut, requiring all traffic to be treated equally is a good start. And I think I agree that TMo should be forced to count streaming data toward the customer's allowance. But, what then happens with VoLTE, where everything is data and calls should also count in the allowance? Why should TMo be able to offer free calls, when the customer pays more for Skype or SIP ones? No more "nationwide free calling?" I don't see consumers accepting that change.

Part of the problem comes from how transport is billed - consumers basically pay for received data, and ISPs want to charge content providers for sent data, double dipping for the same traffic.

(also, Karmashock was quite wrong in claiming that the rules would forbid TMo from delivering streaming music, and that was the basis for the rest of his argument)

Comment Re:I hope this wasn't a trojan horse (Score 1) 599

Even if the rules say the T-Mobile service must count toward data allowances, that would not prevent them from offering a music service on competitive terms. His claim, which was clearly made from whole cloth and therefore unsupportable, was that the rules would forbid T-Mobile and others from streaming music.

Comment Re:I hope this wasn't a trojan horse (Score 1) 599

The distinction is not particularly subtle. It is the difference between content (the Internet) and transport (the network). The FCC is regulating the transport, so that providers which offer both transport and content do not receive an unfair advantage over those who provide only content.

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