"Facetime is a purchasing feature OF THE HARDWARE" [assuming you mean Facetime over cellular]
No, it isn't. The hardware is being offered and sold as a product from the partnership of Apple and AT&T. Facetime, as AT&T customers get it, is a feature of the iOS, which is sold with the hardware.
If Apple/AT&T invented a new app (say movie streaming), and offered it, but limited it to WiFi only; would that be 'offering something new' or 'blocking something'?
Have you considered the possibility that you or your question may not we worthy of further responses?
In jury trials, lawyers can respond to questions like yours with "Asked and answered", and the judge would stop you. Here, you are not stopped...but nobody is under any obligation to answer you.
This isn't as bad as it sounds. Apple has offered some amazing port stability for over 6 years, so we should be somewhat grateful for that. At CES shows, I've noticed for years how the Apple accessory market vastly outstrips the RIM, Android, WinPho, Symbian, etc, EVEN as those makers have standardized largely on micro USB. The reason is that the Apple port has remained in the same place, centered on all devices. Android phones put their port on all four sides of the phone, in weird and varied locations.
Anyways, there will be cheap adapters on Amazon and eBay 2 months after the next iPhone port is launched, so many accessories will still be totally functional. Others will lose their "stand" function and may need have some fit issues, but will still work. So they're not really obsolete.
Meanwhile, I've already noticed that a lot of iPhone docks and speakers are popping up as clearance items around the web and at Woot.com. Obviously, sellers are reducing inventory of the 30-pin items. It's not a bad time to get a deal!!
Isn't it crazy how "number of patents" has replaced "relevant patents" the more the patent wars rage on?
What's going on is that all the major players have portfolios with thousands of patents, so it is almost an impossible task to actually know what all the claims are, when they are relevant, the quality of each claim, etc. But since we know they are all (deliberately) vaguely worded, we can assume that for any hundred patents, maybe one will have a claim that can attack a competitor.
So, it's much easier just to do a ballpark count of total patents. The count is only 'somewhat' useful, but it is actually easily done, whereas an actual detailed evaluation is nigh impossible.
Isn't this, essentially, a methodology based on the core principle of the "patent thicket"? We've reduced patent portfolios down to "How thick is your thicket?" Haven't we achieved 'reductio ad absurdum' yet?
Yeah. And for these agencies to get these logos put up for 10 seconds each by the MPAA...well, that's free brand advertising. A lot like Nike putting the swoosh on a billboard.
Of course, they're too deeply immersed in their own BS to understand that the "brand advertising" has a either a negative or neutral effect on a given viewer's sentiment.
I haven't seen the Finland data that shows the average annual bill to be only $130, but assuming that's true...
It is irrelevant to compare that to the USA without ALSO talking about how much data per year the average Finn transmits, and how many minutes of voice.
People have different billing periods. Their months end at different times. That problem (which never existed) is thus solved 100%.
Furthermore, the idea is to get people to think about the overall data flow their apps use, and consider reducing. Your hypothesis that this will all take place in the last week of the month assumes people will never learn to use less throughout the period.
He wrote "Sprint's 2.5GHz strategy is tied in my mind for "gutsiest US telco project" with Verizon's FIOS project." I love FIOS and it's a crime that deployment has been halted as part of an accord with the cable companies to not step on each-other's turf. Don't presume to understand how I feel about FiOS because I don't agree with you on caps.
And you say you have built networks? Not one telecom network, ever was built with the assumption that people would use their full allottment 24x7. It's just fact. And it's correct engineering. You run statistical models to estimate expected demand, and build for that. In the case of PSTN phones, that means that you don't assume that everyone will make a phone call at the same time, and stay connected all day (even though their phone plan included unlimited local calling). For highways, it means we don't pave roads with the expectation that all cars will make a trip at exactly the same time, or that they will use the road 24x7 - even though that is their right.
You say "its bad engineering if you design a network to only be able to handle a small % of its probable projected load". Well, yeah, but I never said that, that's your strawman. I said projected load is not 100% utilization from each customer.
You're awful angry about this. By the way, I knew from the start that my opinions would go very much against the grain here. People want unlimited, low cost Internet, and taking the side of the telcos on any point is sure to elicit very unsympathetic responses. But I have exhibited none of the characteristics of a troll or shill. I criticize the ISPs frequently, I agree when people say they are money grabbers, I agree that there isn't enough competition. No shill would ever write that. And, BTW, shills aren't Techdirt authors for 12 years, which I am. As for Trolls, they are just in it to piss people off, but I am making arguments, citing sources, bringing stats.
PS: YOU can't just decide that I'm a shill or a troll just because I disagree with you, and yes, with the wider Techdirt community. This isn't supposed to be a comment circle jerk where we all agree day after day that the RIAA sucks. Dissent is encouraged and desirable. Fortunately, the "Report" system is designed to handle a few angry jerks who "Report" things just because they disagree strongly.
Correct, that is my view. That is working as intended. More competition would alter the situation, but for now, ISPs are trying to contain the amount you consumer.
And to your last paragraph, OF COURSE ISPs over-sell their capacity. That is day 1 of any network planning course. You plan your network capacity for some expected usage patterns of your users. Same for road networks, and other infrastructure projects. That's not evil, that's engineering.
If you want to be able to fully use your 50 mbit service with no capacity constraint, then what you want is an enterprise-grade connection, which is absolutely available. It just costs a lot more.
You can't have a dedicated pipe, and pay shared pipe rates.
I write articles here at Techdirt. 762 so far, over 12 years. I just don't ever agree with Masnick, or the Techdirt crowd on this topic. I stick with: use more scare resource = pay more.
Did I miss the actual point? "People can't be bothered to learn what a MB is, so caps are a bad idea." I think I understood it. And addressed how that' silly, and how people can learn, and how they don't need to learn if they can read a pie chart with two slices.
I also addressed the suggested points of the article, that caps are all-round bad. You don't have to agree with me, but I didn't miss the point.
Now, here's some points for you. You say "there were no caps until somebody decided that this was a great way to take advantage of people." That's baloney. Caps are not the result of what you suggest, instead, they are the result of this:
"Last year's mobile data traffic was eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000."
And this:
"The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 24 percent of mobile data traffic..." in 2011.
But because of caps that 2011 figure is
"...down from 35 percent 1 year ago [2010]."
There, in a nutshell, you have the reason caps were introduced, and the effect they can have.
Right, that's the precise point on which we disagree.
So if Billions of dollars are needed for maintenance, operations, and CapEx for new expansion, and demand is ever-increasing (cellular data grew 123% from 388 billion megabytes in 2010 to 866.7 billion megabytes in 2011), how can you stand on the premise that bandwidth is not scarce?
Money is scarce, and money is required to provide today and tomorrow's bandwidth. Non-trivial amounts of money.
Lots of what you wrote is good stuff. But as I said, I don't want to parse AT&T's accounting today. "I don't know how they fudge their accounting, so don't expect me to vouch for it"
Because what's the point of parsing it and reading the fine print. I'm not going to do a better job than the SEC of that. If they are investing $21 Billion in network CapEx, that $21 Billion is either for maintaining existing network or for deploying new capacity. Either one represents a cost of delivering capacity.
My argument, as you recall, is that marginal bits may be free, but capacity is not. Last year to AT&T, it was $21 Billion of not free.
Data capacity is not unlimited. Carriers made the mistake of selling it as "unlimited" for years, and now they are reaping what they had sown: Nobody respects the scarcity of capacity. They now need to push back, to try to show that capacity IS limited. Caps are the blunt tool to do that.
No, they don't speak to peak loads, etc. They are a blunt tool. But they get the customer to consider the marginal price of a bit as non-zero, and that is more right than wrong.
"You know what though? The bits themselves are free". Sure, and I have consistently agreed with that. It's hardly my slogan, I only wrote it once - and not in flattering terms. I said it was a half-argument. That true half-argument leads people to incorrectly think that capacity is, therefore, also free.
So you agree with me that network capacity isn't free. Good. Next point.
Your last paragraph is true. Caps don't perfectly manage the scarcity of the network's capacity. You're right about that. They are an approximation, but a useful approximation.
If people considered data completely unlimited, as in a marginal cost of zero, what would they do? They would find ways of using more. In theory, they would use infinite amounts. In practice, we used more and more, with grown growing exponentially. Reality follows theory closely.
So, caps put an opposite force on that unrestrained growth. Whether it does it precisely is not the question. It forces consumers to assign a non-zero cost to their marginal consumption. The result is a better approximation of a working supply-demand ecosystem then the incorrect consumer assumption of zero marginal cost.
Any good Techdirt reader knows the impact zero cost has, and how wonky the results get when we use zero. Consumers were using zero when there were real cost implications. Caps change that zero to something more.
The precise market alternative to caps would be a real-time market like a stock market, with bids and asks for bandwidth in any given cell sector at any given time. This would be rather complex. An approximation is preferable to most stakeholders.
With AT&T's annual statement. On that page, bottom left corner, the part that reads:
$20.3 B - Capital invested in 2011, including an
increase in investment in wireless and mobile
broadband capabilities.
This is your way of COUNTERING my assertion above that AT&T invests "$19 Billion per year on network improvements"? OK. Well, you've made your point. I stand down.
On the post: AT&T Tries To Tapdance Around Net Neutrality Regulations
Re: Re:
No, it isn't. The hardware is being offered and sold as a product from the partnership of Apple and AT&T. Facetime, as AT&T customers get it, is a feature of the iOS, which is sold with the hardware.
If Apple/AT&T invented a new app (say movie streaming), and offered it, but limited it to WiFi only; would that be 'offering something new' or 'blocking something'?
On the post: AT&T Tries To Tapdance Around Net Neutrality Regulations
Re:
AT&T and their partner, Apple, offer the Facetime app as they offered it.
They are offering something (crippled), not blocking something. You know how you can tell? Do you hear Apply crying foul?
So is it a dick move? Yes. Is it remotely illegal or anti-neutrality? Not even a bit.
Let the anger rain down on me. I know it's gonna hurt to point out the subtle truth.
On the post: Boston Shuts Down Uber Because Massachusetts Doesn't Approve Of The GPS
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Because I don't think that qualifies as "all costs".
Define "all costs" thoroughly in a 300 word essay. If you don't answer me, what are you hiding?
You MUST answer the question, because somebody on the Internet asked you to. That's how it works, right?
On the post: Boston Shuts Down Uber Because Massachusetts Doesn't Approve Of The GPS
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
In jury trials, lawyers can respond to questions like yours with "Asked and answered", and the judge would stop you. Here, you are not stopped...but nobody is under any obligation to answer you.
On the post: Verizon Wireless 'Settles' With FCC For Blocking Tethering Apps It Was Moving Away From Blocking Anyway
Techdirt Had This One Year Ago
Techdirt covered the fact that VZW was in violation of the spectrum terms one year ago:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110711/17464515050/you-dont-own-what-you-th ought-you-bought-verizon-breaks-phones-turns-off-feature.shtml#c1167
On the post: New iPhone Connector Port Revealed, Thus Wiping Out Several Generations Of Accessories In One Fell Swoop
Not Obsolete: Adapters and Selloffs
Anyways, there will be cheap adapters on Amazon and eBay 2 months after the next iPhone port is launched, so many accessories will still be totally functional. Others will lose their "stand" function and may need have some fit issues, but will still work. So they're not really obsolete.
Meanwhile, I've already noticed that a lot of iPhone docks and speakers are popping up as clearance items around the web and at Woot.com. Obviously, sellers are reducing inventory of the 30-pin items. It's not a bad time to get a deal!!
On the post: Would We Prefer HTC To Be Making Cool New Products? Or Just Getting More Patents
Quantity over Quality
What's going on is that all the major players have portfolios with thousands of patents, so it is almost an impossible task to actually know what all the claims are, when they are relevant, the quality of each claim, etc. But since we know they are all (deliberately) vaguely worded, we can assume that for any hundred patents, maybe one will have a claim that can attack a competitor.
So, it's much easier just to do a ballpark count of total patents. The count is only 'somewhat' useful, but it is actually easily done, whereas an actual detailed evaluation is nigh impossible.
Isn't this, essentially, a methodology based on the core principle of the "patent thicket"? We've reduced patent portfolios down to "How thick is your thicket?" Haven't we achieved 'reductio ad absurdum' yet?
On the post: Lodsys Continues Demanding Cut Of Smartphone Apps; Developers Hit Back In Court
Re:
On the post: ICE & FBI Hatch Ingenious Plan To Make DVD Piracy Warnings Longer
Re:
Of course, they're too deeply immersed in their own BS to understand that the "brand advertising" has a either a negative or neutral effect on a given viewer's sentiment.
On the post: Is Corruption Responsible For�80% Of Your�Mobile�Phone�Bill? No, Not Really
Price is Irrelevant Without A Stated Quantity
It is irrelevant to compare that to the USA without ALSO talking about how much data per year the average Finn transmits, and how many minutes of voice.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Study: Bandwidth hogs aren't responsible for peak network congestion
People have different billing periods. Their months end at different times. That problem (which never existed) is thus solved 100%.
Furthermore, the idea is to get people to think about the overall data flow their apps use, and consider reducing. Your hypothesis that this will all take place in the last week of the month assumes people will never learn to use less throughout the period.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Check out what this Techdirt author said about it in 2007
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20070418/174522.shtml
He wrote "Sprint's 2.5GHz strategy is tied in my mind for "gutsiest US telco project" with Verizon's FIOS project." I love FIOS and it's a crime that deployment has been halted as part of an accord with the cable companies to not step on each-other's turf. Don't presume to understand how I feel about FiOS because I don't agree with you on caps.
And you say you have built networks? Not one telecom network, ever was built with the assumption that people would use their full allottment 24x7. It's just fact. And it's correct engineering. You run statistical models to estimate expected demand, and build for that. In the case of PSTN phones, that means that you don't assume that everyone will make a phone call at the same time, and stay connected all day (even though their phone plan included unlimited local calling). For highways, it means we don't pave roads with the expectation that all cars will make a trip at exactly the same time, or that they will use the road 24x7 - even though that is their right.
You say "its bad engineering if you design a network to only be able to handle a small % of its probable projected load". Well, yeah, but I never said that, that's your strawman. I said projected load is not 100% utilization from each customer.
You're awful angry about this. By the way, I knew from the start that my opinions would go very much against the grain here. People want unlimited, low cost Internet, and taking the side of the telcos on any point is sure to elicit very unsympathetic responses. But I have exhibited none of the characteristics of a troll or shill. I criticize the ISPs frequently, I agree when people say they are money grabbers, I agree that there isn't enough competition. No shill would ever write that. And, BTW, shills aren't Techdirt authors for 12 years, which I am. As for Trolls, they are just in it to piss people off, but I am making arguments, citing sources, bringing stats.
PS: YOU can't just decide that I'm a shill or a troll just because I disagree with you, and yes, with the wider Techdirt community. This isn't supposed to be a comment circle jerk where we all agree day after day that the RIAA sucks. Dissent is encouraged and desirable. Fortunately, the "Report" system is designed to handle a few angry jerks who "Report" things just because they disagree strongly.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
And to your last paragraph, OF COURSE ISPs over-sell their capacity. That is day 1 of any network planning course. You plan your network capacity for some expected usage patterns of your users. Same for road networks, and other infrastructure projects. That's not evil, that's engineering.
If you want to be able to fully use your 50 mbit service with no capacity constraint, then what you want is an enterprise-grade connection, which is absolutely available. It just costs a lot more.
You can't have a dedicated pipe, and pay shared pipe rates.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
http://www.techdirt.com/user/derek
I write articles here at Techdirt. 762 so far, over 12 years. I just don't ever agree with Masnick, or the Techdirt crowd on this topic. I stick with: use more scare resource = pay more.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Did I miss the actual point? "People can't be bothered to learn what a MB is, so caps are a bad idea." I think I understood it. And addressed how that' silly, and how people can learn, and how they don't need to learn if they can read a pie chart with two slices.
I also addressed the suggested points of the article, that caps are all-round bad. You don't have to agree with me, but I didn't miss the point.
Now, here's some points for you. You say "there were no caps until somebody decided that this was a great way to take advantage of people." That's baloney. Caps are not the result of what you suggest, instead, they are the result of this:
"Last year's mobile data traffic was eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000."
And this:
"The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 24 percent of mobile data traffic..." in 2011.
But because of caps that 2011 figure is
"...down from 35 percent 1 year ago [2010]."
There, in a nutshell, you have the reason caps were introduced, and the effect they can have.
Source, Cisco VNI:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11- 520862.html
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
So if Billions of dollars are needed for maintenance, operations, and CapEx for new expansion, and demand is ever-increasing (cellular data grew 123% from 388 billion megabytes in 2010 to 866.7 billion megabytes in 2011), how can you stand on the premise that bandwidth is not scarce?
Money is scarce, and money is required to provide today and tomorrow's bandwidth. Non-trivial amounts of money.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
- improve service
- lower prices
- increase quotas / eliminate caps
- increase speed
That doesn't make caps wrong. And that doesn't support the original thesis that "caps are wrong because nobody knows what a MB is."
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Because what's the point of parsing it and reading the fine print. I'm not going to do a better job than the SEC of that. If they are investing $21 Billion in network CapEx, that $21 Billion is either for maintaining existing network or for deploying new capacity. Either one represents a cost of delivering capacity.
My argument, as you recall, is that marginal bits may be free, but capacity is not. Last year to AT&T, it was $21 Billion of not free.
Data capacity is not unlimited. Carriers made the mistake of selling it as "unlimited" for years, and now they are reaping what they had sown: Nobody respects the scarcity of capacity. They now need to push back, to try to show that capacity IS limited. Caps are the blunt tool to do that.
No, they don't speak to peak loads, etc. They are a blunt tool. But they get the customer to consider the marginal price of a bit as non-zero, and that is more right than wrong.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Caps
So you agree with me that network capacity isn't free. Good. Next point.
Your last paragraph is true. Caps don't perfectly manage the scarcity of the network's capacity. You're right about that. They are an approximation, but a useful approximation.
If people considered data completely unlimited, as in a marginal cost of zero, what would they do? They would find ways of using more. In theory, they would use infinite amounts. In practice, we used more and more, with grown growing exponentially. Reality follows theory closely.
So, caps put an opposite force on that unrestrained growth. Whether it does it precisely is not the question. It forces consumers to assign a non-zero cost to their marginal consumption. The result is a better approximation of a working supply-demand ecosystem then the incorrect consumer assumption of zero marginal cost.
Any good Techdirt reader knows the impact zero cost has, and how wonky the results get when we use zero. Consumers were using zero when there were real cost implications. Caps change that zero to something more.
The precise market alternative to caps would be a real-time market like a stock market, with bids and asks for bandwidth in any given cell sector at any given time. This would be rather complex. An approximation is preferable to most stakeholders.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Again, are you trying to make my arguments for me? You sent this link:
http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22516#ar2011-numbers
With AT&T's annual statement. On that page, bottom left corner, the part that reads:
$20.3 B - Capital invested in 2011, including an
increase in investment in wireless and mobile
broadband capabilities.
This is your way of COUNTERING my assertion above that AT&T invests "$19 Billion per year on network improvements"? OK. Well, you've made your point. I stand down.
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