Well, selling you an "unlimited" account and them terminating that
contract if you use "to much" is one thing, that is a stated lack of
a limit in your contract.
There is no delivery guarantee of your IP packets in your contract,
adding one would be a rather bad idea since there is no delivery
guarantee in IP that your service is based on and that would open a
carrier to liabilities if someone was using a firewall for instance
since that is effectivly limiting your delivery to that machine.
What you are buying is access to Sprints network, and transit
effectivly on Sprints view of the Internet, and that is what they
deliver really..
------------------------------
Anders Lindbäck
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 2 nov 2008, at 16.01, Daniel Senie wrote:
At 09:33 AM 11/2/2008, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
On Sun, 2 Nov 2008, Rod Beck wrote:
It is a short term issue that probably doesn't merit government
intervention
The only government intervention I can imagine as being productive
would be to mandate what the "Internet" is, and if someone is
selling access to it, mandate that customers can demand a refund
in case the "Internet Access" doesn't provide access to enough a
big part of it in a well enough working manner.
Precisely the issue I am concerned about. End consumers cannot go
off and multihome easily. Comcast got in trouble for altering
traffic flows to its residential customers. Sprint has broken
access to its EVDO customers. Does it make sense for end customers
to be protected from companies providing access to only parts of
the Internet?
Sprint could, in response to this partitioning, buy some transit to
provide complete connectivity to its EVDO users. But unless
they're willing to allow termination of contracts for cell phones
and data cards without penalty, consumers are NOT free to switch
carriers, and they are not getting unfettered access to the
Internet as was sold to them. The other carriers in the space
aren't much better. Verizon got in trouble for selling "unlimited"
access via data cards, then cutting people off who used it heavily.
Is it worthwhile for the government and/or the courts to set rules
for such? As a consumer, I would prefer the government protect me
from large businesses selling me one thing, then delivering
another. Consumer protection is a valid and useful function of
government, IMO.
