This makes me like Verizon even more.

[x88x]

So here's the deal. You remember all the crap over the last few years with Comcast throttling..certain things.., the FCC slapping them down, them saying they didn't do anything...them admitting that, ok, yeah, we did that :rolleyes:, and finally the FCC getting shot down by congress when they tried to get some net-neutrality legislation passed? Well, it looks like the industry is just as sick of it as we are, because Verizon, Google, and some other key industry players have formed the 'Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group' to set standards of neutrality and help deal with infrastructure problems. Basically, it looks like this is their way of saying, "Well, something needs to be done, and since Congress can't be bothered, we'll just do it ourselves.".

I found this quote very interesting:

So, for example, again the Comcast case, if there would have been an industry body, and I don't just mean industry players, I mean also even advocates that have an engineering and technology background, they should be part of the process; so should folks in the academic world. But they should be able to meet regularly and look at some of these issues. So Comcast could have come in and said, 'Look, we've got a congestion problem. It's severe, it's caused, we think, by P2P. How do we deal with this? Have you guys got some ideas, because frankly, the ideas we are thinking about we are not sure are going to work that well.'

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is a great breath of fresh air and sanity in the information industry. No sneaking around behind each others' backs, just "Hey, there are a lot of smart people around here and in academia...let's put their minds together and see if we can fix these problems we're having." That's the way it should work! :D


EDIT:
Link to original article:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/verizon-comcast-p2p-blocking-was-wrong-we-wont-do-it.ars

[Snowman]

I wish them the best of luck and hope this works but I doubt it. We as a modding society are still being labeled as evil sadistic hackers. I get called the hackmaster at work on almost a daily basis just because of my network security and questionable software that I carry with me at all times (you know the good stuff like password recovery, network protocol analyzers, wep crackers) just the good stuff you might need in a pinch. People have long forgotten that hacking got its start in the yearning for free information now we are labeled as those who torrent copyrighted overpriced software, yes Adobe and Microsoft I am looking in your direction. I think net neutrality will work when democracy does.

[Zephik]

In the past couple year's, Verizon has become quite an excellent company. The only real problem with them that I can see is that some area's don't get as great as service as others, just the same as with any other company, so it's not really even a fault.

But I've been using Verizon all my life. I hated them for year's, but now I can honestly say that I love a lot of what they do. Except for the Kin and the new sub-data plans for "multimedia phones". Both of those things were just... extraordinarily stupid. The cheaper data plan for non-smart phones I liked a lot, however that they require it just like with the full data plan with any Smartphone is just stupid. However you can just call them and be all like, uhm, no and they'll take it off for you. That's what my older brother did, anyways.

Now, take that stupid Kin and take it out of the smart phone category! Place it next to all it's similar phone brethern, like the Samsung Reality or Chocolate Touch or LG EnV Touch. Then charge that small data plan, like you should have done from the start. If I didn't want a smart phone, I'd totally get it. As far as dumb phones go, the Kin owns the competition imho.