None of these articles ever talk about any concept of economic "distance". This one at least discusses the need for throttling if you read past the headline.
End consumers pay an set price for generic data at their ISPs corporate node, but data that comes from further nodes fundamentally costs more, as do large sources at peak times. Personally, I would rather the ISPs sort this out between themselves and other corporations rather than graduate my bill based on which sites/times I browse. The best would be a patchwork of municipal, regional, and private owned wired ISPs, private wireless carriers, and an open standard for peering agreements with concepts of "distance" and "congestion".
In response to the title of the article and ones like it: why is it surprising or "evil" that a company charging destinations a fixed price throttles at peak times or tries to be selective about data sources, even asking some over a certain threshold to reduce or foot part of the bill? It's OK to be suspicious of quasi public/private companies, but I need to see more evidence and more logic in news reporting to conclude people are acting immorally here. For example, outright blocking of content at the behest of politicians or differential throttling of data with equal "distance" outside of a common price structure.
End consumers pay an set price for generic data at their ISPs corporate node, but data that comes from further nodes fundamentally costs more, as do large sources at peak times. Personally, I would rather the ISPs sort this out between themselves and other corporations rather than graduate my bill based on which sites/times I browse. The best would be a patchwork of municipal, regional, and private owned wired ISPs, private wireless carriers, and an open standard for peering agreements with concepts of "distance" and "congestion".
In response to the title of the article and ones like it: why is it surprising or "evil" that a company charging destinations a fixed price throttles at peak times or tries to be selective about data sources, even asking some over a certain threshold to reduce or foot part of the bill? It's OK to be suspicious of quasi public/private companies, but I need to see more evidence and more logic in news reporting to conclude people are acting immorally here. For example, outright blocking of content at the behest of politicians or differential throttling of data with equal "distance" outside of a common price structure.