A debilitating number of people remain steadfastly impervious to the following fact:
Stuff costs money.
I had a great contractor who helped me renovate my first house – a 1930 fishing shack on Maryland’s western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. He described the art of building thusly:
“Air is free. If you want to put it inside? That costs money.”
Because money is required to pay for the cement, wood, dry wall, paint and other materials required to enclose the air. And for the expertise and labor of the people who do the enclosing.
Converting outdoor air into indoor air – costs money.
So too is it with the air we use to wirelessly connect to the Internet. Floating all around us is what is called wireless spectrum:
“All wireless communications signals travel over the air via radio frequency, aka spectrum. The TV broadcast you watch, the radio program you listen to, the GPS device that helps get you where you’re going, and the wireless phone service you use to make phone calls and check Facebook from your smartphone — all use invisible airwaves to transmit bits of data through the air.”
That spectrum – has always been there. But now we’re using it for a bunch of really cool stuff – most impressively (to me) for lightening-fast connections to the World Wide Web.
But converting the air into connections to the Internet – costs money.
There are a lot of really smart people who devise, design and build the very intricate technologies necessary to make these connections happen.
(I was honored to have met the woman – who was the first person to figure out how to connect cell phones to the Internet. For how many trillions of dollars of wealth is her lightning-strike brainstorm responsible? It boggles the mind.)
Paying these minds – and for these technologies – costs money.
And how do these companies pay for all of these connection brainstorms? They charge us for the connections they provide. Because duh.
Here’s another fact to which a debilitating number of people remain steadfastly impervious:
More stuff costs more money than less stuff costs.
If you use the Internet more than the guy next to you? Providing your connection costs more than providing his. Because duh.
So you should pay more than the guy next to you. Because duh.
Except there are LOTS of people who don’t understand this. And most unfortunately, many of them are in government. Where they can debilitate all of us with their profound ignorance.
US FCC Investigates Telecom Firms Over Data Cap Policies:
“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a formal inquiry into the use of data caps by telecom companies. The investigation aims to assess how these caps impact consumers and market competition, particularly in an increasingly connected world.”
You know how the world is increasingly connected? Because the very smart people connecting us have been less fettered (but certainly not unfettered) by government idiocies such as this.
What are data “caps?” Well for one thing, they aren’t actually caps. A cap indicates a maximum allowed amount. Data “caps” – are no such thing.
Here in Reality, you purchase from your wireless provider a specified amount of digital data. That’s what these idiots call a “cap.”
Except you are, of course, able to exceed that amount of data. Which means it isn’t a “cap.” What happens when you do?:
“(T)ypically, exceeding a data cap would require the subscriber to pay additional fees.”
You mean…you pay more for using more? How outrageous.
When you go to the grocery store – you pay more for ten steaks than you do for one. Because duh.
What the government is looking to do – is eliminate charging more for using more.
This is the government mandating grocery stores allow you to take ten steaks for the price of one.
Which is a government price control.
It will cause prices for everyone to go up. Because the small data users – will have to pay more to subsidize the big data users.
And Internet connectivity will go down. Because mandating unlimited use for limited prices – means there will be less money to connect anyone.
We’ll all get slower Internet – at much higher prices.
All of which is exceedingly obvious to anyone who isn’t an idiot.
Which, most unfortunately, is not LOTS of people in government.
Editor’s Note: This also appeared in Townhall.