Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service suspensions.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aussiebroadband.com.au&#x2F;blog&#x2F;aussie-broadband-announced-covid-19-response&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aussiebroadband.com.au&#x2F;blog&#x2F;aussie-broadband-ann...</a><p>Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored, substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

If the current strategy of making telecommuting the default takes hold post corvid-19 the governments of the industrialized world is going to be forced to treat internet the same way it treats other core infrastructure like roads or railways which means that nationalization will happen if the industry fail to deliver high speed and low prices to the undeserved rural areas.

In this time and age I think an internet connection is a human right. There should be free internet access, although limited bandwidth, for those who cannot afford it.

Smart message, hopefully it is received at the cell phone companies. I noticed TMobile is going to give everyone unlimited internet for a couple months whether you have that plan or not - but they didn&#x27;t say if they were going to avoid shutoff&#x27;s for no pay.

to all those who are blackhat , this is not the time to commit crimes and give people reason to want to dissconnect services, if you are a criminal at least realize that you are overtaxing your bread and butter. give it a break for a while until the system can handle the load of light and dark together

Internet should be viewed as a utility.

message needed in this time. Please don&#x27;t think about money in times like this. we need each other and we are all in this together. stay safe and let other&#x27;s be safe too.

&gt;We&#x27;ll mop up society&#x27;s collective bills at a later point in time<p>Very much doubt faceless corporations with automated billing cycles will take such an altruistic view on this but perhaps I&#x27;ll be surprised.<p>Most will do the exact opposite I believe. The last financial crash caused massive cashflow issues for the big corps.

&gt; To illustrate, in the Netherlands we are in lockdown, because of the COVID-19 hazard: you are expected to <i>only</i> leave your house if it is absolutely critical, such as to pick up food from the food distribution centers, to get meds, to go work in a hospital, etc.<p>You have food distribution centers?<p>I&#x27;m jealous.

Funny language issue - as terminating a connection also means providing an endpoint. Perhaps &quot;Don&#x27;t disconnect people&#x27;s internet&quot;.

Here in italy Fastweb pledged set up a 1-million gigabytes traffc pool from which all subscribers draw automatically. Once the million is over, traffic will be drawn from the account (granted, Fastweb offers ~50 GB&#x2F;month for 9.90&#x2F;month).<p>This is for now, i wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if they extend it later on.<p>The thing is, Fastweb is big in residential internet connection but pretty minor as mobile provider.<p>No word from major providers (Vodafone, Tim, Iliad)

About a month ago my Hong Kong mobile service provider offered subscribers a free local data package. Not unlimited, but a nice gesture.

Overall, maybe a good sentiment and maybe a good idea. In many areas I think this is being done.<p>However, I don&#x27;t at all like the argument that if your neighbor can&#x27;t pay her bill, it might not just impact her, but two of her neighbors, one of which is some kind of network engineer who fixes BGP thingies. And neither of the leaching neighbors who have some kind of critical need of <i>her</i> internet can help pay for it???<p>If you can fix BGP thingies, you ought to have your own WiFi, or be able to do better than leaching it.

Knowing how evil telcos can be, I&#x27;m legitimely surprised they didn&#x27;t exploited this crisis and their virtual monopolies to squeeze more money from customers.

If you live in a condo, what about sharing your internet on the guest WIFI network? Does it make sense? Will people misuse it? (It probably violates TOS, I guess.)

Where I live, it is illegal for utility companies to cut power during winters, for obvious reasons. Same should be for internet.<p>In fact, I&#x27;d go as far aa saying thar internet today is an absolute necessity, on par with water and electricity.

I&#x27;m wondering what people&#x27;s thoughts are on net neutrality in light of this new work from home situation. Would it make sense to offer a free tier with limited access?

The message does not really make much sense to me. Both service payments and pay dispute handling is overwhelmingly done online, so it is not affected by coronavirus and lockdowns.<p>We do not really know how long it will take. Emergency state and lockdowns may be the new normal. Everything that could work as usual should work as usual to not cause additional disruption.

Eh.. there won’t be. But it’s not because of some altruistic motivations, it’s bad PR and the sheer numbers of lost customers would out weight the benefit of terminating for non-pay.

Here in the US the vendors are not doing this.

I&#x27;ll play the devil&#x27;s advocate. Bandwidth is a finite resource, and it could be in critically short supply. In those circumstances, I wouldn&#x27;t expect everyone to get <i>more</i> bandwidth, I&#x27;d expect it to be rationed.