686 replies to this topic

[drdredel]

http://www.nytimes.c...es.html?hp&_r=0

I'm surprised I'm the first to post this today... this is quite possibly the worst news this nation has seen in a decade or more. I guess the one silver lining is that this isn't a court ruling or even a law. Just an agency making a ferociously bad policy decision, which can (and dog willing will) be altered in time - hopefully sooner rather than later.

I think most people simply don't understand what the problem is, but I'm surprised that Obama isn't executive ordering the crap out of this biatch. If *he doesn't get its significance, then we really are doomed.

[Progressive whisperer]

Actually it IS a court case, or related to one, in that the FCC wrote three sets of "net neutrality" rules all if which were struck down in court cases.

[Traveler]

If the ISPs were to be regulated as common carriers, with absolutely no preference for their own content, and a pricing tier freely available to all, is this all that bad? Right now, Netflix been fine over the normal pipes. It only just inked deals for faster service. And I think gamers are also doing just fine with normal pipes. So a startup may be hampered if its content is that much higher than streamed video, but I dont see many apps like that coming down the line. Sure, if somebody came up with a game that was so successful that could benefit from the big pipes, then they could have the ability to pay for it at the publicly agreed upon price.

I know this is probably way too simplistic, so I look forward to getting edumacated.

[Probabilistic]

The fear is the ability of the owners of internet backbone to subtly undertake anti-competitive measures (either on their own or other's behalf), impede innovations that disrupt their interests, impact political speech etc. I do not know if it will come to pass. It seems to me to be a legitimate concern given history of monopolies, plus a bit of fear of the unknown.

[Progressive whisperer]

 Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 07:48 AM, said:

If the ISPs were to be regulated as common carriers, with absolutely no preference for their own content, and a pricing tier freely available to all, is this all that bad? Right now, Netflix been fine over the normal pipes. It only just inked deals for faster service. And I think gamers are also doing just fine with normal pipes. So a startup may be hampered if its content is that much higher than streamed video, but I dont see many apps like that coming down the line. Sure, if somebody came up with a game that was so successful that could benefit from the big pipes, then they could have the ability to pay for it at the publicly agreed upon price.

I know this is probably way too simplistic, so I look forward to getting edumacated.

My understanding is that the pipes aren't intended to get bigger, just services that don't pay get throttled back at the inlet to allow the paying services a larger share of what bandwidth exists.

[Traveler]

So this means every schlub like me that has upload and download large files every now and then now has to have even worse service? That is unconscionable.

[Progressive whisperer]

 Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 08:04 AM, said:

So this means every schlub like me that has upload and download large files every now and then now has to have even worse service? That is unconscionable.

I think the greater concern is for future competitors to Netflix or World of Warcraft, but it's certainly possible that if your neighbors on the same service all stream movies every night you might find yourself paying for broadband and enjoying dialup throughput.

[J-CA]

 drdredel, on 24 April 2014 - 01:38 AM, said:

.. this is quite possibly the worst news this nation has seen in a decade or more...

Keep up the good work DrD!

[Sinan]

Since I am in this business and spending the week at the Arizona-New Mexico Telephone Association meeting, I guess I should pipe in as well. First of all, the telcos own the pipes. In rural America, that means you usually don't have a cable company around. Your only access is via mobile phones, wireless shots, satellite or through your land lines. This industry is regulated and subsidized by our taxes which appear on your phone bill. I really don't see net nuetrality impacting this service one way or the other with the possible exception of QOS strategies that make the network work better in peak hours.

In the cities this is a different animal. Most homes in cities can get to the internet from telephone companies, CLECs, ISPs, MSOs, Satellite and wireless systems. These are NOT heavily subsidized since they are low cost areas for the service providers. If they invest in the infrastructure to compete for your business, why should they have no say in what traffic goes over their pipes? The biggest abuser of this is Netflix, google, Microsoft and lately Apple. Each of these content providers pay nothing to the service provider yet force them to get bigger and faster pipes and networks to keep up with the bandwidth demand. If the model allows for the access provider to also own content, then the access provider should be able to give his own content preference. If the model is to have dumb pipes and let everyone subsidize the maintenance of these pipes like a utility model then the provider should treat all traffic the same.

But I simplified it too much. This is a really, really complex issue and gets into the weeds of technology quickly. I really don't see political speech as a factor here, its about making money. And who is going to pay? Either all of us via a tax, the content guys via a fee for use, the customer via some form of sales packages or the telco out of their own pocket with no way to recoup the money from anyone.

[Traveler]

Like I say, I have no problem charging more for the hogs, so long as my service as a consumer of fairly low bandwidth is unchanged. I am not at all comfortable with my current bandwidth now being sold to a big boy. That is bait and switch.

Sure does look like the bait and switch.

Edited by Traveler, 24 April 2014 - 10:39 AM.

[AnBr]

I was working for a major ISP, so I am not completely clueless about this. We have had this discussion before and Sinan has made his view known, but this really an avenue for abuse by the providers. Besides, we have fallen behind so much of the rest of the developed world in terms of speed and price. The ISPs should be upgrading their capacity regardless.They have been milking outdated infrastructure for absurdly high prices. I don't see this as justifiable. And when you consider all of the dark fiber...

[Banty]

 Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 10:31 AM, said:

Like I say, I have no problem charging more for the hogs, so long as my service as a consumer of fairly low bandwidth is unchanged. I am not at all comfortable with my current bandwidth now being sold to a big boy. That is bait and switch.

Sure does look like the bait and switch.

Meaning, ISP's will want to follow that awful cable channel model. How certain are they that this would be enabled?

I'd be all for charging by bandwidth use above some threshold (like for Netflix) as in a sense that kind of stuff *is* an abuse (a sentiment that infuriates my IT buddy) if they can leave the rest alone. Can the FCC consider that?

I guess it's inevitable Netflix and the like would come along, but it goes to show you what happens when people lean way heavily on a good that's in the public sphere. And I don't think the right answer is that upgrades in the infrastructure should be so continual, and continually rapid, to enable anything so ah-ha the fault is all on the provider. *Somebody's* got to pay for that infrastructure. So here we are ...

[AnBr]

I would also note that Comcast has been the one that has pushed the hardest to end net neutrality and as they are about to get their way, they have started to gobble up media companies and other ISPs. They just ate Time Warner. This is just another example of a corporation manipulating the government for their own gain at the expense of everyone else.

[drdredel]

@J-CA
I'm being only mildly hyperbolic. I am having a hard time thinking of a government decision in the last couple of decades worse than this one (citizens united? maybe?)

[Progressive whisperer]

The preceding comments have been deemed to consume too much bandwidth and will now be deleted. Thank you;

Signed Comcast.

[HockeyDon]

 Sinan, on 24 April 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

But I simplified it too much. This is a really, really complex issue and gets into the weeds of technology quickly. I really don't see political speech as a factor here, its about making money. And who is going to pay? Either all of us via a tax, the content guys via a fee for use, the customer via some form of sales packages or the telco out of their own pocket with no way to recoup the money from anyone.

Say wha??

We the people will end up paying. It's either us via tax, us via the content guys passing along their expenses to us, us by purchasing those sales packages, or us when the telco passes along their expenses to us. It will all end up as another way to pull more money upward.

[J-CA]

 drdredel, on 24 April 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:

@J-CA
I'm being only mildly hyperbolic. I am having a hard time thinking of a government decision in the last couple of decades worse than this one (citizens united? maybe?)

That's not mildly hyperbolic, it is outrageously hyperbolic.
Look, I am all-for NN but the fact of the matter is that there are actual issues here that infrastructure providers need addressed. Maybe the best way to raise public awareness about this and get these things fixed is by having consumers actually get hit with these costs in a measurable way. This isn't even a law or a court ruling, it is just a regulatory decision.
The clever banner Traveler posted above might seems like some dystopic vision of the future but flat-rate metered Internet use is actually something fairly sensible. I don't like the idea of all this deal-cutting for content providers stuff either, but this is not a religious crusade.

[AnBr]

One more thought to put it in perspective, it really does not take that much bandwidth to stream video these days. You only need about 2 Mb/s to stream, or 4 Mb/s for HD. If Comcast is going to give preferential treatment to their streaming service or those that pay their tariff, then Traveler's concerns will have to be realized. They will have to degrade the service for everyone else. It is the people running BitTorrents that are hogging up the bandwidth. This does nothing to address that.

[J-CA]

 HockeyDon, on 24 April 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:

Say wha??
We the people will end up paying. It's either us via tax, us via the content guys passing along their expenses to us, us by purchasing those sales packages, or us when the telco passes along their expenses to us. It will all end up as another way to pull more money upward.

Well, we all got lucky for a while, dumb investors lent a lot of money to Teir-1 guys that went bankrupt, bad debt funded a lot of early infra when investor due-diligence was amounting to "Internet you say? Take my money!"

[J-CA]

 AnBr, on 24 April 2014 - 01:15 PM, said:

It is the people running BitTorrents that are hogging up the bandwidth. This does nothing to address that.

Actually it does.