[HN Gopher] The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
___________________________________________________________________
The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
Author : rsingel
Score : 313 points
Date : 2024-04-13 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is
| competition.
|
| The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent
| Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that
| exist.
|
| In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its
| not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as
| in not counting to your data cap.
|
| Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FCC should either
| be breaking up infrastructure from retailers (ie allowing
| regulated priced access like openreach) or splitting up operators
| and fining ones that dont provide proper access.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I think there is limited room for competition in many of these
| categories. For example, the infrastructure costs for telecoms
| make it very difficult for new competition (like a startup) to
| enter the market. The existing ones benefited from past funding
| and a lack of competition, but have captured market share. In
| some cases, there are other practical limitations, for example,
| splitting up wireless spectrum. Apart from Starlink I'm not
| sure there can be viable alternatives in this space
| dave4420 wrote:
| You force the infrastructure operator to allow competitors to
| use their infrastructure on a fair basis. It's what happens
| in Europe (including the UK). It works.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| In Europe they only do this for the last mile as far as I
| know, and this actually also prevents innovation since
| again there isn't competition that can meaningfully
| introduce alternatives (let's say cable versus fiber versus
| whatever). But I agree that approach is still an important
| tool (certainly better than nothing) and the US should
| adopt it.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > In Europe they only do this for the last mile as far as
| I know, and this actually also prevents innovation since
| again there isn't competition that can meaningfully
| introduce alternatives (let's say cable versus fiber
| versus whatever). But I agree that approach is still an
| important tool (certainly better than nothing) and the US
| should adopt it.
|
| Actually many places offer choice between cable and DSL
| variants. But once there is fiber in the ground it
| actually doesn't make much sense to go with anything
| else, so choices disappear (only for connection type, not
| ISP). With fiber it's much cheaper to provide high speed
| access (and there is a much clearer update path).
| ryandrake wrote:
| OR, (and I know this is near heresy) you force the
| infrastructure operator to allow competitors to use their
| infrastructure _regardless of whether it is fair to that
| operator_.
|
| This isn't a schoolyard playground. We don't have to play
| fair and treat these megacorporation with kid gloves. When
| the shoe is on the other foot, corporations don't play fair
| with us. "Fair" doesn't even come into the picture when
| they are in the conference room deciding their prices and
| terms. So why should the government treat them fairly when
| it comes to a regulatory solution?
| dave4420 wrote:
| "Fair" as in "on the same terms that their own retail
| unit gets", without any terms that would be
| anticompetitive.
|
| And no cross subsidisation.
|
| (I meant "fair to competitors", but I think you thought I
| meant "fair to the infrastructure owner".)
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I live in sweden and can pick from roughly 30 different ISPs
| where I live. I don't live in some big city, but in a smaller
| village. There is tons of room for competition if the laws
| are set up to push for it.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Do you know how they are set up? What elements of their
| networks they share?
| throwaway35777 wrote:
| > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser
| extent Canada's) internet is shite...
|
| Speak for yourself, but I live on the west coast and my
| Internet connection is great.
|
| Edit: downvoters, what are the problems with U.S. internet?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| What's your Internet speed up and down, provider, and monthly
| cost? Actual monthly cost, not temporary promotions.
| throwaway35777 wrote:
| It's like $50/mo for 200/50 I think. Why, what are yours?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and
| they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind
| other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers
| 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same
| price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than
| $200/mo.
|
| You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and
| that's fine and probably correct, but you're still
| getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should.
| You're also likely better situated than much of the rest
| of the country.
| throwaway35777 wrote:
| > but you're still getting slower speeds for higher
| prices than you should
|
| And what is your solution to that?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Not vote for politicians that are ardently anti-consumer
| and anti-infrastructure? We're talking about what exists,
| not who you can call to upgrade your internet :/
| umanwizard wrote:
| If by "the rest of the world" you mean a cherry-picked
| selection of the most advanced countries, then yes, the
| US is behind on internet access (and everything else).
|
| It never makes sense to me when people say how the US
| ranks last among developed countries on a bunch of
| metrics. Of course, that just means the US is indeed...
| less developed than those countries. If it's not fair to
| compare the US to Somalia, it's not fair to compare it to
| Sweden either. It just is what it is, somewhere between
| the two development extremes.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| How, exactly, are you supposed to compare if not to other
| countries? There's no bar for "this is what a developed
| country's internet should look like" so the only way to
| compare _is_ to do it against other countries roughly in
| the same range as the US.
|
| It's also entirely factual to say that in comparison to
| other developed countries, the US lags in internet.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| You compare cities, since you need to include average
| income.
| umanwizard wrote:
| If the US is significantly behind developed countries in
| practically every category, why do you consider it a
| developed country? What does "developed" mean?
|
| > other countries roughly in the same range as the US.
|
| The same range of what variable? How do you
| measure/define this?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| There are several definitions for what makes a country
| "developed" and the US is solidly in all of them.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
|
| I'm not sure how you can possibly argue that the US is
| not "developed".
|
| > The same range of what variable? How do you
| measure/define this?
|
| Feel free to take any of those lists and compare the US
| to countries around them in those lists. The countries
| might differ slightly, but the notion of what is a
| "developed" country has been firmly established for a
| long time now.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I'm not sure how you can possibly argue that the US is
| not "developed".
|
| The U.S. is considered developed only because it's
| extremely rich. However, the general state of its
| infrastructure, education, governance, media, etc. is
| more typical of a developing country in many ways.
|
| That's my point: all these lists of things the U.S. is
| worse at than every developed country are collectively
| what it _means_ to be developed, more so in my mind than
| just being rich.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| My prices are much lower in the states than in my place
| in Italy right now. Service sucks here too.
|
| Anyway you're ignoring income. Seattle is around triple
| the median of France for example. You need to compare
| cities of similar size and income.
| Aspos wrote:
| What is great about paying $50 for such low bandwidth?
| zer00eyz wrote:
| West coast USA.
|
| My current service is 130 a month for 200/20.
|
| Its getting replaced: 50 bucks a month for 10gig fiber.
|
| It's going to cost me 800 ish bucks to set up to take
| advantage of that (routing, switching, nic's)... I will
| still come out way ahead before the end of the year.
|
| Competition has its benefits.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| There's actually a couple of local providers that aren't
| bad, for example, https://www.sonic.com/.
|
| $40/month (if you don't rent a modem/eerio, which, why
| would you) for 10 gigs up and down, not to mention
| excellent customer service.
|
| But I will happily admit that they're a bit of an outlier
| and the offerings in much of the country are complete shit.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| $70/month for 10Gb/10Gb
|
| Actual speeds are more like 5/7. But I'm happy!
| seattle_spring wrote:
| In the US? Can you link to the promo page showing where
| others can obtain such a deal?
|
| Even if you deliver, surely you know that such a
| connection is an extreme, _extreme_ outlier?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| California. I have multiple multi-gig fiber options
| available and they compete.
|
| https://www.sonic.com/residential/internet
|
| Looks like the prices must vary by location. They don't
| have a price there.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| That's not really that rare in the USA though? Most
| decently sized cities have some form of fiber offering
| that will at-least give you a gig for $50 a month or so.
| f1shy wrote:
| In the great Europe (Germany, Telekom) I pay 50 for
| 16MB/4MB... good deal!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'm currently doing 6.3/9.1 with 81ms latency on AT&T. I'm
| seeing Europe averaging 48 Mbps [1], though my experience
| in Italy and the UK has been far spottier than in America.
| (Lot of people in this thread confusing home and mobile
| internet. I get 1Gb/35 for $65 at home, but that's
| irrelevant.)
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/689876/average-
| mobile-sp...
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That average looks outdated, and includes a lot of rural
| and under-developed areas. It also varies a lot per
| country[1].
|
| Most people in urban areas can get deals like 300-500Mbps
| for < EUR30/month. I have symmetric 1Gbps and pay about
| the same, could get 8Gbps for EUR80 but have no use for
| it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_state
| s_by_In...
| rom1v wrote:
| In France, I pay monthly 27.48EUR (~$29) for 1Gbps down and
| 500Mbps up (in theory, in practice, it's more like
| 500~600Mbps down, 250~300Mbps up). This includes a TV
| option for 2EUR (without it, it's 25.48EUR).
|
| My provider is SFR (the only one giving access to optical
| fiber in the small village where I live).
|
| EDIT: I'm talking about home internet. For mobile internet,
| I pay 19.99EUR/month for unlimited access (5G), but I
| haven't done a speedtest.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Symmetrical 1G, Verizon, 60/month in NYC
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I pay $55 a month for 1gps symmetrical at&t fiber. No caps
| I normally hit 2TB a month and they've never complained.
| Somedays I only seem to get like 800mpbs of that gig but
| it's rare.
| lxgr wrote:
| Both experiences can be true in the same country.
|
| For me, internet is great (both wired and wireless). For
| wired, I have a choice of cable and FTTH in my apartment,
| both cancelable month-by-month and without any bullshit fees
| ("taxes and surcharges", yeah, believe it or not I also pay
| taxes and I don't make it your problem, ISP!) beyond the
| sticker price.
|
| No idea if this is due to competition, regulation, or both; I
| suspect that at least the "no bullshit fees" part is due to
| the latter, as I can't imagine major US corporations all
| somehow collectively dropping them in one region but not the
| other.
|
| I also don't doubt that it is significantly worse for
| somebody living elsewhere. Data caps seem to still be a thing
| for wired access in some places.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Edit: downvoters, what are the problems with U.S. internet?
|
| once you get outside of truly major metro areas, internet
| access tends to go to shit.
|
| i've got 1G fiber internet in Seattle now, but in Everett
| ~25M shared access comcast is the best you can do in a lot of
| places. and it isn't like you need to be surrounded by cows
| and horses to have bad internet, you can have the boeing
| factory just down the road, but you're living in a ~100k
| population city as opposed to a tech hub.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Heres a little illustration. I used to work for a
| multinational company that had its main office in london and
| a number of satellite offices around the world. We wanted to
| install decent internet into everywhere so we could begin to
| manage our data in a more effective way.
|
| London: look for a good offer, phone up a few ISPs, get a
| quote, work out if we have spare capacity in the building (we
| did) boom, 1 gigabit install inside a month.
|
| Redwood city: 6 months. we had some sort of shitty T3 line
| installed as a stopgap. It never reached SLA. I had to phone
| the NOX, get a report. I then phoned the EMEA president of
| $large_International_network_provider to complain personally
| that I had to do the work of half his fucking company to get
| dailup++ installed. I left before they managed to get actual
| fibre into the building.
|
| Santa Monica: "we cant install fibre as the previous engineer
| reported seeing eyes under the building" Try and use a
| different company. Turns out that there is only that company
| in santa monica (Can't remember which) Ok, order an upgrade
| to what we already have. "line is bad needs replacing" cue me
| having to _fucking fly out_ and manage the fourth attempt at
| upgrading because the company are such useless fucking
| pricks.
|
| _domestic wise_
|
| I am in the suburbs, they've just rolled out fibre to the
| house. I have 900 meg down with 100(might be more) up for
| PS50 a month. Thats the pricy version with a fixed ipv4
| address.
|
| I can get a less fancy version for PS30.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015
| law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality
| Regulation 2015).
|
| > In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but
| its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free"
| access, as in not counting to your data cap.
|
| They do that because speeding up/slowing down apps is illegal
| and they are using loopholes in the law to get around that.
| terse-broccoli wrote:
| Yeah, but the loophole is also illegal. (so it's not a
| loophole?)
| godelski wrote:
| > Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's
| 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net
| Neutrality Regulation 2015).
|
| Why do these have to be in contention?
|
| Regulations are a critical factor in ensuring competition in
| markets. Without regulations monopolies quickly come to power
| because your power and influence is not linearly (or
| sublinearly) correlated to your size (even excluding lobbying
| power). A free market is a ,,well'' regulated market. A
| laissez-faire market is only free in passing.
| kristopolous wrote:
| One is an explicit policy stating expectations and the
| other is a speculative hypothesis that the same policy will
| naturally happen through some form of economic osmosis if
| only we leave things unmolested enough for an unspecified
| duration.
|
| I for one, would rather not rely on the assumption of
| magic.
|
| We know what we want and it's achievable directly. Let's
| not Rube Goldberg it.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| A free market is not a lawless market but instead free
| within regulations. However, the amount of regulation
| should not make it impossible for competitors to join the
| market either. With the amount of subsidies in the US for
| ISPs, I think the services they render might be event
| called a public service, more than a utility.
| godelski wrote:
| We don't disagree. I just thought it was obvious enough
| that an over regulated market isn't free that it need not
| be stated explicitly. Especially since this is the
| general belief.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Sorry for not clarifying. I do agree with your initial
| statement and wanted to add something to it, not
| criticize it.
| marcinzm wrote:
| > Why do these have to be in contention?
|
| I never claimed. I simply pointed out that claiming
| something illegal is not being done by corporations due to
| increased competition is inherently a BS argument. It's not
| being done because it's illegal irrespective of the
| competitive landscape.
| jszymborski wrote:
| > and to a lesser extent Canada's
|
| Not to turn this into a pissing contest, but Canada's internet
| is far more shite and far more captured by an oligopoly.
| Independent ISPs are harder to find than competition up here in
| the North.
| parrot987 wrote:
| This is similar to what I see too. I've actually gotten a
| borderless phone plan from AT&T just so I don't have to deal
| with the Canadian oligopoly.
| randomdata wrote:
| Canada isn't so bad off when it comes to wired service.
| Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce
| Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest. And many more are co-operatives
| owned by the customers.
|
| The mobile space is more challenging. A number of those co-
| ops and government ISPs were running mobile service back in
| the mid 2000s, but they never found the customer base and
| most of them eventually shut it down, Tbaytel and Sasktel
| being the exceptions.
|
| That said, many of those ISPs have more recently turned to
| reselling Big 3 service, so you can still at least minimize
| how much the Big 3 take, giving the small guy at least some
| of the cut. Maybe some day they can take that small cut and
| build out their own network again? But, you get what you
| choose to become a customer of, I suppose.
| gruez wrote:
| >Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce
| Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest
|
| That's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of people
| who aren't served by such ISPs. Population of...
|
| Saskatchewan (Sasktel): 1.1M
|
| Bruce County (Bruce Telecom): 66.5k
|
| Thunder Bay District (Tbaytel): 146k
|
| Prince Rupert, British Columbia (CityWest): 13k
|
| That makes up a total of 1.3M, against Canada's population
| of 37.0M.
|
| Moreover, looking at Sasktel's website[1], their prices
| don't look too competitive. They're asking for $105/month
| for 1G (promotional offer, regular price $150), which is
| actually worse than what corporate ISPs offer, eg.
| $110/month for 1.5G (promotional offer, regular price
| $130)[2].
|
| [1] https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Internet/
| Inter...
|
| [2] https://www.rogers.com/internet/packages
| randomdata wrote:
| _> That 's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of
| people who aren't served by such ISPs._
|
| But is actually warm comfort as it shows a proven model
| that anyone, anywhere in Canada can also do. It's just a
| matter of whether or not the people actually care if they
| are a customer of an independent, or if being a customer
| of a major is just as good or better.
|
| _> Moreover, looking at Sasktel 's website[1], their
| prices don't look too competitive._
|
| Sure. Nobody said owning your own business allowed it to
| operate for free. Publicly-owned and co-op businesses are
| not a panacea. But they are independent and free of a
| major private business, which is the topic at hand.
|
| Saskatchewan's population is ~80% rural, and Sasktel
| doesn't operate outside of Saskatchewan. It isn't
| terribly surprising that it costs more to service rural
| areas, and without much in the way of an urban base to
| help subsidize the operation. But this does indicate that
| other providers are operating within reasonable margins.
| Indeed, Canada is a very expensive place to do business
| in, and not just in telecom. You are never going to see
| cheap internet compared to other countries, or much of
| anything, without radically upheaving what the country
| stands for.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Those are completely irrelevant in 95% of Canada. There's
| bell, Rogers, and Telus. I guess Videotron in Quebec too.
| That's pretty much it and even then, here in Quebec it's
| either Videotron or bell, or their resellers. At least in
| Montreal.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Those are completely irrelevant in 95% of Canada._
|
| But quite relevant as they provide a proven, working
| model that can be used anywhere in Canada. That's the
| beauty of public/cooperative ownership - all people have
| to do is do it.
|
| _> here in Quebec it 's either Videotron or bell_
|
| What about CoopTel, Sogetel, and Telephone de Courcelles?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but
| its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free"
| access, as in not counting to your data cap.
|
| That's also in breach of EU net neutrality laws. A Dutch ISP
| lost a lawsuit over this for providing free Spotify traffic. I
| don't remember which one, I think it was T Mobile (now called
| Odildo or something lol)
| f1shy wrote:
| Odildo? Cant be truth in a country where almost all people
| speak english!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's actually Odido but everyone I know calls it Odildo :P
| it was really a stupid name choice
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I suspect it's a brand name they tested across multiple
| languages, etc
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Most countries are somewhat familiar with english slang,
| such as the word dildo.
| blackbeans wrote:
| I must be weird, but I like the name. It's a palindrome
| and I dig their symmetrical logo.
|
| And of course, it is clever marketing. Even here we are
| talking about it.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| Spanish: jodido
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Haha yes that means fucked (as in "you're fucked"). I
| speak Spanish and I didn't actually think of that.
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| Kinda funny how neutrality is hurting consumers. I dont think
| many of us thought about this potential benefit.
| deanishe wrote:
| It was always going to hurt consumers short-term. I don't
| know why anyone is surprised.
|
| Maybe it's just because I'm old and remember the
| clusterfuck when the EU decided one TV company couldn't
| hold the rights to _all_ the football matches.
|
| (They divvy the rights up in such a way that you can't see
| a single competition on just one service, let alone just
| one team's matches.)
| yftsui wrote:
| Giving "free data pass" to limited set of apps is even more
| harmful IMO, the monopolies can afford pay the network
| infrastructure but small app developers will not be able to.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| This. _If_ ISPs want to QoS traffic into different lanes...
| fine.
|
| But those lanes should: - Be general
| categories of use - Only be created by regulation
| - Be freely accessible to any app - Not involve any
| app-ISP payment
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Or, or, hear me out. The companies that need such high
| speed networks, should pay the infrastructure companies and
| get their own communication lines built, instead of buying
| QoS access on publicly funded projects.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I don't think any company should be able to _buy_ QoS
| access.
|
| They should simply qualify for it on the basis of their
| use case.
|
| E.g. "video streaming" or "real-time telecom"
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I agree. What do you think about fair use policies?
| Things like having 250GB/Month kind of limits.
|
| The internet infrastructure was built with certain
| utilization and speed in mind. Instead of owning up to
| the fact that it's not as good as it used to be, these
| companies are selling quality of service products.
| Otherwise it's too much of a publicity hit if they admit
| it.
| spullara wrote:
| Best internet in the country is offered by a monopoly in
| Chattanooga. Up to 25 Gbit up/down.
| glitchc wrote:
| That's amazing. I just upgraded my home network to 10G to
| take advantage of my 1.5G internet connection.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Why are you calling their municipal fiber internet a
| monopoly? Not only is it a utility, here is a list of 10
| other broadband providers including att fiber, xfinity and
| verizon 300mb 5g:
|
| https://broadbandnow.com/Tennessee/Chattanooga
|
| Pretty ridiculous and disingenuous to call it "monopoly".
| godelski wrote:
| Monopoly? That's a bit bold of a claim.
|
| The provider you're talking about is the utility company. You
| might not know why the utility company provides the internet
| either. It's because before that they couldn't get the other
| companies (AT&T, Comcast, Hughe, Verizon) to offer good
| speeds and reasonable rates. The utility also doesn't take a
| profit. Mind you, those other companies still operate and no
| one is holding them back. They just decided that the profit
| margins weren't worth it, though they did lobby against
| NoogaNet.
|
| It's not a monopoly. It's a city coming together and saying
| Fuck you, give us good internet or we're going to build our
| own internet with blackjack and hookers
|
| And overnight all those companies increased their speeds.
| They found what they were happy with and NoogaNet still
| decided "fuck it, we're going to just be better." I really
| REALLY wish more people/cities would take this "fuck you,
| we'll do it ourselves" attitude. Waiting on others to fix our
| problems clearly isn't working.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's weird that we keep seeing this happen and work but
| then it isn't more popular. Government services are
| typically inefficient, but so are private monopolies for
| almost exactly the same reasons. If you put them into
| competition with _each other_ then they both have _more_
| competition and have to do better.
| bsder wrote:
| > I really REALLY wish more people/cities would take this
| "fuck you, we'll do it ourselves" attitude.
|
| This is hard. Start here:
| https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i
|
| The problem is the activation energy and a bunch of people
| who will oppose you no matter how useful something is.
| lolinder wrote:
| This was my thought. My municipality has been working towards
| laying a city-owned fiber network that ISPs compete on, and if
| that goes through I would have no problem with some of them
| running the kind of programs described in TFA. If consumers
| want it they'll choose those ISPs, if they don't they'll choose
| ones that offer flat rates for all traffic.
|
| The problem with unregulated broadband isn't the lack of
| regulation in the abstract, it's the lack of regulation over a
| sector that has 2(+-1) choices per household and no easy path
| for new entrants.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| I was definitely someone who wrote the FCC (futilely) in
| support of net neutrality in 2017, and I figured the inevitable
| outcome of the FCC decision back then would be skyrocketing
| broadband costs, fast lanes, etc.
|
| Except none of it happened. It turns out there's actually kind
| of okay competition in this space. Maybe not as much as there
| should be, but prices have stayed reasonable, broadband access
| is expanding, and people by and large don't seem bothered by
| data caps when they're subject to them, and they have access to
| reasonably priced, uncapped plans.
|
| All that said, I certainly won't say no to reinstating net
| neutrality, since I don't think you can argue it'll make
| anything worse. In fact it might make competition easier. But
| it's not the existential pillar to online existence that we
| seemed to think it was.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Yeah, the discourse around the Net Neutrality thing was
| _intense_. I was one the few people who argued it wouldn 't
| change much, and I remember being struck by the state of
| near-internet-apocalypse people were predicting at the time.
|
| Helps that I was seeing the whole thing from the outside as a
| non-US-resident.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I have to take the L on going with the flow there. It's
| impossible to build a case that repeal of net neutrality
| was apocalyptic.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That the potential of a future FCC reinstating it
| precluded ISPs' baser instincts?
|
| Their goal was to avoid excess, so maybe they could argue
| that net neutrality wasn't a good idea anyway, so they
| could gradually introduce new revenue streams from
| apps/platforms.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| That repeal lasted five years, with virtually none of the
| visible effects people predicted. By contrast, when the
| Trump administration started tearing down environmental
| regulations, mining companies jumped on the occasion
| within months.
|
| If ISPs are playing the long game, they're being
| incredibly patient about it.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| > If ISPs are playing the long game, they're being
| incredibly patient about it.
|
| They actually are, and this is how politics and lobbying
| work. In 2017 it made no sense for US ISPs to run ragged
| over net neutrality when the 2020 election was looming
| and far from predictable. Even less once Biden gets
| elected.
|
| Plus there was the credible threat of state-level laws,
| which are even worse from the ISPs standpoint since each
| might go farther than the FCC rules in certain ways.
|
| The California law passed and was a really big deal.
|
| If you're looking for a controlled experiment of what the
| world looks like without net neutrality rules, just look
| to countries where there was never any such movement or
| credible threat of them.
|
| Across Africa, for example, 1GB of mobile data can cost
| 10x more if you're accessing the normal Internet, vs. a
| mainstream service like WhatsApp or Youtube.
|
| ISPs use net neutrality violations for price
| discrimination to extract more from white collar workers
| who need access to the Internet beyond WhatsApp-- which
| is fine until you think about the effects on any new
| WhatsApp competitor.
| pydry wrote:
| Much as I agreed with net neutrality, I could see that it
| was being driven mainly by big tech lobbying for their
| profit margins. This is also why the attention and outrage
| was way out of proportion to the actual impact.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That's because the internet went to shit and actually very
| little happens outside of major platforms anyway. This type
| of traffic shaping would just cement it as-is, making it
| almost impossible for a new platform to come up.
| gruez wrote:
| Tiktok would beg to differ. Starting a new social network
| is hard, but bandwdith/net neutrality is the least of your
| problems.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| This is some research it would be cool to see: was TikTok
| adoption measurably slowed in countries where net
| neutrality violations were common?
|
| For example, it's the norm across Africa for providers to
| offer plans with radically lower per-GB costs for
| WhatsApp, Youtube, and other mainstream apps, as a way to
| price discriminate and charge a premium to tech and white
| collar workers who need access to the actual Internet. In
| such countries you would expect TikTok adoption to happen
| more slowly than expected.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| One of the issues here is decentralized services. If
| you're starting a new centralized service, you can pay a
| CDN which itself is already paying the danegeld or is too
| big to degrade without the ISP's customers blaming the
| ISP. That's a tax but if you're state-funded or VC-funded
| you can just eat it.
|
| Whereas if you want to build something based on IPFS or
| just host your own website out of your home/business,
| ISPs have the incentive to thwart this, because then they
| couldn't double dip anymore. See also cable companies
| explicitly designing slow upload speeds into the most
| widely deployed versions of DOCSIS.
|
| So then you're creating a bias towards centralized
| closed-source services instead of open standards and
| self-hosting.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| I know there's a gun pointed at my head, but listen, nobody
| has pulled the trigger yet, it's fine.
| gruez wrote:
| Sounds like your position is one where no empirical
| evidence could convince you otherwise, because even if the
| apocalypse did not come to pass you would use the "gun
| pointed at me but they didn't pull the trigger" excuse.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Huh?
|
| > "Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that
| have been degrading video quality for mobile users will
| have to stop."
|
| This is literally what the article is about. It's
| happening now, it's been happening, it will continue to
| happen unless the laws get restored.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| Mobile ISPs like T-Mobile are quite open about wanting to
| offer plans that privilege certain services over others.
| freedomben wrote:
| > I know there's a gun pointed at my head, but listen,
| nobody has pulled the trigger yet, it's fine.
| gruez wrote:
| 1. If your claim was that the net neutrality doomsayers
| from 2017 were correct, then your original comment of
| "[...] nobody has pulled the trigger yet, it's fine" does
| a terrible way of conveying that. Any reasonable person
| reading that comment would interpret that as you
| conceding that the the doomsayers' predictions have
| failed to pass, but nonetheless refuse to admit the
| predictions were incorrect because it was only a matter
| of time before the predictions would become true.
|
| 2. "Net neutrality" is a term that doesn't have a precise
| meaning, and I'd rather not get into a fight about what
| it really means. That said, in the context of this
| discussion about the net neutrality fight in 2017, and
| whether the doomsayers' prediction came to pass, I think
| it's fair to compare to the pre-2017 net neutrality
| regime. In that context it's not clear whether "degrading
| video quality for mobile users" would be illegal. For
| instance "network management" was explicitly allowed, and
| only "pay for priority" would be banned[1]. Moreover
| there was a court case a few years before where FCC
| fought to prevent bittorrent being throttled, and lost
| the case on appeal.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_U
| nited_S...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| We can turn this around though, can't we? If the ISPs
| have no designs on violating network neutrality then why
| do they oppose it?
|
| If you repeal the law against burglary and then burglary
| doesn't immediately skyrocket, would you say that we
| shouldn't have a law against burglary? Of course not,
| because regardless of how often it happens, you'd like it
| to _never_ happen and would want to prosecute it any time
| it does regardless of how often.
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's been 7 years, but any day now we'll wake up to broken
| online video, random timeouts, paltry data caps, and
| skyrocketing costs.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| > Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that
| have been degrading video quality for mobile users will
| have to stop.
|
| "Not with a bang but a whimper."
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is like the folks who compare the covid death rate
| with treatment, mitigations, and vaccination to prove we
| could have let it run its course in 2020.
|
| Public sentiment was pretty high and we actually had
| network neutrality for the first 40 years of the Internet
| not to mention the over 100M people who live in states
| that adopted laws.
|
| https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/net-
| neutra...
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| > It turns out there's actually kind of okay competition in
| this space. Maybe not as much as there should be, but prices
| have stayed reasonable, broadband access is expanding, and
| people by and large don't seem bothered by data caps when
| they're subject to them
|
| lol. This is better attributed to you getting used to the
| shitty situation you, and everyone else in your country, is
| dealing with. Your speeds are shit and you're paying too much
| for them, and those "not bothered by data caps" just don't
| know better anymore.
| gruez wrote:
| >Your speeds are shit and you're paying too much for them,
| and those "not bothered by data caps" just don't know
| better anymore.
|
| None of what you've listed would be fixed by net
| neutrality.
| seabird wrote:
| I pay $50/month for 300/30 in the middle of nowhere.
| Symmetric gigabit is available for $80ish/month in small
| cities around me. Unlimited phone data is widely available
| and fairly priced. It's not impossible for things to be
| acceptable for the vast majority of use cases just because
| some predicted apocalyptic event which was hyped up by
| certain large players (and not out of the goodness of their
| hearts) didn't come to be.
| plowjockey wrote:
| $90/month for 25/2.5 Mbps here. I honestly never thought
| we'd see that kind of speed. In late 2015 it went from
| 512 kbps to 10/1 Mbps on a new system. Four years later
| (2019) they upgraded it to the present speed with no
| increase in price. It's all wireless and since we're in
| AT&T telco territory there is no chance of them doing
| anything (the phone lines have been in the ground since
| the late '70s), so this independent telco built out as a
| WISP almost 20 years ago. They're looking at doing their
| own FTTH in this area.
| ericfr11 wrote:
| Wow, that is very expensive
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm afraid to tell you what I pay for starlink for speeds
| much lower than that. Still very grateful as without
| starlink is have 20 M down and still pay $75 per month
| for it
| free_bip wrote:
| AFAIK the actual reason most of these things did not appear
| is because of many states passing their own net neutrality
| laws, such that it would be a regulatory nightmare to offer
| services in violation of net neutrality without coming under
| fire.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| The California law is particularly strong and had a huge
| impact.
|
| The other big factor is the _threat_ of new FCC rules,
| state laws, or federal law. As long as net neutrality
| advocates can pose a credible threat of passing rules that,
| from the ISP 's point of view, are more restrictive than
| the status quo, ISPs have to think twice before engaging in
| what John Oliver famously called "cable company f*ckery".
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I'm constantly having buffering videos across many websites
| and paying significantly more for this shitty service than
| nearly anywhere else in the world pays for something
| significantly better.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| All the free access has been removed in Germany a while ago
| because of net neutrality.
|
| The free access also came with a limit like bitrate and video
| resolution.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The FCC did that with DSL. The incumbent telcos retaliated by
| not maintaining their copper plant and killing their own line
| of business as an ISP.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The mistake there was in leaving the private monopoly intact
| whatsoever.
|
| If you want to have ISP-level competition, one of the better
| ways to do it is to have the government install cable
| trenches along the roads which the government then owns and
| provides cheap access for anyone to lay cable. Once the
| trenches exist, wiring a neighborhood with fiber is then far
| less expensive and makes it feasible to have multiple
| competitors.
| passwordoops wrote:
| The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent
| Canada's) { _insert industry_ } is shite is because of the
| monopolies that exist.
| spxneo wrote:
| ppls comments on this thread towards Canada really struck a
| nerve with their cluelessness about Canada. People from other
| countries always act like it's some shining example of the
| Western world, but that's not the real deal at all.
|
| Canada is basically just three big resource companies propped
| up by a massive housing bubble that traps newcomers in debt
| slavery in a form of reverse colonialism where they trick
| immigrants to become serfs paying rent so people who bought
| homes in the 80s (after working for like 6 months) can keep
| flipping it to the next wave of immigrants and blame them
| with the media owned by the very oligarchs that are supposed
| to regulate the real estate industry (lol!).
|
| They don't even bother using or valuing the skills and
| experience these immigrants bring - you've got surgeons from
| the UK working as cashiers, immigrants without income so all
| they can do is start businesses or become traders, all to
| line the pockets of the ultra-rich oligarchs who get
| everything for cheap and flip at insane markups. They have
| every Prime Minister wrapped around their little finger,
| letting them monopolize everything and then screwing over
| everyone that comes to this miserable piece of land.
|
| Take this one famous billionaire in Vancouver - I'm not gonna
| name names, but this dude practically owns all the salmon in
| BC, along with Aboriginal monopolies that were handed out
| just because of what has been described in anthropology
| textbooks as "white guilt". Then there's another billionaire
| from Ottawa who has a monopoly on the legal drug market - guy
| ended up getting choked out with a wire, and the RCMP just
| called it an "accident." Oh, and let's not forget the
| billionaire who somehow scored the exclusive rights to run
| the only online casino in BC. The list goes on and on.
|
| There's no such thing as a free market in Canada - it's just
| a banana republic country club for the rich old Canadians at
| the top. Actually, I'm not even sure if the casino guy was
| born in Canada, but he definitely looks like he could be.
|
| So yeah, to a lesser extent makes no sense here as somebody
| that has decades of experience with that country. At least
| America still recognizes the value of some free market and
| competition with or without a housing bubble.
| godelski wrote:
| I lived in Tennessee when Google Fiber was announced there. At
| the time Chattanooga (and a few small towns) already had fiber
| internet that were offered by the utilities companies.
|
| It was an absolute shitshow. Actually, a shitshow would have
| been cleaner.
|
| Immediately AT&T rolls out gigabit internet, but not
| everywhere. I was in one of the small towns with gig and the
| previous renter had AT&T. AT&T literally cut the lines into the
| apartment instead of disconnecting them, causing me to have a
| $50 install fee (the technician was clearly also annoyed).
|
| Then Google, AT&T, and Comcast got into a big fight and it got
| political. Politicians would talk about how Google coming in
| was preventing competition (I shit you not) and attacking the
| little guys. Then a judge ruled that Google couldn't operate on
| telephone polls because Google would "cause danger to
| employees" and "be a union violation" (not the unions saying
| these things, it was AT&T. Obviously this made people think the
| unions were blocking things and continued to get mad at
| unions)[0]. So basically one of a Comcast and AT&T technician
| had to be there while Google would place in fiber and you know
| how it goes.
|
| It was a literal circus and the whole while it was politicized
| and misinformation was spreading like wildfire. Big Tech
| screwing over the little guys. Big Tech coming after the public
| utilities (never happened). Unions making everything
| impossible. Something about Big Tech and liberals/trans/gays
| taking over at some point. Like the on the ground conversations
| that would happen were mindbogglingly dumb. It actually was
| hard to figure out what was actually going on because every
| person and news article would have a unique story to tell. But
| the weirdest thing to me is about how nearly everyone I knew
| was a self-proclaimed Libertarian who hated government yet was
| licking their boots ad propping them up because they didn't
| want those gay/liberal/furry/godless/<insert random insult>
| techies rolling in decreasing competition and destroying the
| free market. That's when I truly started to believe that
| there's no such thing as a Libertarian (or any other cleanly
| encapsulated idea, but Libertarians are in your face), it's
| just a label. Because I watched anti-government free market
| devotees bend over backwards to protect monopolies and not even
| have a clue of the cognitive dissonance. It also made me really
| pay attention to how this happens more often than we care to
| think (including how we ourselves do it).
|
| [0] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-
| rule...
| freedomben wrote:
| Libertarian does seem to mean different things to different
| people, but if somebody is supporting government or propping
| them up because they are concerned about preserving or
| maintaining current or traditional social values, that is the
| definition of a social conservative, not a libertarian. A
| libertarian position on that would be a "you do you" , but
| don't force others to do "you." A "the government should
| enforce or promote this" is a social conservative position.
|
| But yes, I mostly agree. Most of the people I know who would
| identify as libertarian, suddenly become much more
| comfortable with government action when the government is
| wanting to do something they like, or is even run by their
| person. Once "the other side" gets in control, they seem to
| rediscover their libertarian principles. Seeing this was a
| good reminder to me that we should look at actions, not
| words, when deciding who to vote for.
| godelski wrote:
| Most of these people would repeat the common lines of
| taxation is theft, government is bad, prefer small
| government, complain about things like that existence of
| USPS/FDA (and an inaccurate story about peanut
| butter)/health instructors, and all those things you'd
| stereotype of those positions. They'd also take positions
| like you say about things like drugs (despite the state
| having a lot of dry counties, including the one Jack
| Daniels is in...).
|
| Truth is that people say they believe a lot of things but
| don't act as if those beliefs are true. I think people like
| labels more than beliefs.
|
| A common one is how common it is to say that all
| politicians are corrupt. I know people that say that like
| it's a catch phrase and then when we talk post voting they
| vote in incumbents. -\ _ ( tsu ) _ / -
| Xelbair wrote:
| >In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but
| its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free"
| access, as in not counting to your data cap.
|
| there were such offers. about 10 years ago, but they are
| illegal EU-wide.
| wredue wrote:
| Canadas ISP situation was far better when Crown corporations
| were providing better, cheaper services. In standard fashion,
| conservative government successfully convinced half the
| population that it'd be better if the crowns were sold.
|
| Spoiler: it has gotten way way worse. Not better.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| Actually, the empirical record on this shows that we see _more_
| net neutrality violations by ISPs in marketplaces with high
| competition.[1]
|
| This is counter-intuitive but here's how it works:
|
| In a competitive marketplace ISPs have tighter margins and look
| for every opportunity for cost savings, so if throttling a
| high-bandwidth application only affects a small percentage of
| customers, and only a tiny tech-savvy minority of those
| affected will accurately attribute the effect to ISP
| throttling, it will incur only the tiniest competitive pressure
| on the ISP, so the ISP will do it to increase profits.
|
| We actually saw _more_ net neutrality violations in competitive
| EU markets than in the US, until EU-level net neutrality rules
| passed.
|
| Another way to look at the limits of competitive pressure is
| from a startup's point of view: if your startup is offering a
| new videoconferencing service, how will competition help you
| when a rogue ISP breaks your service for 10% of your customers
| by throttling your service but putting Zoom in a fastlane? Your
| customers will not think "oh, I'd better switch to a better
| ISP," when ~10% of call participants are unintelligible. They
| will think, "oh, this new service sucks, I'm going to stick to
| Zoom."
|
| Competitive pressure on ISPs does not protect nascent startups
| with small userbases from ISPs. And yet, everything we care
| about on the Internet started as a nascent startup with a small
| userbase.
|
| Competition is great for keeping prices down and the US needs
| more of it. But to protect the long tail of startups and all
| the new ways people use the Internet from ISPs you need net
| neutrality laws.
|
| 1. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2700055. Key finding:
| _Relying on consumer switching behavior to provide more
| comprehensive competitive discipline was insufficient for a
| variety of reasons, including the presence of switching costs._
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures
| for even bigger margins?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| If the FCC does not do something, they will.
|
| As to why it has not happened yet: it is easier to corrupt
| a new infrastructure from the beginning than change one
| that is already entrenched.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving
| measures for even bigger margins?
|
| They would.
|
| The issue is that competition alone wouldn't fix it,
| because there is an information deficit. Some people will
| pick the lowest price and not _realize_ that the ISP
| offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to
| degrade their own competitors. And since this is always bad
| -- it 's anti-competitive in the market for over-the-top
| services, so this is an anti-trust rule -- it should be
| prohibited regardless of whether there is competition in
| the ISP market. Because you need it in order to preserve
| competition in the markets for other services.
| avar wrote:
| And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's
| subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad,
| and not care because they're only using the connection
| for SSH terminals and email.
|
| Don't assume that people only pick these plans because
| they're uninformed.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The informed customers aren't the issue. If Disney is
| paying to make Netflix look bad, it's because _somebody_
| is getting fooled into thinking Netflix is to blame for
| this, otherwise what is Disney getting for their money?
| So that plan is an anti-competitive measure, regardless
| of whether it also presents an arbitrage opportunity for
| customers who don 't care about video streaming. If its
| only customers were the arbitrageurs then Disney would
| have no reason to pay and it wouldn't exist.
| saghm wrote:
| > Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize
| that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from
| incumbent services to degrade their own competitors
|
| > And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's
| subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad,
| and not care because they're only using the connection
| for SSH terminals and email
|
| It seems unlikely that there are anywhere close to as
| many of the latter as the former
| parineum wrote:
| So the solution there is transparency.
|
| I'd be much happier if the government regulations gave me
| information to make an informed decision rather than
| forced a decision on me.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Transparency is part of the problem. It makes the anti-
| competitive practice easier to carry out because
| customers don't know they're getting screwed. But there's
| still a potential anti-trust issue even with perfect
| information.
|
| Suppose Facebook doesn't want anyone using their
| competitors, so they subsidize the cost on some ISPs that
| then block their competitors. The customers of those ISPs
| are 15% of the market, and they _know_ the other
| competitors are blocked, but they want the discount. Then
| the other 85% of people have to use Facebook in order to
| communicate with anyone on one of those ISPs, and social
| networks have a network effect, so now everybody is stuck
| on Facebook even if they don 't use one of those ISPs,
| because they know somebody who does. This is anti-
| competitive and so an anti-trust problem.
| parineum wrote:
| I think it's much more likely people stop using Facebook
| in that condition. People may be "stuck" with Meta
| because everyone is on it but the situation you're
| describing is a big difference between zero friction to
| make an account and join everybody else and change your
| ISP so you can talk to your grandma and look at cats on
| instagram.
|
| I'd rather have choice and transparency and see if the
| situation you've described arises. It sounds completely
| unrealistic to me and we don't have to make laws and
| regulations cover every single edge case right away, they
| can be modified as we go.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I'd say the exact opposite. It's clear the majority of
| customers here cannot make an informed decision either by
| way of incompetence about the technical aspects that
| would enable them to detect bad faith behavior on the
| part of ISPs, or lack of transparency, or outright lack
| of competition in their market. Competition does not work
| to increase quality if the customer cannot judge it. The
| entire benefits of markets and competition break down and
| become irrelevant.
|
| Instead: make it a utility, subject to regulation and
| codes as any other. I don't need to be a plumber to
| ensure I get adequate sewer service, I don't need to be
| an electrician to ensure that I get adequate electrical
| service, why should I need to be sysadmin to make sure I
| get adequate network service? It makes no sense. In fact,
| I'd go so far as to say that it makes even less sense
| because those examples require less education overall
| than you would to detect bad faith behavior on the part
| of your ISP. if you don't have enough water pressure for
| your shower to function, you don't need to be a plumber
| to diagnose that. If your homes electrical service is so
| bad that you can't run your appliances you don't need to
| be an electrician to judge that. But how do you know if
| your given ISP is throttling Netflix without substantial
| IT in your background?
|
| I don't think it's an outrageous opinion that any Tom,
| Dick, or Harry, who is participating in this market
| should be able to get the service to a reasonable
| standard of quality that they are paying for without
| needing to verify it independently.
| pipes wrote:
| I thought net neutrality was about ISPs trying to get
| netflix, facebook etc to pay them extra not to throttle. The
| only throttling I've heard of here in the UK (which has lots
| of providers and competition) is on torrenting.
|
| Are there examples of what you are talking about with zoom
| etc? Because as far as I can reason: if an isp throttled
| something like that in a high competition market, they'd lose
| their customers. And if it was a low user / start up phase
| app it wouldn't provide any competitive advantage for an isp
| to throttle it.
| braiamp wrote:
| It is multiple things based on a simple concept: no traffic
| should be discriminated based on source, destination or
| type. That means that netflix ones and zeros are treated
| the same as facebook, same as your web page filled with cat
| pics, same as torrents.
| withinboredom wrote:
| This isn't at all true in the way you are portraying it. Of
| course, if you have more of something, you have more of the
| related things. If you have more oranges, more oranges are
| going to be rotten. This is obvious if you can think about it
| for more than 30s.
|
| The overall net effect isn't what you say it is though.
| nox101 wrote:
| Selection bias. They only picked UK and US. Plenty of
| countries in Asia have robust competition and is arguably a
| reason why they are so cheap and so good. One company offers
| twice the speed for the same price. People quickly start
| switching and new accounts (people coming of age) go to that
| cheaper better company. The other companies are forced to
| follow suit or lose their customers.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser
| extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies
| that exist
|
| Hot take - Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China
| Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and NTT+KDDI are basically
| duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our 5G nationwide in just
| 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while keeping competitive
| pricing, and make the US market look free in comparison.
|
| The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of the FCC and
| regulators, along with issues around deprecating older infra.
|
| This doesn't mean we should go all Reagan, but if this is
| streamlined at the executive level, it would really simplify
| everything.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser
| extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies
| that exist.
|
| New Zealand went from having a single provider for service and
| infrastructure, to having actual options. The breakup of the
| monopoly was imposed by regulation [1]. Following this there
| was a lot of taxpayer investment in fibre and while it's been a
| flawed rollout, it's made a hell of a difference. I'm on
| symmetric gigabit and have 2gb/s, 4gb/s and 8gb/s options if I
| pay more.
|
| [1] under history section
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_New_Zealand
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Broadband funding just funded some competition here.
|
| Before: One ISP. Spectrum $120/mo 1Gb down & 40Mb up.
|
| After: New choices of 8 fiber ISP. Opts inc $35 250Mb/250Mb,
| $50 1Gb/1Gb, $70 2.5Gb/2.5Gb, $120 10Gb/10Gb.
|
| ISPs spend billions on politicians to make sure (the most
| possible) Americans don't have choices. They get their money's
| worth.
|
| ref: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/28/infuriating-
| tel...
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I live in a city with a competitive municipal network and
| Google fiber. If you live in a house down the street from me,
| you can get 1gbit for $70.
|
| Yet somehow, I'm paying $100 for 190mbit. The price and ISP
| (not the speed) are literally written into my apartment's lease
| agreement. This is an apartment managed by the same developer
| who owns every other apartment I can afford, so it's not as if
| I have any bargaining power here, either.
|
| My parents, who live in a remote area, but happen to be next to
| a major fiber line, pay even more than I do for _less than
| 20mbit FTTH_!
|
| I think we have made a grave mistake obsessing over the word,
| "monopoly". It doesn't take a monopoly for anti-competitive
| behavior to absolutely ruin a market. Even if healthy
| competition thrives in a market, some participants will find a
| way to abuse some customers.
|
| We shouldn't be so lazy that we point a finger at what's
| working, and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
| wzyboy wrote:
| I immigrated from China to Canada and I'm not sure if monopoly
| is the root cause. In China, ISP is state-controlled and 100%
| monopoly, yet the plans are dirt cheap compared to those in
| Canada.
|
| I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps
| fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV =
| 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR)
|
| The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TVs) I
| have in Canada is $65 + tax. And it's a discounted plan. The
| price on the ISP website is $100.
|
| Also in China phone plans have fast lanes as well. SNS and
| video streaming data are treated separately (cheap or even
| free).
| gswdh wrote:
| Communist and capitalist monopolies are two completely
| different things.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I lived in China for 9 years and always found the internet,
| even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow. Like
| sure you have 5G, but the overall internet trunks are just
| saturated and not built out enough. Maybe it has gotten
| better since I left Beijing in 2016?
|
| It was definitely cheap and affordable. But I always felt a
| huge speed bump (along with easy access to foreign web sites)
| when I went to Thailand or Indonesia for vacation.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese
| sites, to be really slow
|
| A lot of that is because of the GFW.
|
| MITM/TLS decryption/DPI has a massive performance overhead
| (and why the first question any agent based security
| product is ask is whether it is "in the path of traffic").
|
| It's basically a giant version of Zscaler Private Access
| (ZPA)
|
| The performance hit is a major reason why a lot of edge
| computing development has happened in the Chinese ecosystem
| (you can't guarantee stuff works with latency, so how do
| you solve that)
|
| This is an older investigation (2017) by ThousandEyes about
| this - https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/benchmarking-
| network-perfo...
|
| Note that the infra has changed drastically since 2017.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| If that's true, then why does the US have higher average and
| median broadband speeds than pretty much every European
| country[0]? The narrative that is seen online isn't necessarily
| representative of the reality, Americans just like to complain
| more. In my experience, bundled data whatsapp/YouTube or
| whatever else is much more common in Europe too and no one
| really complains because again, Americans are just that much
| more vocal.
|
| [0] for mobile, they are also in the top 15. For fixed
| broadband, they are 5th. https://www.speedtest.net/global-
| index#fixed
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Here's some better research https://research.rewheel.fi/downl
| oads/Wireless_market_operat...
| Larrikin wrote:
| I haven't checked lately, but Comcast tried that data cap crap
| and was completely pushed back on in every economically
| important state they tried it in or there was actually an
| option someone could switch too. I was shocked in Chicago when
| I got an overage fee, but I promptly switched to RCN even
| before Illinois shut it down.
| deanishe wrote:
| The worst part is, imo, US taxpayers paid for all that
| infrastructure.
|
| These ISPs absolutely should be forced to open their
| infrastructure to other providers, like in Europe, and for the
| same reasons.
| palata wrote:
| > The worst part is, imo, US taxpayers paid for all that
| infrastructure.
|
| Isn't that exactly how it always worked? Whatever public
| service works well is privatised (for some reason I don't
| get), and whatever is a source of cost stays public. Such
| that the taxpayer keeps paying, and some people get rich by
| screwing them.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "The FCC is set to vote on April 25 to restore its authority"
|
| This needs to be controlled by congress. Directly.
| burnte wrote:
| The thing about administrative government is that you free up
| congress by allowing them to approve the creation of
| administrative bodies. It was pretty much the only good thing
| President Wilson did, help create the administrative state. FCC
| already HAS the authority designated by Congress. This is about
| choosing to use it.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I think he means we need this to specifically is important
| enough to society that it should be a matter of law, so it
| doesn't change every administration due to people like Ajit
| Pai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai) coming into FCC
| positions
| photonbeam wrote:
| It means congress is out of practice doing routine policy,
| and instead has big fights over very little
| masklinn wrote:
| Why do you think abolishing independent agencies will
| change that in any way?
| tootie wrote:
| Congress approves the governors and they held up the
| appointment of the deciding vote for years.
| burnte wrote:
| ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of
| services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become
| more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants
| that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a
| glass of water than a toilet flush.
| lsllc wrote:
| Well they sort of do already -- typically you pay less for
| water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by
| water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it's not going down
| the drain).
|
| In places like Florida however irrigation water is reclaimed
| and not treated the same was as drinking water and has totally
| separate plumbing and metering (and pricing).
| loeg wrote:
| I'd push back on "typically." In my municipality, they have
| no way of measuring water used for gardening / lawncare
| independently from drinking water. So it all gets billed to
| the same drinking water and sewage rate.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Well they sort of do already -- typically you pay less for
| water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by
| water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it's not going
| down the drain).
|
| Aren't you paying more for your lawn water then?
|
| If your sewer bill is based on your water bill[1]: a gallon
| of water for drinking results in a bill for a gallon of
| sewage treatment, which you'll use. A gallon of water for
| irrigation results in a bill for a gallon of sewage treatment
| which you won't use. Caveats: maybe you pee on the lawn,
| probably you perspire, sewer pipes are leaky: some of your
| sewage escapes out, some of your irrigation water escapes in.
|
| [1] this is common, but I don't think anywhere close to
| universal; even ignoring lack of universal municipal water
| and lack of universal municipal sewage. Flatrate by
| connection size is also common. Approximately zero households
| have individual sewer meters, but some commercial/industrial
| customers may have them so they can be billed on actual
| usage.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The number of places in Florida that do that is tiny.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I find it interesting how nobody blinks an eyelid at the
| massive profits raked in by companies like Google, Facebook
| etc. but as soon as the ISPs that create the infrastructure
| that makes all this happen (and innovate massively in the
| process) want some piece of the cake everyone cries foul.
|
| Now I actually strongly support net neutrality and maybe ISPs
| don't really need a piece of the cake, but it is still
| interesting how the online companies have captured most of the
| profits, but are also considered the good guys in his scenario.
| masklinn wrote:
| > are also considered the good guys in his scenario.
|
| You can have multiple bad guys. Just because one of them is
| the worse guy doesn't mean the other one is good.
| otterley wrote:
| There's a reason for that. Neither Google nor Facebook are
| infrastructure providers. Infrastructure is a different
| business, and, since it frequently has natural monopolies, we
| regulate it so to provide the greatest good for the public
| and maximize stability and functionality. Infrastructure is
| an enabling foundation for competitive enterprise.
| rsanek wrote:
| how is gcp not infrastructure?
| otterley wrote:
| Public infrastructure, like water, sewage, and
| electricity. I.e., utilities. Telecommunications is
| another. GCP is B2B; compute infrastructure isn't
| generally consumed by the public as a whole.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Most people view ISPs as a utility provider, so it should be
| expected that people would be annoyed at the idea that they
| get to double dip in the profit.
|
| I pay my electric company (the ones that create the
| infrastructure to make an ISP possible and have massively
| innovated in the process) the same for kWh if it's for a
| lightbulb or my work laptop
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Reminds me of how maintaining essential system like the
| banking systems are seen as cost centers and run on a tight
| budget, but if some young men make a webpage that barely
| works venture capitalists are tripping over themselves trying
| to shove millions into their hands.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| What innovations to ISPs make? I thought they largely just
| installed equipment from the same group of vendors.
|
| I'm genuinely curious if anyone knows of any.
| metaphor wrote:
| You're staring right at it:
|
| 5G --> 3GPP --> ATIS[1] --> includes every major ISP in the
| US
|
| Equipment manufacturers are just one piece of a much, much
| bigger puzzle. Standards development towards at-scale
| adoption, global interoperability, etc. is just as
| important; consumers just see the end game of all that
| backend work, and to be quite frank, it's grossly
| underappreciated.
|
| [1] https://www.atis.org/overview/membership/members/
| ninkendo wrote:
| > but as soon as the ISPs that create the infrastructure that
| makes all this happen (and innovate massively in the process)
| want some piece of the cake everyone cries foul
|
| I pay my ISP well over $100 a month for their service. Far
| more than I pay outright to Google or Meta or Apple. Why
| should they try to skim even more off the top?
| quickslowdown wrote:
| It would probably be easier to root for the ISPs if they
| weren't a bunch of monopolistic assholes. I know that's the
| reason I personally root against them.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Infrastructure like that is a natural monopoly - I certainly
| would have an easier time switching from Google than I would
| Comcast, the latter would require me to move or put up with
| 90's era internet over copper lines.
| eknkc wrote:
| I expected electricity grids to do that. Different prices for
| EV charging, for home use etc.
| acheron wrote:
| Have they? You'd think after 30+ years of commercial ISPs
| they'd have actually done something by now if they were
| "trying".
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| We need neutrality up and down the stack elsewhere too. I would
| consider hosting (including DNS, cloud infrastructure), financial
| services (banks, PayPal, stripe), and others as needing their
| version of net neutrality laws, where they cannot refuse
| customers or treat them differently or pick winners/losers or
| charge differently for different use cases. These are all
| utilities that are necessary to survive in today's societies, and
| therefore they must be treated as if they were publicly run,
| through the power of regulations.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You cannot mandate both neutrality and liability for things on
| the payment stack, it is too burdensome.
|
| Personally I would prefer neutrality over liability.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Agree, and I like the phrasing of neutrality over liability -
| captures this tradeoff well.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > where they cannot refuse customers
|
| Having seen the degree to which spammers, scammers, and
| malicious hackers will abuse services to no end (often while
| carefully avoiding explicit violations of the law) I can assure
| you that you do not want this.
|
| Forcing every company to host everyone only sounds good in
| theory.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| We force power utilities and such to support all users. These
| companies can solve the problem and pay the costs. But if the
| laws for scammers aren't adequate that's a separate issue
| that should be solved on its own.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| For anyone confused by the headline, this has nothing to do with
| 5G conspiracy theories: it's about net neutrality.
| extheat wrote:
| My views on this have changed over time. More and more it seems
| like policy people encroaching on technical decisions without
| fully understanding the rationale behind them. Is there a good
| reason to segment different types of content, such as for optimal
| network performance? Ultimately all wireless communications have
| to work within the bounds of physics no matter what the made up
| human laws say. If there's a limited amount of bandwidth you have
| to work with, does it make sense to waste all the bandwidth on
| streaming HD videos and block off all the other traffic in the
| name of "neutrality"?
|
| I would understand if there's some profit motive behind this, but
| I'm not seeing it.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| If it's pricing meant to protect limited bandwidth and not a
| profit motive, I think this regulation has to make it so that
| neither content providers nor consumers are charged
| differently. The proposed regulation lets the carriers charge
| consumers (you and I) different prices for different packages
| that treat traffic differently.
| orev wrote:
| ALL discussions of Net Neutrality allow providers to prioritize
| traffic for capacity management purposes. This so well known by
| now that I have to wonder if this comment is part of an
| astroturf campaign (or maybe you've been influenced by one).
| extheat wrote:
| I'm not sure how much people actually read the link, but I'm
| talking about this "problem point" specifically relating to
| network congestion:
|
| > However, there's a huge problem: the proposed rules make it
| possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and
| putting them in a fast lane - where they'll perform better
| generally and much better if the network gets congested.
|
| > T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are all testing ways to create
| these 5G fast lanes for apps such as video conferencing,
| games, and video where the ISP chooses and controls what gets
| boosted. They use a technical feature in 5G called network
| slicing, where part of their radio spectrum gets used as a
| special lane for the chosen app or apps, separated from the
| usual internet traffic.
|
| > The FCC's draft order opens the door to these fast lanes,
| so long as the app provider isn't charged for them.
| gruez wrote:
| >This so well known by now that I have to wonder if this
| comment is part of an astroturf campaign (or maybe you've
| been influenced by one).
|
| "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,
| brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about
| abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| criddell wrote:
| With T-Mobile, I get free MLB and Netflix - both are things I
| normally pay for.
|
| I wonder if net neutrality becomes law, will they have to
| stop paying for me to access those services? If so, that
| would be a bummer.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The big difference is "type of content" vs. "brand of content".
|
| If a network theoretically prioritized phone calls, email and
| registered messaging platforms, or deprioritized bulk file-
| sharing during congested periods, that would be reasonable.
|
| What I see here is ISPs trying to rent-seek and get big players
| like Netflix or big game companies to pay for being on the
| premium tier, while charging customers for the privilege as
| well.
|
| And from a privacy perspective, ISPs shouldn't know what kind
| of traffic is on its network anyway. I'm on VPN as much as
| possible these days.
| 310260 wrote:
| >If a network theoretically prioritized phone calls
|
| This already exists and is an example of a good use of
| priority. Cellular networks offer Voice over LTE and this is
| inherently prioritized over all other network traffic. This
| is done specifically for E911 but also implements special
| settings so calls can continue to go through even when
| coverage is very poor (and where VoIP apps would start to
| fail).
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| We already know how technically successful those
| implementations will look in practice; Look at the "messaging
| only" free tiers in airline ISPs which are only able to
| distinguish permissible traffic from a selected few partners
| (mainly Apple/Meta) and likely requires cooperation in the
| form of special APIs and agreements between the companies.
| dbuder wrote:
| How many times do we need to fight the same battle? Where I live
| Netflix has a fast lane and from 6:30pm to 10:30pm every night my
| internet is unusable.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Yikes, where do you live and how is that sort of thing
| justified?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| not OP but i could see this being normal traffic shaping
|
| netflix users are going to complain and change providers if
| their tv show buffers at all, so it makes sense to prioritize
| that traffic - not for netflix's benefit but to avoid angry
| customers
| room500 wrote:
| I don't think Netflix has a fast lane anywhere.
|
| Netflix does offer to give servers to ISPs to put in their
| datacenters. So if your ISP is seeing congestion on the IX
| links, it is entirely possible that Netflix still works fine
| (because the traffic doesn't leave the ISP and is therefore not
| hitting the congestion). But that is not a "fast lane"
| xiphias2 wrote:
| At that point Netflix should just provide its own VPN /
| internet access for paying users
| riku_iki wrote:
| Netflix puts servers in datacenters to cache content, so
| you access it much faster. Not sure what problem Netflix
| VPN will solve.
| drewg123 wrote:
| You're missing the point. Netflix is fast in these
| situations because your client can access the server in the
| ISP's data center and video traffic remains local to the
| ISP and doesn't traverse the congested link to the IX.
|
| Other companies embed servers with ISPs as well.
| throwaway918274 wrote:
| i spend way too much time around friends that indulge in
| conspiracy theories, my first reading of the headline was NOT AT
| ALL what it is lol
| lukan wrote:
| Yeah, I am tempted to post it into certain channels, where it
| will probably relinked a couple of times, before anyone reads
| it, (and understand enough) to get confused.
| riku_iki wrote:
| I also was thinking some conspiracy theory now is served from
| stanford domain..
| Zigurd wrote:
| I think the article gets network slicing wrong. Using network
| slicing instead of the traffic shaping that the mobile edge
| router probably supports is a strange idea. The showcase network
| slicing use case was public safety comms. Network slicing is
| AFAIK not much used because it clashes with roaming. The article
| describes network slicing as reserving spectrum for certain apps.
| That's not how it works. It reserves capacity.
|
| Still, zero-rating and traffic shaping should not be used to
| favor apps, especially not on a pay to play basis, for all the
| same net neutrality arguments as ever.
| 310260 wrote:
| This is correct. Slicing can offer significant performance
| gains in certain situations. For example, lower latency when
| certain users need it while not overburdening the network by
| having to give that to every user.
| _pigpen__ wrote:
| So surprised I had to scroll too far for this reply. I actually
| work for one of the major US carriers. My job is literally to
| figure out how to apply the technical capabilities of 5G to
| solve business problems. NONE of the US carriers have figured
| out how to actually deliver network slicing beyond, say,
| reserving capacity for first responders. And, as you say, it's
| about capacity, not speed per se. We want to make sure that,
| say, an AGV can offload kinematics to the MEC and navigate in
| real time in dynamic environments. The poster child for network
| slicing is the surgeon doing telesurgery over a 5G network (But
| that's likely to remain a poster child). We're figuring out how
| to provide network slices for autonomous vehicles, mobile
| teleoperation, etc., in all use cases we're examining it
| because something BAD could happen absent guaranteed capacity.
| I have never ever heard anyone talk about using network slicing
| for QoS for consumer apps.
| rogerthis wrote:
| Sort of related: "GSMA Open Gateway", specially the quality
| related APIs.
| BigBalli wrote:
| I'm totally for net neutrality but I think the article focuses on
| the wrong "consequence". Do you really need superfast internet to
| scroll tiktok? if you think you do then you're probably willing
| to pay more vs a cheaper plan if you don't care.
|
| It might even backfire and stifle the good parts of the proposal.
|
| As mentioned by someone else, the title wording really appeals to
| conspiracy theorists.
| ddingus wrote:
| Recently Jon Stewart talked about the burden we struggle with
| having to deal with an obviously corrupt government:
|
| In order to make this world one where I would consider living...
|
| It is a day in, day out, lunch pail type job. Thousands of people
| banging on doors, until they get something done.
|
| And then, keeping it done takes thousands more doing the same
| thing
|
| DAY IN, DAY OUT, FOREVER.
|
| Truth!
|
| People ask, "How many times?"
|
| Now they have their answer. We either give a shit and act, or we
| fund others who can act
|
| , or
|
| Our lives are going to be enshittified.
|
| The lure of creating near infinite artificial value means Net
| Neutrality is a constant fight, ever present for the remainder of
| our lives.
| willcipriano wrote:
| "We could see offerings like this"
|
| At least get a new trick.
| j45 wrote:
| This is one of the few cases where there could be a better title
| on this for HN.
|
| "FCC May Let Mobile Providers Speed Up or Slow Down Individual
| Apps and Website, Risking Open Internet"
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| How is this different from the last "net neutrality" mess? I
| remember shortly after commercial activity on the internet came
| under the purview of the FCC, all these mobile carriers started
| offering deals, T-Mobile in particular offered "YouTube doesn't
| count against your data cap" and basically we got the opposite of
| what we were sold with the pitch "net neutrality".
|
| Then, when online commerce was restored to being under the
| purview of the FTC, all those special deals stopped. No ISP gave
| special fast lane access to any content service provider. Perhaps
| "net neutrality" is a lie, like "patriot act"? What we hear when
| we hear the term is not what lawmakers mean. We hear "ISPs must
| treat all traffic the same" (except for content with a DMCA
| takedown notice, of course) but what they mean is "move
| regulatory authority over commercial activity online from the FTC
| to the FCC." I'm curious why this, the crux of the matter, is
| never addressed in these articles. In any case, it seems to me
| like we get more net neutrality when the FTC is in charge of the
| commerce.
|
| Commerce online seems to be much more neutral when the FTC is in
| charge, to me at least. I don't think it's a stretch to say that
| big multinational corporations like Alphabet want the FCC to
| regulate the internet for selfish reasons, and if I have to
| guess, I'd guess that it's because they don't want to fall under
| the FTCs regulations pertaining to anticompetitive behavior.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The prior FTC rule stopped this before it became a problem, which
| is probably why we are battling it again.
|
| Politicians are very reactive, hesitant to fix a problem until
| they're unable to ignore it.
|
| Obviously not a good way to govern, but it's the way things are
| now.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| FCC*
| apitman wrote:
| My experience with 5G is that it's strictly worse than LTE. At
| this point, if I see the 5G symbol on my phone I'm conditioned to
| expect the internet to barely work. Requests frequently seem to
| just hang.
| lxgr wrote:
| Then something is definitely up with either your device or your
| local network base station(s).
|
| I used to have major problems with one network one particular
| street corner where data throughput would reliably drop to zero
| on 5G, but calls still went through somehow (even though
| they're also data on 5G, albeit with a different QoS). Signal
| strength was always shown as full. A phone restart would
| sometimes, but not always, fix it - without moving anywhere!
|
| Never happened again since switching away. 5G is a
| standard/protocol; it doesn't somehow inherently prevent bad
| network management.
| wreckdropibex wrote:
| My experience with 5G is that it's strictly better than LTE. At
| this point, if I see the 5G symbol, I'm conditioned to expect
| there to be 10-100x more bandwidth available than with LTE and
| latencies to be at levels at par with wired connections.
| r00fus wrote:
| Are you possibly on a 2nd-tier plan (like mine, I have
| grandfathered T-Mobile "simple choice" @ $10/line)? MNVOs like
| Mint, etc are also typically 2nd-tier.
|
| Telcos typically downrate 2nd-tier data, so if it's there's
| congestion, we feel it most.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Hot take from rest of HN: I don't think lack of competition is
| the cause for the slow uptake in the US.
|
| Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and
| NTT+KDDI are basically duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our
| 5G nationwide in just 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while
| keeping competitive pricing, and make the US market look free in
| comparison.
|
| The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of the FCC and
| regulators, along with issues around deprecating older infra.
|
| This doesn't mean we should go all Reagan, but if this is
| streamlined at the executive level, it would really simplify
| everything.
| pokstad wrote:
| Fast lanes are the biggest selling point of 5G due to limited
| backhaul bandwidth. Instead of eliminating fast lanes, force ISPs
| to provide access to fast lanes equally ( must issue, not may
| issue).
| amluto wrote:
| I'd like to see a lot more nuance.
|
| > For example, would it be "unreasonably discriminatory" to
| create a 5G fast lane that includes the most popular apps in a
| category since it responds to consumer preferences?
|
| What's in it for the ISP if they can't collect money for it?
|
| > There's lots of ways for ISPs to use slices for things that are
| not normal internet service such as a dedicated slice for a
| farming operation using remote controlled tractors, slices for
| telemetry data and oversight of autonomous cars, or providing a
| slice for a stadium's video system at a crowded game.
|
| Really? Will the ISP allow anyone to get such a slice under fair,
| reasonable, and non discriminatory terms? Or will this just favor
| companies with a cozy relationship with an ISP? Just because
| these industries aren't direct-to-consumer doesn't mean the same
| issues don't exist?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Why do I get the feeling that this is overly dramatic? A network
| operator works to install exceptionally fast internet for limited
| applications and the data transfer. But this exceptionally fast
| internet is seen as biased. And instead it is better if the
| network operator didn't install any such service.
|
| What kinds of limited applications will be given priority? The
| network operators' own information systems; their own services;
| and their partners.
|
| This is a threat to companies who are operating in industries
| that network operators could compete with. "Network neutrality"
| is meant to protect them from competition from network providers.
| And this is not right.
| ukuina wrote:
| Preventing fast lanes will likely hamper the development of novel
| applications that we cannot even conceive of today. Banning
| throttling while keeping speedups open (subject to review) seems
| like a good balance.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Sunnyvale, CA has the worst service ever (Verizon)
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