Live data from Hacker News

Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

blog.mozilla.org

151–160 of 452 posts

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In markets with 1 or 2 viable ISPs, what is your solution? I watch about 1 hour of Youtube per month and about 5 hours of Netflix. Why should I subsidize people who watch 5 hours each day? Let's not pretend bandwidth is not a scarce resource. ISPs have to pay for upstream bandwidth. If they can affordably colocate systems to serve specific content at a fraction of the cost by eliminating upstream costs, why shouldn…

Because in your world the eventual outcome is that nearly all (commercial) content providers would be owned by ISPs. Last mile infrastructure is a natural monopoly, and unless you do something to force companies to share it, they won't. There are various ways to do this. What's your preference?

I don't think last mile is a natural monopoly anymore due to wireless options.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#152

I've written it before and I'll write it again (despite the massive downvotes from those who want to silence dissent): Title II regulation of the Internet is not the net neutrality panacea that many people think it is. That is the same kind of heavy-handed regulation that gave us the sorry copper POTS network we are stuck with today. The free market is the solution, and must be defended against those who want Europea…

Huh? My college roommate ran a little ISP on top of the POTS network back when compuserve, aol, and prodigy were "the internet" for most people in the US.

He was just some high school kid with little cash when he started the business, and eventually got acquired by one of the 100's (1000's?) of successful local ISPs that replaced the big walled gardens, and gave average people access to TCP/IP.

This was all with "european style top down regulation" of the telcos (which was actually invented and practiced in the US until lobbyists killed it).

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#153
post #77

I've written it before and I'll write it again (despite the massive downvotes from those who want to silence dissent): Title II regulation of the Internet is not the net neutrality panacea that many people think it is. That is the same kind of heavy-handed regulation that gave us the sorry copper POTS network we are stuck with today. The free market is the solution, and must be defended against those who want Europea…

Most of the POTS system is fiber and has been for some time. The "sorry copper POTS network" enabled the future through any number of amazing technologies up to and including SS7 and lots of modern tech. If you're saying NN gets us something as long-lasting, ubiquitous and powerful as the POTS system, sign me up.

Not to mention POTS goes everywhere and provides basically the same service to everyone at roughly the same price nationwide. And it works even if the power is out. If broadband stood still at the speed it's at right now (my not-impressive suburban area is 40-60mbps) but matched the consistency and affordability of POTS nationwide, we would be in a far better place than we are now.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. By giving them the power to selectively control what they're sending down the pipe, the monopoly problem will grow far far worse. Net neutrality is not the cause of the problems you listed, and removing it won't solve any of them.

ISPs are not natural monopolies though. In the US they are self-made monopolies that over the years pushed for enough regulations to completely thwart competition. Compare that with the most competing ISP markets, like Romania, Ukraine, Russia, where most people can choose from a few ISPs and up to 10+ in densely populated areas. So, net neutrality is an attempt to fix regulation problem with more regulations. Which…

I wouldn't say that net neutrality is just addressing the shortcomings imposed by other regulations.

I think the way forward would be to repeal those other regulations and keep net neutrality

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a data pipeline, that is not the case. You misunderstand my point or you misunderstand QoS. The capacity of a data pipeline can be significantly increased by QoS. Not its absolute, theoretical maximum, but its ability to achieve high throughput amid disparate traffic types. Ultimately it's all buffers and queues. > And we have already qualified our communications pipelines as neutral infrastructure Right, but PO…

You don't understand how latency works at all. If latency to a location is bad, fix it -- that's what you are being paid for. As for bandwidth allocation, that is an entirely other issue that has nothing to do with latency or congestion. You pay for the bandwidth tier you can afford, as an end-user. And business pay proportionate to the amount of bandwidth they require. This need tends to scale directly with customer…

> You don't understand how latency works at all. If latency to a location is bad, fix it -- that's what you are being paid for.

Are you serious? There are some cases where latency is a function of a malfunctioning circuit and can be improved, but in general the latency of a circuit for tcp/ip has to do with traffic shaping settings and physical layer technologies/protocols.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are not natural monopolies though. In the US they are self-made monopolies that over the years pushed for enough regulations to completely thwart competition. Compare that with the most competing ISP markets, like Romania, Ukraine, Russia, where most people can choose from a few ISPs and up to 10+ in densely populated areas. So, net neutrality is an attempt to fix regulation problem with more regulations. Which…

ISPs are natural monopolies due to the incredibly high infrastructure investments required. In countries or regions where there are many ISPs to choose from, it's almost always because the government has required the one or two that own all the infra to rent capacity at cost to anyone who wants to start up a competing service. In return, the governments frequently supply tax breaks. This mechanism may be a viable alt…

FYI, there is no forced rental in Romania, Ukraine or Russia. Their governments simply didn't bother to regulate ISPs at all for a long time.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#157

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

Monopolies are natural in markets. Networks effects from marketshare and efficiencies of scale lead to this.

Net neutrality helps everyone, especially the smaller companies, by making sure there is free and equal access to customers and other companies without being charged, profiled or otherwise blocked based on who you are or how much you pay.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#158

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

People miss the detail that it's those big players that want net neutrality because it lets them essentially have a captive last mile infrastructure that requires no investment on their part.

> People miss the detail that it's those big players that want net neutrality because it lets them essentially have a captive last mile infrastructure

How exactly?

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#159

So, which is it HackerNews? Are we OK with companies deciding what gets on the internet, or are we not? On one hand, we laud Facebook et al. for suppressing "fake news", and then we get upset when ISPs do the same. Furthermore, the FCC has historically engaged in content regulation. Anyone wonder why there's no more cartoons on broadcast television? Or perhaps why the FCC is investigating Colbert's Trump Jokes? If we…

> So, which is it HackerNews? Are we OK with companies deciding what gets on the internet, or are we not? On one hand, we laud Facebook et al. for suppressing "fake news", and then we get upset when ISPs do the same.

If you could only access the internet through Facebook, you would have a point.

You don't.

> Furthermore, the FCC has historically engaged in content regulation. Anyone wonder why there's no more cartoons on broadcast television? Or perhaps why the FCC is investigating Colbert's Trump Jokes? If we're so concerned about content freedom, the FCC is not the organization to trust.

You mean the FCC under George Bush Sr, and the current Republican majority FCC that wants to repeal net neutrality issued by the formerly Democratic majority FCC?

The people distrusting the government running up the the election currently seems to trust the government a great deal.

You can't issue timeless blanket statements regarding any organization consisting of rotating individuals. Hell, even the two parties have switched places a few times throughout history.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#160

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

The Internet is the product of several economic effects, which explain all your points:

* The cost to enter the market is effectively nothing.

* The opportunity cost to switch new services is, again, nothing (change the URL).

* The opportunity cost to switch established services is not nothing (network effects, all friends are on Facebook, etc).

* The cost to acquire network effects is not nothing.

The later effects have nothing to do with the Internet. In any economy where window shopping options is free and competing is free, then whoever owns the collective opinion on your product domain is going to get a winner take all situation. Capitalism in general is like this - the more of a market you control, the more easily you can displace the competition through your own influence. That is why you get many natural monopolies.

Consumers expect web based content to be free because the marginal costs of their usage is effectively nothing (the per-user costs of running a server with a billion users requires many zeroes). Websites, and digital information in general, are non-scarce resources. Once made, making copies costs nothing. That is a much bigger rabbit hole though, and is generalized into broader problems of cognitive dissonance in people trying to put scarcity into non-scarce resources.

The only way to make the Internet - or more specifically, tcp/ip and http - more small guy friendly is to promote browsers to make content discovery easier at the browser level. Otherwise people will go to the silos they are familiar with / the ones they are told about.

Google et al fight for net neutrality because getting rid of it only makes ISPs richer at the cost of consumers and website hosts. The only possible state of being without net neutrality is paid bribes for service - Comcast will demand huge sums of money from Google et al or will throttle their services so their customers stop using them and use their own in-home products instead. And given the opportunity ISPs won't be some charity giving small business free rides - they will slow down or cripple the Internet for everyone except those who pay. The customers Google wants are a captive audience of major ISPs - without competition in the ISP market, and without net neutrality, every website operator needs to prostate themselves to the demands of ISPs to have their websites reach their audience, and the customers have no say in that relationship because they don't have a choice in ISP.

Post reply on HN