I don't know, the Internet got on fine without those rules for a lot longer than we've had those rules, I feel like the gloom-and-doom over this is highly overstated.
And it's been continuing just fine with them now, right?
FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
331–340 of 674 posts
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#332Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…
I'm curious for your take on the wsj article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-fcc-can-save-the-open-i...
I don't think it's paywalled.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the detailed reply. It seems like a lot of the disagreement hinges on the fact that ISPs have a monopoly and many people cannot easily "vote with their wallet" if the ISP does something they don't like. I wonder if focusing on making it easier for competitive ISPs to start up would do more towards bridging the gap between the two sides. I think a lot of the anti-NN crowd is based on a more philosophical ar…
> I wonder if focusing on making it easier for competitive ISPs to start up would do more towards bridging the gap between the two sides. Fighting against properties of a service that make it a natural monopoly is usually not going to work as well as limiting the ability of the resulting monopoly to be leveraged. Either, of course, takes active regulation, and tends to be unpopular with both laissez-faire ideologues…
I would think either strategy would be unpopular with the monopoly-holders.
Why do you say it's more difficult? It seems like it would be more sustainable in the long run even if it's more difficult up front.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#334My half glass full nature tells me that we will be alright. The internet was born and thrived w/o explicit net neutrality laws for a long time (~20+ years). We have seen major technology players come out in support of net neutrality, and I believe that if any funny buisness is uncovered we will see a huge backlash vs. the companies that are playing favorites.
All and all it says one major thing to me. We cannot rely on executive orders and pseudo-legislation to drive change. The reason why Trump has been able to roll back so many of Obama's legacy is that so much of it was executed via E.O; the one thing he cannot seem to roll back is Obamacare which was delivered via Congress. If we want net neutrality to become law we have to push for Congress to deliver it.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#335Tweet in article: >On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom. I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms. Also >"The job of the FCC i…
People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model? If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.
Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?
Because there is a lot of money in that model if you can make it so there is no where else to go. (But you knew that- you were speaking rhetorically. I am the voice in your head.)
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But the packet's source or destination should also not matter Why not? It costs my ISP more to deliver certain packets than others. Sending a packet from San Francisco to San Jose is far cheaper than sending one from San Francisco to Sydney. Internet traffic costs are not the same across the world. Transit pricing in Australia is probably the most expensive in the world - it's roughly 20x higher than in the US. Why…
The ISP isn't directly paying that transit price. Level3 or other Tier 1 network providers are. And they set their prices according to their costs (and based on their own competition). Their prices are passed on to the ISPs, who pass it on to their customers. So, yeah, that transit cost is already accounted for in your monthly internet bill. Also, it's not productive to try and pretend that the prices levied by ISPs…
>The ISP isn't directly paying that transit price
Technically yes, but in many cases the ISPs are essentially the same company as the network provider. Xfinity is the ISP and Comcast is the network provider. Uverse is the ISP and AT&T is the network provider. Same with Fios and Verizon. Network providers do not want to be ISPs for legal benefits.
>That transit cost is already accounted for in your monthly internet bill.
While true, this doesn't address the issue I have with the current pricing model. The current internet pricing model is similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet, with a limit to the rate at which you can grab food, and how many pounds of food you can take per month. The issue is, a person who takes 5 pounds of pasta pays the same price as someone who takes 5 pounds of lobster. Under net neutrality, ISPs can't price based off food cost, and can only price based off weight. This leads to unfair pricing situations, as exampled above.
It is possible to come up with more nonsensical examples with even larger cost discrepancies. Under your idea, should sending a packet across the street cost the same price as sending a packet to Mars? The first relies on $X0,000 of infrastructure costs, while the second relies on billions.
The idea that 'pricing based off a packet's source or destination should not matter' makes sense in a world where all packets (or food in this example) are free, however, in the real world all packets have a cost associated with them.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I live, I like spectrum-formerly-timewarner-formerly-roadrunner cable Internet just fine. There are a lot of alternatives to using it for home Internet around here, and I'm pretty sure the two are related. If you want better internet access, instead of begging the FCC for scraps get on repealing legislated monopoly rights for kinds of wires and/or unbundling last mile from ISP. Then ask yourself why internet re…
Because high fixed costs make it very expensive for competitors to enter the market. It's like asking why someone doesn't just open up a competing water company in a place like Flint. More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the coun…
High fixed costs aren't what's keeping competitors out of the market; legally mandated monopolies are. City/Neighborhood/small scale ISPs work just fine where they're allowed to exist. There's no natural reason people should be married to one ISP based on their address without any alternatives, the overwhelming majority of services do not work this way for good reason. It'd be like banning FedEx anywhere UPS owns one truck.
If you're really worried about the coax network then push for what I suggested: unbundling the last mile. It worked great for the phone network.
I'm not arguing that the proposed plan actually helps anything (although the smaller scale and unconventional ISPs that should be encouraged are harder hit by neutrality requirements and compliance obligations in general)
I'm arguing that tilting at the network neutrality windmill doesn't actually deliver much to end users. There's about a million ways an ISP can suck and network neutrality, if you can even get it to happen, kinda-sorta fixes one of them.
There's a real problem (shitty monopoly internet providers) that has a real solution (the entirely proven strategy of eliminating monopolies).
PS: People in areas where the indoor plumbing water isn't safe to drink use competing water companies, mostly those bring-your-own-container 25c water vending machines you see in front of stores in low-income areas. If they waited for regulation to solve their problems they'd all be dead.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's unlikely popular and profitable services will be hindered by the lack of net neutrality. Huh? Did you forget already that both Verizon and Comcast throttled services like Netflix? They both argued they should get a cut if they were going to carry the traffic to their customers. Now they're getting exactly what they wanted. 1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/veriz... 2. https://consumeris…
Except Netflix doesn't care about net neutrality anymore - Reed Hastings claims they are now big and popular enough for it not to matter for them: https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-netflix-reed-hastin...
The point was to reply to a contention that "popular services will not be affected" with a counter example. Popular services certainly could have been squeezed by ISP, and in fact they were in the past, very notably.
So sure: Netflix maybe might not due to size and popularity. The next great thing will be, for sure.
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
My apartment complex has a contract with AT&T. I either have ATT or I don't have anyone. I can't be "gone". I just have to suck it up and pay unless I want to go to the library for basic internet then.
Talk to your neighbors and offer to split the internet bill. This doesn't solve the long-term problem, but at least it hurts the local internet monopoly.
But what if someone in your neighbor's house likes to download torrent or visit sites that gets you into trouble. Wouldn't that be a huge responsibility?
Re: FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "If you like your cable company" I've never once, in my entire life, heard anyone say they like Comcast.
There's many things I don't like about comcast (like customer service and that you have to call them back every year to avoid huge price hikes), but the internet service itself is very reliable (at least for me).
Yeah, I have to admit it quite reluctantly. They are competing well in my area. They can't match the fiber 1G networks being laid now but their 100Mbps connection has been quite reliable and 4k UHD streams flawlessly. May be 1 outage in a year which was also fixed within a couple of hours.