Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

battleforthenet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 388 posts

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#181

Post by jscholes »

kelnos wrote: post #137
19guid wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs. 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses. However, it…

> 1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be…

> While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.

Realistically how much more of an issue will this be than it is now? In the UK, mobile providers already offer 6-month Spotify/Netflix/whatever subscriptions as a sweetner with your contract, which seems like the same issue to me but in a non-technological sense. New upstarts don't have the money nor the brand recognition to make that happen.

Netflix has become a part of the Collective consciousness, arguably on a similar level to googling something. Even with all the net neutrality laws in the world behind them I pitty the upstart who think they can go up against the current big players in the market (which includes content studios) and win. Spotify can't be said to have the same sort of recognition but Apple Music probably can, owing to it being featured on every iPhone and iTunes installation. New upstarts can't afford to release a smartphone to push their services, either.

It's capitalism. ISPs love short-term customer benefits, because the customers love them too. Once their customer base are fed up with their free Spotify sub, the ISP will have had 12 months to come up with the next thing. And so it will continue in theory until we all have huge data caps as standard anyway so none of this will matter. And then somebody will come up with a way to double the size of Netflix streaming video for a few more pixels and then we start again.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#182

Post by lallysingh »

patrickaljord wrote: post #173
feikname wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can: IMO, if you're selling more than you can provide, you're already doing it wrong... It's not acceptable to prioritize some content over another when having the appropriate infrastructure would solve the problem. > invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (wh…

> People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to…

No. My internet is completely useless at peak times - as in even HN won't load. Expecting competence out of ISPs is simply too much.

My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#183

Post by lallysingh »

patrickaljord wrote: post #178
neuterlize wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business. Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?

>Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business. No, that's not how business work. If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere. The business is not forced by government to improve its infrastructure, just by customers pressure. The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over…

> If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere.

For much of the US, that isn't the case with ISPs.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#184

Post by patrickaljord »

lallysingh wrote: post #182
patrickaljord wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to…

No. My internet is completely useless at peak times - as in even HN won't load. Expecting competence out of ISPs is simply too much. My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.

Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to watch a video on youtube at more than 144p resolution. That's a bargain I was willing to take and never complained about it, life was cheap. If you want better services that costs billions in investment, move to a place where it makes business sense for someone to invest in such infrastructure and don't expect anyone investing free money for you out of their good heart. You wouldn't do it either, why should they? Here's the thing, you will _never_ get better or equal infrastructure and services in a small town than in a big city. Whether it's the diversity of asian food, schools, museums or internet speed. You'll never get it by living in a small town. Want all those fancy things? Move to these big cities and don't ask people to subsidize your small town more than they already do, big cities folks already pay enormous bills each months, they don't need more of it.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#185

Post by folknor »

nnneuter wrote: post #149
folknor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It goes along with the Trump political theme of anti-globalization. I've never managed to connect anti-globalization with no net neutrality. Please explain how you made that connection.

With no NN, you need to make deals with every ISP for your online services. It is only cost effective to do such deals in your main markets. Thus we Balkanize the Internet.

I was not making myself clear; the top comment seems to imply that there's some sort of natural connection between anti-globalism (in the popular sense of the term) and a rejection of net neutrality laws.

I am a fierce proponent of net neutrality, and I don't understand how you can reasonably conclude that I must therefore be pro-globalism.

Or how you can say that someone who is anti-globalist is probably also anti net neutrality.

That's the connection I don't understand. How do you make it?

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#186

Post by paul7986 »

caburlingame wrote: post #6

Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.

What these comments are against net neutrality and are appearing on Hacker News? We are innovators that without neutrality us little guys/girls will suffer.

Are all these comments fake/propaganda? I wouldn’t be surprised!

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#187

Post by unityByFreedom »

zorta wrote: post #133

there is something we can do from Italy?

I would keep a lookout for ISPs doing things like zero rating or other roundabout ways of breaking net neutrality. Arguably, net neutrality is already broken in the US since the current administration isn't going to enforce the current policy. As businesses find ways to make more short term profits here, others will probably follow the same tactics elsewhere.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#188

Post by int_19h »

ryandrake wrote: post #174

The site is technically pretty neat, but honestly does anyone think a bunch of low-effort automated calls to a Congressperson's voicemail is really going to change anything? The commoners' opinions about Net Neutrality (or any issue, really) is pretty low on the list of things our so-called representatives are worried about.

It might, if they're in a swing district. A person who is bothered enough to find the time and effort to call, is also that much more likely to turn up and vote. So their offices do keep track of how many callers there are on various issues, and prioritize accordingly.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#189

Post by unityByFreedom »

colordrops wrote: post #103
narrator wrote: post #95

China does not have net neutrality. Almost everything coming into the country from outside is utterly filtered to hell and back. They do have a vibrant tech economy though. So they have their own Google (Baidu). They have their own Twitter (Weibo), WhatsApp(WeChat), Amazon(Tao Bao). So in the future of no net-neutrality, we'll see ISPs being value-added resellers of their own regionally partitioned versions of these…

They have their own services in China, but it's not only about foreign traffic. Put up a site and you'l find that it doesn't work too well in other regions of the nation, with ISPs throttling each other's traffic.

So without net neutrality, the internet as we know it really is broken. Great.

Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality

#190

Post by int_19h »

BoorishBears wrote: post #30
tony101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a screenshot from the Portuguese ISP's pricing page: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 Exactly like a cable bundle.

Those are flat rates for unlimited access to certain services. If you scroll down there's also per/mb pricing with no services listed.

Of course, if you use per/Mb pricing, then those services suddenly become much more expensive.

Which means that any competitor to those services now faces a high barrier to entry - they can't just compete on features, they have to be that much better to overcome the cheaper cost of mobile data for the product they're trying to compete with. Which leads to easier formation of monopolies.

Which is exactly the kind of thing that was pointed out as the problem requiring Net Neutrality in the first place.

Post reply on HN