When I first moved to Portland, Oregon about 10 years ago, the inner sections of the city has free city-wide wireless. I was broke and in school, but still basking in what I believed the future would be like. 2 years later, they pulled the plug so I had to get a Comcast account and forgo having internet at my art studio. And now this.
F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it isn't. I live in NYC. I have access to exactly one broadband provider. So, if Spectrum starts blocking Vonage because they want you to pay for their VoIP instead (ISPs in the US have done this in the past), I'll have to drop Vonage and use Spectrum's VoIP. Repeat for blocking P2P, Google Wallet, Facetime, Netflix, etc (all of which have previous incidents in the US).
As someone from a country without net neutrality, I have to say this hasn't happened. Generally you get very cheap or free plans that are sponsored by Facebook or others that give priority to Facebook, but ISPs are always happy to take a little bit more money for an unlimited plan that gives you full access. And at least in my country, they're not unreasonably priced. Even without net neutrality, your single monopoly…
>No sane company is going to block Google Wallet
Verizon, then, is insane. http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/06/technology/verizon_blocks_go...
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "last mile" is a utility, and by its very nature will always result in monopolistic control. It is impractical and irrational to wire up a home to multiple ISPs with their own fiber channels. Each channel could cost tens of thousands to install. Instead the "last mile" should be a non-profit funded by ISPs who lease the channels. The non-profit is responsible for installing the "last mile," upgrading it, and repa…
That has been tried in a few places, and I'm not sure that it has succeeded anywhere. Municipal fiber was laid where I used to live in Provo, UT and it had huge funding problems. ISPs could compete, but all the value is in the last mile not in the gateway. Eventually Google bought it out, but the city had to increase taxes to help pay for the current bond, and was looking at more bonds to pay for it before Google ste…
It has definitely succeeded. For example, New Zealand uses this model, and we're actually in the middle of rolling out fiber to almost every house in the country.
Okay, so technically in New Zealand the last-mile infrastructure is owned by a utility company, not a non-profit. However, the utility companies are selected by the government and tightly regulated, so they act more like non-profits than typical companies. Also note that they aren't allowed to actually sell internet access to consumers; they only maintain the infrastructure.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#474Common response on HN for the past two months has been nothing short of hyperbolic. "The world will end if NN is repealed". Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse. I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Lif…
ACA was a mechanism for private insurers to grow their market share with the side effect of increasing coverage and saving lives. NN is a mechanism for internet providers to completely take over delivery of the internet whereby they can effectively censor information, kill or allow companies to kill their competitors, and charge artificially higher premiums for information they do not produce. Not completely applies…
> NN is a mechanism for internet providers to completely take over delivery of the internet whereby they can effectively censor information, kill or allow companies to kill their competitors, and charge artificially higher premiums for information they do not produce.
Um, what? That's literally the opposite of NN.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#475Can someone clarify this for me? Perhaps my assumptions are incorrect: > 1. Bandwidth is limited > 2. Real-time streaming services, such as video, consume much more bandwidth (by sending more packets through the pipeline) than non-streaming services > 3. Net neutrality guarantees that each packet is delivered with the same priority Say Netflix takes up 20% of the bandwidth through its streaming services - each packet…
Your assumptions of how the internet works are incorrect. Comcast wants you to believe you are buying an amount of data from them. In reality you are paying for a pipe that has a given throughput. If the ISP oversold that capacity that's their problem. Yes, bandwidth is limited but that's why you pay for a big enough pipe to do what you want. bandwidth is also limited because ISPs like Comcast do not want to invest i…
I think this is where I err.
My analogy of us all using a shared pipeline (eg. the ISP infrastructure) is not a great one. Rather, that pipeline is partitioned based on how much people pay to access parts of it - the more they pay for their bandwidth, the more of the pipeline they get.
And how they choose to fill their part of the pipeline is their right, and should affect only them. If the latter part is true (that it affects only them), then I think my questions are answered.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…
Ask around for community-friendly ISP's in your area (including Monkeybrains and Sonic in San Francisco). EDIT: OK I suggested sharing a T1 but apparently that hasn't been a good deal since the 90's.
Why would they include the T1 option but ignore the nearly equivalent bandwidth of a pair of tin cans connected with string to some acoustic modems?
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…
> As a private citizen, can I (snip) just lay a super long fiber cable straight to (the internet). Yes. I worked on a startup ISP for a few years, which attempted to do this. It's actually really easy to do : 1) Pick a point where you can get connection to the internet. (Backhaul). This is usually a phone companies central office, but it can also be at a data centre or other point of presence. 2) Run fiber cable from…
I wonder if this would be feasible at the neighborhood level via Home owners association. The neighborhood gets a tower and microwave link to a backhaul station, and provides internet via wifi or wires to the neighborhood.
I think our neighboorhood is about 130 houses. probably not enough to make it cost effective.
On the flip side, maybe starting a local company to provide LOS microwave hookups to the various neighborhoods in the area could make it work.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#478This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…
I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…
Depends on where you live. Every city has different laws about how to run cable underneath the ground. The first cost you pay is figuring out where everyone's cables are. The second cost you pay is convincing the city to let you do it. The third cost you pay is doing the digging.
If you spin it off as a service to your block, then it might be possible...?
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking this over for the past couple months, because I was pretty sure this would be the outcome - that we would lose our net neutrality protection. So let's play out the worse case - Comcast, AT&T etc wait out the shitstorm and then start throttling traffic and packaging the internet, releasing cable-esque "plans." Is it feasible to just start running our own fiber to hubs? I want to learn more about the…
Ask around for community-friendly ISP's in your area (including Monkeybrains and Sonic in San Francisco). EDIT: OK I suggested sharing a T1 but apparently that hasn't been a good deal since the 90's.
I so desperately wanted to use either of those, but MonkeyBrains would require me to mount something outside my building which wasn't going to be possible at either place I've lived in the city... and Sonic... well I got Sonic.
Sonic runs on AT&Ts lines. It was slow and had lag spikes. After about a year it got to be where the modem (and Internet) would cycle for a couple minutes about once every 2 hours. The (Sonic!) tech came out, found a fault on the line, and his advice was to get Comcast.
I also tried getting Wave, but couldn't.
I went through a similar runaround with my previous building (also in SF), where I tried to avoid Comcast. Eventually I caved.
Comcast was terrible and shady from the very beginning. They sold me an internet package they later claimed didn't exist(!) even though I had the offer in writing from the sales guy. So they just adjusted my bill to what they thought I should pay.
They eventually backed down after I kicked up a huge fuss (and took it to social media), but they also threw a bunch of free stuff I didn't want in to my package as "compensation", and guess who was paying for that when my promotional rate expired before they promised it would? My rate was constantly going up if I didn't fight them tooth and nail. I had to check every bill and almost every one had a new surprise. I have never worked with such a perfidious organization.
So after all that I wanted Anything But Comcast, which I already disliked before that experience. I've seriously considered tethering to Verizon Wireless as better...
But I like to do online gaming and Comcast is the only vaguely reasonable option at this point. They're a little less shady if you avoid ALL television service.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#480This wouldn't be a problem if ISP's weren't de facto monopolies. If there was competition in this space, then there would be incentive to improve the infrastructure and Internet speeds. However, ISP's kill competition by making legal arrangements with local governments to only do business with them, and by cutting competitors' cables. Since we have no way to guarantee reasonable speeds to small time websites now, we…
I'm always surprised that folks on here don't think about the future of last mile connectivity being wireless, instead of wired. Next generation wireless networks (5G) are poised to have broadband like speeds, faster latency, and high bandwidth. Wireless operators have been pretty explicit in that their plan to get into the home broadband game. These networks are a few years away from a broad roll out, AT&T is starti…
So we shouldn't worry about the monopoly because it should "go away soon". How does that make any sense? You know, these same companies started out as multi-decade cable monopolies before they were providing monopolized internet service. You really think that will change? If it wasn't for the DoJ blocking mergers 90% of the country would already have a single internet provider.
Wireless internet for everyone will never be realistic. There's a theoretical limit to how much data you can send wirelessly, the "Shannon limit". On many bands we're already close to it, 90% of "5G" is just about using the rest of our bands more effectively. Once we're using all the frequency bands that penetrate far enough to be useful theres nothing you can do in increase wireless bandwidth. Theres more hope with satellites and narrow beams but these technologies are a decade away. 5G isn't going to do anything noticeable to ISP competition and I think you need to do more research on how 5G works if you think otherwise