Most of the time you really only have one ISP to choose from, so it is kind of monopoly already in practice, now with this brain-dead repeal, what will happen then? Don't like this at all.
F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
When I lived there, I had 200mbps up and 200 down for $70 a month and it was great. This was before Google came to town. But since I didn't own property, I guess I was out of the loop on property taxes.
I had it as well at 100Mbs before Google fiber. The service itself worked great, but it had to be subsidized by taxpayers throughout its lifetime - it never broke even after the subscribers fees.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#503Common 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 "The world will end if NN is repealed".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…
I totally agree with you. I believe group polarization [0] causes forums on the internet such as this one to exaggerate how bad something is going to be and this is one of those times. My biggest concern is if something actually world-ending were to be about to happen it would be sort of hard to tell by reading Reddit and Hackernews. Because the users of those collectively dial the alarm severity up to "catastrophic"…
That's not an argument, that's bulverism. How about you explain why repealing Net Neutrality is necessary in the first place? Who actually benefits from it?
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#504Friendly reminder that economists surveyed are far more likely to be for paid prioritization than against http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii
In a fully capitalist market for broadband, I would indeed feel net enforced neutrality is not quite as necessary and would agree with the pro-market economist comments more. Generally speaking, I would expect that consumers could have a choice between various tiers and qualities of service. I'm fairly sure a "net neutrality" type tier would be one of the options here (there's enough for demand for it.) The current m…
Exactly. So many people don't get that. Really 'net neutrality' is sort of the wrong battle. I want to be able to write soft real time application on the internet.
You are right, the market economist are basically just misinformed about the structure of the market. Most of them are not actually people that know much about the internet or work in that space specifically.
My attempt at a solution is to equate packets with real live postal services. The postal service is not allowed to open your packets but they are allowed to look at the stamp. This is how the IP protocol was designed to work, and it would work, but that requires a change in how IP do pricing and so on and so on.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 neighb…
I wonder if 1000 homes pitched 1000$ each if the 1M$ would be enough for them all to get access? From OP it sounds like no.
I wonder if the onion network will counteract this.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#506This 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…
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…
> The "last mile" is a utility, and by its very nature will always result in monopolistic control.
This is THE central point. Everyone saying that they would be OK with the latest FCC regs if there were only more competition need to consider this. In what bizarro world would anyone actually want ISPs competing for the last mile?
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 neighb…
I remember seeing a company that was doing exactly this. They setup shop in an area and then sell to neighborhoods.
Can't remember the name.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#508This 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…
Why would wireless lead to more competition? Wireless spectrum is monopolized in much the same way that the right to lay fiber/wiring is. FCC auctions sell exclusive use of the spectrum to these companies for billions of dollars. The switch to wireless would be nothing more than a chance for these companies to save on the expense of physical infrastructure, not a way to increase competition. Unless you're suggesting that high speed internet could be delivered on unlicensed bands, we'd just be trading one monopoly/duopoly situation for another, and likely with the same obstinate companies that we currently lament having to depend on for internet service.
The best hope for competition in the home broadband market is municipal ownership of last-mile infrastructure. We need to lay last-mile fiber and it needs to be owned by the public, though network maintenance can be contracted out.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#509Here's my question: why was such a momentous decision decided by a board of five people? A decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people was decided by five people. Isn't that insane? Whatever happened to democracy in America?
America is not a democracy. It's a representative democracy.
I find it hard to believe that the will of the people is adequately represented by five people. Not that it really matters--with the massive split between the Republicans and Democrats basically the party with the most board seats will win.
Re: F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
#510Common 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.."
In case you want to edit, did you mean "Repeal of NN is a..." ?