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Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

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Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#211

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #199
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the industry should self-fund universal coverage is massively distortionary. If we want everyone to have electricity and broadband (an admirable goal), that's fine. The government should build electricity and broadband to places that don't have it (and I'd posit they should do it in a cost efficient way, e.g. with wireless). Forcing the places that do have it to subsidize the places that don't have it,…

>The government should build electricity and broadband to places that don't have it Except every time a government tries to do just that, the ISPs sue to stop it. Even if they have no plans to provide the service, themselves. They don't want the precedent.

[deleted]

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#212

Post by jpao79 »

What would seem to make sense for Netflix would be use more HDD/SSD caching of videos, similar to how a DVR for Tivo works. There really isn't a huge reason to live stream Netflix movie/show content. It's not live video.

The Netflix subscriber user could download up to 30 or 40 Netflix shows in advance from their Netflix queue (sort of like the original 'Netflix by mail' queue) over LTE at midnight under some sort of LTE multi-cast deal with AT&T or Verizon. Or maybe lossless transmission over standard POTS/DSL or Dish Satellite.

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#213

Post by mietek »

snowwrestler wrote: post #75
spruciefic399 wrote: post #56

Another strategy to this (not exclusive of other strategies) is to encourage municipal ISPs, or even go further and roll out federal ISP infrastructure ala the federal highway system. I've always thought that this would be well within the rubric of the USPS. The constitutional mandate for a postal service was drafted at a time when the internet could not have been conceived of. I would argue that the intent of the co…

The next step beyond the mail was the telegraph and then the telephone. Those were built out by private companies, but operated under a regulatory regime called "common carrier," which protected the network owner from liability so long as it charged and carried traffic from all parties equally. These days, that concept is called "net neutrality" in the context of the Internet, and I suppose you may have heard it ment…

> that is why the Soviet Union lagged U.S. technology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#214

Post by ethbro »

adventured wrote: post #142
ethbro wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the FCC really wanted to promote competition instead of profits, they could mandate nationwide access to utility poles & shared conduit. As well as making exclusive franchise agreements illegal.

Exclusive franchise agreements are illegal for eg cable. They have been illegal for a quarter of a century. You'll find that nearly all examples commonly presented of the lack of competition, are not due to market lock-out, it's due to the high cost and time required to gain approval to build in a given town or city. The combined cost, with pre-existing competition entrenched, is a very large disincentive. Google Fib…

Thanks for the correction! (And as also noted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8066340 )

Upton Sinclair's "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" seems relevant here.

It's illegal, but it's also murkey enough that it can be made effectively exclusive through permitting delays, etc.

If the incentives were flipped (say, a federal road fund multiplier that scaled with average speed * number of options), I feel like we'd have a lot more competition.

As is, in the contracts I've read, they're essentially "ISP gets a non-exclusive franchise right in exchange for paying local government x% of their fees from the area, and both parties agree that the portion rebated to the local government may not be separately itemized on the bill."

Which sets up some pretty perverse incentives for most part-time commissioners.

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#215

Post by tbyehl »

Someone1234 wrote: post #139
spruciefic399 wrote: post #56

Another strategy to this (not exclusive of other strategies) is to encourage municipal ISPs, or even go further and roll out federal ISP infrastructure ala the federal highway system. I've always thought that this would be well within the rubric of the USPS. The constitutional mandate for a postal service was drafted at a time when the internet could not have been conceived of. I would argue that the intent of the co…

A better approach might be a government managed last mile (i.e. cable from a central data center to your home/business), but not the ISP itself. That way ISPs can continue to compete for your business, but the market would be significantly less restrictive because the ISP only needs physical equipment at the data center and upstream of it. The biggest thing stopping ISP competition today is that local markets don't w…

Seems the logical way to go, but Provo, UT tried that and it became so politically toxic that the city wound up giving the network away to Google and swallowing the debt.

If you look at EPB being forced to pull out of neighboring areas and the actions of other states to prevent muni / utility Internet projects, it's pretty clear that America doesn't want to solve the last mile problem unless it involves preserving the incumbent's market position.

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#216

Post by rayiner »

wpietri wrote: post #205
rayiner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not what is best, but how much competition do you need to beat a government-run service? Here in D.C., with Uber/Lyft versus Metro, that number is just two. Indeed, even a giant national monopoly is probably better than your typical government service. Even Windows 95 was better than most of the public services in D.C.

Depends on the government, I suppose. And your criteria for comparison. Broadband in particular is very infrastructure-ish. It's much more like a water utility or traffic lights than a service business like on-demand personal drivers. Many governments run infrastructure quite well.

What infrastructure is broadband most like? The water utility that's poisoning people with lead: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dcs-decade-old-problem-.... The sewer utility that's dumping raw sewage into the local river: https://wtop.com/dc/2017/07/heavy-rain-raw-sewage-potomac-an.... Or the subway infrastructure that constantly catches fire? https://www.arlnow.com/2018/01/22/developing-track-fire-at-p....

I've lived in several major cities: Baltimore, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago. Out of those, I might trust Chicago to run municipal broadband. For the others, I'd pick Comcast any day of the week.

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#217

Post by error54 »

jpao79 wrote: post #212

What would seem to make sense for Netflix would be use more HDD/SSD caching of videos, similar to how a DVR for Tivo works. There really isn't a huge reason to live stream Netflix movie/show content. It's not live video. The Netflix subscriber user could download up to 30 or 40 Netflix shows in advance from their Netflix queue (sort of like the original 'Netflix by mail' queue) over LTE at midnight under some sort of…

TV's would be one (of many) limiting factors here. Most consumer televisions have, relative to most other computing devices, low processing power and disk space. Plus you have to factor the additional bandwidth load of downloading a 4K television show that you may not watch and then multiply that cost by 30 or 40.

Re: Netflix and Alphabet will need to become ISPs, fast

#220

Post by rayiner »

0xffff2 wrote: post #203
rayiner wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Netflix user watches 40-50 hours per month, and its going down: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/11/netflix-users-collectively... . Netflix says 7GB/hour for 4K (~350 gigabytes), but HEVC will halve that number. That's under 180GB, and that's assuming all streaming is 4K, which is far from the case.

That's also just for one person on Netflix. Now add a roommate, Youtube, Twitch, general overhead (email, web browsing, app updates, etc).

That is per account not per person. For a typical household, all other bandwidth usage pales in comparison to Netflix. Youtube, etc., streaming at HD or lower resolutions isn't going to move the needle much compared to the 4K streaming in the calculation above.
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