ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law • Hacker News Board

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#161

Post by fransje26 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 9:23 AM UTC

zhfliz wrote: post #10

smw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?

Telekom already does this for a very long time, at least in Germany. see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577

Telecommunication in Germany is a price-gouging, customer-abusing, mafia-like cartel that is taking the piss every step of the way. It's cheaper for me to have a foreign mobile provider than to take any local contract. I get more data volume, and much cheaper EU in & out calls than anything that can be found here, and I can network-hop to get semi-decent LTE coverage, as, where I live, each provider seems to be covering a different area.

After years and years of appalling DSL speeds (think But, the subsidies were only for connections up to the local relays, not for bring glass fiber to the local customers. So once the scramble to the relays was finished, nothing else was done.

Two years down the line, slowly, you can start paying (1500 euros) for a connection to your door that should come in the coming months. And the breath-taking connection speed of 100 Mbits symmetric. Which, granted, is a good improvement for casual browsing, but not quite good enough for businesses.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#162

Post by Hikikomori » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #53

jwommack wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary beneficiaries of this are basically Netflix and Google, no? My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. The claims that these policies would be aimed at small businesses seem largely to have not been realistic. The whole situation with lying…

> My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. "large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks"? That is completely non-sensical. It is not streaming services that are creating a burden, it is the ISP's customers . The ISP's cus…

There's simply no way for any ISP to allow all customers to use their full bandwidth, that just doesn't work, both technically and with the prices consumers pay. When building (and replacing parts to add capacity) the network ISPs look at current usage, average usage of each customer, account for future growth, etc, results in some cost that ends up as part of what customers has to pay. If traffic increases much more than expected then the upgrade/investment made that was expected to last X years would last years less, so a new upgrade is done which results in increased price for the end customer.

If the new investment was paid in part by Netflix and others like them, as they drive most of the increase in bandwidth, then the cost would be pushed to Netflix customers through Netflix.

Either way, end consumers pay what is needed to upgrade the network, otherwise the network is congested or the ISP goes out of business.

I would argue that ISPs should not have these massive profits, if they do then they are overcharging their customers. And the fix for that is to have actual competition, consumers must have multiple choices, which for the most part the US does not have in the ISP market as you have no sharing of last mile access and block municipal infrastructure at many levels.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#163

Post by lwkl » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

bberenberg wrote: post #7

wrycoder wrote: post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month.

Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#164

Post by HelloNurse » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

locallost wrote: post #156

jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

I'm not American, but I ran into this issue while discussing with some people living in the US (foreigners no less) and it's crazy how much they bought into the ISP propaganda. They're not stupid people, but they got convinced that they can't check their email because their neighbour is on Netflix and this is all Netflix's fault. When you hear the same argument repeated in the same way, it's always an indicator that…

I don't really understand this American mindset because my current bandwidth "problem" is being "forced" to setup a wired Ethernet network because WiFi isn't enough for cheap 5Gbps FTTH.

More importantly, I'm used to ISPs wasting their lobbying on not paying for laying out fiber and their trust and goodwill budget on deceitful and greedy pricing, bad customer care and capricious geographic coverage: if nobody trusts them more toxic types of propaganda are out of the question.

What are the communication strategies of American ISPs? Even in monopoly and near-monopoly situations, why do people believe them?

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#165

Post by eikenberry » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:10 AM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #9

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

> Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

Torrent-like algorithms do this. They localize the content while maintaining neutrality of services.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#166

Post by throw0101a » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

d110af5ccf wrote: post #144

throw0101a wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. Except the "bad actors" are the ISP's customer . It's they who are asking for the bits to be sent. It's the ISP job to deliver the bits their customers requested . The streaming services are…

From GP: "extreme amounts of resources" "Extreme" here meaning ... the connection bandwidth that was explicitly paid for? Except for the fine print where the ISP notified the customer that they were going to horribly oversubscribe things. It amounts to fraud as far as I'm concerned.

If the ISP has over-subscribed their network that is not the ISP customer's problem, and that is not the problem of the (e.g.) streaming service.

The ISP either has to reduce their service speed or charge more.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#167

Post by parkingrift » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

everybodyknows wrote: post #130

gameman144 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that while this is definitely true of opportunistic politicians who will take any advantage they can, I don't this is actually true of most people who actually believe in states' rights as a real principle (as opposed to a politically malleable one). For instance, I have close family members who are strong free-market conservatives (to a pragmatic extent, not anarcho-capitalists or anything) who I consider to…

> people who actually believe in states' rights as a real principle ... OP's implication was that such principled individuals exercise not much power in the real-world politics of our time.

Yes. Unfortunately, we have to vote between two parties. When I vote I am typically voting for someone who I hope to agree with on 50% of the issues. There is no sane political party in the United States any longer. Pick your poison.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#168

Post by throw0101a » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

Hikikomori wrote: post #162

throw0101a wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. "large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks"? That is completely non-sensical. It is not streaming services that are creating a burden, it is the ISP's customers . The ISP's cus…

There's simply no way for any ISP to allow all customers to use their full bandwidth, that just doesn't work, both technically and with the prices consumers pay. When building (and replacing parts to add capacity) the network ISPs look at current usage, average usage of each customer, account for future growth, etc, results in some cost that ends up as part of what customers has to pay. If traffic increases much more…

> There's simply no way for any ISP to allow all customers to use their full bandwidth, that just doesn't work, both technically and with the prices consumers pay.

I know how over-subscription works.

But tough shit. As an ISP customer I'm paying for $x/month for x bps. I've cut a cheque now provide me with what you advertised.

> If the new investment was paid in part by Netflix and others like them, as they drive most of the increase in bandwidth, then the cost would be pushed to Netflix customers through Netflix.

The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#169

Post by parkingrift » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

bberenberg wrote: post #7

wrycoder wrote: post #2

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality prot…

I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charg…

Bandwidth is already charged by consumption. What you’re suggesting here is to the idea that vehicles should be charged based on what they’re transporting. Sorry but that is preposterous. Weight is weight and should be considered as such. No cost preference for shipment of products that some private company likes.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#170

Post by beardedetim » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

gameman144 wrote: post #108

walrus01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think that while this is definitely true of opportunistic politicians who will take any advantage they can, I don't this is actually true of most people who actually believe in states' rights as a real principle (as opposed to a politically malleable one). For instance, I have close family members who are strong free-market conservatives (to a pragmatic extent, not anarcho-capitalists or anything) who I consider to…

This has been my experience as well along both sides of the axis. If you're not "Lets Go Brandon" or whatever the equivalent is on the left, you usually are reasonable and have valid opinions.

Even more so, we usually share the same ideals just have different ways of getting there. There isn't huge division out there. Just two camps of dicks with most of us in the middle.