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

arstechnica.com

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

#211

Post by thomastjeffery »

HWR_14 wrote: post #109
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 California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.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 like T-Mobile's zero-rating solution. Specific classes of data (sub-480p video) would be zero rated for all servers who filled out paperwork, no source-based discrimination. That made sense. Also, kinda obviously, government emergency services (911, weather alerts, etc) being zero-rated just make sense. I don't want zero rating to let FB subsidize plans that allow free access to FB. I think we can find some uses th…

...but then T-Mobile customers are stuck with 480p video unless they want to pay for an actually reasonable amount of bandwidth.

On top of that, anyone hosting content who wants to be zero-rated has to make 480p copies of all their video, which may be common practice, but certainly isn't free.

And what about content that isn't video on the first place? There are plenty of mobile games that require several gigabytes of download.

No matter what it is for, zero-reading creates an artificial scarcity.

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

#212

Post by lelandfe »

ekianjo wrote: post #209
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…

> The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world. Really? Some highly developed countries have fairly expensive Internet as well. Not sure the US is much of an exception, if you consider not just the cheapest countries.

It's definitely expensive (2014 data): https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared...

> the United States ranks second on the list of OECD countries, behind only Mexico, for most expensive internet prices

> When we look at Europe as a whole, we can see that the United States pays more for broadband internet access than any other country on the continent; in fact, rates in the US are more than double the average

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

#213

Post by smachiz »

naoqj wrote: post #200
jtbayly wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do networks not fill up and get congested?

That's the joke. People and corporations streaming HD video use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth which require more hardware capacity and peering deals. I think it's not crazy to ask that they pay a fair price for it. As someone who doesn't stream HD video I would like to have cheaper connections available if I don't want to pay for the bandwidth usage of other customers.

Hah. That isn't really the issue.

Ballpark FMV for 1Mbps for a month is currently around $0.08/Mbps in the US at scale in carrier neutral datacenter.

If you watched a Netflix HD stream all month long, it would cost maybe $1.

But of course it doesn't actually cost Verizon or ATT or Cox that - Netflix almost assuredly *pays them* to carry that stream.

Blaming the users is a ridiculously bad take - the issue is that the ISP didn't invest in fixing their last mile, or is needlessly congested at their head end, and they could fix it for trivial amounts of money.

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

#214

Post by imgabe »

makomk wrote: post #191
imgabe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Netflix already pay on a usage basis for their bandwidth? If you run a small website that gets 100 users a month, you pay very little for bandwidth. If you run a video streaming site with millions of users you pay a lot. And the users also pay for the bandwidth to download. Exactly how many more times do the ISPs need to get paid?

Not necessarily. Small websites have to pay for their bandwidth, but bigger companies like Netflix have been pushing ISPs into various schemes that give them that bandwidth for free, either through peering arrangements where ISPs take traffic to and from Netflix systems for free or through installing caching boxes in ISP facilities with the power, data and space paid for by the ISP.

How? What leverage does Netflix have that would convince their ISP to give them free bandwidth?

It seems like if Netflix were unable to upload the video to their customers, that would be pretty detrimental to their business.

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

#215

Post by wodenokoto »

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…

Recently I ran out of mobile data, and using my phone providers app, I couldn’t buy any additional data, because I had no data left to connect to them.

There are definitely circumstances where it makes sense to give users free access to data, just like how it makes sense that you can call toll free numbers.

The opportunity for abuse is probably large enough to warrant that we can’t have nice things.

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

#216

Post by jaywalk »

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #205
jtbayly wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do networks not fill up and get congested?

Yes, but the problem is on the ISP side. For example, lets assume a building with 10 apartments has guaranteed 100Mbit connection to the building. If ISP was honest, they would sell 10Mbit connection to each apartment. What they do (at least here) is sell 100Mbit to each apartment and hope their usage isn't all at the same time since it can't support it. I ended up paying more for a 200mbit connection straight to my…

There isn't a consumer ISP anywhere that doesn't oversubscribe bandwidth. It makes zero sense to give a residential connection dedicated bandwidth.

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

#217

Post by RHSeeger »

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…

If I pay you to bring me a package from , all is well. If 10 other people pay you to bring them packages from , all is well. If 100 want to pay you to bring them packages from and you suddenly don't have enough manpower to deliver those packages... do you suddenly start charging because they have too many people that want packages? No, because that would be ridiculous.

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

#218

Post by naoqj »

smachiz wrote: post #213
naoqj wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the joke. People and corporations streaming HD video use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth which require more hardware capacity and peering deals. I think it's not crazy to ask that they pay a fair price for it. As someone who doesn't stream HD video I would like to have cheaper connections available if I don't want to pay for the bandwidth usage of other customers.

Hah. That isn't really the issue. Ballpark FMV for 1Mbps for a month is currently around $0.08/Mbps in the US at scale in carrier neutral datacenter. If you watched a Netflix HD stream all month long, it would cost maybe $1. But of course it doesn't actually cost Verizon or ATT or Cox that - Netflix almost assuredly *pays them* to carry that stream. Blaming the users is a ridiculously bad take - the issue is that the…

Increasing bandwidth in the last mile is not cheap at all.

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

#219

Post by Karunamon »

jaywalk wrote: post #216
odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the problem is on the ISP side. For example, lets assume a building with 10 apartments has guaranteed 100Mbit connection to the building. If ISP was honest, they would sell 10Mbit connection to each apartment. What they do (at least here) is sell 100Mbit to each apartment and hope their usage isn't all at the same time since it can't support it. I ended up paying more for a 200mbit connection straight to my…

There isn't a consumer ISP anywhere that doesn't oversubscribe bandwidth. It makes zero sense to give a residential connection dedicated bandwidth.

Maybe regulators should look into that? Common practices or not, it’s nothing short of fraudulent to sell something you know you can’t provide.

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

#220

Post by Karunamon »

kfmfjfjf wrote: post #178
locallost wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I remember a pretty ridiculous image going around that depicted a hypothetical Internet service package that was sold to you on a site by site basis, for instance you would pay $20 a month and have access to the top 100, another $10 for social media, and so forth.

Given the length of time the Internet has been around, and a complete absence of any of these doom and gloom stories coming to pass despite no such regulation the entire time, I am forced to conclude that neutrality advocates' fears were overblown.

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