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

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty tinfoil hat of me. I have this theory that many companies that are “competing” with each other in an area (Cox and AT&T for me) seem to be ceding areas to each other by upgrading certain sections and not others while avoiding overlap for long periods, functionally only giving buyers one choice. In New Orleans, Cox has offered “gigablast” (yes that’s what it’s called) Internet in some areas while AT&T o…

It’s not tinfoil at all, it’s just normal decision making. You have 10k customers (out of a possible 20k) - do you upgrade your lines where it would make you fastest by far, or do you upgrade your lines where you’d just be as fast? The second probably has fewer customers, the first will get you new customers.

I guess I should’ve been more clear: I think there may be some behind the scenes coordination happening between these companies.

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

#252
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. Lol what? I can get 5-10Gb/s fiber in my town for $120-$200/month. If I want 1Gb/s fiber it’s $55/month. If I want 100mb/s it’s $20/month. To your point it’s about regulatory capture. Not all states and localities have that issue, it’s almost entirely to do with several corrupt states that get targeted.

> Lol what? I can get 5-10Gb/s fiber in my town for $120-$200/month.

Good for you, that puts you in the top 1% of US towns (maybe even 0.1%). Way to totally miss the forest for the trees.

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

#253

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.

This is a bad answer, it conflates the ISPs role in transit and entities like Facebook which are not ISPs.

NN is currently a regulatory thing that can change at the whim of whoever Congress puts there currently. Of course the telecom lobby isn't going to overplay their hand with the current Senate split and D majority in the House, they are going to wait until things are more favorable. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean the stage is not set for it to happen in the near future.

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

#254
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not per megabit. It's middle of the pack. It's also like half to a quarter as dense as most Europeans areas being discussed. It's expensive in large part because of our myriad land use nightmares.

The density argument falls apart in our cities, which are frequently both dense and have expensive (per megabit) internet

American cities are not very dense (with a few exceptions) compared to most cities in Europe, though.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not have been fleeting by the dictionary definition of the word, but it definitely was by the way the rules are applied. I've worked in the broadcast industry and have had to deal directly with this subject, so I'm not just spouting nonsense here.

I've also worked in the broadcast industry; you are just spouting nonsense. You get fined for knowingly allowing several minute long continuous chants like that, and can get your license taken away. It wasn't fleeting in either the dictionary nor the regulatory sense.

Ok, show me the enforcement action that was taken against NBC in this case.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not tinfoil at all, it’s just normal decision making. You have 10k customers (out of a possible 20k) - do you upgrade your lines where it would make you fastest by far, or do you upgrade your lines where you’d just be as fast? The second probably has fewer customers, the first will get you new customers.

I guess I should’ve been more clear: I think there may be some behind the scenes coordination happening between these companies.

I suspect there isn't just because they don't really need to "coordinate" which would cause anti-trust issues, they can just "watch" and adjust based on what they see.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Surely Canada must be worse? At least for consumers.

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

#258
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. Lol what? I can get 5-10Gb/s fiber in my town for $120-$200/month. If I want 1Gb/s fiber it’s $55/month. If I want 100mb/s it’s $20/month. To your point it’s about regulatory capture. Not all states and localities have that issue, it’s almost entirely to do with several corrupt states that get targeted.

In New Hampshire (the state with the 3rd highest broadband penetration in the USA), about 1 hour from Boston, the cheapest possible internet I can get is $83/month from Comcast aka Xfinity

I get 25/5 mbps

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regulat…

But those images did briefly become reality to some customers. T-Mobile and AT&T had services which would be cheaper to access than other competing services.

On AT&T, watching TV on DirecTV Now was zero-rated against mobile data caps. Watching TV on Hulu or Fubo or any other provider was an extra cost.

On T-Mobile, streaming music on Spotify or Apple Music was zero-rated against mobile data caps. Streaming from home or from any non-approved music services was an extra cost.

That doom and gloom image was starting to take shape. It was the passage of California's NN laws and the support in the courts which killed these programs, as they didn't want to have to manage a different set of rules in CA or any other states which implemented these kinds of rules compared to just having a standardized nation-wide platform.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheap 5Gbps FTTH I don't think there is a better way to rub salt into the wound.

5 gbps signal rate doesn't give you the full story about actual data transfer rates to important services, but its a start. Ran into this problem with AT&T Fiber (1 gbps) in Houston, Texas

I’ve had both AT&T and Comcast 1gbps and never had any noticeable data transfer issues. A lot of things like Usenet downloads were close to saturating the wire speed, close to 100MB per second. Comcast’s upload speed is abysmal (coaxial), AT&T was symmetrical (FTTH).

How could I test this?

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