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The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#11

Post by whimsicalism »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #5

We need neutrality up and down the stack elsewhere too. I would consider hosting (including DNS, cloud infrastructure), financial services (banks, PayPal, stripe), and others as needing their version of net neutrality laws, where they cannot refuse customers or treat them differently or pick winners/losers or charge differently for different use cases. These are all utilities that are necessary to survive in today’s…

You cannot mandate both neutrality and liability for things on the payment stack, it is too burdensome.

Personally I would prefer neutrality over liability.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#12

Post by dave4420 »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #8
KaiserPro wrote: post #2

The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…

I think there is limited room for competition in many of these categories. For example, the infrastructure costs for telecoms make it very difficult for new competition (like a startup) to enter the market. The existing ones benefited from past funding and a lack of competition, but have captured market share. In some cases, there are other practical limitations, for example, splitting up wireless spectrum. Apart fro…

You force the infrastructure operator to allow competitors to use their infrastructure on a fair basis. It’s what happens in Europe (including the UK). It works.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#13

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

extheat wrote: post #10

My views on this have changed over time. More and more it seems like policy people encroaching on technical decisions without fully understanding the rationale behind them. Is there a good reason to segment different types of content, such as for optimal network performance? Ultimately all wireless communications have to work within the bounds of physics no matter what the made up human laws say. If there's a limited…

If it’s pricing meant to protect limited bandwidth and not a profit motive, I think this regulation has to make it so that neither content providers nor consumers are charged differently. The proposed regulation lets the carriers charge consumers (you and I) different prices for different packages that treat traffic differently.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#14

Post by throwaway35777 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #2

The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…

> The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite...

Speak for yourself, but I live on the west coast and my Internet connection is great.

Edit: downvoters, what are the problems with U.S. internet?

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#15

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

whimsicalism wrote: post #11
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #5

We need neutrality up and down the stack elsewhere too. I would consider hosting (including DNS, cloud infrastructure), financial services (banks, PayPal, stripe), and others as needing their version of net neutrality laws, where they cannot refuse customers or treat them differently or pick winners/losers or charge differently for different use cases. These are all utilities that are necessary to survive in today’s…

You cannot mandate both neutrality and liability for things on the payment stack, it is too burdensome. Personally I would prefer neutrality over liability.

Agree, and I like the phrasing of neutrality over liability - captures this tradeoff well.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#16

Post by lsllc »

burnte wrote: post #4

ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a glass of water than a toilet flush.

Well they sort of do already — typically you pay less for water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it’s not going down the drain).

In places like Florida however irrigation water is reclaimed and not treated the same was as drinking water and has totally separate plumbing and metering (and pricing).

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#18

Post by orev »

extheat wrote: post #10

My views on this have changed over time. More and more it seems like policy people encroaching on technical decisions without fully understanding the rationale behind them. Is there a good reason to segment different types of content, such as for optimal network performance? Ultimately all wireless communications have to work within the bounds of physics no matter what the made up human laws say. If there's a limited…

ALL discussions of Net Neutrality allow providers to prioritize traffic for capacity management purposes. This so well known by now that I have to wonder if this comment is part of an astroturf campaign (or maybe you’ve been influenced by one).

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#19

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

dave4420 wrote: post #12
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is limited room for competition in many of these categories. For example, the infrastructure costs for telecoms make it very difficult for new competition (like a startup) to enter the market. The existing ones benefited from past funding and a lack of competition, but have captured market share. In some cases, there are other practical limitations, for example, splitting up wireless spectrum. Apart fro…

You force the infrastructure operator to allow competitors to use their infrastructure on a fair basis. It’s what happens in Europe (including the UK). It works.

In Europe they only do this for the last mile as far as I know, and this actually also prevents innovation since again there isn’t competition that can meaningfully introduce alternatives (let’s say cable versus fiber versus whatever). But I agree that approach is still an important tool (certainly better than nothing) and the US should adopt it.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#20

Post by marcinzm »

KaiserPro wrote: post #2

The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…

Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality Regulation 2015).

> In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap.

They do that because speeding up/slowing down apps is illegal and they are using loopholes in the law to get around that.

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