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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

#111

Post by wredue »

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…

Canadas ISP situation was far better when Crown corporations were providing better, cheaper services. In standard fashion, conservative government successfully convinced half the population that it’d be better if the crowns were sold.

Spoiler: it has gotten way way worse. Not better.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#112

Post by free_bip »

EPWN3D wrote: post #44
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 was definitely someone who wrote the FCC (futilely) in support of net neutrality in 2017, and I figured the inevitable outcome of the FCC decision back then would be skyrocketing broadband costs, fast lanes, etc. Except none of it happened. It turns out there's actually kind of okay competition in this space. Maybe not as much as there should be, but prices have stayed reasonable, broadband access is expanding, and…

AFAIK the actual reason most of these things did not appear is because of many states passing their own net neutrality laws, such that it would be a regulatory nightmare to offer services in violation of net neutrality without coming under fire.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#113

Post by gosub100 »

peddling-brink wrote: post #82
EPWN3D wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was definitely someone who wrote the FCC (futilely) in support of net neutrality in 2017, and I figured the inevitable outcome of the FCC decision back then would be skyrocketing broadband costs, fast lanes, etc. Except none of it happened. It turns out there's actually kind of okay competition in this space. Maybe not as much as there should be, but prices have stayed reasonable, broadband access is expanding, and…

I know there’s a gun pointed at my head, but listen, nobody has pulled the trigger yet, it’s fine.

It's been 7 years, but any day now we'll wake up to broken online video, random timeouts, paltry data caps, and skyrocketing costs.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#115

Post by kristopolous »

godelski wrote: post #110
marcinzm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arou…

> 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). Why do these have to be in contention? Regulations are a critical factor in ensuring competition in markets. Without regulations monopolies quickly come to power because your power and influence is not linearly (or sublinearly) correlated to your size (even excluding lobbying…

One is an explicit policy stating expectations and the other is a speculative hypothesis that the same policy will naturally happen through some form of economic osmosis if only we leave things unmolested enough for an unspecified duration.

I for one, would rather not rely on the assumption of magic.

We know what we want and it's achievable directly. Let's not Rube Goldberg it.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#116

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

unethical_ban wrote: post #28
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…

The big difference is "type of content" vs. "brand of content". If a network theoretically prioritized phone calls, email and registered messaging platforms, or deprioritized bulk file-sharing during congested periods, that would be reasonable. What I see here is ISPs trying to rent-seek and get big players like Netflix or big game companies to pay for being on the premium tier, while charging customers for the privi…

We already know how technically successful those implementations will look in practice; Look at the "messaging only" free tiers in airline ISPs which are only able to distinguish permissible traffic from a selected few partners (mainly Apple/Meta) and likely requires cooperation in the form of special APIs and agreements between the companies.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#117

Post by godelski »

spullara wrote: post #34
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…

Best internet in the country is offered by a monopoly in Chattanooga. Up to 25 Gbit up/down.

Monopoly? That's a bit bold of a claim.

The provider you're talking about is the utility company. You might not know why the utility company provides the internet either. It's because before that they couldn't get the other companies (AT&T, Comcast, Hughe, Verizon) to offer good speeds and reasonable rates. The utility also doesn't take a profit. Mind you, those other companies still operate and no one is holding them back. They just decided that the profit margins weren't worth it, though they did lobby against NoogaNet.

It's not a monopoly. It's a city coming together and saying

  Fuck you, give us good internet or we're going to build our own internet  w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶j̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶
And overnight all those companies increased their speeds. They found what they were happy with and NoogaNet still decided "fuck it, we're going to just be better." I really REALLY wish more people/cities would take this "fuck you, we'll do it ourselves" attitude. Waiting on others to fix our problems clearly isn't working.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#118

Post by trimethylpurine »

seattle_spring wrote: post #37
throwaway35777 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like $50/mo for 200/50 I think. Why, what are yours?

The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than $200/mo. You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and that's fine and probably correct, but you're still getting slower speeds for…

My prices are much lower in the states than in my place in Italy right now. Service sucks here too.

Anyway you're ignoring income. Seattle is around triple the median of France for example. You need to compare cities of similar size and income.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#119

Post by trimethylpurine »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #109
School-Cotton wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "the rest of the world" you mean a cherry-picked selection of the most advanced countries, then yes, the US is behind on internet access (and everything else). It never makes sense to me when people say how the US ranks last among developed countries on a bunch of metrics. Of course, that just means the US is indeed... less developed than those countries. If it's not fair to compare the US to Somalia, it's not…

How, exactly, are you supposed to compare if not to other countries? There’s no bar for “this is what a developed country’s internet should look like” so the only way to compare is to do it against other countries roughly in the same range as the US. It’s also entirely factual to say that in comparison to other developed countries, the US lags in internet.

You compare cities, since you need to include average income.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#120

Post by riku_iki »

xiphias2 wrote: post #66
room500 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Netflix has a fast lane anywhere. Netflix does offer to give servers to ISPs to put in their datacenters. So if your ISP is seeing congestion on the IX links, it is entirely possible that Netflix still works fine (because the traffic doesn’t leave the ISP and is therefore not hitting the congestion). But that is not a “fast lane”

At that point Netflix should just provide its own VPN / internet access for paying users

Netflix puts servers in datacenters to cache content, so you access it much faster. Not sure what problem Netflix VPN will solve.
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