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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

#121

Post by School-Cotton »

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.

If the US is significantly behind developed countries in practically every category, why do you consider it a developed country? What does “developed” mean?

> other countries roughly in the same range as the US.

The same range of what variable? How do you measure/define this?

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#122

Post by plowjockey »

seabird wrote: post #97
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 people by and large don't seem bothered by data caps when they're subject to them lol. This is better attributed to you getting used to the shitty situation you, and everyone else in your country, is dealing with. Your speeds are shit and y…

I pay $50/month for 300/30 in the middle of nowhere. Symmetric gigabit is available for $80ish/month in small cities around me. Unlimited phone data is widely available and fairly priced. It's not impossible for things to be acceptable for the vast majority of use cases just because some predicted apocalyptic event which was hyped up by certain large players (and not out of the goodness of their hearts) didn't come t…

$90/month for 25/2.5 Mbps here. I honestly never thought we'd see that kind of speed. In late 2015 it went from 512 kbps to 10/1 Mbps on a new system. Four years later (2019) they upgraded it to the present speed with no increase in price. It's all wireless and since we're in AT&T telco territory there is no chance of them doing anything (the phone lines have been in the ground since the late '70s), so this independent telco built out as a WISP almost 20 years ago. They're looking at doing their own FTTH in this area.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#124

Post by BigBalli »

I'm totally for net neutrality but I think the article focuses on the wrong "consequence". Do you really need superfast internet to scroll tiktok? if you think you do then you're probably willing to pay more vs a cheaper plan if you don't care.

It might even backfire and stifle the good parts of the proposal.

As mentioned by someone else, the title wording really appeals to conspiracy theorists.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#125

Post by ericfr11 »

seabird wrote: post #97
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 people by and large don't seem bothered by data caps when they're subject to them lol. This is better attributed to you getting used to the shitty situation you, and everyone else in your country, is dealing with. Your speeds are shit and y…

I pay $50/month for 300/30 in the middle of nowhere. Symmetric gigabit is available for $80ish/month in small cities around me. Unlimited phone data is widely available and fairly priced. It's not impossible for things to be acceptable for the vast majority of use cases just because some predicted apocalyptic event which was hyped up by certain large players (and not out of the goodness of their hearts) didn't come t…

Wow, that is very expensive

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#126

Post by randomdata »

gruez wrote: post #108
randomdata wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada isn't so bad off when it comes to wired service. Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest. And many more are co-operatives owned by the customers. The mobile space is more challenging. A number of those co-ops and government ISPs were running mobile service back in the mid 2000s, but they never found the customer base and most of them eventually shut it down, Tbaytel…

>Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest That's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of people who aren't served by such ISPs. Population of... Saskatchewan (Sasktel): 1.1M Bruce County (Bruce Telecom): 66.5k Thunder Bay District (Tbaytel): 146k Prince Rupert, British Columbia (CityWest): 13k That makes up a total of 1.3M, against Canada's population of 37.0M. Moreover…

> That's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of people who aren't served by such ISPs.

But is actually warm comfort as it shows a proven model that anyone, anywhere in Canada can also do. It's just a matter of whether or not the people actually care if they are a customer of an independent, or if being a customer of a major is just as good or better.

> Moreover, looking at Sasktel's website[1], their prices don't look too competitive.

Sure. Nobody said owning your own business allowed it to operate for free. Publicly-owned and co-op businesses are not a panacea. But they are independent and free of a major private business, which is the topic at hand.

Saskatchewan's population is ~80% rural, and Sasktel doesn't operate outside of Saskatchewan. It isn't terribly surprising that it costs more to service rural areas, and without much in the way of an urban base to help subsidize the operation. But this does indicate that other providers are operating within reasonable margins. Indeed, Canada is a very expensive place to do business in, and not just in telecom. You are never going to see cheap internet compared to other countries, or much of anything, without radically upheaving what the country stands for.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#127

Post by otterley »

rsanek wrote: post #99
otterley wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a reason for that. Neither Google nor Facebook are infrastructure providers. Infrastructure is a different business, and, since it frequently has natural monopolies, we regulate it so to provide the greatest good for the public and maximize stability and functionality. Infrastructure is an enabling foundation for competitive enterprise.

how is gcp not infrastructure?

Public infrastructure, like water, sewage, and electricity. I.e., utilities. Telecommunications is another. GCP is B2B; compute infrastructure isn’t generally consumed by the public as a whole.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#128

Post by ddingus »

Recently Jon Stewart talked about the burden we struggle with having to deal with an obviously corrupt government:

In order to make this world one where I would consider living...

It is a day in, day out, lunch pail type job. Thousands of people banging on doors, until they get something done.

And then, keeping it done takes thousands more doing the same thing

DAY IN, DAY OUT, FOREVER.

Truth!

People ask, "How many times?"

Now they have their answer. We either give a shit and act, or we fund others who can act

, or

Our lives are going to be enshittified.

The lure of creating near infinite artificial value means Net Neutrality is a constant fight, ever present for the remainder of our lives.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#129

Post by itopaloglu83 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #75
yftsui wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving “free data pass” to limited set of apps is even more harmful IMO, the monopolies can afford pay the network infrastructure but small app developers will not be able to.

This. If ISPs want to QoS traffic into different lanes... fine. But those lanes should: - Be general categories of use - Only be created by regulation - Be freely accessible to any app - Not involve any app-ISP payment

Or, or, hear me out. The companies that need such high speed networks, should pay the infrastructure companies and get their own communication lines built, instead of buying QoS access on publicly funded projects.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#130

Post by whamlastxmas »

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…

I’m constantly having buffering videos across many websites and paying significantly more for this shitty service than nearly anywhere else in the world pays for something significantly better.
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