"We could see offerings like this"
At least get a new trick.
The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
131–140 of 337 posts
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know there’s a gun pointed at my head, but listen, nobody has pulled the trigger yet, it’s fine.
Sounds like your position is one where no empirical evidence could convince you otherwise, because even if the apocalypse did not come to pass you would use the "gun pointed at me but they didn't pull the trigger" excuse.
Huh?
> "Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that have been degrading video quality for mobile users will have to stop."
This is literally what the article is about. It's happening now, it's been happening, it will continue to happen unless the laws get restored.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that have been degrading video quality for mobile users will have to stop.
"Not with a bang but a whimper."
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#134How many times do we need to fight the same battle? Where I live Netflix has a fast lane and from 6:30pm to 10:30pm every night my internet is unusable.
Yikes, where do you live and how is that sort of thing justified?
not OP but i could see this being normal traffic shaping
netflix users are going to complain and change providers if their tv show buffers at all, so it makes sense to prioritize that traffic - not for netflix's benefit but to avoid angry customers
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#135[deleted]
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#136[deleted]
[deleted]
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There are several definitions for what makes a country “developed” and the US is solidly in all of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
I’m not sure how you can possibly argue that the US is not “developed”.
> The same range of what variable? How do you measure/define this?
Feel free to take any of those lists and compare the US to countries around them in those lists. The countries might differ slightly, but the notion of what is a “developed” country has been firmly established for a long time now.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#138This is one of the few cases where there could be a better title on this for HN.
"FCC May Let Mobile Providers Speed Up or Slow Down Individual Apps and Website, Risking Open Internet"
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#139The 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…
Actually, the empirical record on this shows that we see more net neutrality violations by ISPs in marketplaces with high competition.[1]
This is counter-intuitive but here's how it works:
In a competitive marketplace ISPs have tighter margins and look for every opportunity for cost savings, so if throttling a high-bandwidth application only affects a small percentage of customers, and only a tiny tech-savvy minority of those affected will accurately attribute the effect to ISP throttling, it will incur only the tiniest competitive pressure on the ISP, so the ISP will do it to increase profits.
We actually saw more net neutrality violations in competitive EU markets than in the US, until EU-level net neutrality rules passed.
Another way to look at the limits of competitive pressure is from a startup's point of view: if your startup is offering a new videoconferencing service, how will competition help you when a rogue ISP breaks your service for 10% of your customers by throttling your service but putting Zoom in a fastlane? Your customers will not think "oh, I'd better switch to a better ISP," when ~10% of call participants are unintelligible. They will think, "oh, this new service sucks, I'm going to stick to Zoom."
Competitive pressure on ISPs does not protect nascent startups with small userbases from ISPs. And yet, everything we care about on the Internet started as a nascent startup with a small userbase.
Competition is great for keeping prices down and the US needs more of it. But to protect the long tail of startups and all the new ways people use the Internet from ISPs you need net neutrality laws.
1. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2700055. Key finding: Relying on consumer switching behavior to provide more comprehensive competitive discipline was insufficient for a variety of reasons, including the presence of switching costs.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#140Earlier 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…
A free market is not a lawless market but instead free within regulations. However, the amount of regulation should not make it impossible for competitors to join the market either. With the amount of subsidies in the US for ISPs, I think the services they render might be event called a public service, more than a utility.