Fast lanes are the biggest selling point of 5G due to limited backhaul bandwidth. Instead of eliminating fast lanes, force ISPs to provide access to fast lanes equally ( must issue, not may issue).
The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
181–190 of 337 posts
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#182ISPs 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.
I find it interesting how nobody blinks an eyelid at the massive profits raked in by companies like Google, Facebook etc. but as soon as the ISPs that create the infrastructure that makes all this happen (and innovate massively in the process) want some piece of the cake everyone cries foul. Now I actually strongly support net neutrality and maybe ISPs don't really need a piece of the cake, but it is still interestin…
It would probably be easier to root for the ISPs if they weren't a bunch of monopolistic assholes. I know that's the reason I personally root against them.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because the internet went to shit and actually very little happens outside of major platforms anyway. This type of traffic shaping would just cement it as-is, making it almost impossible for a new platform to come up.
Tiktok would beg to differ. Starting a new social network is hard, but bandwdith/net neutrality is the least of your problems.
One of the issues here is decentralized services. If you're starting a new centralized service, you can pay a CDN which itself is already paying the danegeld or is too big to degrade without the ISP's customers blaming the ISP. That's a tax but if you're state-funded or VC-funded you can just eat it.
Whereas if you want to build something based on IPFS or just host your own website out of your home/business, ISPs have the incentive to thwart this, because then they couldn't double dip anymore. See also cable companies explicitly designing slow upload speeds into the most widely deployed versions of DOCSIS.
So then you're creating a bias towards centralized closed-source services instead of open standards and self-hosting.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins?
> Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins? They would. The issue is that competition alone wouldn't fix it, because there is an information deficit. Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to degrade their own competitors. And since this is always bad -- it's anti-competitive in the market…
And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad, and not care because they're only using the connection for SSH terminals and email.
Don't assume that people only pick these plans because they're uninformed.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#185My experience with 5G is that it's strictly worse than LTE. At this point, if I see the 5G symbol on my phone I'm conditioned to expect the internet to barely work. Requests frequently seem to just hang.
Are you possibly on a 2nd-tier plan (like mine, I have grandfathered T-Mobile "simple choice" @ $10/line)? MNVOs like Mint, etc are also typically 2nd-tier.
Telcos typically downrate 2nd-tier data, so if it's there's congestion, we feel it most.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#186Earlier 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.
We can turn this around though, can't we? If the ISPs have no designs on violating network neutrality then why do they oppose it?
If you repeal the law against burglary and then burglary doesn't immediately skyrocket, would you say that we shouldn't have a law against burglary? Of course not, because regardless of how often it happens, you'd like it to never happen and would want to prosecute it any time it does regardless of how often.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#187The 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?
Heres a little illustration. I used to work for a multinational company that had its main office in london and a number of satellite offices around the world. We wanted to install decent internet into everywhere so we could begin to manage our data in a more effective way.
London: look for a good offer, phone up a few ISPs, get a quote, work out if we have spare capacity in the building (we did) boom, 1 gigabit install inside a month.
Redwood city: 6 months. we had some sort of shitty T3 line installed as a stopgap. It never reached SLA. I had to phone the NOX, get a report. I then phoned the EMEA president of $large_International_network_provider to complain personally that I had to do the work of half his fucking company to get dailup++ installed. I left before they managed to get actual fibre into the building.
Santa Monica: "we cant install fibre as the previous engineer reported seeing eyes under the building" Try and use a different company. Turns out that there is only that company in santa monica (Can't remember which) Ok, order an upgrade to what we already have. "line is bad needs replacing" cue me having to _fucking fly out_ and manage the fourth attempt at upgrading because the company are such useless fucking pricks.
domestic wise
I am in the suburbs, they've just rolled out fibre to the house. I have 900 meg down with 100(might be more) up for £50 a month. Thats the pricy version with a fixed ipv4 address.
I can get a less fancy version for £30.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins? They would. The issue is that competition alone wouldn't fix it, because there is an information deficit. Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to degrade their own competitors. And since this is always bad -- it's anti-competitive in the market…
And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad, and not care because they're only using the connection for SSH terminals and email. Don't assume that people only pick these plans because they're uninformed.
The informed customers aren't the issue. If Disney is paying to make Netflix look bad, it's because somebody is getting fooled into thinking Netflix is to blame for this, otherwise what is Disney getting for their money? So that plan is an anti-competitive measure, regardless of whether it also presents an arbitrage opportunity for customers who don't care about video streaming. If its only customers were the arbitrageurs then Disney would have no reason to pay and it wouldn't exist.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins? They would. The issue is that competition alone wouldn't fix it, because there is an information deficit. Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to degrade their own competitors. And since this is always bad -- it's anti-competitive in the market…
And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad, and not care because they're only using the connection for SSH terminals and email. Don't assume that people only pick these plans because they're uninformed.
> Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to degrade their own competitors
> And some people will pick the ISP where Disney's subsidizing the subscription to make Netflix look bad, and not care because they're only using the connection for SSH terminals and email
It seems unlikely that there are anywhere close to as many of the latter as the former
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#190The 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…
This isn’t at all true in the way you are portraying it. Of course, if you have more of something, you have more of the related things. If you have more oranges, more oranges are going to be rotten. This is obvious if you can think about it for more than 30s.
The overall net effect isn’t what you say it is though.