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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

#251

Post by vineyardmike »

pipes wrote: post #160
holmesworcester wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought net neutrality was about ISPs trying to get netflix, facebook etc to pay them extra not to throttle. The only throttling I've heard of here in the UK (which has lots of providers and competition) is on torrenting. Are there examples of what you are talking about with zoom etc? Because as far as I can reason: if an isp throttled something like that in a high competition market, they'd lose their customers. A…

Getting a high-traffic service to pay extra or degrading other services are basically the same thing. Because the obvious question is “what happens if they don’t pay”? The obvious answer is throttling.

> And if it was a low user / start up phase app it wouldn't provide any competitive advantage for an isp to throttle it.

What we’ve seen in developing nations is internet that’s subsidized but only for certain companies (eg free Facebook, paid everything else) and people just use Facebook and have 0 access to the outside internet.

There are examples in the US at least, albeit less severe. It was (is?) common for cell phone companies to offer unlimited data cellphone plans, but they throttle video streaming to a lower resolution. Then offer “unmetered streaming of Netflix” (pick your VOD provider) while, again, degrading the video stream of other companies.

I’m pro-net neutrality but also I question if subsidized internet would actually be bad. If you can take a heavily metered or poor service, and subsidize it, then that could be the tool that helps bring internet to more people at less cost to those users. Advertisers would basically be subsidizing internet through these giants. The catch would be to find rules that don’t throttle competition which I don’t know if that’s possible.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#252

Post by mardifoufs »

randomdata wrote: post #220
mardifoufs wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are completely irrelevant in 95% of Canada. There's bell, Rogers, and Telus. I guess Videotron in Quebec too. That's pretty much it and even then, here in Quebec it's either Videotron or bell, or their resellers. At least in Montreal.

> Those are completely irrelevant in 95% of Canada. But quite relevant as they provide a proven, working model that can be used anywhere in Canada. That's the beauty of public/cooperative ownership – all people have to do is do it. > here in Quebec it's either Videotron or bell What about CoopTel, Sogetel, and Téléphone de Courcelles?

Well I'm not saying they are irrelevant in the sense that they don't provide a good model for what an ISP should be, but more so that they are irrelevant because they don't provide services to the vast majority of people.

Also a part from sogetel, those are either very small or regional. Even sogetel is regional and doesn't really provide services outside small villages and cities. That's not bad, but it's not enough to say that Canada's market isn't deeply uncompetitive. Even the US has tons of cooperative and WISPs that follow a similar coop pattern.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#253

Post by AnthonyMouse »

godelski wrote: post #240
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that we keep seeing this happen and work but then it isn't more popular. Government services are typically inefficient, but so are private monopolies for almost exactly the same reasons. If you put them into competition with each other then they both have more competition and have to do better.

I think it is because it requires significant cooperation. And by significant, I mean size, not the actual amount of action required by an individual. This is an interesting problem to me and seems to be quite a prolific issue. I think it is because everyone feels like they are a tiny meaningless cog in a giant machine. But this confuses me. Even tiny cogs play an important role. Even if your function is redundant, t…

> Or simply voting in a new politician when everyone hates the current one.

Oh, we already know how this one works. People generally like their elected representative, because that's how they won in that district. The district has e.g. a large employer, and the representative makes sure those jobs for the people in the district aren't lost. Even though that's the very thing people in other districts are complaining about, and in order to get that one thing the representative had to betray the citizenry in 250 other subtle ways to get votes from 250 other districts.

This is why federal legislation was originally meant to be limited in scope and require approval from both the House and the Senate, the latter of which was meant to be appointed by the state legislatures and thereby more inclined to reject that kind of populist vote buying and expansion of federal power. But we changed all that without thinking it through and now we suffer the consequences.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#254

Post by spullara »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #59
spullara wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why are you calling their municipal fiber internet a monopoly? Not only is it a utility, here is a list of 10 other broadband providers including att fiber, xfinity and verizon 300mb 5g: https://broadbandnow.com/Tennessee/Chattanooga Pretty ridiculous and disingenuous to call it "monopoly".

Does someone else have access to that infrastructure that can offer the service? Utilities are granted monopolies.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#255

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scarface_74 wrote: post #232
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the exact opposite. It’s clear the majority of customers here cannot make an informed decision either by way of incompetence about the technical aspects that would enable them to detect bad faith behavior on the part of ISPs, or lack of transparency, or outright lack of competition in their market. Competition does not work to increase quality if the customer cannot judge it. The entire benefits of markets an…

The only reason utilities are regulated are because they are natural monopoly. It doesn’t make sense to have more than one utility company with right of way to dig up streets to create the needed infrastructure. To an extent, cellular is a natural oligopoly. Each carrier needs enough spectrum to have decent service. But it isn’t a monopoly.

> To an extent, cellular is a natural oligopoly. Each carrier needs enough spectrum to have decent service. But it isn’t a monopoly.

It's a natural monopoly in exactly the same way any other utility is. "It doesn't make sense to have more than one utility build towers everywhere to create the needed infrastructure." In theory if only one company did it you would only need one set of towers and costs would be lower. But a private monopoly doesn't exactly optimize costs either, and some utilities cost more to duplicate than others. It's much more expensive to have redundant roads than redundant cables running along the same set of utility poles or in the same cable trench, and cell towers are on that end of the range.

The spectrum is a red herring. You could operate live auctions to bid on spectrum in real time in areas of scarcity instead of allocating it permanently to particular companies. This would also give companies the incentive to operate more towers at lower power levels, because you'd only need to bid on spectrum in the same collision domain and lower power levels would cause that to be smaller areas with less contention, lowering their spectrum costs.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#257

Post by godelski »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #253
godelski wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because it requires significant cooperation. And by significant, I mean size, not the actual amount of action required by an individual. This is an interesting problem to me and seems to be quite a prolific issue. I think it is because everyone feels like they are a tiny meaningless cog in a giant machine. But this confuses me. Even tiny cogs play an important role. Even if your function is redundant, t…

> Or simply voting in a new politician when everyone hates the current one. Oh, we already know how this one works. People generally like their elected representative, because that's how they won in that district. The district has e.g. a large employer, and the representative makes sure those jobs for the people in the district aren't lost. Even though that's the very thing people in other districts are complaining a…

> People generally like their elected representative

This is definitely part of it but not all of it. There's more. I hear people complaining about the exact people they vote for.

I think another part of the problem is simply parties. We vote along lines rather than actual beliefs. I actually believe we'd be better off without them. Or at least affiliations on ballots. Like how we do judges. Hand out a booklet, let people vote by mail and take their time. But don't give people the super lazy version. Some friction is good, too much is bad.

The issue I see is it just makes tribalism very easy. And it's very easy to abuse this. Even countries with more than two parties only effectively have two either via major parties or through coalitions. America just has their coalitions under two big umbrellas (Biden and AOC in the same party? Trump and Romney? Those would be different parties in many European countries, but under the same coalitions)

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#258

Post by AnthonyMouse »

godelski wrote: post #257
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or simply voting in a new politician when everyone hates the current one. Oh, we already know how this one works. People generally like their elected representative, because that's how they won in that district. The district has e.g. a large employer, and the representative makes sure those jobs for the people in the district aren't lost. Even though that's the very thing people in other districts are complaining a…

> People generally like their elected representative This is definitely part of it but not all of it. There's more. I hear people complaining about the exact people they vote for. I think another part of the problem is simply parties. We vote along lines rather than actual beliefs. I actually believe we'd be better off without them. Or at least affiliations on ballots. Like how we do judges. Hand out a booklet, let p…

That most often happens in one-party districts because the incumbent doesn't have to please the voters when the district would never go for the other party.

The two party system itself is caused by first-past-the-post voting. In that system if there are more than two parties, the two most similar parties split the vote and both lose, giving them the incentive to merge together instead of running against each other, until there are only two left. Score voting/approval voting fixes this.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#259

Post by samatman »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #90
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…

> 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've got a symmetric gigabit.

I could have five but what would I even do with it?

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#260

Post by eru »

holmesworcester wrote: post #139
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…

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…

Net neutrality is pretty silly as a regulation, and most economists are against it.

You are right that net neutrality, and competitive markets (and thus low prices for consumers) don't really go together.

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