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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

#261

Post by seanmcdirmid »

alephnerd wrote: post #238
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, then I’m not even sure why they bother with lines out anymore. They’ve blocked pretty much everything abroad, it seems like they could speed things up by just scrapping the GFW and physically disconnecting their internet from the rest of the world.

> it seems like they could speed things up by just scrapping the GFW and physically disconnecting their internet from the rest of the world If you do that, international commerce for China grinds to a complete halt (though ik one very large F50 that is in the process of completely decoupling in the next 2 years) Especially because this kind of an en masse disconnection means completely disconnecting Chinese assets ab…

That makes sense, but at least China has to pay a cost for keeping it kind of opened but mostly closed.

It is also really hostile for foreign tourists. You'd be surprised how many people still go to China and have all their trip plans stored in Google docs...doh. Although if you come with a foreign SIM and use roaming, you circumvent the GFW automatically for some reason.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#262

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wzyboy wrote: post #249
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in China for 9 years and always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow. Like sure you have 5G, but the overall internet trunks are just saturated and not built out enough. Maybe it has gotten better since I left Beijing in 2016? It was definitely cheap and affordable. But I always felt a huge speed bump (along with easy access to foreign web sites) when I went to Thailand…

> I lived in China for 9 years and always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow. Did you have your VPN / proxy on? That might be one of the reason as Chinese internet is only fast for traffic within its borders. Traffic that crosses borders are super slow in terms of throughput AND latency (if not blocked altogether). If you have your VPN / proxy on, your request basically crosse…

We tried many VPNs, and they all would stop working after paying for the mandatory few months, so I eventually gave up. IT is slow inside China even without using a VPN, and only accessing domestic Chinese websites (well, if you don't have YouTube, at least you have tons of pirated content to view).

This is with a wired line from China Telecom, China Unicom internet is fine for text viewing, I don't I bothered much with video (and really, it is slower than China Mobile 5G, I guess this has changed now).

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#263

Post by rjzzleep »

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…

> the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite

Why to a lesser extent? In my experience Canada's was way worse than the US, which I honestly didn't think would be possible.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#264

Post by Too »

vineyardmike wrote: post #251
pipes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 companie…

Taken straight out the mafia for dummies handbook. "It would be a shame if something were to happen to the bandwidth of your service in our network".

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#265

Post by cyberax »

eru wrote: post #260
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…

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.

Most economists? BS.

Most economists understand that ISPs in the US are a natural monopoly, you simply can not have more than 1 or 2 choices in most locations.

And when there is no possibility of competition, regulation becomes necessary.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#266

Post by bongodongobob »

alephnerd wrote: post #166

Hot take from rest of HN: I don't think lack of competition is the cause for the slow uptake in the US. Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and NTT+KDDI are basically duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our 5G nationwide in just 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while keeping competitive pricing, and make the US market look free in comparison. The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of th…

I think when people talk about lack of competition, the argument really isn't framed as the government just mandating things as an option. It's the free market solution. Of course we could just say "it's illegal to have shitty internet". I would support that, but, y'know, we love our freedom to have shit infrastructure here in the US. It's our goddamn right.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#267

Post by Too »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #129
ethbr1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what big CDN and cloud vendors do. You can see them as part of the infrastructure. For big users of cloud you can get dedicated connections, for example Azure ExpressRoute.

That's a complete different game than that between end-customers, ISPs and service providers.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#268

Post by oceanplexian »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #177
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #148

Earlier 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…

Except I live in one of the places that has widespread competition (Utah) and can pick from one of dozens of Fiber Internet providers, including some that can provide 10Gbps service, a cable company, and even technically Starlink.

How many of them are throttling content to prevent competition in this hypothetical anti-net neutrality scenario? Exactly zero.

Which is evidence to me that Net Neutrality is a sham, what more people need is a free market. Not another government monopoly with some regulations slapped on.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#269

Post by oceanplexian »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #218
parineum wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution there is transparency. I'd be much happier if the government regulations gave me information to make an informed decision rather than forced a decision on me.

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…

> 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

Unfortunately, if consumers can’t make an informed decision, then there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that the government, which is full of technically incompetent bureaucrats, is going to somehow make the right decision for them.

I’d sooner trust an average 15 year old to regulate the Internet than literally any elected politician or professional lobbyist.

Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

#270

Post by alephnerd »

bongodongobob wrote: post #266
alephnerd wrote: post #166

Hot take from rest of HN: I don't think lack of competition is the cause for the slow uptake in the US. Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and NTT+KDDI are basically duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our 5G nationwide in just 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while keeping competitive pricing, and make the US market look free in comparison. The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of th…

I think when people talk about lack of competition, the argument really isn't framed as the government just mandating things as an option. It's the free market solution. Of course we could just say "it's illegal to have shitty internet". I would support that, but, y'know, we love our freedom to have shit infrastructure here in the US. It's our goddamn right.

"Lack of competition" implies an antitrust solution, yet I have examples of countries where markets are extremely consolidated (and would be a slam dunk FTC case) yet are able to benefit the consumer.

My argument is that the amount of litigation needed in coordination with the FTC, FCC, and others makes an opaque system.

The American system isn't truly a free market - it's increasingly ossified, with decisions immediately litigated following a regulatory decision.

This incentivizes larger organizations with the capital to initiate litigation and continue to be players at the expense of potentially disruptive upstarts (ie. Startups).

At the end of the day, some industries are suboptimal if following a New America/Warren style vision of antitrust.

I don't disagree with the notion of antitrust, but I think "consumer harm" is a better heuristic than an "open markets" approach.

If an oligopoly arises yet is able to keep inflation down and production high, so be it.

If a monopoly or oligopoly is abusing it's position to extract higher than needed costs, then it's time to use the DoJ hammer.

An "open market" approach can be diametrically opposed to "consumer benefit" as it can prevent the economies of scale needed for commercial players to meet their financial needs. Instead, a subsidy or PLI driven approach to build more players would be a much better option, and we've already seen the positive impact that has had via the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

This is also the approach used by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and has helped minimize the amount of financialization compared to the US or the EU, and has helped maintain their commanding heights.

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