summary of all the comments: mental gymnastics to not say the obvious: municipal internet provider
everyone will say more regulation, more competition... while drinking their municipal internet and using their municipal electricity
The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
271–280 of 337 posts
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#272ISPs 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.
Bad example, because drinking vs flushing water can have real differences in properties affecting their price, availability and quality. Just like QoS can be meaningful to differentiate low-latency vs high bandwidth. The problem starts when service level is is based on the service-provider, not the type content, when Spotify music is cheaper than Apple music, even though both are just music.
A more accurate analogy would be if the cost was based on the brand of the faucet, or if electricity was charged differently for using your stove vs running your AC. Or if roads had a fast-lane to drive to Costco, while the rest share a jammed single lane.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#273Earlier 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…
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 m…
How competative was the isp market in Utah before Google fiber subsidized the massive build-out?
Google threw in the towel on wiring more new cities about mid-way through the SLC build, which makes need think perhaps the biggest obstacle to your thesis bearing fruit, is upfront infrastructure investments…
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> Although if you come with a foreign SIM and use roaming, you circumvent the GFW automatically for some reason
That's because when your SIM is in international roaming, traffic is routed by the local telco to a tunnel back to the home telco provider. This ofc decreases margins significantly (because those bytes are routed via fiber or satellite by a Transit Service) and is why roaming costs are so high.
> 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
Oof. You'd have to be living under a rock to not know that Google is banned in China, but I guess some tourists just aren't tech savvy, so who am I to judge.
> China has to pay a cost for keeping it kind of opened but mostly closed
Not really. As an individual you are definetly paying a performance cost in the form of low latencies and speeds, but this is also why edge computing solutions (eg. Compute offloading, packet size optimizations, etc) are heavily researched by Chinese players compared to Western players. In isolation, it's a good forcing function for innovation.
That said, it is absolutely 1984-esque.
Also, a lot of these innovations seem to be a result of the Urumqi and Lhasa riots from 10-15 years ago as well as Tahrir Square, so clearly maintaining the political status quo seems to be top of mind.
It's bad for business, but China (and especially Xi) has seemed to have taken a very statist approach after the 2015-16 financial crisis.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Huh, ISPs are far from a natural monopoly. What makes you think they are? Especially if you take mobile broadband, paid 'public' wifi and satellite internet into account.
(Regulations that make market entry harder push things into the monopoly direction, but that's far from 'natural'. See some of the recent troubles SpaceX has been having.)
See also https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/net-neu... or https://www.cato.org/regulation/winter-2011-2012/economics-n...
> Network neutrality makes competition and consumer welfare dependent on law and lobbying, not natural competition. So you’ve chosen the area in which the telcos are strongest on which to fight!
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#276Earlier 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…
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 m…
They're two independent things. You can still require network neutrality in a competitive market with multiple providers.
Whether a market would converge on providers violating network neutrality depends on the characteristics of the market and its customers etc. But if nobody would have violated it anyway, what's the benefit of not having the law? Whereas if you don't have the law and do have violations, that's bad.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Utilities are granted monopolies.
You can say that as many times as you want, but you don't have any evidence or even an explanation.
If there were ten power lines and ten water pipes to your house would say each of those twenty companies had a monopoly?
Repeating something isn't evidence of anything.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transparency is part of the problem. It makes the anti-competitive practice easier to carry out because customers don't know they're getting screwed. But there's still a potential anti-trust issue even with perfect information. Suppose Facebook doesn't want anyone using their competitors, so they subsidize the cost on some ISPs that then block their competitors. The customers of those ISPs are 15% of the market, and…
I think it's much more likely people stop using Facebook in that condition. People may be "stuck" with Meta because everyone is on it but the situation you're describing is a big difference between zero friction to make an account and join everybody else and change your ISP so you can talk to your grandma and look at cats on instagram. I'd rather have choice and transparency and see if the situation you've described…
> I'd rather have choice and transparency
it is very hard to force trancparancy.
Transparancy (at least how I see it) is matter of culture.
For example, if you open up ISP accounting books to the public, creative people will find ways to hide things. Instead of line item “10M € kickback from facebook”, there will be “10M € sale to facebook”.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Although if you come with a foreign SIM and use roaming, you circumvent the GFW automatically for some reason That's because when your SIM is in international roaming, traffic is routed by the local telco to a tunnel back to the home telco provider. This ofc decreases margins significantly (because those bytes are routed via fiber or satellite by a Transit Service) and is why roaming costs are so high. > It is also…
> Oof. You'd have to be living under a rock to not know that Google is banned in China, but I guess some tourists just aren't tech savvy, so who am I to judge.
We hosted an ACM conference in 2011 in Beijing. One of my friends came, first trip to China, really smart guy just finishing up his PhD in EECS at UCB, but OMG did he mess that one up. We had to use the guest wifi in my office so he could make offline copies. If you aren't used to it, and don't follow China closely, you could be very technical and still be caught off guard. Lots of people will tell you China is just a normal tourist spot like Japan, Thailand, or Indonesia, but it really isn't.
> Also, a lot of these innovations seem to be a result of the Urumqi and Lhasa riots from 10-15 years ago as well as Tahrir Square, so clearly maintaining the political status quo seems to be top of mind.
I was in Beijing for those. A lot of things blocked afterwards, we slowly lost more services that we had previously. I would say 2008 was a peak for Chinese internet liberalization (and well, lots of other liberalization, I also spent 6 months in 2002 so can compare), and then it just tanked from that point on to present. They made a show for the Olympics and then decided they didn't need to bother anymore. It doesn't help that Xi is much more assertive and autocratic than Hu was.
Re: The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes
#280Earlier 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…
It is multiple things based on a simple concept: no traffic should be discriminated based on source, destination or type. That means that netflix ones and zeros are treated the same as facebook, same as your web page filled with cat pics, same as torrents.
Can there be technical things why cerain services get lower level service?
I’ve read that ISP buys various links to to other networks at various prices.
So maybe something like: if facebookBar server is on pricier linkFoo and for that reason ISP buys cheaper version of linkFoo effectively downgrading facebookBar service (along with everything on linkFoo)?
If such scenario is realistic, maybe it could be due to valid financial stuff, not due to anticompetetive behaviour. (Just saying, some technically valid scenarios should be taken into account)