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We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

wired.com

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Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#231

Post by dzhiurgis »

dasil003 wrote: post #152
Theodores wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that. The situation is different in the UK, at least with my ISP. They have teamed up with Netflix rather than throttled them. http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9410/virgin-media... In the UK cable TV took a lot longer to arrive than in the US. When it arrived it quickly merged into some monster debt vehicle that had to be refinanced somehow. Nobody really went for cable, it took on a new life…

I moved from Mountain View to London and I have to say the whole telecom system is night and day better in the UK. It's embarrassing how the wool has been pulled over the eyes of Americans in terms of believing that the country has good telecom infrastructure and value. In the UK I pay £10($16)/month for my mobile service on pay-as-you-go vs $70/month on contract in the US (which high limits than I needed, but it was…

Moved from eastern Europe to London and the only thing that is actually better is 3G coverage. The rest is expensive/extremely low quality.

Just came back from holidays at parents. 300 Mbps FTTH is £20/month, however it's not all bells and whistles. Speed to London is 200 Mbps. To NY - 1 Mbps. Neighbouring countries get 100-200 Mbps and I couldn't establish a real pattern, but international torrent speed is usually 25% of the national one.

The thing is we have monopoly and no one is bothered to play that game "rent from us, it's competition" because everyone knows it's extremely inefficient. Where as in London I could choose among 5 or so "competitors", which offer precisely the same service (and all of them won't offer upload speed of more than 200-300 Kbps - it's hardly enough for video chats (which gave me the idea that not only upload speeds should be advertised, but also streaming bandwidth)).

Oh, and how about the whole BT's rollout of FTTC? Why would you'd be saving couple ££'s, when you know for sure that couple years later that will have to be upgraded?

Mobile plans are roughly half price, 3G coverage over the country is spotty and 4G is virtually non-existant.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#232

Post by yuushi »

lsh wrote: post #126
vacri wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a free market guarantee net neutrality? All the big players could still prefer to offer products that curtail it. There's no logical step ensuring net neutrality. An example - in Australia, there is an ISP called Internode, which used to be run by a techie called Hackett. They were very much for user's rights and net neutrality, and were always at the forefront of lobbying the government for users. Their su…

Internode are amazing in every aspect and everyone I've switched to them continue to use them and continue to thank me to this day. The customer service is second to none: http://xkcd.com/806/ IIRC they were bought out by Adam internet. They were also among the first ( the first?) to introduce naked DSL, which you still can't get here in the UK apparently. http://on.net

They were bought out by iiNet. Apparently Adam also signed deals for a takeover by iiNet in August this year.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#233

Post by AutoCorrect »

declan wrote: post #172

Marvin, the author of the Wired.com opinion piece, is a smart fellow. But what he ignores is that Congress never handed the FCC the authority to impose Net neutrality regulations on the Internet. Such legislation actually came up for a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-608…

Once they begin prioritizing traffic, does this eliminate their safe-harbor status? Could be a double-edged sword for them.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#234

Post by devhinton »

argumentum wrote: post #103
jjoonathan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Telcos = Natural Monopoly + Regulatory Capture > The cost is so high partially due to special agreements This is true, but it doesn't contradict the fact that telcos are also natural monopolies. Let's play a game: pretend that all of these special agreements have suddenly become invalid and the market has become deregulated. Assume you have (or can acquire) the technical expertise to challenge them. What's your bu…

There's a lot of ambiguity in your scenario. Do I get equal access to the existing infrastructure (presumably paid for by the existing monopoly)? Assuming this deregulation comes along with some law or judicial ruling that no local government can create such an ongoing monopoly, there would likely be created a separate industry that simply builds infrastructure at some price to the locality with no continuing agreeme…

If any of the subsequent logic is flawed I'm very open to conceding points based on logically rebuttals.

Aside: This community is awesome, so much respect for this intelligent lengthy, conversation.

It seems 'regulated' vs. 'unregulated' is a false dichotomy, no?

A company in the US (there maybe some complications due to globalization) cannot kill a customer who writes a bad yelp review. This might be advantageous, if the customer will never use the company's service again and may convince others to avoid that company (and the killing does not cause PR harm) then it as a gain to have this customer, and their review, gone.

This is a regulation. So are anti-discriminatory laws (it is true that the market can potentially correct for racists attitudes by naturally punishing those who refuse do business with a segment of the population. This only holds when the discriminated group is large enough and the market is not saturated).

Lets look at this point:

> In most unregulated industries, quality rises and price falls (in the long run)

Can we instead substitute: 'In most industries, as you decrease regulation, quality rises and prices fall'.

Can we agree that if a company could force us to buy their products at gun point, they would sell us terrible products? Or at the other extreme, if the government regulates everything, companies often create shitty products (Products in some communist countries)?

If we can, what we are looking for is a 'sweet spot of regulation'. Maybe that allows the natural spirit of competition to create the best product given the constraint of cost?

To look even further, (I'm blanking on an example >_So would a comprise to this question of 'should telecommunications be regulated?' fall to, yes, 'there should be a set of regulations which allow for competition' and that change when 'a new technology emerges that hopefully decreases (it could increase by the same logic. For example, advent of very expensive technology that is advantageous to have) the amount of regulation need (or even that changes the type of regulation).

In this picture, the government might be more akin to a gardner, the lump of citizen action (a tree) and the laws (in case the regulations) the frame used to shape the tree as it grows[1].

So if we accept this flow, we have arrived at, 'regulation which shifts as technology affects the barrier to entry meant to allow for competitive spirt to flourish and natural create the best product given cost constraints'

I'll readily admit this logically path takes a wide definition of what 'regulation' means.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping#Methods (just awesome examples of tree shaping 0.o)

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#235

Post by Theodores »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #231
dasil003 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from Mountain View to London and I have to say the whole telecom system is night and day better in the UK. It's embarrassing how the wool has been pulled over the eyes of Americans in terms of believing that the country has good telecom infrastructure and value. In the UK I pay £10($16)/month for my mobile service on pay-as-you-go vs $70/month on contract in the US (which high limits than I needed, but it was…

Moved from eastern Europe to London and the only thing that is actually better is 3G coverage. The rest is expensive/extremely low quality. Just came back from holidays at parents. 300 Mbps FTTH is £20/month, however it's not all bells and whistles. Speed to London is 200 Mbps. To NY - 1 Mbps. Neighbouring countries get 100-200 Mbps and I couldn't establish a real pattern, but international torrent speed is usually 2…

In the UK we were able to get something good enough using the copper that was in place 'since Marconi was a lad' simply by putting in better boxes at the local telephone exchange.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, after the wall fell, the situation was 'well, let's start from scratch'. Hence in places like Latvia you have internet speeds both ways (uplink as well as downlink) that are ridiculously fast compared to what is offered in the UK.

When it comes to the fat pipes, a lot of it was put in place during a speculative bubble more than a decade ago. Remember companies like Nortel? I think the bubble burst before they got to places like Riga. So it does not surprise me at all what you are saying.

Incidentally 3G was also a weird speculative bubble in the UK, more than 20 billion or so went on the auction for the radio spectrum. Maybe things were a bit more realistic in Eastern Europe.

The situation in the USA is going to be quite scary. Lots of areas that were remote but sophisticated, e.g. Missoula in Montana, could fall off the map as a desirable place to live, just because of poor internet speeds. It does not seem the government is that alarmed about the country turning into internet have's and have not's.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#236

Post by CWuestefeld »

andrewflnr wrote: post #203
Artistry121 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government exists to organize society. Feudalism served its lords, monarchy served its kings and nobles, empire its emperors, and democracy, occasionally, its people. Government has served a variety of masters in the past - but rarely purely the public interest.

It should serve the public interest, which is good enough for policy debates.

It should serve the public interest, which is good enough for policy debates.

This is absolutely false. Policy debates universally assume that it will serve the public interest, despite experience and extensive research in public choice economics.

The result is that we get policies that aren't crafted to be robust to corruption and bad incentives, and that gets us to the state we're in today.

Any policy debate should include discussion of what could go wrong, what the effects of that would be, and what we could/should do to prevent that.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#237

Post by dublinben »

grizzles wrote: post #209

We are doing a net neutrality IndieGogo campaign http://uplink.aero/project.html http://igg.me/at/aero But based on our conversion rate, I don't think there is a market for it. Feel free to email us if you have any constructive criticism. contact@uplink.aero

I'm not surprised that your campaign hasn't succeeded. You do a very poor job of explaining how it works, or what the benefits are, and it largely duplicates the efforts of other existing mesh networking projects, and free software/hardware projects like FreedomBox.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#238

Post by shmerl »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #2

I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.

Do you consider those who support antitrust regulations to be on the side of freedom? Monopoly is the opposite of freedom and is much closer to dictatorship.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#239

Post by davorak »

belorn wrote: post #202
davorak wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the wording of the contract had already changed to be specific to commercial activity, at least in KC. Am I remembering things incorrectly?

Its not enough that you change the fine print in a 20 page long legal contract. A restaurant could easy require you to agree to an customer agreement on the point of booking a table. It would still not allow them to book 50 people and make food for 10, arguing that their capacity to make food is full. Even if the customer agreement said that the restaurant is only responsible to supply food "up to" all-you-can-eat. T…

> It would still not allow them to book 50 people and make food for 10,

Is something like a 5 to 1 over booking happening with google fiber? Overbooking is common practice with airlines and many business that have solid statistics that tell them how safe it is to overbook. It is not normally considered, when done in a reasonable manner, a scam to do so either.

Re: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

#240

Post by orthecreedence »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #205

How is this different from Google charging bit guys for blackhat SEO, while those who don't pay - are penalised?

Because Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. If you don't like the results, don't use Google. However, if you don't like your ISP, generally your only option is to move to a different city/state.
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