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Net neutrality

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Net neutrality

#61

Post by wtallis »

exelius wrote: post #27
njs12345 wrote: post #19

> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the problem. [2] This is pretty much how it works in the UK; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach It does seem to work pretty well.. there are a wide variety of operators and prices are very low. If I ha…

> and there seems to be very limited innovation in the last mile - even in London it's hard to get more than 20mbps, and many people in rural areas are stuck with a crappy DSL line at 2mbps or so. This is the entirety of the problem with the DSL-style line sharing. If the companies operating the infrastructure get paid on a per-customer basis, they have no incentive to make the service better by improving service for…

> If you want DSL-style line sharing to work in the US, the line owners will need to charge the ISPs on a per-gigabyte basis. This pretty much requires the ISPs to charge on a metered basis as well. This would be an overwhelmingly bad thing for companies doing business over the Internet.

Why? It seems to me that metered internet could work just fine, if the prices are at least somewhat connected with reality (meaning cents per gigabyte at most, with a base cost not more than about $20/month). The form of metering we currently have in the US is usually punitive overage charges for data in excess of some unrealistically low monthly quota, and is applied on top of $60+/month subscription fees. That's obviously bad for internet content providers (since their whole point is to deter further usage), but I think reasonable prices are possible.

Re: Net neutrality

#62

Post by fred_durst »

exelius wrote: post #27
njs12345 wrote: post #19

> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the problem. [2] This is pretty much how it works in the UK; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach It does seem to work pretty well.. there are a wide variety of operators and prices are very low. If I ha…

> and there seems to be very limited innovation in the last mile - even in London it's hard to get more than 20mbps, and many people in rural areas are stuck with a crappy DSL line at 2mbps or so. This is the entirety of the problem with the DSL-style line sharing. If the companies operating the infrastructure get paid on a per-customer basis, they have no incentive to make the service better by improving service for…

Investment dollars are definitely not coupled with profit. They haven't been for almost 100 years in the US.

Re: Net neutrality

#63

Post by CodeMage »

orblivion wrote: post #49

I'll try not to be an overbearing libertarian here talking about how this is all the government's fault. It's not 100% clear to me and somebody else has that covered. But I do want to put one concept out there as food for thought. The FCC's mission statement (amended in 1996) is the following: "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, colo…

So if the current implementation of democracy is broken, the solution is to completely abolish government?

Re: Net neutrality

#64

Post by exelius »

chimeracoder wrote: post #43
twoodfin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to pick out common criticisms, Openreach can take their time if you have to deal with them directly (getting a line installed in a new office or apartment can take a few weeks), and there seems to be very limited innovation in the last mile - even in London it's hard to get more than 20mbps, and many people in rural areas are stuck with a crappy DSL line at 2mbps or so. That's exactly what I'd expect. Make i…

> If everyone here (as I do) hopes they'll have gigabit speeds to their homes in a few years, Unless you already live in a very densely populated area[0], I don't think there's any reasonable chance of that happening for most people, whether we go the Title II route or not. Title II is better than the alternative, but having gigabit speeds for most households is quite a ways off no matter how we do it. [0] And even t…

> [0] And even then - I live in Manhattan and several buildings on my block have FiOS, but mine does not (thanks to TWC's exclusive agreement with the building owner).

This is a problem with MDUs and why the big telecoms have dedicated sales teams assigned to make these kinds of deals. The more likely scenario is that Verizon was working on getting these kinds of deals set up, then they halted FiOS expansion and stopped adding new buildings before they got to yours.

I don't think contractual exclusivity is legal, but a building owner does have to set up agreements with a company like Verizon or TWC to allow them access to the building, provide a contractual basis as to who owns what wiring, etc. So if Verizon doesn't reach out to the building and set that up, FiOS isn't going to be offered.

Re: Net neutrality

#65

Post by SkyMarshal »

jonahx wrote: post #47
zoba wrote: post #42

Folks: If you go here: http://www.fcc.gov/comments and click 14-28 ("Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet"), it will take you to a form where you can submit your comments.

In order to post comments, you have to make your name and address available on the site publicly? Am I understanding that correctly?

Or just send an email, no name or address required:

http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-inter...

Or use/create a Twitter account:

http://www.fcc.gov/events/twitter-chat-gigi-sohn-netneutrali...

Re: Net neutrality

#66

Post by Retric »

cs702 wrote: post #60

I agree, there's no real competition for the "last mile." (If there were real competition, ISPs would be trampling over each other to deliver the best Netflix experience and bragging about it in their advertising campaigns!) Requiring the incumbent mono/duopolistic last-mile ISPs to lease their lines may improve the situation, but I'm not as sure as Sam Altman that it would bring about real competition, because of th…

One option would be to prevent any company from operating a last mile AND selling it to retail customers.

Honestly, what I find most striking is how bad cable boxes are simply because there is no completion.

Re: Net neutrality

#67

Post by rayiner »

I don't see how a normally libertarian-leaning group of people have embraced regulation rather than deregulation as to this issue. Why do local ISP markets tend towards monopoly, even though it has been illegal since 1992 to grant local cable monopolies? Two words: universal access.

It's the same principle that led municipalities to grant taxicab monopolies, of the kind that stifle companies like Uber today. The idea is that in a free market, providers would only focus on the profitable parts of the city, leaving the lower-income areas without service.

Universal access is why it's impossible to "disrupt" the market for local internet. A new entrant can't just come into the market and pick off the most desirable customers or the ones that are cheapest to service. They have to be prepared to service everyone, even many customers who can only be served at a loss, in order to be allowed to operate at all. Additional regulation in this space isn't going to eliminate the underlying problem, it will just make infrastructure construction a more unattractive business and decrease investment.

There is no free lunch. You can have: neutrality, universal access, or a mostly privately-funded telecom infrastructure, but you only get to pick two. If you think universal access is important, and net neutrality is important, you have to be willing to publicly subsidize the construction of telecom infrastructure.

PS. Some folks have mentioned BT OpenReach, but it's important to understand what did and did not happen there. First, BT was originally a government-owned corporation before it was privatized, so the government was in a position to set the terms of the privatization. Second, the government used a fairly generous "RPI - X" price cap to certain of BT's services. Between monopoly pricing power and a relatively generous price cap, BT made very healthy returns on investment. See: http://www.academia.edu/3399930/LESSONS_OF_PRIVATISATION_IN_... (p. 28-9).

In the U.S., unbundled DSL was a failure. First, it got caught up in litigation because the infrastructure was never public at any point. Second, it was an almost pure losing proposition for the telecom companies. The FCC mandated a not-very-generous cost-based price control (TELRIC), which made further investments in DSL infrastructure unattractive.

Re: Net neutrality

#68

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #67

I don't see how a normally libertarian-leaning group of people have embraced regulation rather than deregulation as to this issue. Why do local ISP markets tend towards monopoly, even though it has been illegal since 1992 to grant local cable monopolies? Two words: universal access. It's the same principle that led municipalities to grant taxicab monopolies, of the kind that stifle companies like Uber today. The idea…

I don't see how internet is any less a natural monopoly than electricity. Picture a residential street with 100 completely separate fiber optic networks vs 10 vs 1, now which seems more efficient. It's not like everyone connects to a different Hacker News.

Re: Net neutrality

#69

Post by pokpokpok »

Touche wrote: post #8

> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the problem. Devil's advocate, why would any company want to be the infrastructure-owning company then? Aren't they in the worst spot?

to lease the lines and get revenue that way

Re: Net neutrality

#70

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

I've seen solutions where connection provider and Internet service provider aren't same entity. If connection provider connects customers to POP where there are several Internet provders, it makes it trivial to switch service provider.

I've also always avoided deals where Internet operator owns cabling. It's much better that those are separated. There was a free offer for fiber connectivity. I refused it, ordered own fibers and now it's possible to choose provider quite freely. Because switching provider doesn't prevent using the same fiber with them.

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