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Net neutrality

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Re: Net neutrality

#121

Post by ef4 »

Retric wrote: post #68
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.

It's not obvious whether it's really a bad idea to have several independent fiber networks in the same geographic area. Choice is good. And it would also necessarily imply more total capacity, which is also good.

So deciding the "right" number of network operators in one place is subjective, and comes down to what consumers are willing to pay for. Or at least it would, if competition weren't illegal. There's nothing "natural" about the monopolies we have now.

And even if it turns out that a single network is the best arrangement, it should still be possible for municipalities to choose to own their own last mile fiber and buy transit at competitive rates. Which is also generally illegal in most of the US, thanks to the lobbying efforts of the big incumbents.

And it's also absurd that we're still letting analog-era regulations govern our use of wireless spectrum. We should really have ultra wideband wireless ISPs by now.

Re: Net neutrality

#122

Post by jonahx »

loumf wrote: post #100
zoba wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, looks that way. Putting my name on protecting the internet is something I'm proud to do. Putting my address down is a bit obnoxious though - I doubt they're going to do any verification on these.

They don't have to. If anyone wants to, they could verify it. I helped support an effort to find evidence of astroturfing an FCC request for comment. Having this data enabled us to do that work. Knowing that the data could be verified is supposed to be a deterrent to acting in bad faith. Later, one could do the verification if they doubted the comments were genuine. Given the amount of tech power behind keeping net-n…

They could ask for the information, but not make it public.

Re: Net neutrality

#123

Post by ataggart »

saucetenuto wrote: post #97
snitko wrote: post #74

I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…

> Do you know why I pay so little? That's because we have the free-est goddamn ISP market This is a little imprecise; "free" and "free of governmental interference" are not the same thing. More likely it is because you have a _competitive_ ISP market. That might in turn be because of how free your market is, but in order to really know we'd have to know how your area solved the problems that led city governments to g…

>"free" and "free of governmental interference" are not the same thing.

Since "free" in this context means absence of coercion against extant or would-be competitors, and since government regulatory efforts are a source of such anti-competitive coercion, unless one is concerned with firms sending hit squads against each other (which would more rightly be considered "crime"), the distinction isn't particularly useful.

Re: Net neutrality

#124

Post by cma »

exelius wrote: post #102
wtallis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But the prices you list aren't connected with reality. They're your wishful thinking of what Internet access should cost. Reality says that most telecom companies make about 10-15% net margins, so there really isn't room to drop prices more than 10% or so from where they are currently, even if the ISPs are willing to abandon all hope of profits. It's also a well-known psychological phenomenon that people will curtail…

Telecoms have huge marketing budgets. A large portion is just a zero-sum war with competitors (another portion is enticing people to upgrade existing service).

Those are effectively a source of hidden profit margins--NFL, Major League Baseball, et. al. get them instead of the telecom operators, but when looking at how much prices could drop, you have to consider that.

Re: Net neutrality

#125

Post by rayiner »

dragonwriter wrote: post #93
rayiner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merely being profitable is good enough if you're happy to maintain the status quo. If you want companies to invest billions of dollars of new capital to upgrade the infrastructure, you have to make that investment not just profitable, but an attractive one relative to other opportunities. Simple question: Silicon Valley talks a lot about the problems with the telecom industry, but why does nobody want to actually inv…

> Silicon Valley talks a lot about the problems with the telecom industry, but why does nobody want to actually invest money building telecom infrastructure? The incumbent--descendants of local/regional/national monopoly telephone or cable--providers have little competitive pressure to do so, and other people face intrinsic (largely non-regulatory, except to the extent that real property rights are "regulatory", thou…

But don't telcos face the same issue: enormous capital costs with limited prospects for attractive returns? E.g. FiOS is profitable, but the margins have been quite disappointing to shareholders. Indeed, observers have been skeptical about the value proposition of FiOS since the beginning: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/a-bear-speaks-why-v.... Note that this article was written in 2008. As of 2014, Verizon is still below the 40% penetration rate assumed in the article: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizons-FiOS-Growth-Slow....

At the end of the day, the math has to work out. Everyone assumes, arguendo, that the value proposition of building out fiber is there, but if telcos continue to be required to offer universal service, and if they are forced to operate in a regulatory regime where they can't capture some of the money generated by services running on top of their infrastructure, it's not at all clear that the enormous investment into fiber is going to be justifiable for the shareholders of telecom companies.

Re: Net neutrality

#126

Post by kaonashi »

snitko wrote: post #74

I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…

Considering our government created the internet in the first place, I'm not sure that's a long-term winning strategy.

Re: Net neutrality

#127

Post by SilasX »

tzs wrote: post #73
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…

There was a show on PBS [1] that looked at internet access in several countries, and one of the segments covered the UK. There were two amusing facts they mentioned about line sharing in the UK. 1. BT was very much against it, claiming they would lose a lot of money. They now admit it was great for them. 2. AT&T and Verizon were strongly in favor of this. Ask them about doing it in the US, and they say it would be te…

OT, but I've been looking for examples where a group opposed a policy that passed anyway and turned out to benefit them by their own admission, and your #1 is exactly what I was looking for: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cases-where-a-group-admit...

Re: Net neutrality

#128

Post by snitko »

kaonashi wrote: post #126
snitko wrote: post #74

I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't their fault, the ISP came and fi…

Considering our government created the internet in the first place, I'm not sure that's a long-term winning strategy.

I disagree with that statement. People created internet. As well as built roads and educated children. Individuals do that. The only question is, how are they financed. If those activities are financed using tax money, it's called "government". Then, the question we should ask ourselves, would people still invent awesome things and build roads and educate their children without government funding? Would they, maybe, somehow use the money they don't have to pay as taxes now, to do all of those things?

After all, they use money to do other things all the time, and those other things are not nearly as important for them as roads or education.

Re: Net neutrality

#129

Post by rhino369 »

driverdan wrote: post #92
NoPiece wrote: post #83

This is not the case for the “last mile”. Consumers often can only buy Internet access from a single provider; there is no choice. This is often asserted, but not true. According to the FCC, 97% of consumers have access to at least 2 broadband providers. 67% of people have access to at least 2 providers at 10mbps. Here is the graph from the FCC: http://i.imgur.com/xhn1YCF.png and the original source doc: http://trans…

In most places it's still a duopoly, the choice between DSL from the single telephone company or cable internet from the single cable provider. It's just as bad as a monopoly.

Duopolies are not just as bad as a monopoly. Duopolies might not create perfect competition, but it normally produces pretty good competition.

AMD/Intel, Visa/Mastercard, Airbus/Boeing, etc. all have stiff competition.

And your local telecom and cable company are engaged in pretty stiff competition. At least Verizon and Comcast are where I'm at.

Re: Net neutrality

#130

Post by loumf »

jonahx wrote: post #122
loumf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to. If anyone wants to, they could verify it. I helped support an effort to find evidence of astroturfing an FCC request for comment. Having this data enabled us to do that work. Knowing that the data could be verified is supposed to be a deterrent to acting in bad faith. Later, one could do the verification if they doubted the comments were genuine. Given the amount of tech power behind keeping net-n…

They could ask for the information, but not make it public.

Making things public is how the government gets data closer to the truth with less work, and you don't have to trust them to do it. Groups with interest do the verification (lobbyists, journalists, you, etc). This is part of what makes democracy work.

The alternative is that we have to trust the government to do the verification with no check or balance.

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