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Net neutrality

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Net neutrality

#151

Post by specialist »

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…

Regulation serves the public when it ensures a level playing field. Through the law, protection of property rights, a fair and impartial judicial system, the right to petition your government, etc.

Regulation harms the public when it thwarts those democratic institutions. By protecting incumbents, limiting liability, forcing litigants into arbitration, hiding important information, etc.

Some things only government can provide well. Clean air, fire fighters, standards. Matters of public safety and health really shouldn't be (wholly) privatized, because profit motive is in direct opposition to the public good.

Maybe some day government can provide good (enough) internet service. Perhaps after the technology and rate of change settle down. But not today.

Re: Net neutrality

#152

Post by webmaven »

btilly wrote: post #16
hezakia1 wrote: post #5

"I have met with the Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, and I believe he is a good actor that wants to do the right thing. But he is fighting against very powerful lobbyists and large companies that want to disrupt the freedom of the Internet." "Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry" -Wikipedia Really? Somehow I doubt that he has turned a f…

Rule of thumb. Assume people are operating fairly until proven otherwise. If you meet someone and treat them as a good actor, it becomes easier for them to BE one. Truth is he is probably a politician. He will do whatever he thinks is going to get him the most support. So if you can convince him that is going against his former friends, he will do that. (180 flips in policy are very common in politicians.)

Yes. AssumeGoodFaith: http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith

Re: Net neutrality

#153

Post by snitko »

specialist wrote: post #151
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…

Regulation serves the public when it ensures a level playing field. Through the law, protection of property rights, a fair and impartial judicial system, the right to petition your government, etc. Regulation harms the public when it thwarts those democratic institutions. By protecting incumbents, limiting liability, forcing litigants into arbitration, hiding important information, etc. Some things only government ca…

Why is it that only government can provide some things well? Can you prove it both logically and empirically?

Re: Net neutrality

#154

Post by geekam »

Honest question from a non-citizen about this line "But he is fighting against very powerful lobbyists..."

I do not understand lobbying? Is it a euphemism about bribing a bunch of politicians? If yes, then why isn't it illegal? If no, then can someone please throw some light on it.

I was not born here in the US so I am always confused by what "powerful lobbyists" can do to deter someone like the chairman of FCC who can literally make the rules (right?).

Re: Net neutrality

#155

Post by jbooth »

rayiner wrote: post #147
jbooth wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's asking them to build this stuff out for free. I'm cutting a check north of $100 to Verizon every month, last I checked. And that IS them capturing some of the money generated by services running on their infrastructure. If they're not getting enough money to continue building, first off, I find that hard to believe, second off, they should just charge more to consumers, either additional $/month or an additi…

Please see the NYT article I linked. The per-subscriber capital investment into FiOS is almost $4,000, assuming that 40% of potential subscribers actually sign-up (Verizon is almost there, but still below that benchmark). Now, you're cutting a $100 check to Verizon every month, but how much of that goes to: advertising,[1] maintenance, paying for video content, etc? FiOS is about 70% of Verizon's wireline business, a…

First off, most of the things you're taking out of the monthly were already factored into the fronted cost in the linked article. Second off, if Verizon does that shitty of a job of cost control compared to foreign government bureaucracies, maybe we should consider nationalizing them.

But back to my actual point -- It costs money to deliver the service? Charge more for the service if you can't deliver it profitably. That's fine, I even suggested that in my comment, charitably allowing for 2 different ways they can do it.

I'm going to pay anyways, whether it's a check to verizon or additional costs on my amazon streaming -- I'd rather pay up front for the service I'm consuming than f-up the marketplace with a bunch of submerged hidden transactions. That's why libertarians are on board with liberals on this, they believe in market transparency.

What's your objection to our actual point? Remember, raising the price for the service they deliver to their customers is ok, we're not arguing they should provide it at a loss. You'd rather the costs of the network were hidden in a bunch of backroom deals? You think that netflix paying comcast won't ultimately come out of consumer pockets anyways?

Re: Net neutrality

#157

Post by wtallis »

exelius wrote: post #146
cma wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Telecom service is by its very nature a high-churn business: you lose approximately 20% of your customers every year. Churn happens for a lot of reasons: people move, competitors offer better deals, or people simply get rid of the service (but the "people move" one is actually probably the biggest). But because it's a high-churn business, you have to do brand marketing so that when people say "I need TV service. Who…

Total bullshit. People don't replace the wires in their yard every 5 years. Sure, they move (and immediately get replaced by new customers), and they sometimes opt out of the TV service and increasingly opt out of landline phone service, but the only "churn" that's relevant to this discussion is people switching between DSL and Cable, which wouldn't matter if we could get one set of neutral cables installed to get the data to and from the nearest peering points. The rest of the churn you listed and its overhead costs are for the parts of the business that need to be divorced from the actual internet connectivity.

Re: Net neutrality

#158

Post by rayiner »

jbooth wrote: post #155
rayiner wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see the NYT article I linked. The per-subscriber capital investment into FiOS is almost $4,000, assuming that 40% of potential subscribers actually sign-up (Verizon is almost there, but still below that benchmark). Now, you're cutting a $100 check to Verizon every month, but how much of that goes to: advertising,[1] maintenance, paying for video content, etc? FiOS is about 70% of Verizon's wireline business, a…

First off, most of the things you're taking out of the monthly were already factored into the fronted cost in the linked article. Second off, if Verizon does that shitty of a job of cost control compared to foreign government bureaucracies, maybe we should consider nationalizing them. But back to my actual point -- It costs money to deliver the service? Charge more for the service if you can't deliver it profitably.…

> First off, most of the things you're taking out of the monthly were already factored into the fronted cost in the linked article.

No they're not. They cover, e.g., marketing to get you to hook up in the first place, but not, e.g., marketing to keep you from switching to Comcast a year later. They account for the cost of hookup, but not, e.g., ongoing maintenance.

As to your other point, charging up front is not the same as charging services that operate on top. The former effectively creates a cross-subsidy: my parents who just want fast-loading web pages end up subsidizing Netflix junkies. Now you can charge per-GB, but Netflix really doesn't want to go in that direction. They're quite happy with this implicit cross-subsidy.

"Market transparency" is a red herring. You pay $10 per month to Netflix, because that's the value of that content to you. You don't care if some of that money goes to Verizon any more than you care that some of it goes to the studios that own the content. Indeed, the "backroom deals" ultimately have the effect of allowing Verizon to capture the costs from the people who derive the most value from the infrastructure, because the consumer value represented by one GB is not equal across services.

Re: Net neutrality

#159

Post by tehwebguy »

NoPiece wrote: post #131
tehwebguy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "last mile" argument is true, your numbers don't disprove it because they don't represent a percentage of consumers with said broadband options. The report's title is: Percentages of Households Located in Census Tracts Where Providers Report Residential Fixed-Location Connections of Various Speeds as of December 31, 2012 If the census tract where a household is located has access to 2+ broadband providers it sati…

Yes it seems possible that they could be overestimating, but it is the most thorough report I have seen. And if their sample set is large enough, they should have accounted for it. Do you have any actual data that shows different numbers?

No I don't think they are overestimating, the graph just doesn't say what you said it does. It does not count the residences that have access to 2+ options, it only counts the number of houses that lie within census tracts that have 2+ broadband options available anywhere in said tract.

This means that even a residence with literally 0 options would be counted as a "2+ broadband options available" house if there were 2+ broadband options available anywhere in the census tract it lies within.

The numbers don't have to be refuted, they simply aren't numbers that indicate whether there is a problem or not because they answer a different. But unfortunately no, I don't have any data other than this report. I was super disappointed when it came out because I don't know of anything else.

Re: Net neutrality

#160

Post by tootie »

geekam wrote: post #154

Honest question from a non-citizen about this line "But he is fighting against very powerful lobbyists..." I do not understand lobbying? Is it a euphemism about bribing a bunch of politicians? If yes, then why isn't it illegal? If no, then can someone please throw some light on it. I was not born here in the US so I am always confused by what "powerful lobbyists" can do to deter someone like the chairman of FCC who c…

Lobbyists lobby. All that means is that they share their opinions with government officials. Money need not be involved. When people complain about lobbying it's usually in the context of corporate-sponsored lobbyists who are paid to push their agenda and are spending money. Money can't be paid as an outright bribe (I'm sure it happens, but is pretty rare) but rather in the form of campaign contributions, or occasionally in direct political advertising. Recent Supreme Court rulings have really removed any restrictions on how much can be spent by independent political groups even if they are 100% sponsored by corporations or trade groups or whoever. Wheeler is an appointed leader of an executive branch agency, meaning that he has no campaign fund. Funds can be directed to Congressional campaign funds and Congress can in turn put pressure on his agency (the FCC) to either defund them or rewrite their authority, or to sue them for whatever perceived breach of their existing authority. Theoretically, there is no way a lobbyist can directly influence him.
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