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Net neutrality

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Net neutrality

#171

Post by [deleted] »

jbooth wrote: post #161
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I must be doing a really bad job of writing, because you're not addressing the point I was trying to make at all. I'm ok with paying $100 for internet access (well, not really, but still). If $100 cannot get me internet access at the advertised speeds, I'm ok with paying 120, or whatever additional cost per GB. What I'm not ok with, is if $100 doesn't do it, Verizon goes out and shakes down the companies I do busines…

[deleted]

Re: Net neutrality

#172

Post by rayiner »

jbooth wrote: post #161
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I must be doing a really bad job of writing, because you're not addressing the point I was trying to make at all. I'm ok with paying $100 for internet access (well, not really, but still). If $100 cannot get me internet access at the advertised speeds, I'm ok with paying 120, or whatever additional cost per GB. What I'm not ok with, is if $100 doesn't do it, Verizon goes out and shakes down the companies I do busines…

This is shared infrastructure. If it costs you $16,000 to build out to a neighborhood of 10 people, then you have to set the price at a point where you can amortize that cost over the maximum number of subscribers. The Netflix junkie may be willing to pay $130/month, but if he's the only one that signs up, your cost per subscriber explodes. Thus, if you're a provider, the amount of money you are willing to spend on telecom infrastructure is going to be dictated by how much that, say, 60th percentile customer is willing to pay, not how much the 90th percentile customer is willing to pay.

Now, you can ameliorate this somewhat based on per-GB charges, but people have an irrational hatred of that. The business deals on the backend are obscure, but at the end of the day, how much a customer spends on services on top of their internet connection is a decent proxy for how much utility they derive from that connection.

Re: Net neutrality

#173

Post by pdkl95 »

In this debate, a lot of people - especially those discussing "paying per GB" - that seem to be missing a key issue. Sometimes this is intentional, but I suspect that is a fairly small minority.

The central problem: trying to apply the concept of money and economics to packets doesn't work, because money and economics are tools for handling scarce resources, while the major benefit of the modern "digital age" is that you can copy those bits without a per-copy cost[1]. As bits are not scarce, "pay per GB" becomes a case of applying to wrong tool or trying to solve the wrong problem.

Observing that the infinite scalability of bits isn't leading to free high-speed internet for everybody, a better question is: which resources really are scarce? These are the costs that billing should be based upon.

With networking, those costs are things like creating the network hardware, installing it, and maintaining that hardware. The first two are a one-time cost. We usually distribute that kind of high-variance, unpredictable cost into "monthly payments" in a variety of industries, and tthe maintenance costs are inherently a "per-unit-time" cost as well. This includes the expensive routers that you need to have anyway to be able to tolerate variations in usage[2]. At no point does the contents ("number of packets") enter into this as a cost.

A common rebuttal to the idea of usage not being a cost is to point out the problem of saturation and how an oversubscribed line would the ISP to make expensive upgrades. This problem does exist, and should be part of the billing... because it is a problem about bandwidth, not bits. You don't get to keep billing someone indefinitely for a one-time cost. Attempting to do make up costs like that would be rent-seeking[3].

Various ISPs have shown that billing for a given amount of bandwidth (at some defined defined guarantee of service) can easily be profitable.

[1] Electricity costs are not relevant, and are often not relevant anyway in physical layers where you have to send an empty carrier if there is no data. Most of the rest of the "costs" are associated with using those bits (see: CMOS), which is addressed above.

[2] The specific amount of tolerance required being defined by the guarantees (sometimes with SLA) offered by the ISP.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

Re: Net neutrality

#174

Post by icehawk219 »

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…

Lobbying in its purest form is supposed to be a way for people to have a voice in their government. Anyone in this country can ring up, or write, or email, their representative and push for an issue they feel strongly about. Likewise they can also make campaign contributions to the representatives, or candidates, they like and want to see in office. And the two can very easily be tied together: "I'm donating to your campaign because ...". If you keep it that simple it's a pretty good idea and is one that I think most people can get behind.

However in our modern world it really is just blatant bribery. Because corporations and rich individuals are able to donate such vast amounts that they are the only ones people care about. Take a look at how much money is spent during election cycles and it's obscene how many millions are poured into running for office. All that money has to come from somewhere. Say, for arguments sake, you must raise at least $5m to have a chance of winning an election but you think you can only raise about $2m from small donations (individuals) and then a few companies come along offering you nice big money bags if you agree to support their causes. Who do you care most about?

Re: Net neutrality

#175

Post by cyorir »

atmosx wrote: post #168
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…

> And yet, you claim free market fails. Seriously? You have a cheaper/better internet access in Russia compared to the USA and suddenly the Russian (extremely corrupted) political and social model (a modern monarchy of sorts) became a model economy over the US? PS. I can't find the source, but I've read that in the last Russian elections more than 35% of the population wanted to return back to communism .

Off by a factor of 2, if you are referring to the Presidential elections in Russia, where the communist party candidate received less than 20% of the vote. 35% roughly includes all parties except Putin's. Although I am not sure that voting against Putin (or voting for the communist party, even) is equivalent to voting to return to communism. Were you referring to a poll, or perhaps another election?

Re: Net neutrality

#176

Post by mbreese »

rayiner wrote: post #150
ripter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you explain the smaller ISPs like Monkeybrains, Sonic, and Astound? They don't provide Universal access. Neither does Comcast and AT&T. I've lived in several areas where they won't provide service.

Universal access is usually implemented as build-out requirements in an ISP or cable provider's franchise agreement. The exact terms vary by municipality, but build-out requirements are the general rule.

It's unclear how this plays out in the era of state-wide franchising agreements.

Re: Net neutrality

#177

Post by warfangle »

danielweber wrote: post #48
warfangle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>utility-grade results Hopefully not gas-delivery grade results. 5-10% of methane delivered via mains in the UK is lost to atmosphere. Similar leakage rates are found in the US, sometimes much worse. The main (heh, no pun intended) source of these leaks are cast iron pipes that are over 100 years old. And unlike the Internet, when those things fail, things literally explode.

Methane is a much worse GHG than CO2. This seems like a very significant problem.

It is. Methane leakage in the US is comparable to the GHG output of half the coal plants in the US.

Re: Net neutrality

#178

Post by snitko »

kaonashi wrote: post #164
snitko wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The private sector is notoriously horrible at coordination between competing actors. This must be why I can never get my luggage handled flying two or more airlines or why I can never use my cellphone in another country connecting to another operator's network. Can you give me some examples where the private sector is actually bad at coordination?

You picked two areas with massive government regulation. So yes, when government acts as the intermediary, the private sector can stop failing at coordination.

Well, you're not exactly correct. Airlines are indeed regulated, but not as much as they were before in the 1970s. After the deregulation of the Airline industry the prices dropped, and service levels increased.

Telecomm, again, is only heavily regulated in the US. In my country it isn't, yet we do enjoy rather low prices and quite a nice service overall. Telecom operators also cooperate without any government intervention: at some point they realized it'd be great to have incoming calls from ALL operators free (they weren't before) and outgoing calls to be of the same price for any phone (they weren't).

Re: Net neutrality

#179

Post by ahomescu1 »

gress wrote: post #82
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…

How do ISPs gain the rights to dig up the streets in Russia?

Don't know about Russia, but in Romania they didn't dig (or at least not until recently). Most of the ISPs would run their cables between utility poles, trees and buildings directly. This created messes like [1] and [2], but it was cheap. I think back in 2012 Parliament passed a law forcing all ISPs and cable companies to bury the cables.

1 - http://s.wsj.net/media/050710pow14_J_20100506172349.jpg

2 - http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6142/6205357944_8056b01e05_m....

Re: Net neutrality

#180

Post by kansface »

ajb wrote: post #142

If you want competition, perhaps the simplest way of doing it might be for municipalities to provide universal service at layer -1: run an underground plastic pipe to each house from the street. That way it suddenly becomes cheap for multiple telcos to run fibre to each house, but the municipalities aren't doing anything with an ongoing technical burden which they might be bad at, or running an ongoing service which…

Its not a matter of expense in many cases. Municipalities have agreements that span years with cable providers enforcing their local monopolies in exchange for kickbacks and universal access. It is impossible to compete in these markets with any amount of money.
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