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Net neutrality

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Re: Net neutrality

#181

Post by kansface »

_archon_ wrote: post #162
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…

As I understand it, laying pipe is the fundamentally high cost of expanding or rebuilding a network. The cable itself has a non-negligible cost, but getting zoning and town permissions, securing land for junction cabinets, and digging through existing roads and around existing utilities is hugely expensive. What I don't understand is why any new neighborhood could be built without such underground conduit in place. I…

Cities do this, eg San Francisco, but the pipe is mostly unused.

Re: Net neutrality

#182

Post by aninhumer »

ataggart wrote: post #123
saucetenuto wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are you suggesting the only possible forms of anti-competitive coercion are government regulation or hit squads?

Re: Net neutrality

#183

Post by atmosx »

cyorir wrote: post #175
atmosx wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Since I can't find the link, I won't disagree on the numbers you're reporting, but seriously the only one who trusts Russian election results must be Putin (and you).

ps. I'm not saying that he wouldn't have won anyway, but I'm sure that the elections in Russia are extremely well guarded.

Re: Net neutrality

#184

Post by dragonwriter »

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 a normally libertarian-leaning group of people have embraced regulation rather than deregulation as to this issue.

Presumably because there is a difference between "libertarian-leaning" (to the extent that is an accurate description of the group described) and "having a blind, kneejerk preference for deregulation".

> Why do local ISP markets tend towards monopoly, even though it has been illegal since 1992 to grant local cable monopolies?

Because incumbents that got infrastructure built with government support in acquiring property for infrastructure as monopolies have an insurmountable advantage as a result of the access they acquired then, and effectively leveraged that cable infrastructure to internet infrastructure, whereas without direct government support that comes with that, its pretty much impossible for anyone else to build the necessary infrastructure because property rights.

> You can have: neutrality, universal access, or a mostly privately-funded telecom infrastructure, but you only get to pick two.

Okay.

> you have to be willing to publicly subsidize the construction of telecom infrastructure.

There are extensive public subsidies that have been given in the US for telecom -- and specifically broadband -- infrastructure [1]. So can we have our neutrality and universal access already?

[1] E.g., http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/infrastructure

Re: Net neutrality

#185

Post by mitchty »

pdkl95 wrote: post #149
exelius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because with electricity, everyone gets the same power. You're tied to the same grid; your provider just meters your usage, bills you, then pays wholesale prices for the power you used. But the system as a whole only measures inputs (from power generators) and outputs (consumers). It works for something like electric power where a volt is a volt and a kilowatt is a kilowatt. With Internet access, you're looking for S…

With internet access, everyone (should) get the same bandwidth (per-dollar). Similarly, with electricity you're not looking for SPECIFIC electrons.

> Similarly, with electricity you're not looking for SPECIFIC electrons.

Actually, I am, though its more the source of those electrons. I pay more specifically to get as much power from wind/solar sources. This is an option on my power bill that I explicitly support. I would pay more for internet access that isn't comcast and isn't tied to their stupid bs.

So keep that in mind.

Re: Net neutrality

#186

Post by AnthonyMouse »

exelius wrote: post #76
Retric wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because with electricity, everyone gets the same power. You're tied to the same grid; your provider just meters your usage, bills you, then pays wholesale prices for the power you used. But the system as a whole only measures inputs (from power generators) and outputs (consumers). It works for something like electric power where a volt is a volt and a kilowatt is a kilowatt. With Internet access, you're looking for S…

> With Internet access, you're looking for SPECIFIC packets. Those packets have to be routed in a certain way and delivered over a shared, multicast last mile infrastructure. If you want the ability to choose your ISP, then while it may be the same Hacker News, the route the packets take to get there might be very different.

That is only really true in the parts of the network that don't matter for network neutrality. If you want to send or receive 500MB worth of data, the last mile doesn't care whether you're communicating with Hacker News or Google or Amazon, it's all going over the physical wire that comes into your house. It's only after you cross the last mile and get into the central office that the paths of packets diverge in every direction, but those are the parts of the network that have competition.

Re: Net neutrality

#187

Post by aninhumer »

snitko wrote: post #113
matthewmacleod wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's naïve - it would be exceptionally difficult for a new ISP to emerge countrywide even in the a sense of regulation. It's very capital-intensive!

That's very well. Some industries mature and new companies don't enter those industries because they are taken. For example, not many people attempt to go into the soft drinks market. Why? Because there's Coca-Cola and Pepsi. How idiotic would that seem if government started saying things like "we need soft drinks neutrality so every McDonalds is now obligated to sell you both Coca Cola or Pepsi and that new competit…

>How idiotic would that seem if government started saying things like "we need soft drinks neutrality

Well yeah, that would be a pretty awkward way to encourage competition in the soft drinks market.

However, they do say things like: "You can't temporarily drop your prices just to wipe out competition." and "You can't agree on prices with Pepsi to avoid price competition" which work pretty well to keep that market competitive.

Re: Net neutrality

#188

Post by rlpb »

pdkl95 wrote: post #173

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 tha…

To add to this, 95 percentile billing seems to work very well in the UK. But since this isn't useful to an individual end user, this requires the last-mile provider to be required to resell wholesale access under 95 percentile billing, and for multiple ISPs to compete buy under this cost structure and resell to consumers under price structures that work better for them.

This works very well in the UK. We have no "net neutrality" problem as a result.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing#95th_percenti...

Re: Net neutrality

#189

Post by snitko »

aninhumer wrote: post #187
snitko wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very well. Some industries mature and new companies don't enter those industries because they are taken. For example, not many people attempt to go into the soft drinks market. Why? Because there's Coca-Cola and Pepsi. How idiotic would that seem if government started saying things like "we need soft drinks neutrality so every McDonalds is now obligated to sell you both Coca Cola or Pepsi and that new competit…

>How idiotic would that seem if government started saying things like "we need soft drinks neutrality Well yeah, that would be a pretty awkward way to encourage competition in the soft drinks market. However, they do say things like: "You can't temporarily drop your prices just to wipe out competition." and "You can't agree on prices with Pepsi to avoid price competition" which work pretty well to keep that market co…

There's no evidence predatory pricing is effective. It's fear mongering.

Suppose you have company A trying to outprice company B, which is a much smaller company. If company A wants to drop its prices, it can't just drop prices on just the number of products equivalent to the market share of B, it has to drop prices on the whole line of products of its own. Even if it succeeds in defeating company B, it has to make sure it will make up for the losses in the future. And who's to guarantee another company C isn't going to use the situation, knowing full well company A cannot afford another round of predatory pricing? Therefore, for company A it's much less riskier to compete with B on the market by doing honest things, rather than cheating with predatory pricing and hoping company C will not come to crush it.

Re: Net neutrality

#190

Post by aninhumer »

mitchty wrote: post #185
pdkl95 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With internet access, everyone (should) get the same bandwidth (per-dollar). Similarly, with electricity you're not looking for SPECIFIC electrons.

> Similarly, with electricity you're not looking for SPECIFIC electrons. Actually, I am, though its more the source of those electrons. I pay more specifically to get as much power from wind/solar sources. This is an option on my power bill that I explicitly support. I would pay more for internet access that isn't comcast and isn't tied to their stupid bs. So keep that in mind.

>I pay more specifically to get as much power from wind/solar sources.

And you are able to do this because there is a grid network, which allows your alternative energy provider to enter the market simply by connecting themselves to it, instead of having to run cables to your house.

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