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Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

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Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#81

Post by tptacek »

Aeoxic wrote: post #52
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a competitive market, Comcast wants to, and can, vertically integrate with NBC then punish its competitors for the same reason Apple wants to vertically integrate content/software/hardware and push out anyone that competes with any part of that stack. There's a huge, technical, advantage to having the content company also own the network: pushing caching nodes to the edges of the network, consolidating redund…

> It's not all that different to the advantages of vertically integrating iTunes/iOS/Apple Ax-based hardware. It's different due to the fact that Internet is a "utility" now in the same way gas, electricity and water are (isn't it considered a human right in the USA now?). An Apple iPhone is not in any way a utility, and its functionality can be made up, 1:1 (fanboyism aside, thank you) by another device. iTunes (the…

It's different due to the fact that Internet is a "utility" now in the same way gas, electricity and water are (isn't it considered a human right in the USA now?)

No, it isn't, and no, it isn't.

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#82

Post by pmontra »

rmc wrote: post #66
pmontra wrote: post #64

A better solution: no data caps, even if it has to be enforced by regulations.

But bandwidth is a limited medium. It is fair IMO that those who use it a lot should pay more,

Which doesn't mean having a data cap. It could be 1$ per GB on wireless devices (where bandwidth is really limited because of collisions with everybody's else traffic) or whatever amount it makes sense. Wikipedia pages are quite skinny.

Servers usually pay per GB with many VPS providers right now, with a monthly quota included in the base fee. If you have your own datacenter you pay per GB in other ways.

That said, subsidising the access to one own website could be seen as a fair commercial practice or anticompetitive behavior. It depends on so many factors that I don't even want to get into it.

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#83

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

lavamantis wrote: post #35
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the thing that I don't want to see is some web sites being throttled (or blocked!) on broadband. Considering most (wired) broadband is bandwidth-limited at this point, varying that bandwidth limit based on what site I'm talking with just feels wrong, and I'd love to see the practice banned, because as you mention, a lot of users have no choice in what broadband they can subscribe to. Wireless broadband is almo…

The T-Mobile deal seems great at first blush. You get more stuff for free - yay! But, what if you're a startup streaming music service, and T-Mobile does NOT include you in their list of cap-free streaming? Good luck competing with the other providers. Perhaps a solution would be to classify types of services, and then make ANY company in that service eligible for the cap-free streaming. So, if you're a startup in th…

I get that. But streaming for free over mobile is far from the only way to compete.

T-Mobile is the third-largest carrier in the US. Probably a small minority of T-Mobile users even know about the free streaming feature. If your business plan requires that tiny market segment to bootstrap you, then you need a new business plan.

I just don't see it as a big enough differentiator to kill a new service, even if other carriers started doing something similar to T-Mobile.

A new streaming service doesn't need to rely on free mobile streaming at all to bootstrap; if its focus were mobile streaming, a better answer could be to pre-cache hours worth of streams when on wifi. I end up in dead areas frequently, and I end up in roaming areas where T-Mobile won't give me data at all. I'd love a service that would auto-cache exactly the music I like to listen to so I could play it when roaming.

I've heard Spotify CAN cache, but it's too expensive for my tastes. Something like a cacheable Pandora would be nice.

But my point is that while yes, it grants an edge to certain established businesses, it's not an insurmountable barrier. Not like Comcast throttling Netflix; if you can't use the service in its primary form, it's DOA. And T-Mobile seems to be adding new services pretty quickly: Even indie stations like Radio Paradise are on the list.

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#84

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

chimeracoder wrote: post #42
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the thing that I don't want to see is some web sites being throttled (or blocked!) on broadband. Considering most (wired) broadband is bandwidth-limited at this point, varying that bandwidth limit based on what site I'm talking with just feels wrong, and I'd love to see the practice banned, because as you mention, a lot of users have no choice in what broadband they can subscribe to. Wireless broadband is almo…

> But what I would like to see, since this is effectively a utility, is for that "free streaming" to be available on an equal opportunity basis: And T-Mobile seems to be doing exactly that by allowing customers to vote on what services to include. That's not an equal-opportunity basis, as consumers can't (or won't) vote for a company that doesn't exist yet. This raises the barrier to entry for startups even further,…

See my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683425

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#85

Post by daveloyall »

skuhn wrote: post #57
amalcon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is technically correct, it suggests a causation that just isn't there. Metered per-byte rates have existed since at least the 1990s. Datacenter bandwidth has historically always been metered, though typically on a 95/5 rate basis. This is also how mobile data has historically been billed: data packages really only took off with the relase of the iPhone, and before that most people just paid per-kb (which i…

95th percentile billing is not like the per-byte billing that ISPs and other parties try to enforce. 95th percentile billing uses your instantaneous bandwidth utilization, which directly correlates to how you have to size network equipment, and therefore to how much it costs to operate the service. Per-byte billing does not directly map to how much it costs your provider to transfer your data. I can utilize a link to…

You comment is informative but it contains a magnitude error. It should be 2.47gbit, not 2.47tbit.

https://www.google.com/search?q=1+kibibit+per+second+*+30+da...

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#86

Post by skuhn »

daveloyall wrote: post #85
skuhn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95th percentile billing is not like the per-byte billing that ISPs and other parties try to enforce. 95th percentile billing uses your instantaneous bandwidth utilization, which directly correlates to how you have to size network equipment, and therefore to how much it costs to operate the service. Per-byte billing does not directly map to how much it costs your provider to transfer your data. I can utilize a link to…

You comment is informative but it contains a magnitude error. It should be 2.47gbit, not 2.47tbit. https://www.google.com/search?q=1+kibibit+per+second+*+30+da...

You're right. 1kbit/s over a month would result in 2.47gbit of data transferred, which is a bit less damning. To get to 2.47tbit, you would of course need 1mbit/s transferred (which is still not that much!).

However flawed my example, I think my point remains valid: data usage measured over arbitrary time periods makes no sense when the underlying infrastructure is built with blocks that only care about instantaneous transfer rates.

Re: Wikipedia’s ‘complicated’ relationship with net neutrality

#87

Post by daveloyall »

skuhn wrote: post #86
daveloyall wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You comment is informative but it contains a magnitude error. It should be 2.47gbit, not 2.47tbit. https://www.google.com/search?q=1+kibibit+per+second+*+30+da...

You're right. 1kbit/s over a month would result in 2.47gbit of data transferred, which is a bit less damning. To get to 2.47tbit, you would of course need 1mbit/s transferred (which is still not that much!). However flawed my example, I think my point remains valid: data usage measured over arbitrary time periods makes no sense when the underlying infrastructure is built with blocks that only care about instantaneous…

I agree.
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