Live data from Hacker News

Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

juliareda.eu

101–110 of 181 posts

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#101
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The argument doesn't makes sense. When a normal citizen is choosing her internet provider they are not going to expend a lot of time looking at the implications of their decision." I think you're missing the implication of the point. If there is 'a lot of competition' - it makes cartel-like or colluding behaviour among carriers difficult, thereby facilitating de-facto net-neutrality. Customers don't have to be aware…

> If there is 'a lot of competition' - it makes cartel-like or colluding behaviour among carriers difficult, thereby facilitating de-facto net-neutrality. I don't see the point. If Google decides to pay to providers to speed up Google content. How having more carries solves the problem? Is not even worse as then Google will have more power to bring carriers to its side? What will happen with little content providers?…

> If Google decides to pay to providers to speed up Google content.

The Internet doesn't work that way. If Google wants their services to work better at particular ISP they pay for bigger pipes to the ISP and/or install content caches at the ISP and everybody is better off.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#102
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have to provision for the maximal capacity all over your network. Given that most people only utilize their channel 1% of the time, this is a huge waste! Agreed, everybody loves the idea of fixed allocation, but never seem to consider how much that costs. If you could buy overprovisioned 25mbps @ $50/mo, or fixed allocation 25mbps @ $5,000/mo, which do you think most people would go for...

Everyone is playing by the same rules so they would all end up advertising 2.5 mbps @ 50$ / month with speed boost if that's what they can provide. The important point is it does not actually take much bandwidth to do streaming video etc, but if you can't provide reasonable bandwidth when people want to use it then it's false advertising. PS: Don't forget back haul is actually a relatively minor cost for most ISP's.…

That information is even less useful than what ISPs provide now. Home users really have no reason to value the worst case scenario speed since it never happens.

If my ISP was going to tell me either the limit they cap me at and the speed the can guarantee me at 100% use, I'd pick the former.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#103
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have to provision for the maximal capacity all over your network. Given that most people only utilize their channel 1% of the time, this is a huge waste! Agreed, everybody loves the idea of fixed allocation, but never seem to consider how much that costs. If you could buy overprovisioned 25mbps @ $50/mo, or fixed allocation 25mbps @ $5,000/mo, which do you think most people would go for...

Everyone is playing by the same rules so they would all end up advertising 2.5 mbps @ 50$ / month with speed boost if that's what they can provide. The important point is it does not actually take much bandwidth to do streaming video etc, but if you can't provide reasonable bandwidth when people want to use it then it's false advertising. PS: Don't forget back haul is actually a relatively minor cost for most ISP's.…

I can watch a Netflix movie in 3G at 320kmh (TGV, in France). So you're right, video consumes fewer bandwidth than we imagine. But it's common that I can't view a proper Youtube video on ADSL. ISPs are really being deceptive when they provide a connection to "the Internet".

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#104
post #20

I once heard an interview with the Economist digital editor Tom Standage where he claims (at 5:45 into the interview) that net neutrality is the wrong thing to focus on, and the important thing is just making sure there is more competition between the telcos. Can someone more familiar with this issue tell me if this argument is correct? https://www.podcat.com/podcasts/i63zqo-untether-tv-mobile-st...

They're saying that the U.S. ISP companies have regional monopolies, and that net neutrality wouldn't be as much of an issue if there were substitute service providers per region. This honestly isn't true, because if we had a marketplace for ISPs, most consumers would pick the cheapest option, which would probably be the one that subsidizes it's revenue from charging companies like Netflix. Some smaller companies tha…

> This honestly isn't true, because if we had a marketplace for ISPs, most consumers would pick the cheapest option, which would probably be the one that subsidizes it's revenue from charging companies like Netflix.

The marketplace doesn't work that way. Neither Netflix or any other content provider has any interest in paying any ISP for the pleasure of serving their customers. Netflix would just refuse to pay the low cost ISP and tell it's customers to change ISPs if they complain.

The only reason Netflix is paying Comcast is because Comcast has enough market power and captive users to blackmail Netflix into paying them, lest Netflix be denied access. If there was any alternative to Comcast, Netflix would just say screw that.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transit isn't everything you're paying for. Your local street cabinet isn't kitted out like your local datacentre and thus prices won't be the same.

No, but everything that's not transit is a fixed cost and thus as long as the internal network is properly designed and implemented, only transit costs matter. The rest (i.e. the fixed costs) will be covered by the monthly subscription fee.

It would take a massive upgrade to most ISP internal networks to allow each home to use 25 mbit at the same time. There are bottlenecks that would have to replaced.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#106
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, choosing to throttle video content in general to promote their cable service would probably be allowed under this ruling. I don't know if that possibility is serious enough to worry about though.

I wonder even about that, given that it's stated that it can be done only under exceptional and temporary conditions of congestion. The regulator should probably act if it were the general practice instead. But yeah, the public will need to stay vigilant over how national regulators implement this ruling case by case.

From my understanding it looks more like: "We are streaming the Olympics and its transferring 2TB/s of data, we need to route this differently!". But then again, loopholes are loopholes, and it will be just a matter of time until it will be abused.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

comcast could in the US, and won in court. Despite US regulation being seen as quite robust. By this text, they'd need to show it was an exceptional and temporary necessity to deal with congestion.

If you are talking about the case from 5ish years ago, that was because the court struck down the entire basis for net neutrality. The net neutrality rules themselves didn't allow for blocking p2p.

yeah, that's the case. Could you clarify? I'm just seeing old articles claiming the last court verdict on the matter was that the FCC overstepped its authority in that particular case? Did some case or law change this? But yeah, hard to see how discriminating a particular protocol w/o cause could be network neutral.

Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

#110
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument doesn't makes sense. When a normal citizen is choosing her internet provider they are not going to expend a lot of time looking at the implications of their decision. If the services is cheap enough and has the thing that they usually use then they are done. Competition can easy bring cheaper services but hardly can bring improving in long term needs. That's why we have laws that forbid companies to poll…

"The argument doesn't makes sense. When a normal citizen is choosing her internet provider they are not going to expend a lot of time looking at the implications of their decision." I think you're missing the implication of the point. If there is 'a lot of competition' - it makes cartel-like or colluding behaviour among carriers difficult, thereby facilitating de-facto net-neutrality. Customers don't have to be aware…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN