141–150 of 392 posts
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Too risky, no? If Comcast said the problem was not with their network, but with bit CDNs. Customers would shift their rage towards them instead. The whole thing would turn into a PR pissing match
I'm going to go with customers being mad with who they send a big check to every month (e.g. Comcast). 99% of people only know about their ISP, not their ISP's providers.
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This is why I'm so disappointed to see the small-medium ISPs hop right in bed with Comcast and co-sign anti-net neutrality letters: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/top-isps-threaten-to... With the national attention this issue is getting, this is a tremendous marketing opportunity to take customers away from the big dogs.
The smaller ISPs are just following Comcast's example: "You mean we can charge multiple times for the same data without doing any extra work? Sign us up!" All last-mile ISPs will eventually realize they can hold everyone hostage, so long as there is no significant competition.
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> There is nothing fundamentally wrong with charging both sides. You may prefer a different fee structure but a better argument than "I already paid for it!" is necessary. Fair enough. Eminent domain can also be used to seize the cable plant and put it under ownership of a non-profit/municipal broadband provider, who won't gouge those who request/send bits. The knife cuts both ways.
That's been attempted. Many municipals have tried to roll out their own broadband to be sued by the industry to prevent it. Although eminent domain is an interesting argument, not that I agree with it necessarily.
Why? Public funding and a government-granted monopoly were the reasons local ILECs have the power they do; they'd be given fair value for their gear in the ground.
While I agree with the general thrust of the article, there is one fallacious argument here. Cringely argues that cable breaks even and money is made on the net, but that's an artificial distinction. What if cable disappeared? Would they still make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet fees? The desperation and risk of this game of chicken convinces me that the answer might be "not…
> Would they still make money if they had to pay for the upkeep of the network with only Internet fees? In parts of the country, slower-speed copper, fast-download cable, and a few fiber networks are already built out. The cable distribution giants like Time Warner Cable and Comcast are already making a 97 percent margin on their “almost comically profitable” Internet services, according to Craig Moffet, an analyst a…
It's like deciding Microsoft's profit margin based on the cost to physically acquire CD-ROMs.
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I'm referring more to the fact that ISPs probably reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms in their contracts, not on your terms. You having a month of 720p instead of 1080p Netflix is worth it to the ISPs instead of raising your service prices by $5 bucks every single month.
Oh; instead of referring to some bullshit clause in my contract, you're referring to something that's actually irrelevant. That's weird, but okay. I can roll with it. ISPs probably do reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms, but I don't care about that because I'm not paying them to have a certain agreement with peers, I'm paying them for a certain quality of service. If they are not providing that s…
The crisis, if you've read the article, is that Level3 is getting shunned by 5 of its client ISPs. The ISPs are NOT shunning other backbone providers, just Level3. So yes, this is entirely a contract negotiation between Level3 and 5 ISPs.
This isn't an existential crisis of the Internet, like Level3 is trying to portray it, it's Level3 being shut out of additional business by 5 ISPs because they won't play ball like the other backbone providers.
This cable-menu style image from the comments is scary: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1567010/original.jpg
Fearmongering- the internet is not going to be that easy to kill.
Would be very interesting to see what happened if the big CDN providers just depeered Comcast for 24 hours. Would certainly cost Comcast a fair amount in customer support calls, bad publicity, and properly bring the debate to the general public.
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Oh; instead of referring to some bullshit clause in my contract, you're referring to something that's actually irrelevant. That's weird, but okay. I can roll with it. ISPs probably do reserve the right to negotiate with peers on their terms, but I don't care about that because I'm not paying them to have a certain agreement with peers, I'm paying them for a certain quality of service. If they are not providing that s…
This is turning into a flame war. If you can't see how negotiating peering agreements is relevant to a post whose first sentence begins, "There’s a peering crisis apparently happening right now among American Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and backbone providers..." then I don't know how we can continue... The crisis, if you've read the article, is that Level3 is getting shunned by 5 of its client ISPs. The ISPs a…
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The demand is not for L3, the demand is for Netflix. Level3 is pushing itself on "Comcast" (which is really a stand-in for the 5 ISPs who aren't playing ball with L3, and may not actually be Comcast at all). Why must these ISPs play ball with L3, and not try to find competitors to do what L3 does? Isn't competition good? Edit: People aren't going hungry (I know it's an analogy, but come on), people are watching Netfl…
L3 is not pushing. I cannot stress that enough. L3 is not pushing. L3 does not push. Pushing is not something L3 does. In the Game of Pushing, L3 is not a player. If you navigate to wikipedia.org/things_which_push, L3 is not on that list. If all the entities of the universe were put into two groups, one labeled "pushers" and one labeled "not pushers", L3 would be in the second group. The ISPs must play ball with L3 b…