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Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

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Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#21

Post by Telaneo »

lukan wrote: post #17
Lio wrote: post #7

Is there anything that Vodafone customers can do legally to punish Vodafone or not delivering on their broadband contracts? If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection and Netflix is only able to stream to you at 0.93 Mbps because Vodafone or Inter.link are choking off the supply, surely that's breach of contract on Vodafone's part? I'm sure Cory Doctorow has a word for what's happening here.

"If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection" That's why you are paying for a "up to" 1Gbps connection. (I think it was already a struggle that they had to put the "up to" in the big advertisement)

Surely there's a reasonable expectation that Netflix would work at decent speeds, especially given that Netflix's infrastructure, nor the network load as a whole are to blame, but rather the specific ISP bureaucracy? Getting 1/1000 the listed speed does not strike me as something even a 75 year old computer neophyte of a judge would take kindly too, unless it were for very good reasons.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#22

Post by hylaride »

BoredPositron wrote: post #10

Fucking around with peering is the specialty of German ISPs. Telekom (our biggest provider) is sometimes unusable for YouTube/Netflix/Cloudflare/Steam in big cities because of similar shenanigans.

I was shocked just how slow and poor the mobile networks were in Germany. When I last visited (circa 2014) I literally switched my prepaid sim from T-Mobile to Vodaphone because the experience was so bad - only to have the same bad experience. I had barely usable LTE and connections dropped to EDGE on the train between Hamburg and Berlin. Google Maps barely loaded in the cities let alone the fact I was playing Ingress at the time and it was pretty much unusable

This was surprising to my Canadian sensibilities. Our mobile networks are expensive, but I generally get solid 4G and now 5G coverage between Toronto and Montreal and had full 4G (at the time) coverage on a road trip between Saskatoon and Calgary.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#23

Post by okanat »

tracker1 wrote: post #12
Lio wrote: post #7

Is there anything that Vodafone customers can do legally to punish Vodafone or not delivering on their broadband contracts? If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection and Netflix is only able to stream to you at 0.93 Mbps because Vodafone or Inter.link are choking off the supply, surely that's breach of contract on Vodafone's part? I'm sure Cory Doctorow has a word for what's happening here.

Are there competing options, or are they a monopoly?

Yes and no. There are other providers in Germany. However, with the EU's neoliberal privatization policy the governments privatized many existing infrastructure. Vodafone bought the previous government company that owned all of the the cable TV infrastructure of Germany. So they are a monopoly of a particular type of internet connection. Depending on the place the alternatives could be too slow since Germany also has an aging population that do not {care about, demand} higher internet speeds and didn't upgrade its copper infrastructure due to corruption.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#24

Post by fuzzy2 »

tracker1 wrote: post #12
Lio wrote: post #7

Is there anything that Vodafone customers can do legally to punish Vodafone or not delivering on their broadband contracts? If you're paying for a 1Gbps connection and Netflix is only able to stream to you at 0.93 Mbps because Vodafone or Inter.link are choking off the supply, surely that's breach of contract on Vodafone's part? I'm sure Cory Doctorow has a word for what's happening here.

Are there competing options, or are they a monopoly?

No monopoly. Only for cable internet, which may be a possible argument. For landline internet (DSL), there's plenty of alternatives.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#26

Post by stego-tech »

benced wrote: post #3

Rare comparative W for American ISPs?

Not really, as US ISPs have been repeatedly trying to game the system into becoming landlords for decades. The difference is, ironically, their own self-imposed monopolies: Comcast may be a T1 ISP, but they’re largely a monopoly in the markets they serve. Same goes for Verizon, Spectrum, Cox, TDS, etc. The end result is a sort of “forced cooperation” with each other, though occasionally one will try to extort the others for cash (I seem to recall L3 and Cogent both engaging in this bullshit around the time streaming video got big).

Companies are extractive by nature, and they will always try to find new ways of squeezing blood from a stone absent regulations saying otherwise (and suitable punishments ensuring anyone caught violating them is crippled in the marketplace, if not outright destroyed). This has been going on for decades and will continue absent regulatory intervention. Just look at how the US Electrical grid bills to see how this could end up (higher prices, bullshit fees, redundant billing).

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#27

Post by danogentili »

Seems pretty much a private equivalent of "fair share" govt regulation currently being pushed by ISPs in Europe through lobbying with the Digital Networks Act (https://www.namex.it/toward-the-digital-networks-act-the-fut..., https://stopdna.eu/).

South Korea pioneered fair share govt regulations in 2016 (which caused Twitch to exit the market in 2024 due the exorbitant "fair share" fees).

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#28

Post by stego-tech »

The solution - as always - is regulation. ISPs typically already have very generous business models with widespread monopolies on customers, overwhelming barriers to entry for new companies, and a lack of rate controls allowing then to price arbitrarily - all of which supports immensely profitable businesses without the need for additional extraction of capital from other parties. Regulators and consumers alike should be screaming in rage at the idea that their ISPs are now multi-dipping for revenue, but we’ve done a piss-poor job of explaining how this works to the common man and thus can’t count on them to support the Open Internet as we’d like to see it.

That being said, the threat to the open internet is also more than just ISPs being gigantic assholes: it’s centralization in general. A majority of web traffic passes into or through one of three main cloud compute providers; Cloudflare has such an outsized impact that regional IP blocks can disrupt global traffic; and ISPs have been permitted to consolidate through mergers and acquisitions into expansive monopolies. The internet is fiercely centralized and largely closed already, which is why these ploys by shitty ISPs are likely to work absent Government intervention.

You want to protect the open internet? Regulate the shit out of its major players again. Force them to keep it open, especially when it hinders expanding profit margins.

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#29

Post by danogentili »

stego-tech wrote: post #28

The solution - as always - is regulation. ISPs typically already have very generous business models with widespread monopolies on customers, overwhelming barriers to entry for new companies, and a lack of rate controls allowing then to price arbitrarily - all of which supports immensely profitable businesses without the need for additional extraction of capital from other parties. Regulators and consumers alike shoul…

The current trend in govt regulation is actually going in the opposite direction, with telecom lobbies in Europe pushing for "fair share" (pretty much an implementation through law of what Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Germany are doing right now) through the Digital Networks Act.

South Korea pioneered "fair share" govt regulations in 2016 (which caused Twitch to exit the market in 2024 due the exorbitant "fair share" fees).

Re: Vodafone Germany is changing the open internet, one peering connection at a time

#30

Post by Retric »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #24
tracker1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there competing options, or are they a monopoly?

No monopoly. Only for cable internet, which may be a possible argument. For landline internet (DSL), there's plenty of alternatives.

High speed internet is a market not just internet access. Email might not care that your on a DSL connection but a streamer can’t generally use DSL as a substitute.
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