Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 329 posts

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#201

Post by throwaway894345 »

walrus01 wrote: post #80
jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

[flagged]

> The really funny thing is how the "STATES' RIGHTS" free market conservatives get upset and indignant when an individual state does something to regulate things within its own borders.

I’m an independent liberal and I’m pretty apathetic about NN (none of the doomsday stuff has manifest, but it doesn’t seem like passing NN would be harmful either and also I would rather solve ISP issues with antitrust regulation). That said, this feels like a straw man or nut picking. I haven’t heard of any conservatives getting mad over this, and anyway there’s nothing inconsistent about arguing that NN at the federal level is a breach of states’ rights while also arguing against California implementing it because you think it’s bad policy.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#202

Post by martin8412 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #35
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?

In spirit I agree with you. The reality gets more complicated. The canonical example here is Netflix. Netflix's traffic is _mostly_ outbound and because it's video streaming, there's lots of it. If an ISP has a 10G circuit, then Netflix may end up taking up 50% of that circuit during prime after-work time. Because the circuit is limited in throughput, if Netflix takes up 50%, then remaining internet services need to…

Netflix offered to pay for the circuit upgrade in the case of Verizon. They're both present at some of the facilites, so upgrading would be a small matter of adding more interconnects.. Verizon refused point blank.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#203

Post by Forgeties79 »

jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

This is pretty tinfoil hat of me. I have this theory that many companies that are “competing” with each other in an area (Cox and AT&T for me) seem to be ceding areas to each other by upgrading certain sections and not others while avoiding overlap for long periods, functionally only giving buyers one choice.

In New Orleans, Cox has offered “gigablast” (yes that’s what it’s called) Internet in some areas while AT&T offers fiber. Now they often don’t overlap, which isn’t wild given they are incrementally upgrading a large area section by section, so I can easily see wanting to be first to an area your competitor isn’t offering a comparable product. But here’s the rub: Cox also offers 5mb down/600kb up in some areas of downtown New Orleans. That is unusable Internet. No one would get anything but AT&T, who hasn’t laid fiber in that area yet, but gives you 25+.

That’s not competition, that’s the appearance of it.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#204

Post by zmgsabst »

bcgraham wrote: post #187
lwkl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn…

Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.

In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#205

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

jtbayly wrote: post #189
naoqj wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Brainwashing has caused people to believe in network congestion caused by high bandwidth usage."

Do networks not fill up and get congested?

Yes, but the problem is on the ISP side. For example, lets assume a building with 10 apartments has guaranteed 100Mbit connection to the building.

If ISP was honest, they would sell 10Mbit connection to each apartment. What they do (at least here) is sell 100Mbit to each apartment and hope their usage isn't all at the same time since it can't support it.

I ended up paying more for a 200mbit connection straight to my apartment because of this. I was on a 500mbit connection before when working from home, then lockdowns started and everyone started to work from home and during work hours, if I would get 10-20mbit I would be happy. They sold me 500 but never had that capacity, so they 'blame' netflix and not them selling only what they can (like gyms, they sell over capacity and if for some reason all show up, they are screwed)

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#206

Post by cto_of_antifa »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #105
Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine print isn’t a blanket solution for false advertising issues. Essentially advertising X while providing Y becomes a question of fraud.

ISPs pay enough to politicians that it’s not a problem they really have to solve. It works out through game theory. Solving it requires playing better and beating them.

No post body was provided.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#207

Post by sambull »

naoqj wrote: post #200
jtbayly wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do networks not fill up and get congested?

That's the joke. People and corporations streaming HD video use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth which require more hardware capacity and peering deals. I think it's not crazy to ask that they pay a fair price for it. As someone who doesn't stream HD video I would like to have cheaper connections available if I don't want to pay for the bandwidth usage of other customers.

There are. There are 5Mbps/10Mbps connections, that while being unusable for streaming HD are FAR cheaper and usable for other services.

The consumer is paying the price of what they can get out of the connection. Conversely I pay extra (higher bandwidth pipe) so I can stream more HD videos, and even extra so I can do so without a overages fee per GB after a TB.

The consumer in this case just paid to have a bigger pipe (more HD videos) and a use more data (unlimited bandwidth fee extra).

Over $100 a month extra to stream more HD videos, and to not get double the bill just for going over on bandwidth.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#208

Post by bombcar »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #203
jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

This is pretty tinfoil hat of me. I have this theory that many companies that are “competing” with each other in an area (Cox and AT&T for me) seem to be ceding areas to each other by upgrading certain sections and not others while avoiding overlap for long periods, functionally only giving buyers one choice. In New Orleans, Cox has offered “gigablast” (yes that’s what it’s called) Internet in some areas while AT&T o…

It’s not tinfoil at all, it’s just normal decision making.

You have 10k customers (out of a possible 20k) - do you upgrade your lines where it would make you fastest by far, or do you upgrade your lines where you’d just be as fast?

The second probably has fewer customers, the first will get you new customers.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#209

Post by ekianjo »

jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

> The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world.

Really? Some highly developed countries have fairly expensive Internet as well. Not sure the US is much of an exception, if you consider not just the cheapest countries.

Re: ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

#210

Post by phkahler »

jmyeet wrote: post #46

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird . The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world…

>> Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either.

I don't think anyone noticed back when Obama Care (ACA) was passed and challenged at the Supreme Court. When deciding to hear the case they said it was not a tax, but when they actually debated the issue suddenly it was a tax.

Post reply on HN