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

Ajit Pai is right

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 316 posts

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#271

Post by lovehashbrowns »

treis wrote: post #266
lovehashbrowns wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those issues are inherent to competition, not to the infrastructure. The ISPs shouldn't be deciding who gets to stay or go. Their infrastructure should be neutral, just as water pipes don't care if they're going to my house or to a giant industrial corporation that has a stronghold over the steel industry. I think my example is bad. I'll try a slightly better one: My water pipes don't care if they go to my ABC brand…

Why not? Why shouldn't the best usage of a limited resource be determined by who is willing to pay the most money? Does this extend to other industries? Should we force Fedex/UPS to ship at one speed only?

Because I don't want an ISP to decide how much to charge one service or the other, which ones should be blocked or not blocked, and which services to promote or not promote. They have a monopoly, and a conflict of interest when it comes to services they own (partly or whole).

Plus, ISPs can and do charge similar to UPS/Fedex. If you want a higher level of service, faster speed, better hardware, etc. you can pay an ISP for a business package, fiber, etc. That's similar to UPS charging for Overnight Air, 2 day, etc. But UPS can't say "Oh you're Spotify, I'll charge you more to deliver your mail." And there's also the fact that UPS, Fedex, USPS, and DHL all compete with each other, whereas ISPs have literally agreed not to compete with each other and have set up regional monopolies.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#272

Post by dominotw »

dboreham wrote: post #134
dominotw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope I don't immediately get downvoted for this comment. Wouldn't the right "fix" for the issue be encouraging more competition and figuring out why we only have 1 or 2 providers . That way we won't need an extra govt rule to protect neutrality and the market will solve this issue on its own? I live in a mid size indian city and we have about 8-10 providers ( not sure if they are just subcontractors or what).

We have only one or two providers because it is very costly to hang wire on poles all over town (or trench it under the street). Typically the only provider able to foot that bill is whatever company has been in the business of hanging wire around town for decades : either the phone company or the cable company. So in fact there are actually no new providers typically, just the old providers we had 30 years ago using…

So ppl in US are stuck with comcast for eternity ? Also curious what's stopping them from charging $500/month for internet.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#273

Post by Crespyl »

pseudalopex wrote: post #257
throwaway23497 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which operated over phone lines... which meant they were covered by Title II. Do you have a source on this?? I've seen this claim made a few times in this thread and have been unable to find anything to back it up. I was under the impression that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 dictated that all ISP's were information services and exempted them from common-carrier and the like. The phone services themselves were…

In 1996, "ISP" usually meant a third-party information service that used the phone company's lines. In the mid-2000s, the FCC reclassified DSL and cable lines as information services. That probably wasn't what Congress intended in 1996, but the Supreme Court ruled that the law was ambiguous.[1] That all but eliminated competition, so now "ISP" usually means a company that operates its own last-mile infrastructure, an…

If we could actually get back to that model, having last-mile networking be a regulated title 2 neutral telecommunications entity (even municipal fiber, just maybe) and "ISP" be whatever service we connected to reach the wider internet, that'd be amazing.

ISPs could go back to being "information services", zero-rate, throttle, fast-lane, and generally do whatever they want, new ISPs could easily compete by popping up and connecting to the neutral backbone, and customers would have the ability to easily switch providers (just not the backbone).

IIUC, this is pretty much how the electrical utilities in Texas work, one local monopoly "distribution company" and a plethora of generating companies that consumers are free to choose from.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#274

Post by nkurz »

kodablah wrote: post #23

Arg. I feel like articles like this are calling me stupid with some statements. Like this doozy: "T-Mobile treats all data the same, some data just doesn’t cost money" I guess I'm too stupid to understand what "same" means. Or: "Zero-rating [...] Customers loved it" That's not enough. The argument is about small providers conforming to T-Mobile. What customers think is irrelevant I'm afraid. Then the author goes on t…

"T-Mobile treats all data the same, some data just doesn’t cost money"

I guess I'm too stupid to understand what "same" means.

It made sense to me, but maybe I'm the one misunderstanding. Let's try a hypothetical parallel:

PhoneCo sells you 1000 minutes of phone service, meaning that you can make 1000 minutes of calls without additional charge. But as a "perk" (to encourage you to convince your friends to switch PhoneCo), calls to other PhoneCo customers don't count toward this limit. You can still make calls to anyone you want, but the minutes don't always count against your total. I think it's clear what is meant by saying that "PhoneCo treats all calls the same, some calls just don't cost money".

Now assume we have DataCo, which sells you the right to download 1000 GB of data, but has a special arrangement with some partner companies such that data going back and forth to those companies does not count toward your limit. Again, you can still connect to any web site or data service you want, but for some subset of sites the data usage doesn't count toward your limit (presumably because those companies are paying something on your behalf).

Is it unreasonable to say that "DataCo treats all data the same, some data just doesn’t cost money"? Does it at least have a clear meaning? This is separate from the argument as to whether this is a good idea to allow, but I don't have much problem with the phrasing.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#275

Post by treis »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #271
treis wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Why shouldn't the best usage of a limited resource be determined by who is willing to pay the most money? Does this extend to other industries? Should we force Fedex/UPS to ship at one speed only?

Because I don't want an ISP to decide how much to charge one service or the other, which ones should be blocked or not blocked, and which services to promote or not promote. They have a monopoly, and a conflict of interest when it comes to services they own (partly or whole). Plus, ISPs can and do charge similar to UPS/Fedex. If you want a higher level of service, faster speed, better hardware, etc. you can pay an IS…

See this is the problem with the pro NN side. It's littered with factual inaccuracies and outright lies. ISPs, in the US at least, have not agreed to not compete with each other and there's no regional monopolies. The majority of the country has 2 or more broadband providers plus a plethora of wireless and satellite options.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#276

Post by Crespyl »

0xfeba wrote: post #140
thehardsphere wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they "realize" that, suddenly a couple years ago? I am not doubting you, I am genuinely confused. I mean, human greed is a constant, and the rules didn’t change from 1996-2015, yet during the same period you said that Wal-Mart would have paid to destroyed Amazon, Amazon became one of the most wealthy and powerful companies in the world. So... it must be something more than the rules, right? Greedy companies w…

> If Wal-Mart simply didn’t realize some trick in those days, what information would the Walton family need to take with them in their time machine to destroy Amazon from 1996-2015 That this internet thing will really take off.

Forget Wal-Mart, tell that to Sears.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#277

Post by xellisx »

masklinn wrote: post #264
and0 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare the OP's point, that a tiered internet service would hurt small businesses doing business OVER the internet, to potential "new innovators" in the ISP space being burdened by regulations. That's an absurd false equivalence. (I'm also lost as to how a company that had the ability or tenacity to compete with Comcast / Verizon would look at basic regulation requirements / legal costs and give up? That's…

> Also, why in "pre-2015 internet days" did we have zero competition / innovation in the ISP space? Because the Bush FCC repealed line-sharing requirements when they moved dial-up and from Title II to Title I back in 2005. This means entrance into the ISP space is prohibitively expensive as you must build your network to get any client (huge initial/capital costs), which combined with the power of the incumbents mean…

Last mile sharing was nice. You could get DSL from SWB, Earthlink, or whomever.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#278

Post by michaelbuckbee »

cookiecaper wrote: post #143
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #108

What worries me is that this is the easy to notice stuff that is brought up (AT&T blocking Skype, etc.) what is really pernicious are things like network "optimization" where there is a huge potential for abuse. Want to influence the next election? Delay requests for a particular party's website by 10s each. Want to promote your new streaming service? Make competing ones timeout on every 10th request. Concerned about…

With you all the way until your last sentence, which seems to contradict the rest. When there is an immense concentration of power and concern about shady figures subtly influencing and corrupting things, the emphasis should be on diffusing that power out over a variety of diverse vessels instead of centralizing and condensing it further. Governmental apparatuses are just as, if not more, susceptible to corruption an…

So, I'm in agreement, but I'm not sure how to get from here to there. I think I'd rather a stopgap solution than one that would put me in a bad spot for the next decade+ while deep infrastructure issues are addressed.

What I really wish is that Internet was just another boring utility like electric or gas.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#279

Post by libertyEQ »

dragonwriter wrote: post #225
masklinn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's very specifically advocating going back to the structure between 2005 and 2015. And there were lots of issues despite likely way less emboldened ISPs: https://np.reddit.com/r/KeepOurNetFree/comments/7ej1nd/fcc_u... The 2015 move was actually because the FCC had been repeatedly challenged by bolder and bolder ISPs over its rules, and the courts ultimately stated that the FCC didn't have the authority to stop ISP…

> He's very specifically advocating going back to the structure between 2005 and 2015. The courts struck down the 2005-2010 structure in 2010, and the 2010-2014 structure in 2014. 2014-2015 was unregulated, but all actors knew that the FCC was going to come out with some new neutrality regulation, so no big player was going to put effort into exploiting the unregulated state and build an unsustainable business model…

In this very subthread, we have seasoned HNers, all of whom I've agreed with over the years of reading comments from all 3 of you. I believe you all have a sound grasp of logic, and I think there is some common ground you could all agree on. It does worry me that you all aren't having a productive discussion, and are seemingly talking past each other.

If such reasonable and knowledgeable people (as evidenced by HN history) are unwilling to drill down and establish an agreed set of fact and principles, what hope do we have at a national level?

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#280

Post by npsimons »

exabrial wrote: post #226
npsimons wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carriers have a say whether or not they can block things on the Google Play app store. Why do you believe this is okay?

Quote me where I said it was okay. I was stating a well-known fact, it stemmed from a time Google was trying to convince carriers to sell Android phones. It has little to do with net neutrality and I think it conflates the issue to something it isn't

Okay, so you don't agree with it. And it may not be a facet of net neutrality, but it certainly is analogous. I've paid for a general purpose computing device, and I've paid for a connection to the Internet. Why should anyone besides me choose what I can run on that device? Blocking apps because they compete with services a provider sells translates pretty clearly across to blocking websites because they compete with services a provider sells.
Post reply on HN