So why isn't internet an utility?
FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
331–340 of 343 posts
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thoughts on what effect title II designation would have on innovative ISPs such as Google fiber and webpass? Would Google still be inclined to invest money in Fiber?
Google is generally capable of thinking long term. The major broadband providers in America are incapable of thinking beyond the next few quarterly statements--otherwise they would not have gotten themselves into this mess.
The fact is that Google is only deploying fiber in cities that give massive regulatory concessions: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-t....
It's very legitimate to ask whether Google would invest in fiber were it regulated under Title II, because to date they have expressed the distinct unwillingness to enter municipal markets with heavy telecom regulation. They won't even agree to build-out requirements, which are pretty much standard for cable franchises.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Time to nationalize then. I hate even thinking that, but I'd rather have tax dollars wasted than see our money funnelled to Wall Street. When capital investment into broadband is set by vote, do you think you'll be happy with the resulting level of investment?
Nationalizing anything nearly always leads to lower quality. Compare the toll roads in France to the "free" autobahns in Germany. The French toll routes are far better maintained. Another case is health care, compare an NHS experience with a hip replacement in the UK with a hip replacement in France (or the US.) In the UK, the waiting list is measured in 6+ months, while in the US or France, it is almost immediate. F…
> while in the US or France, it is almost immediate.
You seem to operate under the assumption that healthcare in France is private. It isn't. It's underfunded and has had a gaping deficit for as long as I can remember, but it still sort of works.
> The government doesn't have a profit motive, thus they have no incentives.
The government doesn't have a "profit motive". They have what is called a "mandate to deliver a public service". Which means that they're not going to deliberately screw over non-profitable areas. Not to say that everything is rosy (see, eg, the absolutely shameful state of the French penal system), but they're trying. As a bonus, you can compare the (privatized) UK railroad system and the (still public) French railroad system, and run a customer satisfaction survey.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#334There is no way in hell this can go ahead. Also, minor nitpick, but this is a rather misleading post. Nobody approved anything, the vote was merely a green light to go ahead with the proposal, nothing has been approved just yet, it's not that easy. Some of my "favourite" takeaways: He stressed consumers would be guaranteed a baseline of service Just like your internet provider says they don't throttle torrent traffic…
> What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed).
Comcast actually owns part of Hulu, but its a purely economic ownership interest (See https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu for more information)
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically the answer to this is yes. If Comcast spends all of this money to upgrade their network and the cost to the end user goes up for the better service, then there are really no problems here. That's basically how a market should work. That plan would actually encourage them to upgrade their networks over time and install things like fiber to meet the new demands of customers, instead of providing poor service…
Exactly, customers in the market can then make cost/value choices for products that directly relate to how that individual ISP is managing costs. With fast lane proposals, additional cost gets pushed back to successful websites. So for example, when Netflix pays a toll to Comcast, that additional cost is distributed among all the users of Netflix even if they're not doing business with Comcast. How does this work to…
The part that makes this different from healthcare options, is that there are usually no or few options. I know where I live I have the choice of timewarner or fios. That's it. If they decide they are slowing down the sites I use, I'm SOL.
I see a future where we are given a list of "premium" supported sites before making ISP decisions. I wonder if well end up with another dimension of price tier where one dimension is speed of service and the other is what major sites support it.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comcast: Video streaming services must pay 40x the base cost, or suffer from a data cap. Amazon: OK, we'll sign a 4 year contract for 30x the base cost. Comcast: Great Year 5 comes around, Amazon wants a discount. Comcast refuses. Comcast then blocks all Amazon IP Address traffic until they reach a deal. Comcast: Customers, you cannot access Amazon video on our service, but here's a $5 coupon to our own video on dema…
"After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable," business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider." From what I understand, your example would not be permissable. I know the…
Just out of curiosity, what authority does FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler cite for his ability to do this, given the history of the FCC getting railed in court?
How do we know this is not just FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's plan to give Comcast exactly what it wants?
"Oh well, we tried to block this deal, but that darn court stopped us!"
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US is not going to match the #1 and #2 on your list, Hong Kong and Singapore, ever, because it is trivial to wire up a single dense city with weak democratic red tape. But even the most densely populated areas in the US have terrible Internet access. A small portion of New York City has FiOS, but the vast majority has Comcast or Time Warner, and those are about$60 for 20Mbps advertised [0]. I'm willing to give…
At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium. It may be that there are cities in France and Belgium that have faster internet service. But they have better subways, etc, too. Most Americans cities are terribly managed. While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to a…
> At the state level, on Ookla's data, New York performs pretty comparably to France and Belgium.
Because they're including Weill Cornell Medical College and Digital Ocean in the data (those are the top ISPs in NYC, on their map).
It's not very meaningful unless we (A) can separate out consumer ISPs from business ISPs[0], (B) Know what speeds everyone is paying for and has available (currently this is all lumped together), and (C) knows how much everyone is paying for that service.
> While Verizon is trying to deploy FIOS in New York, De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government!
As someone who actually lives in NYC and has tried to get FiOS installed in multiple buildings, there are two problems. One is that buildings have exclusive agreements to provide television service through either Time Warner or Comcast (usually because the superintendant and/or owner gets free cable as a result of this agreement), and that Verizon refuses to provide FiOS Internet unless they can also provide television service.
Verizon is fully aware of this problem, and they've framed it in a way that allows them conveniently to point the finger at another entity.
Verizon is "trying" to deploy FiOS in New York, but they're not really interested in expanding their coverage.
> De Blasio has hired a civil rights lawyer to look into the issue of poor people not being able to afford FIOS! I would say the bottleneck is definitely NYC's government
This would only be relevant if the NYC government were the ones actively blocking people who can afford to pay for FiOS from having it installed, but as explained above, that's not the case.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
The military relies on the Internet too, it should be politically neutral.
Not quite, the military really only cares about the SIPRnet, a construct that is thankfully completely free of the likes of AT&T, the FCC, etc. The military has never depended on the Internet normal people use. Its a great service for Bob and Joe Servicemember to be able to watch Netflux in their down time, but because its not really important to any mission in any way, they dont care.
That's not really true, NIPRNet (unclassified regular Internet) is just as important nowadays.
There are a lot of essential communications going on that aren't classified, and not everyone doing an essential job function has a security clearance.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A CDN only carries traffic for those who’ve paid to be on it. A CDN doesn't carry traffic at all; it hosts content (multiple copies of it in different locations) for others to carry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network CDNs operate servers , not routers. The servers can be located in data centers with easy connections to ISPs and transit providers, but their traffic still doesn't get privileged ov…
I think you're focusing too much on the technical implementation. I agree with the parent that a CDN effectively carries traffic from a content provider to the end user. Sure it does it in bigger chunks, and uses existing network connections. But the end result is still "pay more for faster access", and isn't that exactly what net neutrality is against?
> I think you're focusing too much on the technical implementation
I'm focusing on the functionality that's being implemented, which is what the poster I was responding to said was important. Having privileged routes is different functionality from having multiple hosts that all have copies of the same data.
> a CDN effectively carries traffic from a content provider to the end user.
But so does a non-CDN. So does any route on the Internet. The only difference with a CDN is that the content provider has paid for more servers to host multiple copies of the data. But the money is for those multiple copies, not for giving any specific copy a privileged route to certain users. As above, that's a functional difference.
Here's another way of seeing the functional difference. Say I use two online services, A and B. A is served using a global CDN. B is served using a privileged network with my current ISP. Now I change ISPs to one that service B isn't paying for privileged access to. I see no difference in performance with service A, but a big difference in performance with service B. So service A using a CDN doesn't lock me in to a specific ISP; but service B paying for privileged routes does.
> the end result is still "pay more for faster access"
No, it's "pay more for multiple copies of your data". It's not "pay more to have your data go over a quicker route from the same place".
> isn't that exactly what net neutrality is against?
No, net neutrality is not against "pay more for faster access", like service A above. It's against "pay more for privileged access to an ISP's users", like service B above.
Re: FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you making the argument that the existing QoS for power and water are both optimal? If so, for whom are they optimal? Many people purchase bottled drinking water via delivery service b/c they deem the quality of tap water unacceptable for consumption. Many people invest in UPS units, backup generators, etc. b/c they deem the reliability of power from the grid unacceptable. Imagine if the power grid had an additio…
Many people purchase Google Fiber for 900Gb/s down b/c they deem the quality of Comcast's 25Gb/s down as unacceptable. Are you making the counter argument that 25Gb/s is optimal given the reality that we're living in a time where 900Gb/s down is attainable except for the lack of shareholder will preventing its deployment? I've built my own modems. I witnessed the stagnation around 2400 baud. I'm unimpressed by your s…
I think you misunderstood my argument, b/c you are making the same one.