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Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

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Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#41

Post by Zikes »

So the argument seems to be that the more money these companies believe they can make, the more likely they are to build infrastructure that will ultimately reduce the costs for consumers.

This is a highly idealized view, which does not mesh well with synonymous real world systems like cable TV and cell phone networks. Those two examples alone prove to me that these companies would prefer to collude to keep prices artificially high than to use their monopolistic infrastructures to provide cheap and high quality service to consumers.

Besides which, America has already paid $200 billion to these companies in the name of infrastructure improvement, and all they did with that was take the money and run.

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#42

Post by foobarqux »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #22
wmf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiding the source or destination of traffic (which is one of the major things ISPs want to discriminate on) requires onion routing which will make things ~2x slower and more expensive. If we end up in a situation where a significant fraction of Internet traffic is being onion routed I would consider that a massive failure.

I actually wasn't trying to suggest onion routing, but a more peer-to-peer distributed internet, similar to the way bit torrent works. If a CDN was spread across multiple sites instead of concentrated at one place (ala S3), it would be very difficult for an ISP to track.

A distributed data store would achieve this and at the same time provide inexpensive versatile cloud storage.

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#43

Post by twoodfin »

rayiner wrote: post #37
alberth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the tax that's added into the price of a gallon of gas suppose to pay for roads? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax

That just covers the maintenance costs (and only about half of those), not capital construction costs.

That's not accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Finan...

"About 70 percent of the construction and maintenance costs of Interstate Highways in the United States have been paid through user fees, primarily the fuel taxes collected by the federal, state, and local governments."

And about 1/7 of the fuel tax revenue is redirected to public transit, rather than highways.

A moderate increase in the fuel tax[1] could make the IHS completely self-sustaining for both capital and maintenance expenditures. Unfortunately, raising the gas tax is typically a political loser.

Local roads are predominantly paid for through local property and other taxes, but that's easier to justify, since everyone takes advantage of local roads even if they don't drive.

[1] At least until electric cars become commonplace, in which case I'd probably be in favor of a simple mileage tax which could achieve the same effect.

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#44

Post by rayiner »

billiam wrote: post #8
jackgavigan wrote: post #4

I had a bit of back-and-forth with Marc on this topic and I think he's underestimating the difficulty of regulating a non-neutral 'net such that competition (and, therefore, innovation) isn't stifled. I can't help thinking that if, 20 years ago, Microsoft had struck a deal with the major ISPs to prioritise packets being downloaded to Internet Explorer over those being downloaded to Netscape browsers, Marc would have…

Exactly. I think that the woeful state of US broadband and wireless infrastructure today is the strongest proof of the failure of a poorly regulated private sector that effectively has captured telecom governance. That sunny world of virtual worlds and holographic telepresence will happen in Singapore a lot sooner than in the US if government allows the Internet to look like Cable TV. I consider Andreesson to have ze…

It's weird to me to blame the "state of U.S. broadband" on the telecom providers, and in the same breadth compare it to Singapore, a city-state where all 5 million people live in a single urban area of 270 square miles (i.e. a bit smaller than New York City with a population density a bit higher than San Francisco).

The state of broadband and wireless in the U.S. is proof only of the fact that it's much more expensive to build infrastructure to a huge, sparely-populated country with large suburban, exurban, and rural populations. Half of South Korea lives in the metro area of the largest city. About 30% of people in England live in the metro area of London. About 25% of people in Finland live in the metro area of Helsinki. Only 4% of the people in the USA live in the metro area of New York City. Beyond that, more than half the population of metro London lives in the city proper. For a typical U.S. city like Boston or DC or Atlanta, its more like 15%.

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#45

Post by protomyth »

pbreit wrote: post #14
protomyth wrote: post #2

What is the technical definition of net neutrality? I look at a lot of these articles and they seem to imply people are using the same term for multiple things.

Network neutrality rules prevent the network providers from cutting preferential deals with content providers. The pipe providers must remain neutral regarding the data flowing through their pipes. If you want to know what the world looks like without network neutrality just go back to the days of Compuserve, Prodigy, Genie, AOL, et al. Dismal does't even begin to describe the situation.

"must remain neutral regarding the data flowing through their pipes" - what would be the technical definition?

"If you want to know...." - no, just looking for an actual stated technical definition of net neutrality without the hand waving from these articles

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#46

Post by astrodust »

nostromo wrote: post #26
alberth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>" It's why major roads aren't owned by private companies" In the US, many major roads are owned by private companies like Cintra [1] to give one example, and they charge tolls [2] on those roads. It's become common practice in many US states that any new highway construction must have a toll on it and then the state sells the road to a private company. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cintra [2] http://en.wikipedia…

This is actually a great illustration of the reason we have common carrier laws in the US. Should we allow Cintra to let you go 100MPH instead of 70MPH if you pay a higher toll on the Indiana Toll Road? Maybe every 10MPH is an additional $1. Or maybe Cintra knows that Tesla drivers are rich, so their tolls could be set 10x higher than a Kia's toll. Or maybe people with Illinois license plates are on average more weal…

How about free trips if you order more than $100 worth of food at Chili's? Discounts if you let them plaster your car with advertising?

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#47

Post by rayiner »

lhc- wrote: post #25
twoodfin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. You can imagine pretty expansive definitions, and whatever definition you come up with can create potentially undesirable incentives. I don't know whether Comcast is using IP to deliver their video-on-demand services to your cable box, but let's assume they are. That IP bandwidth is above and beyond whatever you're paying for as a "broadband" connection, but that's just accounting: It's all packets in the end…

Im not sure how the second case incentivizes them to build out their networks either. They have barely done that for the last decade or so (consider how expensive and slow internet access in the US is compared to much of the first world), so I'm not sure why they would start now that they have even more control.

What's are the points of comparison? It's not really fair to compare average speeds in the U.S. with those in South Korea or Japan, where residents are heavily concentrate in a handful of major urban areas. I don't think internet access in the U.S. is slow compared to say Australia or Canada, which are similarly suburbanized and spread-out countries. According to this report, we're 11th in the OECD for average download speeds: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/fil... (page 30), ahead of Canada, Australia, and the U.K.

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#48

Post by rayiner »

pbreit wrote: post #11

I don't know how Marc squares his free markets love with his presence at the table being substantially enabled by the government (internet + UIUC + NCSA). Surely people have not forgotten what it was like pre-neutrality (Compuserve, Prodigy, Genie, AOL, et al)?

"Pre-neutrality"? You mean like 2009?

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#49

Post by calroc »

roin wrote: post #35
calroc wrote: post #16

There are no "cons" to net neutrality. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best and duplicitous at worst. The idea that we won't get enough bandwidth in the future unless the telecos et. el. are allowed to play gatekeeper makes no sense to me.

CON: The more money I think I can make by owning network infrastructure, the more I will invest to build it now. That's not to say that net neutrality is bad or wrong on balance, but no cons at all?

Faulty frame. Try it with other basic infrastructure: "The more money I think I can make by owning ROAD infrastructure, the more I will invest to build it now."

See the flaw?

Re: Marc Andreessen talks about the pros and cons of net neutrality

#50

Post by crazy1van »

sowhatquestion wrote: post #29
crazy1van wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this logic. Toll roads allow the people who want to use a road to pay for it. Tax-funded roads take taxes from all the district's citizens to pay for roads that only some will use. Great if you use that road. Not so great if you don't.

This is insane. By this logic, public goods don't exist. Tax-funded fire departments are great if your house catches fire, not so great if it doesn't, etc.

Of course there are public goods, but your fire department analogy doesn't work. We have fire departments standing by in case there's a fire. So, sure, a fire department that services your neighborhood is great, but you probably wouldn't want to pay for one that doesn't service your neighborhood.
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