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Small Cable Groups Seek To Break Net Neutrality
saikou writes "CNet's News.com has a story on the first cable companies openly going against Net Neutrality. As usual, request for equal treatment is labeled as 'special favors', and Google is used as an example of company that should pay for a fast connection to the end user." From the article: "'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
Agreed. Any company who has a presence on the internet pays for it's bandwidth, and the people accessing it are paying. What more is there to this?
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They would argue that Google only paid for their bandwidth to a certain point and likely that doesn't extend to that ISP's network... of course on the other side a rational person would say that the customer has paid for that portion of the bandwidth too.
Sadly this is just another example of some companies trying to nickel and dime people to death in order to maximize revenue at all costs.
Don't get me wrong, I am a major fan of free markets and capitalism... something we really don't have in this area in large part because of government regulations and municipal/regional monopolies that do much to lock out competition.
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So after years of "Get your unlimited broadband internet" they now realize that maybe there is a limit and want to charge Google.
That is fine if Google is your customer, if not you can't charge them.
Another option is to charge your customers (the people at home) for the usage of google.com. You could even provide them with a detailed bill.
200mb google video 30$
50mb youtube.com 5$
500mb pornlegends.com 50$
Or wait a second didn't we have the pay per bit 10 years ago and everybody switched to "All ways on internet" packages, promoted by the same bastards that now think that they are losing revenue?
What power has law where only money rules.
Not to be a troll, just Devils Advocate. What do you think would happen if Cox "blocked" Google. Do you think the vast majority of Cox users would care enough to switch ? Do you think they have the ability to switch ?
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed other than RoadRunner. I cannot get DSL, and have only one provider. What happens tomorrow if they decide to throttle back Gmail, and throttle up Hotmail ??
This is something that needs more press.
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The remarks indicated it's not only the nation's largest broadband players, both in the cable and the telecommunications sectors, that have voiced public opposition to what they refer to as unprecedented governmental regulation of the Internet. They've said repeatedly that without evidence of a problem, there's no need for new laws.
Net neutrality, also called network neutrality, is the philosophy that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize content and services--particularly video--that come across their pipes. Proponents have launched a campaign to enact detailed regulations barring such practices, and so far they've won over some congressional Democrats.
Network operators counter that they deserve the right to charge premium fees to bandwidth hogs in order to offset their vast investments in infrastructure and to ensure the quality and security of their products. Mediacom has made $1.7 billion in capital investments over the past decade, according to Commisso.
And so I return to my premise that it's time to nationalize the communications infrastructure in this country. Declare it an important national resource, vital to the safety and security of US citizens, and then take it away from these greedy pinheads. Create a department to oversee telecommunications infrastructure and force these companies to bid on maintenance contracts for the various regions of the country.
True, that means goverment oversight, and the government is an iffy proposition at best, but it's a damned sight better than allowing the telecoms to run amok and ramp up the prices for content we as customers want. In the end, they'd do well to listen to customers, before they don't have any.
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Aside from the end users getting the raw deal (as usual), I think it would be hilarious for these money-grabbing bastards to get a harsh lesson in just how dependant they are on these sites. Case in point: I personally do not know anyone, not one single person, that doesn't use one or more of Google's services in some way on a regular basis.
Not trying to say everyone does of course, but the amount of people that do is large enough that any ISP that attempts to mess with them like this faces a giant backlash and loss of business as I can't see Google giving in to this extortion.
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> Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?' Some states do set a minimum as to what a gas station can charge. In an attempt to keep the little guys in business the state of Wisconsin has a 5% minimum that gas stations are required to charge over the wholesale price at which they purchase it at. In the city of Milwaukee this is a big issue because a lot of the little guys are more than willing to use gas as a loss leader to get you into their convenience store.
And the infrastructure is on public land.
I had a similar idea but without paying for any trial.
Surely Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc can identify trafic originating from that ISP via IP addresses. When anyone trys to access your page from one of those ISP, redirect them to a page explaining that the ISP is holding back bandwidth to this site so your expierence may be slower than it should be. Then provide information about competing ISPs in the area which don't do this as well as contact information to the ISP to complain. Then after 5 seconds or something you are redirected to the actual page.
Yes, this will probably annoy users but I think that annoyance will mostly be focused toward the ISP. Then the market can sort out if its worth it to implement this.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
1.) People that stay connected continually.
2.) People sharing files (big ones)
3.) People downloading bigger and bigger files, since hard drive space is el-cheapo.
4.) Myriads of video sites popping up everywhere.
So, rather than your little ISP eat it's own shit over your extravegant downloading habits, or jacking up your bill, they are trying to shunt this bandwidth hurt over to the major players who supply it. I know, it's bullshit. But, the only alternative I see, scary thought, ISP's being forced to go back to some sort of "pay for what you use" service, which works for major ISP's and backbones, but joe consumer whore won't swallow it because he would find out that his $40/month cable service really costs the cable company $80/month once you figure in his 30 gig/month porn downloading habit. I know a guy that works for a major cable internet provider, and I've got it on good authority that their CMTS is over subscribed, and their connection to the world in the are we live in is VERY overburdened, but they just can't seem to afford an upgrade.
Dunno, just my 2 cents.
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You forget that in both of those cases, the "end user" winds up paying more for the use of certain infrastructure, like transoceanic cables, satellite time, or airmail. Users also, with certain exceptions like flat-rate phone service (which still doesn't include overseas calling), pay per actual usage of the service (i.e., per-minute phone rates or postage stamps). And in the case of stamps, you can pay more to get better service (overnight, 1st class v. Parcel Post, etc.)
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While you make a good argument, you are wrong at the core. In true capitalism, where there aren't regulations, it does not tend to monopoly because the moment a market becomes oppressed, a competitor will step up and fill the gap. Not all monopolies are wrong or even bad. Not all trusts are wrong or bad. The moment that a monopoly or trust exists, and becomes opressive, that is where the competition steps in and the monopoly falls. It is in the best interests of a trust or monopoly to try to keep their customers happy so that they have no reason to want to go somewhere else or start up their own. The biggest fallacy about regulations making capitalism safer is exactly what you said, about how regulations keep things fair. That couldn't be any farther from the truth. Regulations make it harder for the competetion to step in when it is most needed. All of these giant companies lobby with the government to set up regulations that favor them. These regulations are not neutral or even good-natured. You tend to forget that these regulations, while begged for by the hippies in the world, are proposed and instituted by the actual companies that are forced to comply. So naturally the solutions they propose and are willing to institute are ones that are going to maintain their monopoly. What we need to get rid of is our Democractic government and actually re-adopt our Republic. republic + capitalism == possible democracy + capitalism == socialism If you are in doubt about my last statements, then go look up exactly what democracy is.
The funny part is that these completely incompetent CEO's have no clue as to who they are dealing with. If Google wanted to they could put a nice hurt on them all in short order. Google owns a crapload of wonderful dark fiber all over the place. A google Backbone ISP offering services that cut into the real pie of these idiots will wake them up fast. (VoIP over an encrypted port range that Comcast cant screw with to make QOS bad for customers other than THEIR VoIP service.. Yes they do that right now. Video content that makes people ditch their cable tv for ala-carte show access.)
I really hope that is what Google is planning on. Something to fire up all that dark fiber and flip a giant middle finger to the greedy assholes at SBC and Comcast that think they deserve to double charge customers.
IF Comcast lost google to the local DSL company. (I.E. www.google.com resolves to "Comcast want to charge you more to access us, so we are unavailable in order to save you money. here is a list of DSL and other broadband providers in your area that will serve you better than Comcast wants to serve you.") they would be hurting really bad nationwide within 30 days. Their margins are pretty thin because they spent way to much on poorly engineered networks and Cisco gear that is way over sized. (They have a Fiber ring that is designed by a moron in the midwest. Very little redundancy.. you lose a connection and large amounts of cities lost all TV signals.)
They need to play hardball with these idiots. Everyone already has a bit of hate for the companies already,(even comcast employees hate the place) if a large loved company were to take a side, the change would be pretty damaging to the company that they target.
No. It's you who do not understand free-markets and capitalism.
.gov.
.gov interference sets the price differently than the market-clearing, there will be problems. The franchise situation with cable essentially means that cable can charge a greater price than otherwise, which means for guaranteed priceing they have fewer customers than otherwise or in other terms their price/performance sucks. And guess what -- no bureaucrat can fix that. If they [.gov] choose the market price what did I need the .gov idiot for in the first place? If they set it higher... well that's the favoritism we all know so well. If they set it too low, the area will become a wasteland of no service because noone will step in to provide or demand will greatly outstrip supply - either way it sucks... Fancy that -- markets work...
The so-called collapse you are talking about occurs if and only if someone passes a law that protects turf or establishes barriers to entry that are not surmountable by startups that cannot command the same capital or priveledges from
With the excuse that it would be wasteful to have multiple pipes run to my house I only have Time-Warner and legacy PacBell. Nobody can come into my home to compete and to make matters worse I can't even lay fiber to the fiber optic port 1000 ft away because of moronic city constraints.
In addition, capitalism works regardless of the perceived fairness of the transaction. In a free-market the price-point is different, as defined by the market-clearing price. In a constrained transaction, where the
Also monopoloy is not evil at all provided it comes about naturally. ALCOA was a wonderful example. Prior to the bogus antitrust action, they deployed aluminum worldwide at ever decreasing prices while making an obscene profit taking advantage of their declining average cost curves.
Just display a page with a message saying "XYZ isp is making you wait N seconds before accessing Google".
Using the end user's ISP named and N being the average from that ISPs throttling. Include a link to a page explaining what the ISP is actually doing - slowing down the users connection to try to make someone else pay them money. In other words the users service was reduced intentionally (without notifying them). Just use simple words because most users don't have a clue about computers.
Mmm no, capitalism in it's pure form is exactly "laissez faire". Your idea of government regulated trades would make real capitalists cry in bed.
In pure capitalism the government doesn't mess with the economy, it lets the market run freely. The idea is that whenever someone gets crushed, the -theoretically- healthy system can reabsorb him somewhere else. It works at some places and at some times, it's the case of many asian enterprises that outsource their work: when something is wrong down the chain, they get rid of it and factories are closed. The employees are then put somewhere else (because they are growing economies) and no one gets hurt.
About your problems with the term "socialism". Many so-called socialist governments today do exist. They do not own the factories, but they share some fundamental conceptions with historical socialists. Terms such as this evolve as the world changes.
a fair transaction is a mutually beneficial one Yeah right. There's no such thing. Unless you are printing bills your are not creating any wealth (even then you aren't). It only goes from one hand to another, and in that process someone gets screwed. That's how it works. How much you screw or get screwed depends on your position and negotiating abilities. And yes, the PBI of your country most likely grows every year, but the $ goes down every year too. Capitalism plays on greed and selfishness that are pretty much builtin on every person. Every one does the best he can in his situation, no matter how many he has to crush to do se. There's a reason it's cheaper to outsource your jobs to India, someone somewhere *is* getting screwed.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
The incumbents are only universally available because the government mandated that Ma Bell serve every single house out in the middle of nowhere. Without government regulation, the most remote 10-20% of the public probably wouldn't be served at all, and probably half of the remainder would end up in a natural monopoly because the market can't sustain more than one player.
Outside of major metro areas, the cost of running the lines never pays for itself. For example, in my hometown of 8500 people, when the cable company's limited monopoly came up for review, a second cable company came in and challenged the previous company. Both were regional entities. The town agreed to let them both duke it out in the free market.
The new cable company came in, put in brand new lines for the entire city, competed on price, and got almost a third of the town to switch. After two or three years, they realized they were still millions of dollars in the hole and weren't likely to break even in any reasonable time frame. They sold their lines to the original incumbent cable company. Thus, effectively, all competition did for us was to upgrade the cable company's lines for pennies on the dollar... but to make up for their losses, as soon as the second company went away, the original company's prices skyrocketed to half again more than they were before the second company came in.
Free markets don't work except for physical products (or location-indifferent services) that can be distributed broadly enough to make competition practical. For example, satellite cable service works because it is not tied to a geographical location, so a single infrastructure cost covers the entire country. Occasionally, they work for location-tied services, but for the most part, those collapse into a monopoly... and while not all monopolies are abusive, most eventually become abusive unless they are a not-for-profit entity (and occasionally even then).
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Sure, true Capitalism should not require any Government influence as it's normally designed. But it works from the principle that the parties involved in capitalism exchange fairly goods and services. That they produce and are compensated. The best at a particular service or production would receive the most benefit. This is not what happens though (and not because the government blindly implements regs).
Just as government should remain outside and not influence the market, so should those parties involved in the market should refrain from manipulating the market beyond the normal level of competition. This is where is begins to skew and capitalism becomes deformed. No longer is the market defined by the ebb and flow of better services/products competing, but rather there are parties that can interfere with the market....and not allow competition. Just because it's not the Government performing the market maipulation (via regulations) doesn't mean that it isn't happening. People seem to have a blind eye toward companies when they perform the manipulation versus the governemt via regulations.
Regulations by the Government, when not just another manipulation by companies, are instituted to ensure that the maket remains as level a playing field as possible.
Pure capitalism fails just as bad a communism because it all depends on humans. And we all know that not all humans have the ability to refrain from deforming the society/economy they exist to only benefit themselves.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to do this *before* any of the proposed legislation takes effect? Once the laws are in place, it's going to be difficult to change/repeal them.
I think that Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. should go on the offensive on this issue and start playing hardball *now*, so that people besides those interested in tech (geeks) get an understanding of what's about to go down. Redirect people to a page explaining the proposed legislation and an email link to all 100 senators.
Annoying? Yep. But worth it in the long run.
The telcos are going to have some serious explaining to do once Joe and Jane Average understand that they are not getting what they paid for. The problem is, they may not know until it is too late.
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"Since the internet is not regulated like a utility"
Yes, but what these companies are leveraging is their control of last-mile connectivity, which is regulated like a utility. These organizations enjoy monopolies granted to them by municipal governments, just like other utilities.
Since we're into outlandish analogies:
Imagine that your city granted PowerCo the right to exclusively provide power service to all of the houses in the city on a promise that power usage fee rates would be set by a particular formula or 3rd party organization. Imagine that WidgetCo produced a widget that consumes an enormous amount of electricity, and everybody in your city buys their widget. Now, PowerCo needs to generate more power to feed the widgets, but does not want to incur the capital expenditure to build a new plant. Now, the city's residents _are_ paying for the power used by their widgets. PowerCo could go to the city, and ask for rates to increase or for a grant or a loan to fund their new plant. In that instance, though, the city could just say "Well, ElectriCo's just over in the next city, and they seem to think that they could pick up the slack if we let them into this market." Or, PowerCo could go to WidgetCo and say "If you don't fund our new plant, we'll make it impossible for your widgets to use our power." Then, in a stroke of pure genius, PowerCo decides to do exactly that - they make it impossible to power WidgetCo's widgets using electricity provided by PowerCo, and produce their own widgets (which are of lesser quality, and cost more - but can be used with the electricity provided by PowerCo). A victory for the consumer?
They aren't interested in Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. This massive lobbying is the result of only one thing: VoIP. VoIP has freed people and businesses from being tied to the circuit-switched network that is the core source of revenue for many telcoms. AT&T, Verizon, and the other players desperately want to tilt the playing field back into their favor. VoIP startups have been popping out of the woodwork over the past two years. At the very least, Ma Bell wants to slow down the growth of these nimble companies by charging tarrifs, which get passed onto customers and lessen the biggest incentive to switch to VoIP: cost savings.
Cable companies now are simply jumping on the bandwagon. Which, if you notice, seems to coincide with the rollout of their own VoIP services.
Last December I founded a small-business VoIP company myself. So I've been following this issue very closely; it's the only time I've ever contacted a federal representative in my life. However, this is bigger than simply a slower Google or putting me out of business. It's about real jobs and real innovation being extinguished.
Please read a recent blog entry of mine to put a face with this imporant issue. Or, even better learn what you can do to help.
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Cox wouldn't have customers very long if none of them could get to Google. This doesn't address the real goal of defeating net neutrality.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Maybe even, to show them who's boss, Google could block all access from ISPs that support the QoS BS. Just for one day. Call it a warning shot.
That just might make them shit their pants.