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Cell Phones Presage Future of Non-Neutral Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The US cell phone network has no network neutrality. This story on NewsForge takes a look at the obstacles to getting a third-party application running on cell phone networks, and explains why the same obstacles could ruin a non-neutral Internet." (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)
I think competition alone at this point would gaurentee net neurality. That is if one company starts limiting access to the web then customers will switch to other providers. If they all try to do it at the same time I am sure they would be breaking some collusion / monopoly laws.
Philosophy.
I don't think it's the best argument for net neutrality. I think the average person might look at that statement and think, "Well, even though different cell companies are linking different networks together - everything seems to work fine. So why not do the same thing with the internet?"
Of course, we know why. Competing companies would squeeze competitor's offerings unfairly, and that would stifle the current net's model of natural selection. Sub standard service would result.
So, while I agree with the article I don't think it should be used in arguments about net neutrality. It's possibly misleading to non-geeks.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I tried to create a chat client for a free mmo game i play http://getcontinuum.com/ only to discover my cell phone provider
O2 only allows HTTP and blocks TCP and UDP. Sucks, aparently it is to prevent people using VOIP but it prevents hundreds of legitimate uses.
Then again they probabbly dont want people to play or use 3rd party free apps.
You mean to tell me that a company that builds a networking infrastructure actually gets to set the terms by which others are or are not allowed to use it?
Clearly, something must be done!
But what if the 'Net's neutrality *is* compromised? Could this not spur the development of a new kind of communications network? It seems to me that there is not a great enough incentive for our civilization to make the next great leap in how communication is sent because we haven't been weaned from the nipple of the telcos.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I assume that if it was profitable for cell phone companies to find a way to create a net neutral infrastructure, there would already be steps in that direction. It seems to me that the biggest reason that they are insisting on controlling their own networks is that it is simply more profitable to them, no surprise the telcom giant want to do the same to the internet. Imagine if ISPs had the same amount of control over the internet that cell phone companies have over their networks now. I dont think what we know as the internet today would have ever gotten as large or productive as it currently is.
I'm one of the non-IT /. readers. I've never doubted that AT&T charging Google protection money was a BAD idea, but I don't think I could have really articulated why at all, let alone stood up and departed the issue. What a great way to put it. In an instant, you can see just how bad an idea non-nutral, and just how bad it could get.
San Francisco Photographers
Excelent article, i think it make a very valid point and without intervention, that is a plausible future for the Internet.
The way I see the argument pro-non-netrality is mainly that the big ISP's don't want to invest large amounts of money into new technologies unless they get a piece of the action (control, basically) over those developments. They see it as a way to get back their investments (and I believe that they would have a decent return without all this, just by gaining subscribers and by the simple fact that the internet is not free to the end user).
So they are asking for control in exchange for innovation, that's not a new concept, not even on the internet. (under different forms but with the same basic concept, networks like Netzero allowed access to the net for free, gaining a bit of control on your computer).
The difference is that we know how the internet is today, and I'm not sure the end user is going to stand for less than that, It's easy to switch a paradigm when you give people something better, suddenly they don't stand for what it was before, if you change it for something less good, people complain, and markets shift, if a given ISP chose to be more neutral than others, there's a chance they'll attract more customers.
Before all the replys come in, I don't like the idea of a non-neutral Internet, we see what happens in China and other countries that block traffic, we look upon them as something dirty and low, ISP's need to realize that they may be looked upon that way if they choose to go too far with their efforts to make extra money.
The future will take care of itself.. It has in the past
I think his point is valid. Anyone who has a cellphone knows how these companies cripple their phones and basically limit their customers to very few expensive, poorly designed, services. It seems pretty obvious to me that verizon would love to be able to control their landline network with the same stranglehold. How else could they get people to actually use their shitty services?
Fortunately, unlocking and registry hacking tools are starting to be ubiquitous.
-b.
SMS uses the, rather limited bandwidth, control channel for transport. That puts a lot of pressure on the kinds of applications that can be supported.
Look at the price per megabit for messages outside a package to get an idea of the cost (k$).
Not the same at all!
But some cell carriers are far from neutral on IP as well. I'm not sure they are clear on how that affects their market share.
So, no net neutrality is a bad thing - I've felt this in my guts for a long time and this article gives me some very good arguments to articulate it (yes, I should have done my own thinking, but I'm lazy).
It's easy to understand WHY cell phone companies are doing this, though. Too much money was lost in creating a transparent, neutral internet; some companies and executives may have gotten rich but as an industry, global telecommunications has an appaling performance record.
Cell phone providers are one of the potential providers of the "next net" (depending on who will win the technology battle - the cell phone providers with 3g/4g, broadband providers with WiMax or whoever else can float a business model for some cool technology). So, the folks in strategy and marketing of Verizon/AT&T/ have figured that net neutrality is a bad thing 'coz they need to get some ROE on their investor's buck.
The question is - how are we as consumers (or better - potential entrepreneurs?) going to prevent this from happening? I'm not sure Joe Average is smart enough to understand he shouldn't be buying his UMTS minutes from a company that doesn't offer him a neutral service.
" For now, Internet service providers are prohibited from discriminating against connections to particular sites on the Internet: they are required to treat traffic to Google exactly the same as traffic to Yahoo! or MSN."
Incorrect. They are not *required* to do anything. There aren't any laws that specifically prohibit data discrimination.
"It's simple. Because the cell phone carriers control what services are allowed to use their networks. There is no net neutrality on the cell phone network."
And this is much like how AOL used to be (in the past: Prodigy, CompuServe, and many bulletin boards).
What's next, water pipes?
Skype will attempt to tunnel over HTTPS or HTTP if it's normal route is blocked. So O2 doesn't really block VOIP completely at all. You should tell them that their measures only hurt legitimate customers, and then switch providers.
As the summary points out, mobile phone networks in the U.S. compete against each other with no third-party innovation allowed.
I'm not talking about java games here, I'm talking third-party mobile services.
So, why would a privatized internet be different?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Actually, I believe it is a poor analogy. I'm currently undecided on the merits of legislating for net neutrality. I'm not sure differentiated classes of service is intrinsically a bad idea. It all depends how it is handled. Much of the debate is, indeed alarmist.
Anyway, having got that out of the way, why is it a bad analogy?
The article asks why there is a dearth of innovative applications on cellular phones and answers: It's simple. Because the cell phone carriers control what services are allowed to use their networks.
Well no, it's not that simple. The cellular networks control a hell of a lot more than that:
1. In many cases they control the applications you can install on the handset (an application walled garden)
2. Data is charged on a per-byte basis as opposed to the flat rate all-you-can-eat (yes I know there are exceptions) tariffs common on the net.
Those two on their own are enough to keep the mobile ecosystem moribund.
Net neutrality potentially threatens to impose the third big sin of the cellular networks:
3. The content/connectivity walled garden where you can't connect to Google or YouTube, Just AT&Tgle and You&T.
the trouble is, I simple don't see this coming to pass. While there is a market for people wanting to connect to these guys, someone will make the circuits available and charge for them. Any backbone that offers lousy services to key Internet destinations will find its downstream customers changing backbones).
but charging against the content control was stupid. There are plenty of conservatives techno-users who would sign up for every single word of the article except the unnecessary libertine diatribes against content screening. The whole net neutrality movement should concentrate on discriminating by business and potential monopolisation instead of focusing on decency censorship issues.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I think you're right, for the most part. But....I do think you may be overly optimistic regarding people's tolerance for things getting better as opposed to worse. Television has more comercials than ever, our government is turning fascist, our personal and national debt rises, planetary change is imminent while energy consumption soars....... I think people can be manipulated to think everything is "OK" when in fact, conditions are far from our potential at this point in history. Capitolism is not a system that promotes freedom and equality, I don't care what "free market" whining some people emit. Greed does not go well with power and power is what money can buy today.
Here's how I imagine that it would work: Your phone doesn't really have an IPv4 address; all it has is a connection over a proprietary network protocol to an HTTP proxy at the network provider's data center. It relays all outgoing connections that form a valid HTTP request over this connection and drops all other connections. It could even incorporate a "web accelerator" that rewrites HTML as conforming with normalized whitespace, recompresses text and images, and blocks unknown Content-types.
The balance of the arguments is so out of kilter I can barely treat it as an argument of merit. Currently, the net is a (mostly) impersonal collection of linked devices. ISP providers take their chances and either succeed, or fizzle.
... which the net will do. End Of Line.
I am paying Verizon for the cabeling that allows data to flow. That is their revenue source, fair and square. There is no way Verizon should ever get *content control* over what flows ON their net cable. Yes, they have somehow achieved this lock on the cell phone side, to the pain of the article author.
The second any of these big carriers gets content supervision rights that somehow pass a court appeal, then they gain a completely corruptible level of power. Why? Because the NEXT thing that happens is they start making deals.
"I'll block Atheist traffic for a cut of your action, Mr. Robertson."
The Slashdot review word for this post is Dissolve
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
and the near term motivation is the idea that Bell can't charge google. Its not fair that google makes millions by providing a service and Bell only gets the subscription fees. Its just not fair. Bell needs the legal ability to extort google if it is going to survive and have money to 'innovate'.
much of the article was a stretch however this is slightly disturbing and believable:
He is writing the article pseudonymously because the cell phone companies have the power and freedom to crush his company by blocking it from their networks.
Its all about extortion. Its the American way. Who are we to stand in the way of progress?
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I think you've gotten your terms crossed here. Net neutrality would mean that no one is "cut off". The loss of net neutrality would allow a telco to block, say, Google or YouTube.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
You're spot on.
If having paying customers is not enough incentive to build the next generation networking infrastructure, I don't see what else is enough.
The only case where non-neutral Internet makes sense is to have ad-supported Internet, so that content providers pay for end user's Internet bills from advertising revenue. If this is the case, then you get what you didn't pay for. But I don't see this coming.
In the current model where end users do pay for their own Internet access, eliminating net neutrality actually poses risks to the ISP. If they happen to choose the wrong premium partner, they will lose customers. In fact, some people will be dissatisfied for every choices of partnership. Remaining neutral is probably the best way to make most people happy.
I once had a signature.
But what if the 'Net's neutrality *is* compromised? Could this not spur the development of a new kind of communications network? It seems to me that there is not a great enough incentive for our civilization to make the next great leap in how communication is sent because we haven't been weaned from the nipple of the telcos.
We already made the leap.
Now we're talking about letting the telcos control and bastardize it.
paintball
Need I say more?
The great thing about the internet is that it only does one thing, and it does it incredibly well. The internet moves little bits and bytes of information from point A to point B. That's it.
There is some guy who's name escapes me (and who is also I believe famous in geek circles) that said that if you take away features from a protocol, you'll increase innovation. I'm paraphrasing a bit as I don't know the quote or the man who said it, but look at the phone network.
Phone companies do phoen calls really well but in order to add new features the phone company has to redo major portions of their network. The phone network is for the most part one highly integrated network with highly integrated protocol. It's a pain to work with these days. How fast do they innovate?
Now look at the internet and all the layers it has. On the lowest level you have the physical medium to transport data, which could be swapped out from copper to fiber without affecting the IP protocol. IP4 can be swapped for IP6 without dramatically affecting your operating system. Your operating system can be swapped without affecting your email server or your web browsing. You can add a bittorrent client in two seconds as long as your OS supports communicating to your ISP. And all these layers can be shifted and moved without having to create one monolithic company and structure to run everything from the major internet hubs all the way down to the PC on your desk top. You get to select all the layers right for you, and businesses can pick the layers they can put themselves into. It's the ultimate form of expression of competition and innovation.
Fuck companies who are opposed to net neutrality. Companies that support a tiered internet are anti capitalism as Adam Smith envisioned it. They don't want competition or innovation, they want easy profit.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Around here I've found that you usually have two choices: DSL or cable. Where cable is controlled by the local cableco, and DSL is either through the local Telco or somebody else who buys access to their lines.
Of course, in many cases the telco tends to be more accessible to rural areas (no cable TV, no cable internet), and the really rural areas often have weird ways of getting access such as airwave (wireless) or sattelite.
The net neutrality bill was VOTED DOWN. And more BS later: "...closely mirrors the technical functionality of the Internet...the US cellular phone network."
No it doesn't "closely mirror the technal functionality" of the internet. It may seem like it to the user, but cells are nothing like backbones. Technically there are few similarities.
Because a cell phone has a two inch screen. DUH.
I can't read any more of this crap. I am 100% FOR network neutrality, but when you have to resort to rank bullshit to make your point, you're doing your side no favors. This guy should STFU and let someone with a three digit IQ argue for network neutrality; he's making us all look like fools.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I can write a letter in the cyrillic characterset on either my phone or computer. I can send the message via computer from the US to Eastern Europe or the other direction with few problems (especially if in Unicode). I can not send or receive cyrillic (or other alternet non-latin character sets) to or from Cingular with SMS, but while in Ukraine the same phone sends the same text without problems to other Ukraine phones. Worse, I can MMS a message from Ukraine to Cingular in cyrillic and it is garbled by Cingular, but on the way from US to Ukraine (starting on Cingular and ending on Kyivstar) the MMS message _sometimes_ arrives intact. Other times it is just replacement characters. So parts of Cingular are different than others (I have wondered if the ATT Wireless vs Cingular from the acquisition is the cause).
If the cell phone networks worked like the Internet it would just work if both ends adopted the same standards (i.e., the phones used the same standards) as the telephone network would be a layer above that doing just data delivery.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
If you want to convince anyone of net neutrality.. you just show them this video where john stewart & co describe net neutrality in a way even your grandmother could understand.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's a good argument.
Furthermore, I already went to a DSL ISP that rents pair from the local telco monopoly rather than be subjected to the abuses of network neutrality that Telus has already perpetrated bly blocking Union websites.
When I called Telus to disconnect, the service rep tried to tell me that they were posting content unlawfully (like addresses of Telus execs, blabhlabh). I said "You guys don't bother blocking all the rest of the illegal stuff out there on the net, why the hell are you starting here?" In retrospect, I came up with all sorts of smartass responses about the fact that they fail to filter far nastier crap like my favorite kiddy porn sites (yes, as a joke, stupid). Or "That's great. When I want someone to protect me from the Internet, I'll call you."
Not much of that was necessary, of course. To his credit, the service rep got one whiff of my displeasure and went about our business.
I've been with Uniserve for years, and have had no such shenanigans. Competition works wonders.
..we would have to buy a new computer to interface with each companies internet. What a crock.
-Xen
We shouldn't be depressed about how wireless networks are the poster child of a closed network. We should point out to our congressmen that wireless carriers should have to meet the same common carrier requirements as any other access provider does.
Free the airwaves!!!!!!
Sad as it is, i must concede that perceptions can be torn and masses can be convinced that things are ok.
"A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it..." -- K , Men in Black (Here I am, quoting movies again, i promised myself i'd stop that).
However, my faith in mankind remains, after all, it is a historic trend that we don't allow atrocities to go unchecked... for more than a few hundred years at least...
The future will take care of itself.. It has in the past
The cell phone non-neutrality problem has even caused the government to go and buy thier own cell network. I would say that this would be a first since the birth of the states. I am talking about the Nextel iDEN network. Eventually all Nextel customers will be on Sprints network with PTT on it as well. Oh you forgot about the DoD buying one of the better networks out there? This has to be a first for the DoD. Usually DARPA invents it, sells it to the company who can make it fo the cheapest. In this case, they bought a whole cell Network for DHS.
This is the number one thing that pisses me off about all cell providers in the states. One example is Verizon Wireless seems to block a wap site outside of thier network. Why? I don't know, but the site I am talking about provides subway train info via wap browser. I can get to the site from my laptop outside of thier network, but on the phone I get nothing. I can get to google and I can get to gmail, but this subway thing? No dice. The reason? I don't really know, but I am guessing that maybe they are going to start selling a app that does the same thing and they'd rather me pay them instead of get it for free.
Gorkman
Hi. I agree Hatch is a corporate whore, but you can't googlebomb him from your slashdot sig. Googlebot doesn't log in to read pages, so it won't see the sig.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
But if you've got DSL, almost anywhere in the US, you've got lots of providers who will sell you service, and they're the ones who set open/closed/AUP policies even though many of them are selling telco-provided connectivity underneath their service. Some, like Covad, are renting dry copper and running their own DSLAMs; some are using telco-provided Layer 3 IP with PPPoE, and many are using telco-dslam Layer 2 ATM connections. They may charge a bit more than the latest sale price from your telco (though those deals usually seem to be 3-months-cheap customer-acquisitiion scams rather than long-term low prices), but if you want an ISP that allows you to run your own Linux mail server, lets you share your wireless with your guests or neighbors, lets you run your own web server, lets you use multiple computers in your house, doesn't censor what kind of content you send (except for spam, of course), doesn't interfere with VOIP, gives you a range of services like mailboxes, shell, web+ftp space - all of those things are commonly available. I use Sonic.net, and Speakeasy is similar and better known, but hundreds of small ISPs have this as part of their business model. Most of them aren't supporting ToS or DSCP traffic prioritization yet, but some of them probably are figuring out that there's a market for it.
And if that's not flexible enough for you, you can get a cheap cable modem or telco DSL and get some hosting space from thousands of places around the net. Some of them are selling cheap virtual web hosting ($1-10/month), some are doing Linux Virtual Machines (typically $20-30/month), some are fancier. If your cable/DSL access provider limits the services you can run, you can run an IPSEC or other tunnel to your colo server.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That NewsForge story needs to be submitted to all the Congresscritters.
Especially , every one of them who you think might be swaying to vote against net neutrality, we need to ask them why they think such a thing can never happen!
There is historical evidence that phone companies are control freaks rather than profit optimizers.
The whole regulated monopoly mindset, built around gaming the system instead of attracting customers (because customers are captives), doesn't go away in only one generation.
The cell phone marketplace sucks for non-voice applications, but how is it non-neutral? I can make and take calls to/from off-network endpoints without any penalty, voice quality remains the same no matter what, and that describes most of what the cell network is used for currently (although is changing with more smart phones, blackberry, etc). It'd be a better argument if calling a landline or a different carrier meant crappier service, but that would be the death knell for any cell provider.
I think it's too early to make a lot of claims about the cell data networks. Sure, they're largely closed but until very recently they were also unusable for all but a tiny percentage of specific applications. The cell companies would like them to stay limited so they can wring profits out of them, but it's only a matter of time before pretty much anyone who wants a high speed cell-network based data connection can have one inexpensively, and at that point the companies will eventually end up having to provide a neutral network environment as it will become a point of competition.
Tired of reality, eh? The bells have been screwing over "independent" DSL providers for years. They own the "availability" list and can deny service to anyone who won't buy from them, if they even get an open slot because they continue to drag their feet on deployment. The result is that the US is 16th and falling in broadband deployment. We pay more for less and it's getting worse not better. They really have destroyed their competition, aka the "bursting internet bubble." Removing neutrality so they can get back to milking every bit of traffic is what they had in mind all along.
Because government created this mess, they will have to pull us out of it. In the mean time, instead of getting the fiber you were promissed and paid for, you are stuck with copper from a hundred and fifty years ago. Oh yeah, you could get cable ... with upload speeds capped to exactly what you can get from a better DSL connection. They will push you back to dial up and counting minutes if they can. That's what you get when you feed a few pet companies instead of letting competition do it's magic. They started out snakes, now they are bigger snakes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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Need I say more?
.83 to .67 each.
Around here it's frequently the case that new/recent releases, unencumbered 12-15 song albums with artwork and packaging are sold at retail for 9.99.
or
If we could get some fella to ride a horse to death across the midwest with a bag of CD's we could get the cost per song under 50 cents.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Just as it would on the Internet, Tariff Rebate Passthrough would be a fix in the cell phone case as well. All the "decency" and noncompetition rules would be out the window, as would the socialism-style approval cycle. If anybody enforced "decency", it would be the FCC.
On the other hand, the cellular providers would still be allowed to rake in money hand over fist.
What's not to like about the idea?
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
The streets, sidewalks, bridges, and traffic lights in my town were also built by the government. By your logic, the government should be able to institute price controls on all goods and services in my town because all of them ultimately depend in some manner on the road network, and the road network was funded by "massive public subsidies."
The cellular providers are very wary of applications that could consume loads of precious RF bandwidth or spread viruses throughout their networks. These are very real threats that are hard to mitigate without control over the apps themselves.
The other reason is that ISPs in general are afraid of becoming "fat pipes" where they cannot differentiate themsevles from other ISPs except for having tighter operations. Tight operations requires business and technical discipline that few large organizations seem capable of attaining.
Mike Borella http://www.borella.net/mike