Competitors Ally With Comcast In FCC P2P Filings

crocoduck writes "Right before the deadline passed for filing comments in the FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic-management practices, telecoms and other cable companies submitted a slew of comments defending Comcast's actions to the FCC. 'Just about every big phone company has filed a statement challenging the FCC's authority to deal with this problem. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest all submitted lengthy remarks on February 13th, the last day for comments on the proceeding (parties can still reply to comments through the 28th). "The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades — costs that would ultimately be passed through to end users, raise broadband prices across the board, and force ordinary broadband consumers to subsidize the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few."' P2P fans have also weighed in."

Comments

Needless?

[MachineShedFred]

"expensive and needless capacity upgrades" which the US Taxpayers ALREADY PAID FOR THROUGH EXCISE FEES?!

The telcos can eat a bag of dicks.

Needless capacity upgrades?

[urcreepyneighbor]

The "capacity upgrades" are obviously needed if you're having problems with "the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few."

Shut up, cut your salaries for a couple quarters, and invest in the goddamn infrastructure.

Re:Needless capacity upgrades?

[msobkow]

The United States has been falling behind on the capacity game for a long time now, so it only makes sense that the ISPs and telcos there are crying the blues about the need for upgrades. Had they been upgrading all the way along as other countries have, they wouldn't have the capacity shortfall that they do now.

I deal with SaskTel as my ISP. We actually get the full use of the provisioned bandwidth as promised, with no filtering, traffic shaping, or other artificial impediments. The downside? My internet connection costs $45/month instead of $22 for the basic "DSL Lite" subscription.

Re:Needless capacity upgrades?

[urcreepyneighbor]

The downside? My internet connection costs $45/month instead of $22 for the basic "DSL Lite" subscription. Downside?! That's less than Comcast!

Yep

[mikkelm]

I've gotta go with AT&T on this one. Allowing people to use their connections without restrictions would create a need for needless capacity upgrades.

Re:Yep

[Belial6]

The same could be said about all those jerks that want graphics sent across their internet connections. Really what needs to be done is to get us back to only sending green screen updates. All that wasteful html traffic has just caused needless upgrades. If you need to consume more than a what a 1200 baud modem can offer, perhaps what you need is a dedicated line. Not a consumer internet connection.

Look, it was no secret as to what Comcast was jumping into when they decided to get into the internet business. In fact it seems pretty obvious that they were quite clear on the fact that bandwidth would keep increasing to the point that people would just get their video directly from the source, instead of paying them to be a gatekeeper middleman. What they were hoping for was that they could use their monopoly power to stifle the internet so that their monopoly would not crumble in face of actual competition. So far they have been successful. Now that people are starting to cry foul, they are trying to pretend that they are the victims.

It always amazes me how many people will defend someone who is clearly trying to screw them.

Re:Yep

[Curunir_wolf]

Wow. So much bullshit - so little time.

That's ridiculous. About 10 years ago you could as an average person get at best a dial-up connection that might (theoretically) be able to download at up to 56kbps (actually 53). If you wanted a little better you could pay for ISDN. If you wanted better than that you could pay for a T1.

Ok, that much is true. I had ISDN 10 years ago, and it was not real cheap. I paid $30/month, but with limited connection time (I don't remember my limit, but I never went over). Whenever I connected, though, I used the maximum bandwidth available. Why wouldn't I? I was charged by the minute.

I know for a fact they were making a profit. Same old copper lines that had been in the ground since 1962, and I had to pay $100 for the connection!

Today you can get a cable modem or DSL for not much more than you'd have paid for dial-up and probably less if you had a second phone line dedicated to your internet access. Technology advanced. The providers improved their infrastructure. Costs came down.

No - this is bullshit. More bandwidth, sure. But it's more expensive, too, and we paid for it in myriad ways (check out the $200 Billion Ripoff for example). I could get dial up for $10 a month (yea, plus phone line). Now I pay like $55/month, and it would be $15 more if I also didn't buy their "cable TV" service.

The sad fact is that what we have now is more or less what we can collectively afford. It's easy to point to more socialized states and say that a handful of them have faster internet connections. What you seem to fail to consider is that those faster connections were paid for. Most likely it costs the average person in one of those states a lot more for their internet connection, they just don't see it as a separate internet bill. If they do get an internet bill it's not really reflecting the true cost of providing the service.

This is speculative and complete bullshit. Just because other countries don't have schizophrenic policies ("it's a phone - no it's a data service - no it falls under this other rule") and corporations writing the laws so they favor their own monopolistic pricing doesn't mean they are subsidizing the costs. Those countries are just more *efficient*. The US is falling behind in data communication infrastructure - and it's not just anecdotal evidence that demonstrates it - it's a troubling trend.

Comcast alone makes about $1.2 Billion dollars in profit a year. Billion with a "B". Not revenue - *PROFIT*. I think they're doing just fine - maybe they should invest in a little more infrastructure instead of bitching about having to keep up with demand.

I'm no socialist - but Internet infrastructure needs to be either regulated or state supported. It's too critical to be left to these corporations that just want to slow everybody down!! If there was real competition, it might work to motivate these guys to make their customers happy. But there's not, so it doesn't.

If you can live with forcing everyone to pay several times what they're paying now for internet access we can do this too. But don't sit there and spout that we could do better without pointing out that it does actually cost more to do so. I personally find that my cable modem is fast enough and I don't want to pay more than I do per month. I especially don't want to have the money effectively hidden in a bunch of federal budget documents.

As if... Look - this is critical infrastructure we are talking about. Everybody says that when they talk about "security measures" to make sure anybody that tries to cut a trunk line will get put under the ground for the rest of their lives. But we have these clowns running it that think it's okay to just put the brakes on innovation and new business models and growth of the economy so they can squeeze more profit out of the infrastructure that really needs constant upgrades.

Why Did They Wait Until The Last Day?

[Wandering Wombat]

That's what they get for throttling their own connections...

Re:Why Did They Wait Until The Last Day?

[Wandering Wombat]

Because they didn't want the public & think tanks to submit comments ripping apart or contesting their arguments.

But... but...

(parties can still reply to comments through the 28th).

Western countries' telecoms seem crotchety

[CRCulver]

In my experience in Eastern Europe, customers that heavily use bandwidth are the average customer. I know hardly a single household that doesn't massively download music and films. Nonetheless, the local ISPs can keep monthly fees down to what is even by local standards cheap, and people are increasingly getting fiber to their door. Funny how the U.S., that beacon of technological progress, is being outdone by some former Communist states.

Re:Western countries' telecoms seem crotchety

[grumpygrodyguy]

In my experience in Eastern Europe, customers that heavily use bandwidth are the average customer. I know hardly a single household that doesn't massively download music and films. Nonetheless, the local ISPs can keep monthly fees down to what is even by local standards cheap, and people are increasingly getting fiber to their door. Funny how the U.S., that beacon of technological progress, is being outdone by some former Communist states.

You're right, and it's not funny, it's sad.

The US is falling more and more behind, while the telecoms have the gall to say things like:

"The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades".

This is what happens when 'free market' monopolies are allowed to continue unchecked by a corrupt FCC.

The money goes straight into shareholder's pockets, and almost nothing goes back into the network.

i've said it before and i'll say it again...

[lucky130]

If you can't provide the speeds you advertise, then don't advertise them.

Lies, lies, lies.

[Jaysyn]

Tagged: LiesAndLiars

Seriously, if they were *just* throttling the connection, there wouldn't be a problem. They were basically "disconnecting" the file transfer. This is analogous to a telephone operator listening to your phone conversation & cutting you off if she doesn't like what you're talking about.

Can't stop the signal, Mal

[Duncan Blackthorne]

IMHO broadband providers either have their heads in the sand, or they're just trying to delay the inevitable. In surveys I've read the United States is far from being the world leader in broadband internet connectivity in speed, price, availability, or even customer service -- and I think they all know that as well as anyone else does, too. P2P isn't going away anytime soon; as we speak developers are working on ways to rewrite the bittorrent protocol to get around the DDoS attacks that companies like Comcast are using to hamstring it's users. Beyond that, the reality is that we live in a country where more and more people are using the Internet for surfing, gaming, telephone, email, downloading (completely legal, paid-for) movies, and in some cases for live-streaming content; bandwidth demands aren't going to ever go down, they're only ever going to go up, and they (ISPs) damn well know that too. Perhaps this is just their first volleys in a war they want to start, with their preferred end-result being tiered pricing based on monthly bandwidth usage, but again I say they must have their heads in the sand because nobody is going to sit still for that, either.

Expensive and Needless?

[wiggles]

So capacity upgrades are 'expensive and needless', eh? Is that why we're among the worst in the developed world for broadband speed and penetration? I don't know about anyone else, but I heard, "If our customers would only stop using our services, we wouldn't have to throttle them!"

Maybe if they advertised lower peak speeds and limited their customers to those speeds and charged a premium for higher speeds, we wouldn't have this problem.

Re:Expensive and Needless?

[esocid]

So capacity upgrades are 'expensive and needless', eh? Is that why we're among the worst in the developed world for broadband speed and penetration? I don't know about anyone else, but I heard, "If our customers would only stop using our services, we wouldn't have to throttle them!"

Sorry, all I heard was penetration.

Watershed Moment

[Stanistani]

The FCC faces this choice:

Take a step towards unrestricted bandwidth, build a new economy based on the innovative development of new business models using this bandwidth as a utility.

Or

Allow the telecommunications oligopoly to produce a network ghetto, stove-piped and metered, and watch the US economy stagnate, and fall behind the rest of the developed world.

Re:Watershed Moment

[Smidge204]

watch the US economy stagnate, and fall behind the rest of the developed world

This has already happened =( Hey! No spoilers... I'm still waiting for the download to finish!
=Smidge=

Re:Watershed Moment

[cheater512]

They are the ones advertising the connection as unlimited. Not our fault that we have a dictionary.

Re:Watershed Moment

[syzler]

Or put in a less inflammatory way, how preventing or slowing some P2P operations or otherwise using some QoS methods is going to cause any disastrous effect. Part of the problem I have in seeing it is I don't see the importance of the people having very high speed broadband.

As the Internet becomes the delivery agent for more entertainment venues and other uses that have yet to be foreseen, implementing QoS becomes more questionable. Let's say a similar device to the AppleTV is created and released by a competitor to Apple. Let us also assume that Comcast is permitted to enforce QoS for various services. Comcast could then give preferential treatment for QoS to one content provider over another which puts Comcast in the position to either extort one or both companies or lock competitors out of the market (for Comcast subscribers).

By allowing ISPs to implement QoS to limit some types of use, we are allowing ISPs to dictate how data services are used. Depending on how draconian they are about QoS, this could reduce innovation for data services which will then cause this part of the economy to stagnate.

Right now we are mostly talking about movies, however in the future (maybe as little as 3-4 years) we may be talking about something a little more dear to you personally. Allowing them to do this to something you don't care about will set a precedence that will make it easier for them to do the same to something you hold dear later.

Here are a few example uses that I see today that could be impacted:

• Buying/Downloading Software Over the Internet (Omni Group, Parallels, GNU, BSDs, Linux Distros)
• Telecommuting for office workers
• VoIP and Video Communications
• Home/Business Security Systems

Rights and privileges lost are not easily obtained again.

If I wanted AT&T's opinion...

[jesdynf]

I'd solicit it through illegal means and shield them with retroactive immunity.

Unlimited comments

[KillerCow]

The FCC should have stated that it would have accepted unlimited comments on the matter.

After the comment period ended, they should have announced that certain comments were rejected because they were too long (beyond an arbitrary amount determined after the comment period) or contained too much legalese, since they didn't want to have make the other commenters "subsidize the [resource]-hogging activities of a few."

Translation

[Wildclaw]

Translations:

marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, the non market driven place where the minimal competition allows us to dicate all the terms, remains a good place for us to squeeze money.

and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick, the suggested changes would make it more difficult for us to squeeze money out of our customers.

"At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades The suggested changes would force us to spend money on upgrades, that we could avoid spending by capping everyone so much that they become unneeded.

ordinary broadband consumers customers who hardly use the broadband they paid for.

the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few. the activities that we advertise our services for, but that we don't want our customers to use.

Its like this son...

[GlobalColding]

The "tubes" aren't limitless. If we dont cap their use, we will run out of Internets.

A Bunch of Bull

[iviagnus]

If the top 1% in the telecommunications industry weren't sucking the life (read money) out of their respective corporations, they'd have the funds to upgrade the networks when that need arises. If, as a consumer, I'm sold a 1.5Mbps/384Kbps package, I should have every right to utilize 100% or that bandwidth, 100% of the time. No exceptions. If the telecommunications industry can't deliver on that, they shouldn't be running a corporation. Businesses should be 100% liable for honesty and deliver 100% of advertized services. If I walked into any store in these United States, saw a package containing 50 items for $29.95, and after taking my money I find out the package now contains only 27 items, you can damn well bet I'm gonna be in the right to get back the difference. Every breathing soul on this planet would expect the same. Just because we're talking about electrons and not gumballs has absolutely NO bearing on what we as consumers should be getting. I would expect the other "players" to send in comments defending Comcasts practices. Each of them either already uses similar methods themselves or plans to, and they can see the writing on the wall. Here's some writing for AT&T, Verizon, and everyone other service provider that is "with" Comcast . . . "Eat my Dick Mother-Fuckers!"

Another car ananolgy

[esocid]

Time-Warner Cable's comment all but condemns P2P applications as "designed to consume all available bandwidth and, if left unchecked, will prevent consumers from continuing to access the wealth of content available over the Internet."

So their solution is to hinder or completely block a technology or protocol because they aren't up with the times? So let me use another car analogy, since Comcast is fond of that one. They are saying that since everyone just got sportscars, we shouldn't pave the dirt roads but force most people to keep riding horses and allow only 30% of people to share these sportscars on the available paved roads at peak traffic hours.
It's outrageous that they can say that with a straight face! This seems like a perfectly obvious sign that their infrastructure is in a serious need of an upgrade in order to maintain competition with the up-and-coming technologies that are being, or are already, released. This has me fuming.

Re:Another car ananolgy

[funaho]

Actually a better analogy would be that they're forcing all the sports cars to stay in first gear, and just to be sure they're throwing up fake stop signs every so often to slow down traffic flow.

Selective throttling == CENSORSHIP

[sd.fhasldff]

There's just no two ways about it. Throttling *selectively* is censorship.

Comcast unilaterally decides that some content is good and some bad - and that should just plain be illegal.

I know many are opposed, but I don't mind the actual *throttling* itself, if it were just protocol-neutral. I cannot accept, however, that Comcast gets to decide that I can't use the rated capacity of my line (you know, the number they tout in their PR) to download Ubuntu with a bittorrent client, while my neighbor can max out his identical connection downloading movies over HTTP or FTP.

(And, no, the actual *content* shouldn't matter either, of course, that's just a feeble attempt at highlighting the inherent stupidity of the method).

Requiring an ISP to have enough capacity to enable ALL its customers to max out their connections would be monumentally wasteful, no question. However...

What Comcast, and any other ISP should do, is actually tell you what you are buying, up front, so that it's possible to make an informed purchasing decision. E.g.:

6Mbps down, 1Mbps up. Rated bandwidth available at least 90% of the time. Minimum bandwidth of1Mbps down, 256kbps up (except in case of equipment failure).

The ISP can then throttle users with this connection in times of peak load, but still protocol (and content) neutral!

If they wanted to get really advanced, they could give their users the ability to use some kind of QoS feature, so that e.g. a user could choose to prioritize http and ftp over, say, bittorrent. Or to prioritize whatever port #s the user's favorite multiplayer game uses, so that using the internet connection for other stuff introduces a minimum of lag on gaming.

In any event, there's just no justification for saying that my downloading Ubuntu or whatever should be throttled in favor of some idiot streaming porn over HTTP. (OK, maybe if it's porn... bad example... you get my drift, though)

Amazing

[alphastar]

This whole argument strikes me with this odd thought:

Some Peer-to-Peer protocols (i.e., BitTorrent) were developed in order to take the burden of content distribution _away_ from the "dedicated server" (do reduce demand on bandwidth) and push it more on the users engaged in retrieving.

Comcast and ilk seem to be arguing in favor of the _exact opposite_ of this point.

Re:THERE'S A SIMPLE SOLUTION - used by interstates

[mrchaotica]

In a competitive environment where multiple choices exist...

Sure, but the reality is exactly the opposite of that!

Here's reality:

• There is exactly one cable ISP. It is the same company that provides cable TV, and has a government-mandated monopoly on cable right-of-way. Where I live, it's Comcast.
• There is exactly one DSL ISP. It is the same company that provides phone service, and has a government-mandated monopoly on phone line right-of-way. Where I live, it's the AT&T.
• The cable ISP and DSL ISP collude to provide about the same speed for about the same price. Around here, that's $40/month for 6Mbps download (if your wire is brand new, in pristine condition, and there's nobody else connected to the same CMTS or DSLAM).
• Satellite Internet doesn't count as broadband (because upload is via modem).
• Cellular Internet is too expensive and slow, and always will be by its inherent nature.
• Verizon FiOS doesn't exist. As far as I can tell, it's just a lie perpetuated by Verizon in order to keep the government from demanding all that taxpayer money (that was supposed to be used for upgrading the infrastructure) back.

Non-broadband options, such as satellite and dialup, are entirely irrelevant -- unless, of course, you get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that our situation is slightly better than some rural, 4th-world Hellhole where they've only recently decided that not shitting in the drinking water was a good idea. I, for one, think we ought to hold ourselves to higher standards than that!

Besides, not even cable and DSL count as real broadband! Real broadband, like they have in Europe and (especially) Asia, is in the tens or even hundreds of Mbps range. What we've got here is lies and excuses caused by insufficient regulation of a decidedly non-free market!

In reality, there are two solutions:

• Force the telco and cableco monopolies to follow through with their promises by actually regulating them.
• Entirely deregulate the industry, including removing all exclusive right-of-way agreements, and demand repayment of the billions of taxpayer dollars the industry has received in infrastructure subsidies over the years.