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Bill Ready To Ban ISP Caps In the US
xclr8r writes "Eric Massa, a congressman representing a district in western New York, has a bill ready that would start treating Internet providers like a utility and stop the use of caps. Nearby locales have been used as test beds for the new caps, so this may have made the constituents raise the issue with their representative."
Why not? They already sort of have government granted monopolies of certain areas of the country, there's very little competition, etc. Regulation would be the key to prevent a company from taking advantage of these situations to adversely hinder a user's right to consume what they have paid for.
Unfortunately, it'll never happen. It'd be nice if it did but, so long as ISPs have lobbying power, which they do, it'll never come to pass.
Has it occurred to anyone else that treating "utilities" like utilities is what's caused water shortages and rolling brown-outs in CA? Maybe it's not such a great idea to extend the process to ISPs.
Until you realize they will just lower their speeds. But...
I'd really ike an investigation into how much bandwidth these ISP's and the top telco's really have and what their utilization is. What needs to be done is to make this information public on a permanent basis so these companies can't claim that the small percent of users are eating up allthe bandwidth and use it as an excuse to lower speeds.
Quite frankly these companies should have not be able to withhold this information in these matters because the internet is so important to society.
13(a) PROHIBITION.--It shall be unlawful for major
14 broadband Internet service providers to offer volume usage
15 service plans imposing rates, terms and conditions that
16 are unjust, unreasonable, or unreasonably discriminatory.
I'm sure they can somehow find a way to "Justify" the caps.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I'm not sure who this new Bill guy is, but I like him already.
A lot better than most of the other Bills around.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Trying to get a new water, sewer, or electric hookup can be an exercise in frustration because of the bureaucracy and safeguards in the system.
Phone and cable have gotten better in the past 30 years. Landline phone and cable companies are so desperate for business that they're oftentimes pretty damned quick about getting a line out to you. (Unless you want something fancy like a business line or a T3, then welcome back to the Bad Old Days.)
I invoke the ghost of Lilly Tomlin: "We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company."
And if you think that usage on Utilities isn't capped, you're naive. If you didn't have those teeny-tiny water pipes and electric lines to your house you'd find out real quick there are all kinds of regulations and arbitrary rules about water and electric usage. For industry -- which have much larger access to electric and water -- there are often "monthy maximums" for water use, and obscenely high electric rates for peak usage.
Get off my lawn.
You dont pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge.
So why should you pay your internet becaue of the maximum throughput possible?
Only going to say one thing here - remember that trying to analogize the internet to make it the same as things that are not-the-internet has led us to some rather unfortunate conclusions.
With that said, what I'd prefer is simply regulation that you can't call a service "unlimited" if it's not unlimited. That's my biggest beef. They should have to clearly advertise it as X gigs/month. "Unlimited" should mean "unlimited."
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Internet Socialism: All-I-can-eat mentality
Until you realize they will just lower their speeds. But...
Maybe it will happen, but then it will be easier to pick your ISP, right now there are so many hidden details it's very hard for a regular Joe to pick up the best package.
I'd go even further, 50ms is the maximum latency, packet lost should be under 1% and the upload and download should never go below 80%. Ofc, this would only apply inside their network. Plus some public monitoring of their routers / bandwidth so they can't blame someone else for their problems.
The speed of the connection is their decision, but we have to stop this sill over-selling capacity, bringing down the whole net.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
My water is provided and billed by the local service authority.
I'm billed for usage in tiers like this:
0-3000 gallons $3.30 per 1000 gallons
3001-6000 gallons $6.60 per 1000 gallons
6001-9000 gallons $10.00 per 1000 gallons
9001+ gallons $13.30 per 1000 gallons
Presumably, utility style billing for internet connections would be similar - very cheap for the first few GB, then progressively more expensive where the heaviest users could find themselves a lot worse off.
Not sure I like it. I suspect the internet companies would think it a great idea.
The summary grossly misrepresents what the congressman is proposing.
This bill doesn't "ban ISP caps". It simply says that ISPs will start to become regulated in the same way that phone companies, for instance, are, so that a given ISP would have to put in a submission to raise their rates, explaining why they need to do so, etc.
Most ISPs solution to this would be to immediately switch all plans to a per-byte type of plan (which works given the comparison with utilities. I don't get carte blanche from the electric company to use it all for free, complaining that "they provide 20A to the house so I should be able to use 20A around the clock for free!"), and this would almost certainly not be in the consumer's best interest.
Enron did that, pissed everyone off and suddenly they were put under a microscope.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the telcos that use caps lowered their speeds, that would make them less able to appear superficially price:performance competitive with their competition, where they have it, so forcing them to be more honest about what they are providing would still be a plus.
Of course, the bill would not prohibit caps, it would make ISPs get FCC approval for caps, which might reduce the imposition of caps, or it might mean that those that have the most political pull would get their caps approved, while those with less pull would not.
Finally, some legislation to stop all those noobs from using Caps Lock!
As a utility, they would be more inclined to institute "metered access" which will be worse than having simple unlimited access. They have always controlled the speed and I would actually have less issue with that so long as it is reliable. As a utility, it should also mean a great many other things such as no port blocking or DNS redirecting or any of the other games they play. It would also open up the floodgate of many ISPs who have been inhibiting botnet behavior.
It could do a lot to change the scape of things.
Just compel the ISPs to state that there is actually a limit to what they will allow you to use, the penalties/limits they impose if you exceed that limit, and what it takes to get past the limit. I'm not sure we should be legislating that Internet service be UNlimited. Sooner or later, someone will claim cell phone service is a 'right', and all plans need to be UNlimited. Not so smart, but it sounds good.
In other words, make them say 'limited' when they try to say 'unlimited', and it is NOT.
Truth in advertising. Yes, an oxymoron. Shouldn't be.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hmmm something I don't get. They want internet access to be treated like a utility. Let's see...
The more electricity I use, the higher my bill.
The more water I use, the higher my bill.
The more natural gas I use, the higher my bill.
By treating internet connectivity like a utility, that would mean that I would get billed according to usage... Which is what bandwidth caps mostly are (pay extra if you surpass a certain amount of utilization in a month). So how does this bill have any type of impact, other than ISPs having to prove to the FCC what the cost:utilization ratio is.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I pay my utilities by usage. They don't offer an "unlimited" water or electricity plan. Additionally, I pay a lower rate for the first X units of usage, then a higher rate for further units, in addition to the service fees..
Why do all articles that express certain ideas that haven't been implemented yet get the tag "goodluckwiththat" and articles that ideas that have just been implemented get "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense".
Does it speak to the pessimism of the community to influence technology towards the mass market or is the /. crowd just a bunch of crabby whiners?
Responding to the topic at hand... I don't think they should make the internet a regulated utility until such a time when the nation's government is capable of using it as a mechanism to broadcast emergency information/communication. For the time being, television for 1-way communication and telephone for 2-way communication are the standard and they should stay that way.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
i would rather take a slower speed with no cap then a super fast speed and 250gb month cap. what is the point of say 20mbit download if you can only avg 8gb a day, and max speed dl speed that is only 1 hour and its used up.
How do you define "their network"? You could go coast to coast and never leave AT&T's (or Qwest's or Verizon's) "network".
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
But 50ms maximum latency to where? And is it one way or return?
Getting latency down is very hard especially when modems are involved. Often modems need to keep a moving "sample window" of the signal before they can decide what bits were sent. That "window" = latency.
FWIW the distance between the east and west coast of the USA is about 13 light-milliseconds (following the surface of the earth) - assuming speed of light in vacuum.
But light travels slower in optical fibres. A naive calculation just using the index of refraction gives me about 20 milliseconds. Round trip time then becomes 40ms.
The fibre isn't taking a "great circle route" and there's some modulation and demodulation involved, so round trip time is likely to be higher than 50ms.
I'm torn on this one, I hate regulations. But at the same time many of those providers who are putting caps in place *sold* their service as unlimited and I believe they should be forced to honor the original agreement. If they want to start capping service they should give some incentive to downgrade vs just pulling the rug out from under people. Heck give users +5mbps but a cap of whatever GB at the same price or a buck or two off and they could easily swap almost all their users. The real reason this uproar occurred isn't because of caps but because the ISP's just downgraded their promised level of service without giving the uses any choice and they rightfully got angry. Which is now forcing this backlash by the government to threaten to step in and start regulating things.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
i would rather take a slower speed with no cap then a super fast speed and 250gb month cap. what is the point of say 20mbit download if you can only avg 8gb a day, and max speed dl speed that is only 1 hour and its used up.
I, on the other hand, would rather have a faster speed and a cap. I don't download much stuff from home -- some email, some light web browsing. When I do, I want it to be fast. If I'm not planning on BTing a bunch of stuff, or watching tons of online video, then why sacrifice speed for a cap that I'll never hit?
Personally I hope not, that should be a market decision not a government one. There is nothing immoral about selling internet service as a metered product. The problem is when you promise unlimited service and then after you grow huge or gain a government granted monopoly you put a meter on it because you over sold your network.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
When you pay for water and electricity, you are actually buying them. The utility company produces them (well, with water they pump and purify it, and might have to pay for their water source depending where you are and how the service works) and sells them to you.
Comcast doesn't produce the bits they deliver to me, they simply transfer them from someone else who I might be paying for the bits. If they can actually deliver the 16Mb/s they claim they can to me at any time of day regardless of "congestion" (of course they can't), then the cost difference to them of delivering nothing for a month and maxing out that connection for a month is negligible. Their routers might draw slightly more power, but the total cost of delivering an additional bit (or 100GB) is next to nothing compared to the cost of making the network available to me.
The idea behind ISP transfer limits is totally different than paying per unit for water or electricity. With water and electricity you pay per unit (usually - in my hometown of Anchorage, AK water is actually a fixed rate I think) because it costs the company to sell you a unit. With ISPs, they want to limit your use because the speeds they charge you for aren't actually the speeds they can deliver if everyone actually uses their connection. So instead of telling you realistic speeds, they just make sure people can't actually use their connection, making it more likely that you will be able to use yours (until you too hit the cap).
Of course there is the totally separate issue of most ISPs also selling content that they would much rather you get via pay per view, etc than via the Internet...
Pick your ISP?
I only have one broadband option available to me (that I know of). Unless I want to go back to dialup or get some ridiculously expensive air card or satellite link, I'm stuck with just one service provider: our local cable company.
The cable company decides to implement a cap or traffic shaping/policing to reduce throughput? I've got no choice other than drop them and go with some other even worse option. I suspect many people are in the same boat.
When I pay my electric and gas bills, I pay based on the quantity that I use. But with my water bill on the other hand, I pay a flat fee for the first X gallons and then an additional fee for each y gallons I use over x.
My guess is that if ISPs become utilities they'll charge bandwidth like my water company. Average users get the flat rate, power users get increased rates. If I were a cable or FIOS company that provided media content in addition to internet access, this is how I would want my customers to be billed... especially considering that I'm losing money by having those large bandwidth users drop their content service as they can find the same thing on the internet at my expense.
Based on that I don't think I like the idea of ISPs becoming utility companies.
Not running out of bits, but rather running out of bandwidth.
While there is an unlimited number of bits, there is a limit to the number of bits that can go down the wire at any one time. The more you use, the less that is available for everyone else. If everyone uses lots of service, then the company have to improve the infrastructure to support the desired service level, which will cost money, which they will earn by charging a higher rate to those with a higher usage rate.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Most ISPs solution to this would be to immediately switch all plans to a per-byte type of plan (which works given the comparison with utilities. I don't get carte blanche from the electric company to use it all for free, complaining that "they provide 20A to the house so I should be able to use 20A around the clock for free!"), and this would almost certainly not be in the consumer's best interest.
No, that wouldn't be in our best interest though it would probably happen, even though the comparison to utilities fails for the exact same reason that fixed download caps are stupid in the first place, which is this: Bits are free. The total amount of power you use in a month directly affects the amount of fuel a power utility has to burn, or the amount of water you consumer affects how much water the utility has to treat. Bits on a connection aren't like that. If you "don't use" a bit on their fiber link to the backbone, that doesn't leave them with an extra bit, and if you use a bit, the next one is coming at the same time and same cost anyway. Combined with how most peering relationships work, other than a tiny amount of electricity in their routers, it doesn't make any difference to them if a bit is used or not and thus the total number of bits you consume is by itself meaningless.
Bits per second, aka bandwidth, is a different matter. That's what costs them money to provide, and money to improve. And no single user's cable modem/DSL connection is going to saturate their ISPs bandwidth even if it is used continuously. Rather it's during Internet Prime Time when everyone, even "light" users, hop on the net and download some Youtube videos which in aggregate suck up every last bps and make the ISP's pipe choke. It's Prime Time peak usage that makes the ISP have to go out and buy new hardware in order to keep their customers happy. Utilities have maximum rates too, which is why electricity is cheaper at night and the water company will have designated days for watering your lawn based on addresses. But they also have per-unit expenses. With an ISP, someone who downloads 100GB a month but does it all at 2am will cost them less than someone who downloads 20MB but does it all at 8pm.
So here's what makes sense with an ISP: You charge your user for bandwidth. "Unlimited" bits -- as in as many as you can download -- goes without saying because its irrelevant. During Prime Time, when the ISP's link is saturated, then everyone's performance degrades, ideally in proportion to the amount of bandwidth they payed for (as in if the link is at 120% utilization, everyone's bandwidth goes down by 18%). Thus just like with electricity everyone is encouraged to use off-peak bandwidth to get better performance. If prime time performance degrades too much, the ISP buys more hardware.
Unfortunately, while this is completely fair to everyone, it's not going to happen because 1) the ISPs probably believe they can make more money charging per-bit and 2) most of the biggest ISPs are also content providers, and thus for them total number of bits -- as in total number of movies/shows you could download without paying for their more expensive media services -- matters a great deal. That is what download caps are all about. Not conserving their precious bits.
The enemies of Democracy are
As I noted in another comment, it's not the FCC, it's the FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
PS, nice job getting modded up twice for essentially the same comment. Maybe it'll happen to me too :-)
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Right. Until we start seeing Japanese-style competition for providing service, things won't change so much. I believe that the biggest change will occur when we start legally classify ISPs as common carriers and treating them as such. With that designation ISPs would have to ditch their shaping and blocking practices and just pass bits back and forth.
A recent study by the Pew Institute demonstrates that Internet access is a "must have" service. That makes it a utility. Treating all ISPs as utilities brings them one step closer to common carrier status.
You may have noticed that I tend to harp on this idea. Here's why: a common carrier cannot refuse service and cannot discriminate. Once those two requirements come into view, just watch the content providers get out of the business, in a hurry.
The current debate in public discourse and with respect to pending legislation seems to exhibit a logical progression of taking a new service that was a luxury and turning it into a utility. I'm happy to help it progress.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
as they should, that'll be possible
No they should not be regulated as a utility. Instead what we need is to foster competition. And a duopoly is not competition. Add fiber and wireless then you may have competition.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the problem with this is that most of have literally no options. It is not take your business elsewhere, it is accept their crap or do without. We could go back to dialup, but other than that, I am stuck with Comcast. Verizon DSL is not an option for me, because they say they "oversold" in my neighborhood, so they can't sell any more (after I had already bought, but that's another bitch) leaving me with: Comcast and dialup. If we had the option to "take our business elsewhere" we would not be having this discussion.
There always will be. The difference is that, with regulation, there is a loophole somewhere. With deregulation, there are loopholes everywhere.
With deregulation there are no loopholes, there are only loopholes when there are regulations.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you want to say you don't want government involvement, that's fine as an argument, but there's evidence that deregulation in California and abuse of this deregulation by Enron and other such companies had more to do with the situation
CA energy was not deregulated but you like so many other have fallen for the lie that the rolling blackouts in CA were caused by deregulation. Sure some regulations were dropped but others were added. See this post of mine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
" Who says metered service is a bad thing? "
Uh...
The internet is not a public resource.
It's a concatenation of private networks.
You own your network, I own mine, we agree so use the TCP/IP protocol suite to connect them.
There is no "public internet". It's all privately owned.
And you want some politician to tell you how you're gonna run your network?
Be very, very careful what you wish for.
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