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AT&T's Net Neutrality Doublethink
GMGruman writes "George Orwell would be proud of AT&T, as Bill Snyder explains in this blog post, for its new ads saying it supports Net neutrality when in fact it is working actively to scuttle proposed FCC rules that would clearly ban discriminatory practices against different types of data, such as video streaming or VoIP. It's also trying to get government subsidies to build a substandard broadband network for the under-served areas of the US. If it and its carrier partners win, 'Internet freedom' will mean freedom for carriers to be the 21st century's robber barons."
...electricity companies trying to charge you different prices for using different applicances. We already have "electricity neutrality", why isn't net neutrality taken for granted?
i wish there was a tractable way of making lying in an ad a criminal offense punishable by death for all those responsible...
weinersmith
With the AT&T network, "under-served areas of the US" includes pretty much the entire country, including isolated rural towns like San Francisco.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Broadband is one of those cases where experience matters more than ideology. Ideologically, we might say we should have no government interference in the broadband market, or the government should provide broadband to everyone, but what really worked is the government giving the carrier a measure of guaranteed returns on their investment in exchange for satisfying some general social obligations. This worked stunningly well in the old electric industry, where state PUCs did regulate rates, for sure, mandated service levels, for sure, but, at the end, the shareholders of the electric company got a nice dividend check every year. Not a growth stock, but a reliable dividend stock, a good service for consumers, a good company to work for in the community, and it was really about as much of a win-win deal as anyone could get until everyone got greedy - consumers and shareholders alike, and screwed it all up with electrical deregulation.
To wit : I really don't have a problem with taxpayer subsidies for rural broadband IF the broadband companies subsequently tie themselves to Public Utilities Commissions for the setting of rates in the way electricity worked in the better and pre-deregulation days. Give the rural carriers the monopoly, have the government set the rates. That provides badly needed service, the government gets its social responsibilities fulfilled, and the carrier owners get a nice dividend check.
This isn't rocket science. But we just have to get rid of this awful grip of capitalism / socialism black and white thinking that has seized our minds and focus instead on historically that which has worked to build our communities.
This is my sig.
Robber Barons? You, sir, slander the good name of brilliant men like Jay Gould and Daniel Drew. How dare you!
If it and its carrier partners win, 'Internet freedom' will mean freedom for carriers to be the 21st century's robber barons
What do you mean - will be? We already pay a ridiculous monthly fee for piss poor access that you can't even get in most parts of the US. The areas that do get broadband access are all carved up into local monopolies so that users can stay crowded on the same cables as 10 years ago that can no longer carry the load and if you do try to use the broadband you paid for you get disconnected or throttled by the carrier. So how is this any more than business as usual?
mmmm...forbidden donut
I remember when the internet first went private. None of the telecos minded inheriting the original infrastructure. But now that it's time to invest in new technologies, they whine like a spoiled little kid. Somebody call the whaaaambulance.
They're trying for the same deal the big banks get. Taxpayers shoulder the infrastructure investment, but the telecos get to run it and make obscene profits without any real oversight.
Our 40 year "government regulation is bad" experiment ended with disastrous results. Without a referee looking out for the interests of the public, which has a lot of skin in this game, the telecos are going to ride us all like a carnival pony, just like Wall Street.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They'll be robber barons because like in the 1800s, they bribed/gamed the governmental control system in place to achieve monopoly power.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Would it not be nice for consumers in these rural towns to be able to vote with their dollar and pick the best carrier.
"Hmm, I could choose AT&T who wants $60 to be able to browse 4chan, or, I could choose INTERNET4YOU who will give me free access to every site for only $40"
Why is the government supporting the creation of bigger and bigger monopolies?
I work in this industry, so I'm somewhat familiar with it.
I agree with net neutrality up to a point. Where that point is is where the company has clearly made investments in their infrastructure to deploy data services outside of the conventional internet. Many of these companies (AT&T included) are testing the waters with their own VoIP and TV services. Should any non-paying service be allowed to choke out the bandwidth for those services? I think not.
More like "Net Neutrality Doublespeak", no?
Net Neutrality means the Internet backbone carriers should operate just like the post office - everyone buys a 44 cent stamp and takes their chances with delivery, you can't pay for better service, and there is no lower class of service than first class.
And substandard broadband? By who's definition? If I listen to some folks almost all US broadband pales in comparison to hand-picked alternatives (Finland, Japan), other folks think that anything that is several times faster than dial-up is better.
Wait, I get it - the idea is we should dip into our magic government printing presses, grab some of that free-flowing "Stimulus" money and roll out several megabit broadband to every house, apt, and trailer park in all 50 states (and territories, can't forget American Samoa, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico) and and carriers should never consider doing anything that looks like "quality of service" or offering anything better than this base offering... Right, that's it, isn't it?
Ken
unlike regular electricity you can do a lot of things with the electrons coming over the internet wires
Google and the rest of the silicon valley upstarts want to stream all kinds of data and grab most of the profits while avoiding large capital investments into low return markets like broadband access for people. the ISPs are in a constant upgrade mode and want to stop the cycle. every time they upgrade their networks and start to pay the interest on the bonds some other company makes up some new service to bring the network to its knees.
people talk about obscene ISP profits, but Google has profit margins that no ISP dares to dream of. for all the revenue ISP's bring in, it's a very low profit margin business
personally i think that ISP's will always be dumb pipes since their plans to extract more profits are always too grand and slow moving and silicon valley is a lot faster at coming up with new ideas. but it's not black and white where Google is the good guy and ISP's are evil. Google wants the profits while having someone else pay the high capital costs to run the last mile connections and manage them
Bill Snyder writes a long post, with meticulous footnotes, criticizing certain AT&T ads, but not once does he link to the actual AT&T ads! Where are the ads so we can judge for ourselves?
It is so difficult for an editor of a site that calls himself "news for nerds" to know the difference between QoS and net neutrality? I mean, the issue has been discused for so long it is even boring.
TFS talks about the discrimination against "some types of data", that is QoS and generally accepted to be a good thing. In the other hand, TFA talks about different service providers (true net neutrality issue).
Giving the number of times these terms have been discussed, it is annoying that an editor still brings the error to TFS... I am beginning to understand the whole kdawnson rant.
Kid, if you can't do better than that, leave the job to someone who can.
Why can't
How long do you think it will be before all those buffet restaurants go out of business? Why do you think they and their customers have tolerated such an unfair pricing structure for so long?
Why would Orwell be proud? I think he would be horrified. He wasn't adulating the society in 1984, he was writing in fear for what ours might become. The book was supposed to serve as a wakeup call. The fact that we're inching closer to this society might make his prediction correct, but I don't think he'd be happy about that.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
They need to treat ISP companies like they do the telecos. Aren't the teleco's required to lease at wholesale prices their lines to any other teleco to provide service? This would get us out of the one or two providers per area problem and add competition. Another alternative would be to have the municipalities treat the 'last mile' cable the same as other utilities and lease the lines to whomever would like to provide service. The lack of real competition and lack of anyone being able to deploy wire to the homes is what keeps this situation like it is.
No he wouldn't. Describing something in a work of fiction isn't the same as advocating it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or am I wrong. I thought network neutrality said nothing about discriminating on the type of data. I thought it was about not discriminating based on who's data. That is as long as you treat all bit torrent traffic equally and alll voip traffic equally that's network neutrality. If you start giving priority to voip users who happen to use some service provided by AT&T and degrade service to people using SKYPE, then you're not being neutral. So which is it?
This wasn't a 40 year experiment. We had much the same thing going on in the late 1800s and early 1900s with much the same results. We didn't learn our lesson the previous two times, so I expect we won't learn our lesson this time either. In another few decades, the big corporations and big financial companies will whine that following the law is too hard and the sheeple will listen to them.
It always amuses me how so many of you will jump on the band wagon that a company using the government's regulations to its benefits means that there isn't enough regulation, or that the overpowering government in all aspects of life as abhorred by Orwell is the same as AT&T business practices. Stop and take a look at what those who want net neutrality are actually asking for: The government should create rules that force service providers to charge the same regardless of usage. Who sets the price? Who sets the service requirements? Since it has to be "Fair" this always means everyone is equally miserable excepts those who set the price and service levels who always get the best while the public gets the worse. This is exactly what Orwell warned about in his work. Remember, inner party gets the best food and even some privacy while the others get the worse or none at all. Yes, I do not want any government in my life except as strictly spelled out in the preamble of the constitution. Now about the robber barons of 1800, that was also over regulation and the government getting too involved. When a business gets support from customers it caters to customers, when support comes from the government it doesn't need customers.
Is this something like the canSPAM act, the one that didn't .. can spam that is :)
davecb5620@gmail.com
"It always amuses me how so many of you will jump on the band wagon that a company using the government's regulations to its benefits means that there isn't enough regulation, or that the overpowering government in all aspects of life as abhorred by Orwell is the same as AT&T business practices"
Classic strawman, what this is about is preventing companies such as AT&T in introducing a tiered service, with their own services given priority and ultimately gaining control of content to the detriment of the end user.
I've got it! We can create our own open source network lines. Each person will go to the hardware store and buy 10 meters of fibreoptic cable and dig a trench in front of their house. We can take our spare parts and combine them and make servers! Power to the people! Stickin it to the man! Yeah!!!
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Actually, many of them DO go out of business because it's really, really hard to get 'unlimited' right, including making it a good deal for the light eaters as well as the gluttons. Sometimes it's not even possible.
But those restaurants don't implement a 'neutrality' scheme, either. Many of them put up more of the cheap food than the expensive food. (No, not all... But then, not all ISPs will limit, either.)
I never said ISPs would go out of business. I said they would solve the 'unlimited' problem in some fashion.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You can be against regulation while still being for the principals of what people think they are getting when they say "Net Neutrality".
Being opposed to regulation does NOT mean you are opposed to what the regulation is trying to accomplish, you just see a better way to achieve the same effect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Early on, the debate about Net neutrality centered on the issue of tiered or metered pricing .. The argument now is much more complex and centers on control of content and applications on both the wired and wireless Internet.
If a carrier can pick and choose among different types of content and different types of applications, its competitors (and, ultimately, the users) are severely disadvantaged.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Net neutrality like most other ‘laws’ here in the US are to be applied to the other guy .
ISPs DO IN FACT have to pay for the data you send and receive. Yes, they do.
Peering arrangements do not cover the cost of the connection to the NAP. If, say Cox Cable in Arizona wants to interconnect to the other Cox state networks, they can do so and it's just their way of dealing with interconnection. But when they decide to connect so, say MAE-West, they pay for the connection into the NAP. It may be an OC-148, or something truly studly, like a really hot fiber. These circuits are not free, as they require right-of-way, actual genuine fiber (which they may share sometimes with others in the jacket - true), and of course the hardware to make it work. Price out some of that some time.
Now, true, the cost is shared amongst the many many subscribers, and they could choose to peer in one NAP, though in fact that would be bad practice, with single point of failure stuff and all.
But the reality is that not only would Cox (as an example) have to provision enogh connections and capacity to at least prevent customers from flooding the lines with 'I can't get' calls, but most peering arrangements at the NAP require you to provide enough bandwidth to actually receive what other peers send to you (on request from your subscribers, usually) or they see you as not playing fair. This gets you either booted off the NAP or throttled (or ignored, see Cogent v Sprint) and your users get poorer performance. Providing adequate service in a NAP peering is non-trivial, and the big carriers do not let you off. If you're a small ISP, you usually partner with a bigger one to avoid this sort of thing. I know. I was a small ISP. My carrier was MCI for a long time, and they had me 3 hops from MAE-East, a nice multi T1 connection. When we downsized to BBN, we got a dual T1 that was 25 hops away from a midwest NAP, which was a little off the beaten path and increased our latency about 12ms on average. But it was cheaper. Boss wins.
The concept that somehow your ISP doesn't really pay for their ultimate connection to the 'Internet' is ludicrous and misleading.
And having said that, Cox cable is probably more interested in the high-volume users that 'distort' the local networks and might be causing congestion. This is where most 'oversubscribing' is noticeable, and where the pproblems for the ISP are most difficult, IMHO. And where they need to decide what level of service they wish to provide.
That should be interesting. That's where individual customers will be hurt, and will fight back.
And you wrote:
"ISP's per-MB usage charge is just added there to discourage customers to actually use their connection."
That's one pricing formulation. Another would be to price higher volume users to recover costs, while not discouraging them or losing them to competitors. This formula is not so commonly used, since real competition is ineffective in most of the U.S., though there are other pressures and this is not nearly so simple as most of us would like to believe. Of course, the impact is plain and obvious, so we tend to think that the cause is also plain and obvious.
Don't think I am defending packet inspection and service filtering, nor am I defending the US ISP marketers. But let's keep our focus on reality. They should be expected to carry any traffic their users request, without discriminating on the basis of volume or source, and they should either price their service as necessary (or desireable) or describe their services accurately so customers can make informed decisions and have reasonable expectations. And MOST importantly, they should not discriminate on the basis of the source of the data. For instance, throttle based on URL (hulu.com, for example) or traffic type (H.323, for example) and then offer an unthrottled service of their own which is substantially identical (HD video streaming, for example) and delivered via the same method (TCP/IP). This would be discriminatory in a way we should not accept - like restraint of trade, the ISP could throttle some vi
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yes, I believe you are correct. I'm kind of surprised I had to read the whole page to the bottom before someone commented on this. Everyone is discussing the pros and cons of traffic shaping, not network neutrality.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
isn't all this completely irrelevant?
Once wireless technology like 4g are main stream, the "last mile" price would drop substantially.
Instead of having to run tens or hundreds of thousands of miles of last mile fiber, they could just setup strategic towers in the neighborhood and run fiber to the towers.
I would imagine blanketing an entire county / state in wireless coverage would be a lot cheaper than doing the same thing with wires.
If I can get 100mbits from a wireless connection, I would be a very happy camper... If you need more bandwidth, just grab a few more wireless receivers.
Nope... you're correct, but metering electric usage is, IMHO, a little more of a necessity than metering Internet usage. Electric power generation involves very real and substantial costs that aren't really a matter of one-time investments and minimal upkeep to "upgrade" so more power is supplied. EG. If I put several large businesses on a power grid and they start drawing a lot of electric power, I very well might be looking at putting another generator online to handle the load. Every hour that generator turns, it's using up coal or oil or natural gas. Or let's say bigger dollars were invested up-front to go with a nuclear plant instead? Ok, great ... but that's kind of like trying to avoid paying for spent inkjet cartridges by purchasing a more expensive color laser printer to do your heavy color printing jobs on. Eventually, the bill comes due by way of a set of 4 expensive toner cartridges, a new fuser and drum. With a nuclear plant, you're looking at a HUGE cost of disposal of radioactive waste at some point .. and don't forget the cost of hiring all the employees who keep it operating safely.
By contrast, dealing with "heavy bandwidth users" is a different beast. Yeah, eventually, you might need to upgrade some back-end circuits, or even invest in new routing/switching gear. But that new Cisco switch you put in isn't going to require a whole crew of employees operating it 24 hours/7 days to keep it functional. The new optical fiber you put in isn't going to consume more natural resources you're paying for, the more data moves through it.
Yeah, but nobody's hacking into my Toaster while I'm at work and setting it to use a high amount of electricity all day.
Nobody's trying to hack into my shower to let it run water all day.
Telling ISPs what traffic they can and can not charge for as it crosses THEIR network probably violates the takings clause of the US Constitution.
Any WHY do end users think net neutrality is going to benefit THEM? Is Google going to give you free time with their private jumbo jet?
... even though it's likely a waste of breath:
The only true network neutrality is public ownership of the wires themselves.
We don't let construction companies own the sections of highway they build and maintain. We don't even let broadcast and telecom companies own the slices of RF "spectrum" they use for some of their devices and services. So why do we continue to let them own the wires, when those wires are (now) so obviously common shared infrastructure, just as are those other examples? We may not have recognized it when the first telegraph wires were laid along the railroad rights of way, but we damned well ought to recognize it now.
We're truly at a crossroads here... and in grave danger of taking the wrong fork in the road.
All you can eat does have value in eliminating the hassle of ordering, and it lets you pay up front and then just go straight to the food. So you're buying convenience and early service too.
Another reason that AYCE isn't going to bankrupt the restaurant is because your stomach has a finite capacity and eventually you have to stop. With electricity and internet, you can keep burning juice and downloading indefinitely.
However, giving heavy users flak for using what they paid for is just like an AYCE place kicking out a fat person after they've already paid to get in.
One place I went to awhile ago had a cross between ordering and buffet. You still loaded up with whatever you liked, but you took it to the register to weigh it and you paid on that.
If internet usage were metered like electricity then the heavy users would get better signals as to how much of a fixed capacity they were using.
Finally:
Whatever the issue may be about network abuse, ISPs that oversell and underprovision have only themselves to blame for bandwidth shortages and should really be smacked by the FTC as well for false and misleading advertising. Just getting barked at by the FCC really doesn't cut it.
"It makes sense that people who use more should pay more. Why shouldn't the people who use more, pay more?"
When I buy a day pass to Disneyland, I expect that I can go on the Haunted Mansion ride 15 times in a row if I want to. That's why I bought a day pass. If they want me to go on it a maximum of three times, they shouldn't call it a day pass, they should give me a punch-pass instead, and when my 3 punches have been punched, I'm done (unless I buy another punch pass, of course...).
Also, be aware, that every one of those plans that the carriers sell is subject to tariff agreements between them and the PUC (Public Utilities Commission), which gives them the right to charge certain amounts for certain things, and have certain things and not others included in bundles, as part of their regulated monopoly on providing the utility in a given area. This is why your phone bill makes such a big deal about caling out the line items for lifeline service, rural service subsidies, and so on: in exchange for the monopoly in the lucrative markets, they have to serve the non-lucrative markets as well, or they lose the monopoly (and with it, the public rights of way for their wires, where needed, or frequency spectrum, where wires are not in use).
What they are crying about here is the death of their circuit-centric business model, where they used to get to charge for call competition, and for distance between end points (if you ever wondered why there are "services" such as custom ring indication based on the caller and "free" voice mail, wonder no longer). They are deathly afraid that higher data rates and VOIP are going to kill their current cash cows. And they're right: their current cash cows are going to die.
The cell phone boom saved them from becoming nothing more than dumb pipes, where the get to bill based on the diameter, but it only saved them for a short time, and now it's time to pay the piper.
-- Terry
When I buy a day pass to Disneyland, I expect that I can go on the Haunted Mansion ride 15 times in a row if I want to.
Except that if you go to Disneyland, your bandwidth (i.e., the number of times you can go on the Haunted Mansion ride) is throttled by the lines. (*queues, for the Brits among us).
And, the more popular the ride, the more it is throttled.
This not an example of a content-neutral system-- it is an example of usage that is throttled directly proportional to how popular content is.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Traffic shaping IS an important part of what most "net neutrality" advocates would consider important.
Deliberate efforts to interfere with traffic (like Comcast BitTorrent reset packets issue) should be prohibited.
Also, any ISP that specifically limits a certain protocol (BitTorrent for example) to some amount less than your total bandwidth should be prohibited.
If I am being sold 20Mbps, I should be able to GET 20Mbps no matter what protocol I am using if all the other network links between me and the other end are able to handle that at that point in time.
The ISPs should be limited to the following:
1.Giving latency sensitive protocols priority over other protocols (as long as all VoIP protocols for example get the same priority)
2.Giving you fixed amounts of bandwidth per month and throttling your entire connection for the rest of the month if you exceed it (that's if they choose not to simply charge you extra for extra usage)
and 3.If the ISPs network is congested, they should be able to temporarily throttle the entire internet connection of the user who is using the most. (in the ideal world we would ban this last item entirely and force the ISPs to stop overselling their networks and e.g. ensuring that if a cable segment has 10 customers at 20Mbps each, it HAS 200Mbps worth of capacity but we dont live in an ideal world and overselling of bandwidth will continue for the foreseeable future)
ISPs should only be allowed to limit your connection to less than the 20Mbps you paid for if one of the above 3 things is true.
Most significantly, rule no. 5 says broadband service providers "would be required to treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." The other new rule would make ISPs disclose relevant information concerning network management and other practices.
Hell they already do this in Atlanta.
I'm not sure about other places in the US but in the Atlanta area if you have a home DSL connection you cannot send email to a third party SMTP server that does not belong to ATT. We've run into this problem with our customers and had to set up a backdoor SMTP port to get around the problem. When I called about this first they out and out lied and said WE! were doing the blocking. When I finally proved to them it was them they said "Too bad you can't do anything about it." They said they blocked it for security reasons. They suggested that our customer upgrade to a "Business Class DSL" and then they would be able to use our servers. When I ask why the security policies were different for a home circuit and a business circuit I got no answer.
We had 5 or 6 problems like this and in the end it always comes back to ATT pulling some kind of shit.
Well Mr ATT I know it ain't much to your pocket but I hope you like the fact in the last two years we have moved over $350,000.00 per year of revenue OUT of your pocket and into you competitors and Jan 10 and $115,000.00 a year is leaving.
Orwell wrote a book of fiction. The sad truth is he is a prophet. He was just about 20 years off the mark.