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AT&T Says Net Rules Must Allow 'Paid Prioritization'
suraj.sun writes "AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in 'paid prioritization' of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet."
..AT&T...YOU are harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet!
AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Uh, no...that would uphold the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Living With a Nerd
"AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.
Telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of Internet service, AT&T said, adding that it already has "hundreds" of customers who have paid extra for higher-priority services."
So you want to tier the internet. You want only certain things viewable if I "only" pay you $30/month. I'll get more, but probably not everything at $50/mo and at $100/month I'll get everything you think I should want, but of course, something will be blocked as it will probably be against your businesses interests for me to see and/or use it (competing services, etc).
Seriously, go @#$# yourselves, AT&T.
1. We do things on the internet that you pay us for.
2. You do things on the internet that you pay us for.
3. When you do things on the internet that other people pay you for, you pay us for the privilege of doing them.
4. If we find out you are doing things on the internet that we are also doing, you will pay us for the privilege of doing them slower than us.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
There's already issues with ISPs promising bandwidth they don't provide, now they will come up with plans to sell you both bandwidth and priority. If that were the case and AT&T started to charge for priority traffic, how can any entity can confirm they are receiving the proper "right of the way" on networks?
This is yet another strategy to sell services that cannot be quantified.
I love how this is the quote that came up at the bottom of the story.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. -- Aleister Crowley
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's depressing since up till now most companies have for the most part stuck pretty close to something like net neutrality with the occasonal dispute with other companies interupting that.
but now it's a political issue and all the guys in suits who before were happy to manage their companies without the foggiest clue what their companies actually do are hearing all these sugestions (in the form of "companies must not be allowed to do X Y and Z") and suddenly they're thinking "Really? we could do that??? awsome!!! why didn't anyone tell me about this before?"
Well that's funny, considering the fundamental principles that have driven internet growth have until now been all about net neutrality. There are always crazy anti-net neutrality advocates whining about governments regulating what "might" happen instead of what is happening. If this isn't proof enough that strong net neutrality regulation is needed to prevent the balkanization of the internet, then I don't know what is.
Man, that's a short summary.
Essentially, AT&T is arguing that because the idea of service classes is built into packet headers, the internet is not meant to have net neutrality.
Their opponents argue, essentially, that the service classes are there for a given end user entity to prioritize traffic by class if they choose, not for the telecom companies to do so.
Honestly, who could be surprised that AT&T reads the history/design of the internet in such a way that it seems to say exactly what they'd like it to say? This isn't any different from a corporate version of the phenomena in which a person interprets the holy text of their religion in such a way that it just happens to say that they should hate things or people that they already hate.
I bought bandwidth from my provider. Now additional tolls are being charged to the providers who I want to access. AT&T wants to sell something that is not theirs to sell.
The point of net neutrality is not to do away with differentiating levels of service. It's to prevent ISPs from charging others for access to those tiers, while giving themselves or preferred services access to those tiers for free or reduced prices. The main fear is that a company like Comcast might offer a streaming video service over their network for a fee, then charge other services, like Netflix, a quality of service fee that makes it prohibitive to compete with Comcast on their own network and prices them out of the market. AT&T objections here, while worrisome on their own, don't necessarily conflict with the principles of net neutrality.
Why are people having such a hard time understanding what network neutrality means? Paid prioritization pretty much is the exact _opposite_ of network neutrality. Thus, any net neutrality plan that included provisions for paid prioritization are NOT NET NEUTRALITY PLANS!
sigh...
The Internet is not a Mall. Sure, there are stores. Sure, there are ads for anything you can think of plastered everywhere. Sure, it's an anonymous place with crowds of people you don't actually know.
But the Internet is not a Mall.
It transcends the status of a basic retail venue. The Internet is a place where information (and occasionally knowledge) is stored. The Internet is an international forum. The Internet is an academic cornucopia. The Internet is the Great Library of Alexandria for the 21st Cenutry.
If AT&T demands the right to tax access to the Great Library, I demand that AT&T offer to sell all of its shares to the United States government for $0.01 so that there's public control about how those additional tax revenues are spent. Failing to hand over the keys to the castle to the public, AT&T can go pound sand. They ought *not* to be the arbiter of who gets access to what for which price.
Actually, hey: let's just forget the "Oxy", shall we?
Using Adolph Hitler's "Big Lie" tactic, ISP giant AT&T simply turned the definition of "Net Neutrality" on its head in order to take advantage of people (especially in government) too stupid or too uninformed to appreciate the Net Neutrality concept and its importance to everything positive about the internet.
Gee, what a shock. News at 11.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Uh, no...that would uphold the fundamental principles of the Internet.
I agree with you but we're just users. That's the fundamental principle to a user. The fundamental principle of the ISPs and other businesses surrounding the internet is to make money and -- let's face it -- if there had never been a profitability aspect of the internet it would not have become as big and powerful as it is now. So far we've been pretty much in symbiosis with most of what the companies do but it seems to diverge daily. Back then I wanted to buy everything without leaving my home. Then came Amazon and Newegg and an endless supply from retailers. They wanted to sell, I wanted to buy, we were happy.
I think that's one of many reasons that Net Neutrality is so confusing to your average consumer: the internet used to be a great tool in getting them what they want from people who want their money. AT&T will phrase the debate to the consumer thusly: "You want prioritized traffic and we want to give you prioritized traffic so let's do the whole cash dance just like you do with everything else on the internet." The problems with that are obvious to you and me but may bamboozle the average consumer into thinking: "Yes, I need this. Here is my moneys. Please go do, my intarwebs are all slowed up from the evil file sharers!"
I'm on the same page as you but I think we're at a disadvantage because people are willing to pay for a prioritization of processing in many other things and assume that doing it this way with internet traffic is just a logical step in a capitalistic society where the rich can pay a premium for better and ensured service. In my mind, the simplest counter explanation without getting into -isms and what the internet manifesto is they don't meet my current advertised speeds so why should I pay them more to not meet higher speeds?
My work here is dung.
Providers OWE us net neutrality. They get access to public lands, and private properties to build and maintain their cables and routing hubs. Sometimes they need to tear up streets or block off traffic to to their work. Hell, they can sometimes get government subsidies to build cables or routing hubs. To say they own their network 100 percent is preposterous. That doesn't mean they shouldnt get a return on their investment, but if they want to charge for prioritization then they need to start paying for the aforementioned privileges and shouldn't get a cent of tax payer money.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
is that if you repeat it often enough, people start to believe it.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The usual Slashdot response is that there is no way prioritization is compatible with net neutrality, but we only have to look at the post office to see that it can be done. You have the choice to send by standard mail, or to pay more to speed up delivery. I'll grant that it's not a perfect analogy, but there are models that would work.
My biggest concern would be that prioritization is done on an exclusive basis, i.e., a company pays to be the only one that can distribute sports on a high priority basis. We could imagine multiple tiers of bandwidth with a couple of conditions. Each tier must be available on uniform and nondiscriminatory terms, so that anyone can pay $X to deliver a megabyte on the highest tier. It's also important that the lowest tier doesn't get starved, which could be accomplished by requiring that no more than X megabytes are transmitted by high speed delivery before a megabyte is moved over the lower tier system.
As a community I think we have to look really hard at whether net neutrality is a battle that can genuinely be won. If it is, then we fight the good fight. If not, then I think we have to consider what kind of non-neutral network is most reasonable.
I've been using the Internet for a long time, since when it was just an University network and before AOL and in all the docs, READMEs, RFCs and FAQs that I read over the last 28 years, not once was "The right to profit" ever been mentioned as a fundamental principle of the Internet.
Openess and interoperability: yes, profit: no.
AT&T objections here, while worrisome on their own, don't necessarily conflict with the principles of net neutrality.
I'm not sure they're even worrisome, from the article it sounds almost like everyone's talking past eachother. Or just talking about different things where only the news people think they're trying to talk about the same thing.
The consumer-protection people say ISPs shouldn't be able to alter service levels based on how much the external endpoint has paid. AT&T says ISPs should be able to alter service levels based on how much the internal endpoint has paid or what preferences the internal endpoint has expressed. These are perfectly compatible and both make perfect sense.
The only problem would be if AT&T is using the internal-endpoint argument to push for the ability to make external-endpoint actions. But I expect that if that were the case we'd be hearing stories highlighting their duplicity, so...
I'm pretty sure that is exactly what "paid prioritization" means. AT&T wants to charge Netflix for prioritized packets. Unless Netflix ponies up, then AT&T will downgrade, or eliminate, Netflix traffic.
AT&T calls it paid prioritization. You call it quality of service fee (possibly tongue in cheek). I call it double dipping.
AT&T says ISPs should be able to alter service levels based on how much the internal endpoint has paid or what preferences the internal endpoint has expressed. These are perfectly compatible and both make perfect sense.
Want to access youtube.com from urISP? That's an extra $10/month. Don't worry though, we comply with the law since we aren't charging youtube.com for that premium access.
Even if it is just: Youtube.com unthrottled: $1/month it's wrong.
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Here on Slashot, I know I will be pilloried. But this issue is too important to fear retribution of the masses.
The deal is, that network neutrality is not just talking about stopping ISP's from not slowing certain network types.
It also stops companies from charging you more for expediting certain kinds of data. Well, what if I as a consumer WANT to pay a bit more to have my Comcast voice work really well with video, or to get faster bandwidth to some CDN's so that I could really replace cable video with internet video? Why should they and I not be allowed to do that?
The only issue we've ever seen is something I'm not even sure a network neutrality law would stop - Comcast forging packets to screw over BitTorrent. None of the proposals we are talking about say anything about forged traffic or even adhering to network standards, just that the companies cannot ever prioritize one source of traffic over another. So we're talking about a regulation to solve a problem we have not yet seen and there is no sign of that may not even prevent real attempts at hurting user traffic, while at the same time limiting the possibilities for advanced services ISP's could offer in a network-savvy world.
The real crime is that people don't have more ISP's to choose from, so that they can go elsewhere if they do not like the policies of the one they are using. Instead of adding new regulation, why not loosen up that one and see what real competition does for the internet instead of the government-enfornced monopolies we have today?
The last note I want to offer is one of caution - if you choose to regulate the internet, which until now has been free and open, you invite special interests to follow up and shape what the regulation means. If the government has a hand in regulating the flow of the network it can just as easily decree that MPAA blacklisted torrent trackers MUST be blocked or the ISP would face a fine. Is that really the world you want to move forward into?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because these assholes are trying to wall garden the internet itself, which is contrary to the very existence of the internet.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I disagree. Consider two situations: (A). AT&T starts up a search subsidiary and then says "We're going to impair connections to all other search providers in favor of our own," reaping a ton of profits. (B) AT&T spins-off that search subsidiary but enters into a contract with it where the subsidiary pays a bunch of $$$ for AT&T to impair connections to the other providers, reaping a ton of profits? The end result to AT&T, end-users and other search providers is identical; the only difference is that in (A) the flow of money from search to AT&T comes through ownership and in (B) it comes through contract.
Honestly, I don't think it would be unfair to pay for priority service.
Things like WoW connections, VoIP, and any other such "real time" protocol that is sensitive to delays can benefit from increased priority. Paying for "packet rushing" is IMHO a valid thing.
The problem comes when it turns into a protection racket, or worse, sabotage.
If you can pay to have your packets boosted, that's ok.
What isn't ok is for the network to sabotage your performance on purpose because you didn't pay up, or worse, because one of your competitors did.
And that includes throttling bittorrent connections.
Does AT&T realize that they too can get severely screwed without net neutrality? Verizon or any other provider can decide that they don't like AT&T network traffic and place it at the bottom of the priority list or not route any of their traffic at all. For the small guys, this could quickly become a death sentence.
Look at Cogent history of issues with other providers. (AOL, Level3, Sprint, etc) Cogent was under-cutting everyone on price, generating huge amounts of traffic that caused lopsided peering and some providers didn't like it. What happen? They started dropping any traffic coming from Cogent.
I think it's imperative that all network traffic flow freely with the exception in the case of gross abuse of resources.
How about ths:
The internet should be considered a public good, because the benefits of having it are spread to the entire public in the form of greater communications and information spreading.
Also, the internet was created and funded by the federal government, and currently continually uses public land.
Because of these reasons, we should have a say in assuring that the internet continues to operate in a manner primarily supporting the public good, and not primarily as a for-profit endeavor.
They failed because common carrier rules allowed people to switch their ISP.
Those walled gardens would not fail today after the telecoms were reclassified to exempt them from this regulation. In other words, the failure of those semi-closed systems was an example of net neutrality working and why it should be put back in place, since without it consumers do not have enough power to actually shape what is offered to them.
Returning to common carrier rules would not prohibit prioritization of traffic based off types, so VoIP and such would still get the bandwidth they need.
This is what is frustrating about this debate.. the telecoms have done an amazingly effective job at getting misinformation out there about what re-establishing these rules would do. So no.... bringing back the old rules will not cause torrents to bump VOIP off... there is nothing stating that VIOP traffic, or any type of packet, can not be prioritized for bandwidth, and there never was. Completely made up talking point that the industry pushed into the discussion that people keep parroting.
Sounds good to me. If Time Warner does something I don't like I can go to.... hmmm.... FIOS isn't in my area yet. I suppose I *could* go to DSL but Verizon doesn't seem to be supporting that as well as they used to. And what if Verizon does something I don't like? No other company in my area offers high speed Internet.
The problem with the "go to the competitors" argument is that most people in the US have a choice of two or less companies from which to get broadband. You can't rely on the threat of competition with two or less companies.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think it's more of what is meant by priority traffic. If priority traffic happens to be users who pay more for a higher bandwidth cap then I don't see a problem - there's definitely an infrastructure cost if a user wants more than the standard line will deliver to their location (or the provider has to put in a bigger node so there isn't a pinch point). The entire issue seems to be an artifact of how we bill for internet usage. Billing entirely based on pipe size is absurd when the cost to the service is actually a function of total data sent and received.
How would you react if your electric company told you there was a flat rate on your 200 amp household service and that it was going to be more expensive just because your neighbor happens to like using his welder as a full spectrum light source every night (or you pay out for CF bulbs and he or she doesn't)? I'd even bet that some people would take to running a salamander in the back yard all summer just to "stick it to 'em." If you've ever needed more juice you may have to pay an initial fee for a 400 amp service (and maybe not) but after that it's pretty much based on what you use (some places might have a nominal recurring fee based on increased maintenance). Some industrial locations will pay a premium for guaranteed service (or guaranteed first back up service) but they may also get volume discounts - nobody seems to complain about that.
If we're talking about something other than neutral to the content of the traffic then it is not net neutrality. If we're talking about a provider making decisions and pricing based exclusively on quantity and rate of traffic than that should still be within the bounds of net neutrality.
Sure, I'd love to see a flat rate determined by a third party (government?) at a set percentage of profit of which another set percentage must go back into infrastructure improvement, but I am not convinced that such a system would work out the way I'd envision it's implementation and success.
So what makes it wrong? Should the old AOL and MSN "walled gardens" have been illegal? They seem to have failed just fine on their own...
They failed because there was competition. They were operated by dialing in via the phone lines. And that LITERALLY is the point. That AOL and MSN could exist at all was by virtue of the fact that the Phone Companies couldn't discriminate against them. And since there wasn't discrimination over who you could call, anyone who had the equipment and paid for the connections could set up a competing service.
Switching from AOL or MSN was as easy as calling another phone number.
Now, consider how easy it is to switch from one Cable internet provider to a different Cable internet provider. I'd bet 90% of the time if you want to try a different cable company, switching would involve selling your freaking house and moving to a different city (or state).
Hell, the NUMBER 1 factor in me chosing my current home was finding one that had decent internet services available. And I'm not kidding on this, the first thing I looked at when presented with a new place on the market was "Can I get FIOS there". Now, that's not true for everyone, but having the ability to at least switch between two comparable services was VERY VERY important to me because when you DON'T have that option, it is very easy for that option to suck.
Earlier I decided that I wanted to switch internet providers from Dial-up. If I wanted another dial-up provider all it took was 5 minutes on DSLreports.com to find a decent service. To switch to DSL... impossible, they hadn't upgraded the CO. To switch to cable... $1500 to build a new extention to my house, it took 9 months before they finally got around to it.
The point is, MSN/AOL failed because there was competition. In the broadband market, aside from a very few lucky areas, there is none.
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This is their next step after they get their protection racket pushed through.
The ISP's want it 3 ways.
Customer pays $X for service. Websites and services pay $X for access to those subscribers.
When that is done they will then start charging customers $X for "faster" access to popular things.
The ONLY legitimate thing they can charge for is the $X to the customer for service. Everything else is extortion money and flat out scumbaggery.
I so wished the FCC had the balls to force Internet ISP's to be Common Carrier Status to avoid all this crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It would be stupid to roll out a network that restricted your customers to 3.0mbit/s when you can offer them the ability to burst at higher speeds and even sustain them when others don't need them.
That's fine and all, but sell it as a 3.0 mbit/s service with higher burst speeds as a bonus. Don't sell it as a 10mbit/s service when you never see those speeds in reality.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The T-1 (or more properly DS-1) is still 1.544 Mbps and not 100 Mbps as AC mentioned.
I think his theory was that AT&T would sell 66 1.5mbit/s DS-1s (99mbit/s) and a bunch of DSL connections and make them all share the same 100mbit/s backhaul.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If I could get TWC to guarantee 3Mb/s with "up to" 10Mb/s (which, with TurboBoost or whatever it's called, they might as well call it "up to" 14 Mb/s, since I can hit that speed about as often as I can 10Mb/s), I'd probably be pretty happy with that.
As it is, it's not uncommon for me to be able to pull less than 700Kb/s down on my "up to" 10Mb/s connection, which is, in my opinion, disgraceful. 3Mb/s as a guaranteed minimum would actually be a blessing.
The issue isn't so much that they advertise the [generally unattainable] maximum; it's more that they don't advertise or adhere to any minimum speed or QoS metrics.
So... what they're saying is that in order for net neutrality to work, we have to not have net neutrality?
And if you think about it, the pay-for-prioritization model doesn't help anybody except the ISP, by bringing them in more money. It hurts the customers who pay for prioritization because they are paying more for the same service they had before the prioritization model. It hurts the customers who don't pay for prioritization because their connection now sucks.
Another interesting way to think about it is, "Pay us more or your connection will be throttled down," which I'm pretty sure has to be some form of illegal.
What there needs to be is a clearly advertised minimum speed (and require it to be within a certain range of the maximum advertised speed, as well as not being throttled depending on its source/destination) and a clearly advertised maximum latency. If we can get those to be required somehow, it will at least be a step in the right direction. Tis a longshot, though.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
I recently changed my iPhone plan on my work account to include the ability to tether (I don't want to jailbreak my work provided phone).
The choices were 2GB "DataPro" plan with tethering ($45) or a 2GB "Enterprise" plan with tethering ($60). It wasn't clear on the web-site what the differences were so I called AT&T.
After three transfers I finally got to someone who could explain the difference. The guy told me that the "Enterprise" plan is for users connecting to their own mail server - not a google/yahoo/hotmail type service.
I asked if they would actively block my connection to my mail server on the "DataPro" (non-enterprise) plan - and he said no - not yet. I asked if he would support (somehow) my connection to my mail server on the "Enterprise" plan, and he said no I'm on my own.
So AT&T is charging more for an "Enterprise" data plan and not giving ANY additional service - they only reserve the right to break your connection to your own mail server on a non-enterprise data plan.
Fuck those guys. We are leaving them the minute iPhone goes to Verizon, or some other carrier. Are we to trust this company with ANY policies regarding network fairness? No way.
-ted
Often we choose an expensive ISP over another because it is faster, or has a lower national or international latency. How is this different from paid prioritization? A real problem is the size and power of AT&T and similar companies, which limit the available options when choosing your ISP.
My other signature is a car
The Principle of Capitalism: use the money you have to make more.
That capitalists might voluntarily limit themselves to moral or even legal ways is simply a myth invented by the likes of Rand and then perpetrated by the robber barons who's image it helps improve. Comcast, Enron and BP are the true face of Capitalism, and the faster you understand that the faster we can make the huge corrective turn towards left we should had done a long time ago. Otherwise, watch things get worse as the pack of wolves deregulation has unleashed keeps on tearing the society apart.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"I'm all for net neutrality, but with restrictions put on what the government can do"
Your point seems to miss two fundamental points:
1) we (the government, by virtue of those we elect; yes we often chose poorly) paid to have the internet invented
2) putting restrictions on the people to their own inventions so that rules can be set by third parties, with no accountability is just asking for trouble, since eventually these parties will exclude everyone else from the decision making process and then be free to charge whatever they want for "internet related services", which essentially means every aspect of human activity these days.
Better have a few basic rules like net-neutrality that essentially say, no you can not manipulate the system to give yourself an unfair advantage. I like the idea of requiring ISP and service providers to pay a larger "royalty" to the government each year so that certain essential services (free and fair exchange of political speech, free and fair elections, universal pricing for political advertising, free availability of laws and regulations be made available to all, etc. without third parties being able to inject their own self-serving "rules" into the process whereby they can charge differential costs to access such information.
Maybe we need some kind of "minimum delivered services laws" akin to minimum wage laws, if the principal of net-neutrality for IP packets is to abandoned to the free markets. Otherwise, a few will gain at everyone else's expense and that is not an equitable or useful social policy upon which to manage the sustainability of a fragile planet.
Maybe some people don't understand this, but in general the pipeline from an ISP to the rest of the world just isn't big enough to handle user traffic to a lot of very popular sites. Take CNN for example. When you type in www.cnn.com what do you think happens? Do think your request goes to a server owned by CNN in Atlanta?
Well, if you did you would be wrong. It goes to a server probably in the same building as your ISP (if it is big enough) that is owned by Akami. See, if you have enough traffic it is almost cheaper to pay Akami to cache the content on its servers which are co-located in pretty much every major ISP's facility. If you want high speed access to your content for all users then absolutely you want that content coming from a locally caching server.
Now, if you don't have a lot of money then Akami's fees are way out of line for you. And so you get way, way slower performance on requests.
See, pay-for-performance is here already and has been for a really long time.