Slashdot Mirror
The Danger In Exempting Wireless From Net Neutrality
nmpost writes "Nearly two years ago, the FCC outlined its rules for net neutrality. Notably absent were rules for wireless networks. There are several legitimate reasons that the same rules applied to wired networks can not apply to wireless networks. However, the same danger lies in leaving wireless networks unguarded against the whims of its administrators. As we move more and more towards a wireless dominated internet, those dangers will become more pronounced. We are going to need a massive investment in infrastructure in this country regardless of net neutrality rules. Demand for wireless is going to continue to grow for many years to come, and providers are not going to be able to let up. Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth. Eventually, demand will slow, and these practices will have to be addressed. This is where allowing internet providers to regulate themselves becomes an issue. Self regulation usually does not end well for the consumer. Imagine allowing power plants and oil refineries to determine what chemicals they could pour into the air. Would they have the population's best interest at heart when making that determination? In the future when the infrastructure can match the demand, what will stop internet providers from picking winners and losers over their wireless networks? As conglomerates like Comcast gobble up content providers like NBC, a conflict of interest begins to emerge. There would be nothing from stopping one of the big wireless providers like AT&T or Verizon from scooping up a content provider and prioritizing its data speed over the network."
Wireless networks suffer from congestion a lot more than wired networks. I don't think it's unreasonable for carriers to want to throttle traffic on wireless mediums to ensure mr tethered torrenter isnt destroying everyone else's connection.
The more the ones who can afford armies of lawyers will win.
And once the government starts regulating the internet, there will be literally thousands and thousands of pages of regulations.
Tell me, how does that help the consumer?
Or do you REALLY think the government is really setting out to help YOU? YOU don't control enough money to generate millions of dollars in campaign contributions, do you?
Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth.
Understandable.
Still fraud.
I could solve all the problems associated with these profiteering asshats with a simple solution: Allow people to be licensed to broadcast internet. Right now amateur radio can't offer internet access. If private persons were allowed to do with a larger spectrum space what they can do right now with wifi, I suspect that their entire business model would implode.
Mesh networking is a mature technology -- and it doesn't require the infrastructure these companies offer. Make it legal for people to build wireless communities. But I guess that would be too radical of a concept for the FCC; They seem only interested in appearing to support the common citizen, rather than actually supporting them. There's no profit in handing over spectrum to "the public", the group the FCC claims to represent, and whom the FCC mandate the spectrum is actually owned by, for which the FCC is merely an administrator of.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Self regulation usually does not end well for the consumer. Imagine allowing power plants and oil refineries to determine what chemicals they could pour into the air. Would they have the population's best interest at heart when making that determination?
That's not an apt comparison because power plants are refineries are paid for what they deliver and what you are concerned about regulating is an unwanted byproduct of their operations. With data service, your bits getting to and from your devices is both what you are proposing regulating and what they are selling. Sure, there's an inherent conflict between what they want (to get as much money from you for service under the most favorable to them terms) and what you want (getting your data fast and cheap without restrictions of any kind, or according to restrictions you can dictate). But that's the case in every other commercial transaction as well. There's a need to protect consumers from such unfair practices as abusing monopoly power to drive up prices higher than could be sustained in a competitive market, lock-in, charging you for access to your own data, unreasonable tarriffing of data from outside networks, uneven and deceptive price models and unfair cost shifting. But these are unrelated to problems like pollution.
In the future when the infrastructure can match the demand, what will stop internet providers from picking winners and losers over their wireless networks? As conglomerates like Comcast gobble up content providers like NBC, a conflict of interest begins to emerge. There would be nothing from stopping one of the big wireless providers like AT&T or Verizon from scooping up a content provider and prioritizing its data speed over the network.
I don't foresee a future where the infrastructure can match demand. As capacity grows, people will demand more data services from more mobile devices and saturate the capacity unless pricing prevents them from doing so, and prices in a free market would normally be be set such that they fall a short of saturation.
However, like most others, they have a data cap. Interestingly, the data cap does not apply to some of the services they provide, only to the rest of the world.
So I can watch internet television THEY provide to my heart's content, but for anybody else, there is a cap.
How is that for net neutrality?
Google lobbied hard to exempt wireless from the net neutrality rules. While telling everyone how much they supported net neutrality, they quietly pushed to remove restrictions on wireless providers. From http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20100812/17291310611.shtml
So what changed? Google did. In 2007, Android wasn't a major mobile OS, and Google didn't have multi-billion-dollar wireless advertising relationships with Verizon and AT&T. You'll also recall that Google had hopes of bypassing the carrier retail experience completely -- hopes that flamed out rather spectacularly with the death of the Nexus One and their online phone store. The policy shift is clear and indisputable, as is the motivation: Google doesn't want consumer protections (be they privacy, or network neutrality) to impact wireless ad revenues.
Name one time in the history of the internet where demand for bandwidth has slowed? The size of content outpaces the increase in bandwidth that technology provides. Remember when you could install your OS with a floppy? Try a DVD now. The current Debian dist is 8 DVD's, over 300GB.
Demand for wireless is going to continue to grow for many years to come, and providers are not going to be able to let up. Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth. Eventually, demand will slow, and these practices will have to be addressed.
Um, NO?
Demand for bandwidth will always exceed supply. Because it's ridiculously easy (more often than not to the point of the application doing it by default) to use more and lower-latency bandwidth, while it is difficult and time-consuming to install more supply. And this becomes ever more true the farther you move up the tiers. Installing new high-quality GigE cards and 8-port switch in my office? Under an hour from opening the NewEgg box to a job well done. Rolling out 10GigE to the whole floor? All week for a crew of guys. Rolling out 100M or 1G fiber to whole cities? Years of work and the job's barely even begun.
And if anyone thinks demand will saturate, there are always applications waiting in the wings to use more bandwidth.
As conglomerates like Comcast gobble up content providers like NBC,
So, stop them.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to acquire other corporations anyway. After all, they are people. And President Lincoln said people shouldn't own other people.
Have gnu, will travel.
We started with wireless television broadcasting to everyone's home, but not we have wired television reaching most of the country. I see internet moving the same direction, towards more wired lines as time passes by. (Of course people will still have their cellphones & other portable gadgets, but that data will mostly be streaming through WiFi modems that hook-into the wired LAN lines.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
traffic to the rest of the world utilizes pipes belonging to 3rd parties and they don't give away the bandwidth for free. In-house traffic is virtually free, just like sending terabytes of data between computers plugged into your house LAN is.
"In the future when the infrastructure can match the demand..."
Why do you assume the infrastructure can't match the demand? The fact that it doesn't does not mean that it can't.
Let's look at some facts:
(1) Bandwidth has continued to get cheaper for the providers, every year, while price / MB for consumers has actually been going up.
(2) Provider profits have never been better.
(3) Other countries (Canada, much of Europe, many others) manage to deliver superior bandwidth at much lower rates.
And these up, and the logical conclusion is: the providers are deliberately creating an artificial shortage to keep prices high.
They could easily take some of their record profits and turn them into bandwidth. The fact that they haven't been doing enough of that to meet demand pretty much gives them away. Others haven't had that problem.
Same with Comcast (their video content does not count towards your 250GB cap). You see this is what happens when the government regulates..... instead of actual net neutrality (like we had before) it has created some other bastardization which allows Cable companies to treat their data favorably, while blocking outside companies via the cap.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The biggest problem here is not controlling usage so there's less congestion. Providers already do that plenty with data caps.
The problem is providers telling you what application you can use that 2GB or 4GB you purchased for.
AT&T for instance, says that if you have a 2GB smart phone data plan, you can't tether your laptop. But if you have a 4GB plan, you can. What business do they have telling you if you can tether your laptop? If you want to sit there and use 30GB tethered, that should be okay; you'll just have to pay for the additional usage. This is understandable and makes sense.
They're doing it again with iOS 6, saying you can't do Facetime over cellular unless you upgrade to one of their sharing plans. They shouldn't CARE if you use facetime over cellular, because if you use too much data, you'll have to pay for it anyway.
Charge me $xx for $yy GB. That's fine. Just don't tell me what I can do with those GB. They're MINE, I paid for them!
Same with Comcast (their video content does not count towards your 250GB cap). You see this is what happens when the government regulates..... instead of actual net neutrality (like we had before) it has created some other bastardization which allows Cable companies to treat their data favorably, while blocking outside companies via the cap.
OMFG! Government intervention didn't improve things?
That CAN'T be TRUE!
Our government knows BEST!
Net neutrality is not the same thing as bandwidth neutrality. Even landlines can't tolerate infinite bandwidth. The point is to allow carriers to distinguish between traffiic only for matters that directly affect the network. The carrier should *not* be able to meddle with the traffic to suit the carrier's business goals. So long as the traffic doesn't adversely affect the network, the carrier shouldn't be able to interfere with it. If the traffic does adversely affect the network, the carrier shouldn't be able to interfere with it any more than with other similar traffic.
Fraud? In what way? My cellular provider told me upfront that I wold get 2.5 gigabytes uncapped, and unlimited at 2xISDN speeds. It isn't fraud when you are told point-blank what to expect. (Better read your contract more carefully.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
This article reeks of FUD. The technical challenge alone is pretty unbelievable when you think about it. It's one thing to set up layer 3 policy-based QoS on a handful of service provider core switches, but to coordinate that policy across hundreds of access level devices is quite difficult to say the least...assuming those devices even support it. Never mind that the relationship of consumer to service provider has been less the focus of net neutrality policy than the issue of fairness to content providers.
Data caps and throttling are understandable now as demand is far outpacing infrastructure growth.
What color is the sky on your planet? Data caps and throttling are not acceptable, because the whole notion of them is a complete fraud, and anyone with half a brain knows it. The fact that they're running their networks at or over capacity should be a good thing. This should mean that they have the money to upgrade and rebuild their networks. After all, they have been fleecing their users and the government in the form of broadband subsidies for years. There's no excuse for not building a new network where "caps" are not necessary, or expanding the capacity of the existing ones. I hope Google wipes them all off the face of the earth.
This signature intentionally left blank.
The US FCC has no authority to do anything with regards to the Internet.
Discussing "how" and "how much" and "when" begs that question. Stop it.
The FCC is an irrelevant dinosaur that regulates television and radio. It is
specifically prohibited from interfering in useful networks -- including the Internet.
http://tinyurl.com/9p4z35p
E
So if I set my torrent client to prefer to download from peers within Cox, it won't count against the cap, right? Or it is only free for their services?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I deal, on a daily basis, with people who are using hotspots and cellphone connections as their primary connections. Netflix, Hulu, torrents, all cramming their way through some poor little Android; the laptop, the console, the iPads and iPods all feasting on its misery. I think the speeds currently being offered just shouldn't be available. I don't think "4G" is a product whose time has actually come, and telling people it exists results in them using it as if it were a real connection. Don't ban FaceTime, just sell people the awful connection you can actually afford to sell them... The one that sucks too much to use FaceTime.
As long as there is not a monopoly, why can't the marketplace take care of issue? Simply take your business to an ISP that practices net neutrality.
Why not allocate half of available wireless network capacity to strictly nondiscriminatory use and half to unrestricted commercial trading? Pretty soon, we will have the answer as to which approach is more beneficial. My guess is both, and that the largest users of commercial spectrum wouldn't be able to initially grow and succeed without nondiscriminatory spectrum.
I get my internet hookup through Cox. Don't get me wrong, they are somewhat better than a bunch of other providers I keep hearing about. I am overall satisfied with their internet service (television service is another matter, I have DirectTV).
However, like most others, they have a data cap. Interestingly, the data cap does not apply to some of the services they provide, only to the rest of the world.
So I can watch internet television THEY provide to my heart's content, but for anybody else, there is a cap.
How is that for net neutrality?
It has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. You're paying them for internet access, and being throttled/capped on what you're sending to/from the internet.
They are also providing a localized service to you, which does not involve the internet. It also has a much, much smaller impact on their core and backhaul circuits, as most of your data is streamed from a server located in your area.
Think about it like this. Your internet provider is like someone who owns a bunch of private roads. They have a toll booth setup where their roads end and the other people's roads begin. However, there is a road within their private road network which leads to a store also on their land. If you visit that store, you don't have to pay the toll since the booth is just at the edge of their road network.
Here's a better example that removes some of the drama and complexity. My ISP as a direct peering agreement with Google, so traffic to/from Google goes over a dedicated circuit and not the internet. Now, this is not Unfair nor is it a NN violation. Two reasons- first, the agreement is not exclusive- any other search provider is welcome to setup a similar agreement; the Google peering does not demand that ONLY Google get such a service. Second, the ISP does not do anything to throttle, delay, or otherwise tamper with traffic going to other search providers over the internet.
Now as for the issue of Fair practices, the problem is not the use of the networks but the fact that companies like Verizon should not be allowed to sell both the access to the content AND the content itself. A cable company should not be allowed to own both the coax plant and some (or all) of the TV stations being delivered- they should have to organize into two divisions and the deals between the Verizon Content arm and the Verizon Delivery arm should be subject to the same rules and processes as with any other content provider. But that's not network neutrality- that's just plain old Unfair Competition.
And since I already see people saying "But what about streaming from my buddy down the block who also uses my ISP"? Well that's a tricky issue. While it's true that you're not using their internet edge links, you're still using circuits and systems which are allocated specifically for internet traffic. The complexity of provider networks would make the billing extremely difficult and almost impossible for consumers to understand.
I first noticed it around the 17th of August, before that date, no problem.. I assumed it was implemented for RNC convention, but the convention is gone now and T-mobile's filtering nasty is still active.
I can no longer remote admin any of my customers networks (router web pages, remote desktop, etc) using non-standard network ports(8000+ range) over t-mobiles wireless network.
T-Mobile appears to be using a combination of unsolicited tcp resets and throttling down to 60kbits, (even simple web pages no longer load).
I guess I'll have to look around for someone else's wireless solution or just tell customers.. sorry our of luck until I can find a landline.
Preferential routing was caused by regulation? Which regulation requires a company to give themselves preferential treatment?
This "all regulation is evil" meme is very lame. Yeah, there are regulations that are stupid. There are also regulations that keep the air breathable and prevent your next-door-neighbor from running a disco in a residential neighborhood.
>>>Preferential routing was caused by regulation?
Comcast didn't start giving its user free videos (they don't count toward the 250GB cap) until AFTER the net neutrality rule was passed. Basically comcast held back until they got permission from the government, and then they went non-neutral.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
This rambling summary misses the two key issues in wireless neutrality. The hunger for "unlimited" comes mostly from carriers' exploitive billing practices of sending surprise $1000 bills without providing meaningful tools to control and monitor your consumption, charging roaming data fees 100 - 1000x higher than local fees, and otherwise using this mafioso "postpaid" relationship to maximize customers' anxiety and uncertainty about their bills.
Carriers turned this hunger into a trojan horse, pleading they were too incompetent to protect their network from reasonable use under the plan they sold, "Unlimited". This gave them an excuse to invent new caegories where "use" was translated into "abuse": ban "streaming"---not "throttle" or "prioritize," but simply ban. Then, finally, they demand the privilege of vetoing every software release that goes onto a phone before the manufacturer can publish the update. "Sorry, FaceTime only supported on Wifi, unless you upgrade to the Golden Spray Unlimited Plan instead of the Ordinary Unlimited plan"---another company's product is turned into an upsell for the carrier's network, through the trojan horse of Unlimited. If you bought outright the 5GByte that they actually limit you to when they say Unlimited, there'd be no excuse to control how you use those bytes. Presumably they also haggle, "well give us some branding, our logo on the phone case, a couple bloatware apps---and maybe we can 'approve' it sooner. You have to understand, we are working so hard to approve all your phones as soon as we can and are really overwhelmed," like motherfucking prison guards pleading sincerity and empathy that they're only able to deliver food and water every two days. Just open the gates and let me out! And now they demand veto power over the app stores as well, kicking out any app that displeases them, because "Unlimited", and there is no transparency over this. You have to get your friends together with a bunch of phones and then search for what's NOT there. Finally, they have this twisted view of "abuse" that customers are surprisingly ready to internalize, like "whatever amount of traffic is in the top 1 percentile is abusive." It's like the consumer version of "first they came for the Jews." Well, I use my phone in an *ordinary* way so I've got nothing to worry about. Who do these tall poppies think they are, anyway? I've got some desk job pushing papers and have always resented people who do "interesting" things, make them into startups, and spend the rest of their life retired on boats. This wireless is for normal internetting, not fancy internetting.
Did you notice if you stick a FooCarrier SIM into an Android, boot it, then remove the SIM and reboot, the SIM-less Android will still consider itself a "FooCarrier Nexus X" or whatever, which affects app-blocking and geo-blocking? The mere presence of the cel radio in the phone means that it must always be the bitch of one carrier or another.
This has become so ingrained that carriers now talk about "their" phones, rather than their customer's phones. Instead of subsidizing the phones, carriers now live in the fantasy world where they buy the phones from the manufacturer and then rent them to the customers. so, of course they are not overreaching to ask for control of every app on the phone, or expect that the manufacturers build phones primarily to please carriers not customers. It's just like the old days of the Bell monopoly.
And this isn't about throttling silently behind the scenes and then selling websites faster access. Yes, they do something like that, sorta, ex. killing TCP sessions after 5 minutes except ones on port 5228, or snooping User-agent and either redirecting you to tethering upsell page (T-Mobile), or using AUP "violation" to cram tethering onto your bill with some unfavorable roaming-rates plan and then sending you the surprise $1000 bill again (AT&T). This practice is allowed under a lesser bogus view of neut
TFS is wrong, starting with the most basic premise stated in the first sentence, to which the whole rest of the piece is a reaction (and a reaction which is completely pointless, since the premise it is reacting to is completely inaccurate.)
This is false on several levels.
First: what the FCC did wasn't "outlining", it was publishing the actual rules (not an outline of the rules).
Second: Wired/wireless wasn't something that was distinguished in the rules, it was fixed (which can be wired or wireless) vs. mobile (which, naturally, will only be wireless).
Third: Rules for mobile broadband networks were included in the published rules, alongside the rules for fixed broadband networks; they were not "notably absent". The rules for mobile broadband networks did provide fewer consumer guarantees than those for fixed broadband, for which the rationale was provided in the Report and Order establishing the rules.
Now, if someone wants to have a discussion about the actual differences in the rules published for fixed vs. mobile broadband, and whether those differences are appropriate, there is probably a useful discussion that could be had. But starting with the completely false premise in TFS isn't a way to start that discussion.
That's nice. Why don't we look at the Net Neutrality bill, see how many congressional representatives voted for it, and then look to see which ones of them were funded by Comcast? The corporation got exactly the law it paid for: One which would allow them to treat their own data differently from competitors' data.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
So, you're saying that because Comcast has corrupted Congress, they had to give themselves preferential treatment? That makes even less sense than your previous argument.
>>>So, you're saying that because Comcast has corrupted Congress, they had to give themselves preferential treatment?
Well of course. Comcast doesn't want true net neutrality, so they bribed the Congress members to write the Net Neutrality law to allow Comcast to treat their own data as higher priority than outside competitors' data. (This is so fucking obvious, I am amazed I have to explain it. Regulations are written for the *benefit* of corporations, and rarely for the people.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
his is so fucking obvious, I am amazed I have to explain it.
Yeah, you're so sure you're right, it really irks you that you have to mess around with boring things like logic and evidence.
we never had net neutrality before.
net neutrality didnt even really become a thing until in the public eye comcast bought NBC becoming both content distributor and content owner. you can mention time warner having been there already (though i believe the ISP section was a seperate entity long before). but comcast is the big kahuna of ISPs and NBC (the company, not hte singular channel) is a huge content owner.
it was always a possibilty before, but seen as similar to actual nuclear war, fairly low risk. then comcast made a play, and everyone just KNEW what they were aiming for, and its true: we provide you the cable and internet services that benefit us most, namely, the ones we make.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.