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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."
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?
It is unreasonable for them to throttle anything due to lack of infrastructure while simultaneously sporting enormous profit margins.
You can have one, but not both. If they need more infrastructure they should build it.
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.
Keep in mind that on wired or wireless networks, Net Neutrality is NOT treating all packets the same. VoIP and Video are among those applications that are time sensitive. You need to apply QoS to prioritize that type of traffic. Where NN comes in would be something like this: Say your ISP charges $50/month for internet, and limits you to 250Gb per month. Instead of subscribing to their TV service, you want to use Netflix or Hulu. Under this scenario, their data limit may keep you from using Netflix as much as you'd like. OTOH, they don't charge against you cap to use their TV service. Oh, but you can buy additional data for, say, $10/10Gb more. What they're doing is making sure that the additional data charges are so expensive that it's cheaper to buy their TV service, keeping out competition.
It's OK to throttle traffic on congested networks to make sure that everyone has access, but it's another to use data limits to keep out competition for other services.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
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.
So if they made less of a profit, it would be ok? I am trying to follow your logic here.
At what point is the profit to much? I am assuming that you know that the profit is just sitting still somewhere and not being used in R&D, wages, infrastructure, rainy day fund, etc
back in the 2g days maybe, but not since 3g, and absolutely not since LTE nor real 4g does congestion even become a factor. IT's more an issue of "Carrier doesn't want to improve coverage" vs "users who want actual coverage".
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.
This line of thinking never quite works.
A doctor doesn't NEED wireless internet, but they certainly would like it since it makes a great number of things easier and more convenient. If the providers can update their infrastructure to accommodate traffic but choose not to the doctor is NOT going to go out and build their own network. It would require a complete change in their life and learnings to do so. It's not a reasonable thing to ask.
Much like if a software engineer gets a headache. They don't NEED it but some medicine would definitely be nice to alleviate the pain. However, pharmaceuticals are artificially pumping up the price. The software engineer is not a doctor nor a chemical engineer. Vindicate the pharmaceuticals by saying that the doctor is free to drop their life and go a completely direction to fulfill this one need is just silly.
So it's OK for you if your daughter can't call the police to come help her when she has an accident on the highway because 5 or 100 other users in the same cell are downloading porn right now?
Wireless providers *have* to throttle to protect the voice network for public-safety purposes.
It's not ok, but that wouldn't be the "porn downloaders" fault. It would be the fault of the network operators who oversold services they couldn't adequately provide. If they have too many customers in an area they need to build more towers. If you sell someone a service you need to provide what you sold them.
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.
outbound traffic costs them money while in-house traffic is virtually free. You will never equalize the costs of internal and external services.
On a smaller scale the same thing happens in home LANs. People shuffle shitloads of stuff back and forth between computers, NAS boxes and what not and pay ISPs big round zero bucks for that traffic. Outbound packets are counted against non-free quota while LAN traffic is limitless.
Do you want net neutrality here? How would that work?
"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.
Build your own damn network.
Throw a cell tower in your back yard - see how quickly the FCC knocks on your door.
The problem with the 2 things you mentioned is that we have regulation, we have a distorted market based on coercion
If it only wasn't for regulation, we would have a perfect world. Right? Haven't learned anything yet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
The purpose of a government is to maintain a free market via regulation and police and the justice system. Free Market does not exist without regulation. As soon as there are any major players in the market, they would just muscle out any competition, even if they have to do that literally.
Natural end of any purely capitalistic society is total monopoly, at which point it basically becomes a totalitarian government.
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!
>>>If they have too many customers in an area they need to build more towers.
Exactly right! I propose one fiber optic-connected tower for every home. Just locate it on the chimney so everybody in that home has a dedicated cellular.......... Hey wait a minute. If they do that, why can't they could just run the fiber directly into the home & forget about the towers. (ponder)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
You don't quite seem to understand why the free market doesn't work very well with markets like telecommunications, roads, etc. Sometimes the regulation is problematic, but often the market wouldn't even be viable without the regulation. The problem is that some markets are what are referred to as natural monopolies. Consider roads. How many sets of roads from different providers can any given location support? How many roads does the typical home have frontage on? Multiple sets of roads would also _have_ to cross. How would the property rights work? How expensive would all the tunnels and/or overpasses be? How would interconnects between the different providers work? Roads are natural monopolies, which means that, to be practical, they either need to be managed by government or by heavily regulated industries. The same holds for telecommunications. With wireless telecommunications there's only so much spectrum to go around. In a pure free market, there would be so much noise on the airwaves that cell phones probably wouldn't even be possible.
Agreed that natural monopolies are hard for free markets. But then the question is will the regulation be effective. Regulation can be expensive and sometimes ends up benefiting initial players and limiting choice. The biggest issue, for me, is if the regulatory body will stay effective and not be corrupted by market players. When a regulatory body is captured, it will be very hard for a politician to work to defeat it due to the interest/power of the market players vs the interest/power of the people. You mention that often the market wouldn't even be viable without regulation, do you have some examples to discuss? Things such as wireless frequencies could simply be considered property and handled similarly. Ownership of such property could be handled in the same way, ie homesteading.
I think the point you are getting at here is that the owners of routes to destinations, of which there are few, will take advantage of their position and it will cost you more to use those routes. Markets are actually more complicated than that as they also have to deal with indirect and potential competition. How much would it cost me to walk to a parking garage that gives me access to different routes? What if I took a different means of travel altogether?
Private property rights would work as they do today. Tunnels and overpasses would be expensive, I assure you government does not make them cheaper. That is also a problem with government roads; they will be built even when they do not make financial sense in a market. Interconnects between different providers would bring more usage (ie. more money) so they would be beneficial to road owners to that extent.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Wow, you think that the key difference between the market for burgers and the markets for pharmaceuticals and the internet is the regulation?
Try again, look at the actual realities of the different things you're trying to conflate together. And since pharmaceuticals are nothing like the internet, combining them together as if they were the same market is not a good idea either.
But go ahead and scream for your precious freedom.
Me? I'm not going to complain that Regulations caused problems as if they were the issue, when the real problem is the regulations might not be ideal. But who is surprised by that? You think that the government must be uncorrupted for it to be viable?
That's a high standard.
So it's OK for you if your daughter can't call the police to come help her when she has an accident on the highway because 5 or 100 other users in the same cell are downloading porn right now?
Wireless providers *have* to throttle to protect the voice network for public-safety purposes.
It's not ok, but that wouldn't be the "porn downloaders" fault. It would be the fault of the network operators who oversold services they couldn't adequately provide. If they have too many customers in an area they need to build more towers. If you sell someone a service you need to provide what you sold them.
I'm sorry. Were you promised a certain data rate under all conditions regardless of what other users on the network are doing or did you just not understand what multi-user system is?
And nobody is forcing them to lease spectrum. They are using the public resource to provide a commercial product.
No sir I dont like it.
No. This is not what Net Neutrality means. Net Neutrality means giving the same priority to the same type of traffic (voice, data, SMS, etc.) categorized by data type, and most especially NOT categorized by source provider. Net Neutrality means that a carrier should treat all voice calls equally, even if the call originates/terminates/transits a provider other than the carrier.
For example, Sprint should not give higher priority to digital voice packets from a Sprint source than they would to digital voice packets from a Verizon source. AT&T should not allow full bandwidth to streamed video from AT&T movie archives but throttle video from UTube.
Emergency voice traffic would warrant higher priority categorization than normal voice traffic. But the important point is the *type* of traffic, not the source of the funding that pays for it.
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they rarely are.
Net Neutrality means nothing anymore. The term was hijacked by strawman proposals that had nothing to do with the original concept. It used to mean that you can't prioritise data based on either the source or origin. The idea was that you couldn't prioritise your VoIP or movie streaming service unless you also prioritised everyone else's. The problem with this was that you could use some custom protocol for your service and then you could prioritise traffic for everyone who used that protocol (i.e. you), and degrade everyone else. So the definition evolved slightly to the requirement that you give equal QoS to all data in the same category. That, unfortunately, is very difficult to implement. With the current trend of trying to stuff everything over HTTP, it's often quite difficult to categorise traffic.
There was also an intentional attempt by ISPs to conflate Network Neutrality and lack of QoS in the minds of users. Network Neutrality did not mean that you had to treat latency-sensitive and jitter-sensitive traffic (e.g. VoIP) the same way you had to treat bulk transfers (e.g. software update downloads). The networks tried to pretend that it did, and so you get the nonexistent problem in an earlier post of porn downloads meaning you can't make telephone calls. In reality, it's fine to reserve, say, 10% of the total throughput for latency-sensitive communications and use that for voice traffic. The people doing the downloading have buffering and so don't notice the slight increase in latency or the extra jitter when people start and stop using the high priority channel. The voice users don't know that their traffic is higher priority, and it abruptly ceases to be if they cross some throughput threshold.
My biggest complaint is that ISPs are not required to publicly disclose their traffic management policy. If they were, then customers could make an informed decision (e.g. this ISP will cost you more because you can't use that VoIP provider with it and get adequate quality).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
One requires no additional laws at this time and also has well-established analogs in the court, and one requires a funded regulatory body that gets to make the rules with very little oversight. Cost and effectiveness is the difference.
You are acting as if this is what we don't already have today. The difference being one outcome was achieved at great expense by having a regulatory body such as the FCC. If wireless spectrum were divided up under property law, "scraggly bearded hams and hackers" would have more of a chance against whatever big business types were abusing the spectrum because they could hire a lawyer instead of beg the FCC or some politician.
Eminent domain is evil and has already been abused by our government. But it is very cheap and effective.
Government or conquerors taking over the roads? You mean like they are now? Going anywhere is more expensive and slow now than it should be. Gas tax that everyone pays subsidizes commercial road shipping. Traffic builds up at certain times, which would be alleviated if there were an incentive to use the roads during less busy times (like by making it cheaper). Road owners have a financial incentive to get as many cars across their roads as possible so they would implement solutions like many other cities like E-ZPass to charge tolls.
Of course they would allow it because it would allow more cars onto their road which means more money. If the arrangement is obviously in the 2nd operators' favor, they could come up with an equally favorable agreement and write it into a contract (which, of course, would include the agreed upon court of arbitration because government courts are slow and expensive).
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
not entirely true.
the FCC mandates who gets the wireless spectrum, and they only give them out to wireless companies.
In addition, its damn hard for a small, minor, or start up to get linked to the national cell network.
Its really not an option to start your own wireless network.