Comcast: Destroying What Makes a Competitive Internet Possible

An anonymous reader writes "Vox has another in-depth report on the perilous state of net neutrality regulation, and how Comcast is attempting to undermine it. Quoting: 'In the bill-and-keep internet, companies at each "end" of a connection bill their own customers — whether that customer is a big web company like Google, or a an average household. Neither end pays the other for interconnection. ... ISP's typically do this by hiring a third party to provide "transit," the service of carrying data from one network to another. Transit providers often swap traffic with one another without money changing hands. ... The terminating monopoly problem occurs when a company at the end of a network not only charges its own customers for their connection, but charges companies in the middle of the network an extra premium to be able to reach its customers. In a bill-and-keep regime, the money always flows in the other direction — from customers to ISPs to transit companies. ... But when an ISP's market share gets large enough, the calculus changes. Comcast has 80 times as many subscribers as Vermont has households. So when Comcast demands payment to deliver content to its own customers, Netflix and its transit suppliers can't afford to laugh it off. The potential costs to Netflix's bottom line are too large.'"

Comments

That's why Atlanta (and other cities) ...

[loony]

... need google fibre. Its the opposite extreme when it comes to performance and openness...

Peter.

Re:Comcast doesn't care

[supersat]

It doesn't really matter where you are; there is no real competition in the US broadband market. Sure, DSL exists, but old copper lines can't handle nearly the bandwidth that coax can. I live only a few blocks away from the CO, but due to the age of the wires, I could barely get 1.5 mbps.

Get OFF your freaking duffs!

[stox]

You can still change this!

Start with filing your comment NOW at the FCC:

https://www.fcc.gov/comments

Click on 14-28 Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet

Here is a sample to give you some inspiration:

"It has become time to classify Internet Service Providers as Title II Common Carriers. The possibilities for abuse are just too great otherwise. Failure to do so will cripple the future economic well being of the United States, stifle innovation, and limit the freedom of consumers to choose the content they desire."

Lobbyists are a HUGE part of the problem

[fightinfilipino]

having lobbyists in government regulatory bodies HAS to stop

sign this and share it: http://wh.gov/lwhr8

Tom Wheeler and his ilk have empowered too much Telco/Cableco monopoly control and done nothing to help regular people

Re:movies should not go over internet backbone

[Duhavid]

My recollection is that NetFlix has such caching equipment, and that they have offered it to Comcast and Verizon.
CC and VZ did not take them up on that offer.

Re:Sigh...

[mrchaotica]

How many of the average consumers getting Comcast "Hot Deals!®" realize the penalty for the deal? Not many.

I firmly believe Comcast's "average" customer has only the choice between Comcast or no adequate Internet service at all. Other than Stockholm syndrome, it's the only explanation that makes sense.

Re:Netflix is a terrible test case

[mrchaotica]

Actually, packet switched networks work just fine for this IF they have a "reserved bandwidth" connection-emulation feature. In return for being limited in the number and size of the packets, and having asked first, the packets of the call get to "go to the front of the line", which means they aren't dropped and have little variation in transit time (jitter). The high-bandwidth services that speed up until they hit a bottleneck and back off, dividing all available bandwidth among themselves, then find that "all available bandwidth" is just a little smaller. That way both types of service play together JUST FINE.

But that means treating some packets different than others, which in turn means that "net neutrality" mandates, in a naive form, ban them, leaving the phone calls running in the "best effort" manner you describe.

Repeat after me: NET NEUTRALITY IS NOT FUCKING QOS!.

It's really simple: QOS ("Quality Of Service") is about discriminating between different types of traffic based on its characteristics and needs (e.g. low-latency-required stuff like VoIP vs. latency-not-important "bulk data" transfers like BitTorrent). That kind of discrimination is just fine. In contrast, Net Neutrality seeks only to prohibit discrimination based on the origin or destination of the packets; i.e., who sent or requested them. That kind of discrimination is very much not "just fine."

For example, Comcast wanting to prioritize Comcast's video-streaming service above Bittorrent is fine; that's QOS. Comcast wanting to prioritize Comcast's video-streaming service above Netflix is wrong; that violates net neutrality.

In my experience, the only people who disagree with this after having it explained to them are those who are paid to believe otherwise.