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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.'"
First they came for Netflix, and I did not speak up because I did not use Netflix.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
... need google fibre. Its the opposite extreme when it comes to performance and openness...
Peter.
I live in a rural Virginia area. Comcast is my only choice. They don't care.
These concepts were part of the commercial Internet circa the early 1990s
and were part of the reason CIX was so successful. Then PAIX then others.
In time, Internet exchanges were themselves bogged down and companies
did private peering. Those who connected to like-quantity produders of
content did so for free (settlement-free peering). Those who were unequal
paid for transiting the network (paid transit).
That hasn't changed in 32 years. All that's changed is the up and down of
who provides more traffic where. The dominant player in each interconnection
point ALWAYS demanded transit, and often did so with the "wherever our
two networks meet" even if elsewhere it was not the dominant player.
Comcast could be made to behave, but Netflix blinked and paid them money.
Now others will as well.
This CAN BE FIXED BY REGULATION but not the kind people are thinking
of. No, not net neutrality. Rather the elimination of the cable-company
monopolies on entire swaths of subscribers. Eliminate the government-granted
access to rights-of-way, towers, utility poles, and infrastructure. Let them not
have a "sole franchise" but rather be one of many competing in the market.
Remove Comcast and their ilk from their high post as the monopolistic "owner"
of all these households by fiat, and having to compete to keep them, and instead
of throttling their peerings to make Netflix users (THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS)
suffer... they'll get peering with netflix.
More government regulation doesn't solve a market-driven problem. Removing the
government regulation harming free competition is the key.
E
I think he is talking about the people on here who are far right, the ones that are ok with the citizen united ruling and the like.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
No, I didn't. I've been clamoring to get the private corporations out of government
Which isn't going to happen unless government gets a lot smaller. So the only alternative is to not give them any more power.
When people give the government power over the internet, naturally companies will seek to control what the government does with it. This is why happened; it is what was inevitable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We simply need to forget the FCC and make this an antitrust issue. If an ISP is so big that they charge companies for the privilege of reaching their customers, then it is anticompetitive. If they start charging backbone providers, well... then the backbone providers will go out of business since their revenue stream will become an expense. I'm not sure how that would ever work.
Netflix even said Comcast is charging them very little for the connections and its not material to earnings.
i've seen estimates of $.30 to $.50 per megabit per second which is A LOT less than standard transit prices and an estimate that the netflix will pay $18 million per year for this. out of almost $5 billion in revenues this year and a current tech budget which includes transit of over $100 million
this is another blogger crisis. they scream for better internet speeds and when a deal to enable this finally happens they scream fraud and extortion
Netflix also has a motive here -- to create a barrier to entry to keep other smaller businesses out of streaming movies and TV shows for profit.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
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."
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Comcast must be thrilled Netflix has emerged as the proxy case for Net Neutrality. Netflix, a company that commands a large double-digit percentage of all US traffic, with plans to aggressively push 4K streaming later this year. It's so easy to paint such a Goliath as needing accommodations, as a company singly adding bandwidth stress on its own.
I don't think there are a lot of people who don't use Netflix. At least, I don't know any.
Money also flows one way for cell service in most of the world, except ... in the USA where both ends pay, so that's not unique to what Comcast is trying to do with internet service.
Remember landline service? One didn't have to pay to receive calls (not even from the telemarketers).
Lets say you did use Netflix.
Why would you speak up? Netflix just arranged a deal with Comcast and from the user perspective, it got faster. So from external observation most Netflix users would think the situation had improved.
There's simply no way to explain to non-technical people why what is happening is bad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Removing regulation, rather than writing proper regulation, would do nothing more than set all of us in the claws of Comcast-Warner
Totally wrong, the fastest internet I had was a decade ago when a small company called Wide Open West was allowed to run fiber to the curb.
Comcast put a stop to that soon enough, they are gone as is that faster access.
I've already seen a looser regulation having a positive effect, and yearn to return to that state where someone COULD offer service to me besides Comcast.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Those who remember USENET poorly are condemned to reinvent it poorly.
You can do all kinds of things which are not "huge data" and you won't have a problem.
Netflix pushed things very hard and changed the foundation of the "all the bandwidth you want" model.
Because previously the average customer downloaded a fraction of what they downloaded after netflix.
ISP's have the option of charging their customers more (maybe a lot more) or charging Netflix (and amazon prime and hulu) which can then pass that cost on to its customers.
Comcast are not nice dudes- but it's not all on one side.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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
Because I can see further than the next financial quarter
So what? My point is few of the MANY USERS of Netflix can understand the long-term implications.
It doesn't matter if a handful of people know better, because to actually change things would take a majority of Netflix or Comcast subscribers. And that cannot happen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Netflix does offer something similar to ISPs so they don't need to route all that traffic over the backbones, but since Netflix charges a fee to maintain the cache system, ISPs don't want it. Besides, if they did that, they wouldn't be able to complain and extort more money out of the backbone and edge providers.
This whole thing doesn't make sense to me. If Comcast is intentionally degrading (or failing to upgrade, causing degradation) NetFlix stream, why doesn't NetFlix just let them? Put a message over the buffering stating that the buffering is caused by Comcast and asking the customer to contact them in order to fix it. Maybe put a short pre-roll PSA video, explaining the situation to all Comcast NetFlix users. I'm (luckily) not a Comcast subscriber, but if I was, and I couldn't do whatever I wanted with the net connection I bought from them, I'd be screaming bloody murder, and I'd sure want to know who was to blame.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
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.
emt 377 emt 4
If the Executive administration wasn't such a bunch of spineless cowards they'd be pursuing RICO charges against Comcast for extorting Netflix and then miraculously eliminating their throughput problem less than a month later.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Untrue. The CDNs are provided by Netflix for free.
The ISPs are refusing because many of them also operate cable companies/online services *cough*Hulu*cough* that compete with Netflix.
Can someone explain something to me, because I don't get it. If I want content, and netflix has the content, and I have a subscription to Netflix and an ISP, assuming neither has a monopoly, why does it matter if netflix or the ISP pays for the transmission of data? One of the two of them has to pay for it for my consumption. I understand this all changes if there's a monopoly by either netflix or the ISP, but without the monopoly, why does capitalism not drive this to cost+ a reasonable cost of doing buisness/profit margin? And if it does, why do I really care if I pay this money to either the ISP or netflix, I have to pay it to someone. Now obviously, this goes out the window if one or both has a monopoly. Also, please, I'm looking for a real answer as to why I should care, not "zomg, ISP greeeeed"
I'm sorry, I don't have your faith in "the people".
Case in point- US consumers have been paying through their nose for broadband access for years.
I don't see this rising tide of angry consumers you speak of. Most of them will shrug their shoulders and keep on paying. With Netflix cut off, they will just switch to cable.
Don't be obtuse. The government should have, but failed to, control the internet. That is why the ISPs are charging you and arm and a leg. One example- the FCC wanted net neutrality, which by all accounts most consumers want. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the ISPs however killed the idea :-
You are doing the ISPs work for them. Every time one of you should "less gov'mt" and burn flags, they rub their hands in glee. Less government = more freedom in them deciding how to skin you.
Also explain to me how is it that you can get cheaper broadband in countries even heavier regulated than the US .
Repeatedly sending big, high def movie files over the internet backbone seems so wasteful.
Wasteful of what, exactly? Most of the costs in networking are fixed. You use a little bit more electricity to send more data but, generally speaking, most of the physical equipment involved doesn't really experience extra wear and tear when a connection is saturated versus being unused (some that's poorly designed might from, for example, overheating). In other words, if you graphed it, the real cost of bandwidth per unit is going to go down the more bandwidth is actually used.
Obviously you run into problems if the network is oversaturated, but it's not somehow a waste to actually use bandwidth once all the infrastructure for it is in place.
Don't be obtuse. The government should have, but failed to, control the internet.
You fail to understand what is happening. The GOVERNMENT has decided that content providers will henceforth pay ISP's. How is that government failing to control the internet?
They are controlling it quite well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since the same people (I'm tempted to use an ad hominem for them, but won't distract) that own Comcast own all of the Mass Media
This wouldn't involve an acronym for "music and film industry associations", would it?
Oh, for the want of the missing 0... :-)
Great counterpoint to a terrible typo.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's wasteful of instantaneous bandwidth in a network that currently happens to be saturated.
If that is true, you actually can do something about it, being both local and small.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How could a libertarian support net neutrality?
Play Command HQ online
"Which isn't going to happen unless government gets a lot smaller."
How do you figure?
"So the only alternative is to not give them any more power."
Alternative to what? Who's giving who power?
"When people give the government power over the internet, naturally companies will seek to control what the government does with it."
When did the people ever have control over the internet? When did anyone give the government control. To the extent that the government does have control, they just took it. Why would less government control lead to less corporate control?
Your post is incoherent. Partly because you addressing an event that has shifted control away from the government toward corporations. Your thesis doesn't even fit the situation at hand.
Play Command HQ online
You do not understand the situation. The government has decided that it can't force ISPs to not charge content providers. In other words, it ceded powers to corporations.
Play Command HQ online
- "Unlimited" plans with traffic limits
- Net-neutrality issues: deep packet inspection low-prioritizing torrent and SSL traffic
- Asking for money from 3rd parties to allow customers to reach them
All these "problems" are non-existent in countries with decent Internet connection. American ISPs provide crappy connections at high prices and they struggle to find new ways of scamming the poor customer, instead of upgrading their extremely old tech.
In my country you can pay 15 bucs a month for an external 1 Gbps line, and the provider will not say anything even if you do 500 TB of traffic each month.
The solution is easy, and it was in front of your eyes starring at you for more than 20 years: proper regulation of monopolies.
When people give the government power over the internet, naturally companies will seek to control what the government does with it. This is why happened; it is what was inevitable.
Er, no. The fact that you think this means you are utterly ignorant of how the rest of the world worked. Level 3 pointed out that in some companies with good competition (such as the UK) there was not a single congested port.
The UK market is very heavily regulated. There is an old encumbent ex-government monopoly (BT). They're mandated to sell the local loop wholesale to whoever the hell wants it at a sensible price. As a result, there are dozens of ISPs you can choose from at a variety of prices.
There's no bullshit about some ISPs throttling netflix. Well I don't know about BT. They're amazingly crap from a consumer point of view, but you don't have to choose them anyway.
On and out cellphone pans are great too for much the same reason: really tight regulation.
Though I'm in a funny area with extra weird plannig regs (no cable and almost no cell reception) and no one's upgraded the local units so I'm on quite a slow link.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Given that the majority of this Supreme Court just ruled that government-backed and sanctioned prayer in public meetings is fine provided they are Christian prayers, you really think an FCC ruling on Title II would have any scintilla of hope?
Democracy is dead, but most of us either haven't realized it or come to accept it yet.
I would mod you up as funny, but I commented earlier.
Cheap storage VM.
Sorry about that, sometimes it seems like the US is a test-bed for the worst policies. If corps can get them to stick here, they know they just need to try harder elsewhere.
Cheap storage VM.
The alternative is to send movies on optical discs. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a USPS truck carrying BDs in envelopes.
First, consider that a libertarian would support allowing each property owner to charge Comcast rent for allowing its cable to be buried across their property.
Since there is already government interference prohibiting the above (and said interference has absolutely no chance of going away), it is reasonable for a libertarian to support net neutrality as a compromise to improve the situation (although not make it optimal).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Freedom of speech. Data is just speech between a server and a client. Why should ISPs limit or censor speech between two parties based on their content?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
according to Level3, which is seeing congestion and ISPs asking for upgrade money. Cringely wrote about it yesterday. Goldarnit, The Connected Internet is supposed to be free in the middle, or it all falls apart! /coot
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They shouldn't. Two other positions exist which would be more to libertarian liking.
One option would be to oppose the sanctioned monopoly that net neutrality supporters want to regulate. By providing competition, it will be easy for the free market to punish ISPs who choose to discriminate between traffic sources. A side effect of this choice is a snarl of wires on the telephone poles - one for each local ISP. Also, this option is unlikely to work where all communications lines have been buried.
Libertarians could compromise to a second option - the common carrier option. This position yields the physical connection to stringent government control (like telephone networks, power grid, etc) but allows any company to make use of said infrastructure. Essentially, the wire is socialized, but everything that it carries is free-market.
Any company can join the union.
The union appoints independent observers to assess whether ISPs are acting in accordance with principles of net neutrality.
If the ISP is not net neutral, then the union has a series of escalating sanctions which are deployed in a pre-announced schedule
Sanctions might be
-provide slow service to users of ISP
-cut off service to users of ISP for one hour per week
-cut off service to users of ISP for one day per week
(etc)
Union members are required to implement the sanctions, or they are expelled from the union.
The message here is simple; The ISP claims that their customers (users) haven't paid to access the web, and that the ISP must charge internet companies(businesses) to send content to the users.
So - let's see how that plays out when the businesses stop providing service to the users. Are the users still happy to pay the ISP?
I wish Netflix had had the balls to say 'ok, we're not renewing any new comcast customers, and stopping any new signups with a big red 'comcast sucks' warning'.
It's easier to be ballsy if google, facebook, yahoo, netflix, bing all act together.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
it is reasonable for a libertarian to support net neutrality as a compromise
And that's why libertarians fail. They look to find the best government solutions to maximize liberty. It's like a gazelle negotiating with a lion for protection.
The last two hundred years of history illustrate the problem. But it's not like Jefferson, et. al. were in the dark about its nature, they just didn't see a better option.
There are now visible better options than he could have known.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's wasteful of instantaneous bandwidth in a network that currently happens to be saturated.
I've been telling people this for years, caching files in memory is wasteful! Just read it from disk. Think of the savings! Let the HD parks itself to save power? Hell no! We don't want to be wasteful! Make those motors spin 24/7!
/sarc
Movie studios want to charge higher prices for not having to redownload all the time. Compare the price of a "rental" license to that of a "purchase" license.
There were in fact 7.5 million readers last time I checked.
That doesn't make any sense. The server has a right to speak and you have a right to listen. Why is the ISP obligated to facilitate any given speech? You want to hear that particular speech, go to a different ISP.
Play Command HQ online
Who has the right-of-way on a property is arbitrary. The very concept is a government one. Without the government, you'd have to shoot at them to stop them from burying the cable for free.
Play Command HQ online
Roll the clock forward to the 2000's. People have traded-in their 56k modems for digital subscriber lines (DSL) and cable/fiber for the "last mile." Now big bandwidth is ubiquitous, opening the market up for companies to deliver on-demand digital content to a ginormous audience of 10's of millions of people (read: we are past the early-adopter phase and well into momentum). But, sadly, the guys who "paved the digital roads with fiber on the last mile."
The cost of carrying this bandwidth has gone way-way-way down, comparatively. And it became a commodity. And noooooooow, the ISP's want a taste of the action. That's the bottom line. The race to install fiber "outside plant" to convey big bandwidth has left a lot of player broke or DOSOR (dead on side of road). At this point, they are turning to "mafia-style" tactics and the appointee's at the FCC (whom all want patronage jobs at these various carriers, when the new administration gets elected) is all too happy to oblige them.
Take the blinders off, we are getting screwed by our government, AGAIN.