What Canada Can Teach the US About Net Neutrality

blottsie writes If there are two ways in which the Internet is similar in the United States and Canada, it's that it's slow and expensive in both places relative to many developed countries. The big difference, however, is that Canada is looking into doing something about it. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission—the northern equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)— is examining how the wholesale market, where smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) use parts of bigger companies' networks to sell their own services, should operate in the years ahead. The industry reaction to this proposal provides insights to the potential consequences of re-classifying broadband in the U.S. as a Title II public utility.

Comments

Need a better opinion

[rogoshen1]

Could someone (who is preferably a frequent contributor) explain what this article is about in no less than 20,000 words?

Thanks.

Re:Need a better opinion

[Garfong]

I never expected to see a (Score:4, Insightful) post asking for the opinion of Bennett Haselton.

Re:Need a better opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, aboot the fact I'm an AC Canadian eh.

Bud, in Canada, there are two main companies: Shaw and Telus. Telus does adsl and Shaw does cable. Alright, time for a beer eh, brb....Okay back! Sorry about that!

Shaw and Telus have stingy rates and stingy services. Only a hose-head would use them. However, there are other companies who use Shaw's cable and Telus' lines and provide a service through them for a MUCH cheaper rate. That leaves more money for your pet beaver, and groceries like bacon and poutine.

For example: A company called Lightspeed offers 6 MBPS/1MBPS ADSL for only $29.95 where as Telus' cheapest plan is $58/month for 15 MBPS and probably offers the same speeds due to caps and availability. If you really want the 15MBPS, it is still much cheaper to go with lightspeed. Lightspeed uses the EXACT same infrastructure as telus for 3/5s the cost. F*ckin eh bud! Take your computer out for a rip! When you first hook up internet to your igloo, usually Lightspeed will even send a Telus contractor to hook it up directly to your outer wall.

Same goes for Shaw, there are a few companies (including lightspeed) who sublet cable companies. Probably is, when there is a hockey game and everyone is using cable, your internet becomes as slow as frozen maple syrup. So usually everyone uses ADSL.

Sources:
http://www.lightspeed.ca/personal/ratesadsl.html
http://www.telus.com/en/ab/internet/plans/internet-15/

If you Take Off to the Great White North, you better get 'er done with Lightspeed.

Sorry I did not use 20,000 words. Sorry!

Re:Need a better opinion

[WillAffleckUW]

Could someone (who is preferably a frequent contributor) explain what this article is about in no less than 20,000 words?

Thanks.

In the time it took a US consumer to download one word of the 20,000 word article real First World Nations can read, a real country would have given you the entire 20,000 word article.

Capiche?

Re:Need a better opinion

[Mashiki]

Ah a west-coast canuck. I'm a east-coaster.

We have 5 companies in total that another poster listed. Remember though, up until a few years ago we had zero competition, becuase these companies wanted to maintain a monopoly. Now you can pick any ISP you want, and pretty much get anything you want in terms of speed as long as it's available in your area.

http://canadianisp.ca/ is a fine resource for those who want to look around, myself I'm on Teksavvy(25/10 grandfathered plan though there are better I'm happy with it)--I pay the same rate I did in 2002 when I first got broadband from Rogers, and have a 300GB cap with zap the cap on--I have an unlimited cap but am throttled from 8pm to midnight. Midnight to 6am I believe it is downloads are always unlimited on every plan. Anyway, we've got lots of competition here now besides the incumbents. It reminds me of the US broadband market back in '99-01ish when you could get a 6/1DSL line for $9/mo unlimited in Indianapolis.

Now the problem in western canada is we've got lots of people moving there from the east and all of these companies have their heads up their ass in terms of rollouts for ports on DSL, and oversubbed cable lines. My sister is in Grande Cache, she's lived there now for 4-5 years, and it wasn't until last year when I was out there that she was able to get broadband because there were no ports available. It's a mess, a really bad mess. So much so that the improvement districts are looking at setting up their own municipal internet solution.

Re:Nope

[davydagger]

I know right, I mean we should let edge networks decide policy on the internet, who are these silly little congresscritters anyway.

The US doesn't need to be taught

[quietwalker]

This isn't a matter of lack of knowledge or understanding. The US doesn't need to be taught, or led.

The US is currently on the divide between protecting consumers from potentially abusive practices or allowing businesses to run rough-shod over them. It's a debate regarding priorities between business, consumers, the economy, and social welfare, and despite my strong feelings on the subject, on a national level, there's no silver bullet answer that 'fixes it', especially since Canada hasn't actually done anything either, but commission a study.

In fact, studies of the sort that are being done in Canada have already been done in the US, at several different points in time, and the recommendation they had then was one of non-interference. With the inability for congress to act in any way other than to block action, that's likely how it's going to go.

What we could use is a surefire way to figure out how to light all the democrats and republicans on fire, and replace them with politicians that actually care more about the people they're meant to represent than their next elections, party, or party politics. If you've got one of those, let us know, cause THAT's what we're in dire need of.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Guspaz]

In terms of net neutrality, the CRTC did a heck of a lot more than commission a study, they put their ITMP framework into effect. It's essentially regulation requiring net neutrality be preserved. It's been enforced in the past (when the country's largest cable company was throttling some online games) and has issues currently under review (for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).

It wasn't complicated or simple. We didn't have network neutrality. Then they put some straightforward regulation into effect, and then we did have network neutrality, and a framework for what consumers can do when they need to report a violation.

It's worth noting that the CRTC review of both of the net neutrality violations that I mentioned above were instigated by regular consumers filing a complaint, without any lawyers getting involved (on the consumer side). In the first case, the CRTC ruled against the cableco, and in the second case it's still in progress.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[bigpat]

By "non-interference" I think what you really mean is regulatory capture in order to increase the regulatory burden on new market entrants. If you look at the numerous attempts to set up local non-profit or municipal WiFi or Fiber networks you will see an army of lawyers and lobbyists from the big telecom monopolies arguing at the state, local and federal levels that "the market" needs protection from all that chaos which would be caused by people getting better service at cheaper rates. It is absurd to even remotely suggest that we have somehow naturally arrived to this point with these big telecom monopolies through a free market.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Em Adespoton]

It's more of a choice on which companies you want consumers to get screwed by. Content Providers or ISPs. NN gives content providers a huge financial break at an ISP's expense which is inevitably passed onto consumers. Non-NN gives ISPs leverage against content providers. Either way, some set of large companies will win. Myself, I prefer to let my dollars go to the ISP rather than let some large content providers (who I don't use) get a free ride on the network I'm paying for.

I can see why you posted AC, as this is a logical fallacy understood by anyone who thinks about it.

If there were no content providers, just individuals (like in the early days of the Internet), then the individuals pay their ISPs for a connection to the network. Those ISPs have peering agreements so that they can share the data sent by their customers.

Add in the content providers. Wait. Aren't content providers just virtual individuals with large amounts of data someone else wants? Doesn't that mean that they're ALREADY paying their ISP for their connection to the network? Isn't that data already being handled by peering agreements?

There's no free lunch, but some of the big ISPs want to get one anyway, by double-charging (that is, charge their customers for access to their peers, and then charge their peers' customers for access to their customer base). If it actually costs them that much money and they're attempting to lower costs to consumers by shifting some of that cost to content providers, then that's not network neutrality; that's cost shifting, and needs a contract. Amazingly, most "large content providers" are more than happy to sign those contracts and absorb some of those costs in exchange for having distribution points inside the service provider's networks, instead of depending on peering. Oddly, those ISPs often refuse to deal with the CPs, instead using the desire for the CPs and their customers to talk to each other as a pressure point for gaining advantage in their peering agreements over the other ISPs. Some CPs like Google have responded to this by creating their own networks and in some cases, allowing consumers to route around the ISPs putting up gateways between their customers and their desired content.

Meanwhile, the ISPs who are pulling these stunts are also either in, or attempting to get into the CP racket, and produce content to compete with that hosted by their peers. They can do this by hosting that content inside their own networks, just like they've been refusing to let the competition do.

Why does this work? Because these ISPs have legislated limited monopolies -- their customers can't just go somewhere else for the most part. In Canada, the tit-for-tat regarding having that limited monopoly is that there's balanced legislation saying "if you want that monopoly, you have to play by these rules and not abuse that monopoly". In the US, instead of that balanced legislation, there's a few decades of sweeping things under the rug, lobbying, and hubris. I'm fine with AT&T & co. blocking net neutrality, as long as they give the government back all the money that was given to them over the past 30 years to build out the network -- they've obviously failed to meet the requirements the government listed in the agreements, and so should not be getting taxpayer's money and a limited monopoly in the marketplace as well as control over what packets come into and out of their network.

I'd like to see the government say "No Class II? Fine; give us our money back, and you no longer have marketplace protections, which means any municipality or start-up can enter your market and there's nothing you can do about it. And if they want to play by our rules, maybe we'll give them some of that money you've failed to invest in infrastructure, to offset the hardware monopoly we gave you via land lines."

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Obfuscant]

(for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).

And the winner when the government forces the telecom company to start counting both Netflix and their own video streaming in the user's data cap is ... the telecom company.

Oh, you thought the telecom company would simply lift all caps to solve this problem?

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Guspaz]

No, I expected the telecom company to simply start treating the data fairly. And several of the mobile companies did just that.

It provides an incentive to the mobile companies to raise their caps. They want people to subscribe to their mobile television services, but at the same time, they don't want their customers to say "I don't want that, I would pay too much for the data". It may have no impact, but at least all services are on an equal playing field.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Obfuscant]

No, I expected the telecom company to simply start treating the data fairly. And several of the mobile companies did just that.

I bet the people who used to have unlimited streaming of telecom-provided feeds are just all warm and fuzzy that they now have a cap.

It provides an incentive to the mobile companies to raise their caps.

So your answer should have been "Yes, I expect the companies to lift their caps." What good is incentive to do so if you don't expect them to do so in return? And how does this help the former unlimited-data user who was consuming only telecom streams -- he's still wound up with a cap, and he's now going to have to worry about paying extra.

It may have no impact, but at least all services are on an equal playing field.

Why shouldn't services that cost less to provide cost less to the consumer, even if it's just a little bit less? All services are not equal cost.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[ppanon]

No, I expected the telecom company to simply start treating the data fairly. And several of the mobile companies did just that.

I bet the people who used to have unlimited streaming of telecom-provided feeds are just all warm and fuzzy that they now have a cap.

Well, since the traditional behaviour of telecoms is that, once they've eliminated the competition, they raise their prices and rent-seek, if the telecoms had been allowed to wipe out the competition then those "unlimited" plans would have suddenly become a lot more expensive. And that is a very real risk because content is licensed per country, so that as, let's say, Netflix's user base dwindled, it would lose economies of scale in licensing content to its Canadian customer base and have a harder time providing a competitive catalog. The Canadian Netflix already has a significantly smaller selection than the US service because the Canadian audience is smaller, limiting its licence purchasing power.

To also address your point about the users of the unlimited service being sad, their unlimited service was effectively a (substantial) discount, subsidised by every other user of the same common infrastructure. That was in effect very much a parallel to abusing monopoly power in market to obtain monopoly power in another, although the monopoly power actually was monopoly in one segment (cable vs. ADSL) of the consumer data services market.

It provides an incentive to the mobile companies to raise their caps.

So your answer should have been "Yes, I expect the companies to lift their caps." What good is incentive to do so if you don't expect them to do so in return? And how does this help the former unlimited-data user who was consuming only telecom streams -- he's still wound up with a cap, and he's now going to have to worry about paying extra.

Yep, he's lost the (ephermeral) benefits that he was obtaining at the expense of every other user of the common infrastructure, and which he would have paid for in higher subscription fees as soon as the telco was satisfied their service was sufficently dominant to present high barriers to entry for any potential competitors. Because they've proved over and over again that that is exactly the kind of market they like - one where they can command margins that you wouldn't get in a competitive market.

It may have no impact, but at least all services are on an equal playing field.

Why shouldn't services that cost less to provide cost less to the consumer, even if it's just a little bit less? All services are not equal cost.

Because the service cost difference in entertainment media is negligible. What the telcos were doing was subsidising the bandwidth cost of their media content users and spreading the cost to all their other users, who often didn't have alternative ISP choices.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[Obfuscant]

Well, since the traditional behaviour of telecoms is that, once they've eliminated the competition,

I cannot speak to Canadian regulations, but down in the US it would be very hard for one wireless carrier to "wipe out the competition", since the FCC auctions for wireless bandwidth were specifically set up so that there were two winners for each service area. It was a design goal that there be competition.

To also address your point about the users of the unlimited service being sad, their unlimited service was effectively a (substantial) discount, subsidised by every other user of the same common infrastructure.

No, it was that they were actually costing less to the telecom so they paid less for the service. It's irrelevant if they were subsidized or not, the point was that they're going to be unhappy. I don't know too many people who would say "gee, I now have a data cap on the streaming video feeds that used to be unlimited, but that's ok because I was leeching off of everyone else..." They're going to think "thanks Canadian regulators for screwing up my service and making me pay more."

That was in effect very much a parallel to abusing monopoly power in market to obtain monopoly power in another,

Cell phone service is hardly a monopoly in any sense of the word, neither is streaming video service. What it actually was was a company saying "I can provide this to you cheaper because of vertical integration". Vertical integration is how many companies cut costs, and it doesn't create a monopoly.

Because the service cost difference in entertainment media is negligible.

While the cost for the actual content may have little difference, the cost of transport isn't the same by any means. You need to look at total costs, not just the cost to buy a program package.

What the telcos were doing was subsidising the bandwidth cost of their media content users and spreading the cost to all their other users, who often didn't have alternative ISP choices.

Well then, Canadian regulators screwed their constituents pretty bad, because in the US there are alternatives. It is that way by design. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile -- I believe all four are infrastructure providers -- and then the contract carriers like Cricket, USCellular. The list of the latter is nearly endless. You don't like one, you've got another choice. Too bad Canada's equivalent to the FCC didn't think ahead.

But that still doesn't mean that the unlimited users were being subsidized. They added nothing to the peering costs, so they got a better price. If you want to talk about one group subsidizing another, look to the heavy data users who expect unlimited service for the same price that the low-volume users pay. That's 180 degrees from your claim.

Re:The US doesn't need to be taught

[ppanon]

I cannot speak to Canadian regulations, but down in the US it would be very hard for one wireless carrier to "wipe out the competition", since the FCC auctions for wireless bandwidth were specifically set up so that there were two winners for each service area. It was a design goal that there be competition.

...

Cell phone service is hardly a monopoly in any sense of the word, neither is streaming video service. What it actually was was a company saying "I can provide this to you cheaper because of vertical integration". Vertical integration is how many companies cut costs, and it doesn't create a monopoly.

When you can get fiber-grade bandwidth and comparable monthly data volumes from wireless at a competitive price let me know. Otherwise, this is a red-herring because you're comparing apples (wireless) with oranges (wired broadband).

Sure the provider video services don't add to peering costs, but the video customers still use a large portion of the bandwidth on the provider's shared infrastructure, from the last mile to the provider's data centre. Those costs (capital financing for equipment and fiber deployment, operations, maintenance) are being disproportionately paid for by the other customers who don't get a sweetheart deal on bandwidth, and that will be the same in the USA as well.

What is it?

[jamesl]

No posting on Slashdot about Net Neutrality without including what you think Net Neutrality is.

It is many things to many people. Most wrong.

What is it? I don't know. Tell me.

Re:What is it?

[Skarjak]

It's what happens when you mix basic net with acidic net.

Re:What is it?

[alzoron]

This is a very good point. There's a very active campaign going on to confuse people about net neutrality. I've gotten into enough arguments with people that actually agreed with me but had been misled by some of these campaigns that I have to ask people what they think it is before we talk about it.

Re:What is it?

[puzzled_decoy]

Could you tell me what Net Neutrality is? I haven't been able to find a single coherent, agree upon definition yet.

Re:What is it?

[Your.Master]

Usage-based billing is not treating packets differently, because packets aren't treated with bills.

Throttling is, sort of, because the destination is your computer and that is throttled, so pre-throttle packets are privileged.

I'd go with the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N....

I would generally say that bandwidth throttling a user based purely on the volume of use is *not* a neutrality violation, even if you could kind of stretch the argument that it discriminates against bandwidth-heavy content. It's not treating packets differently because of anything particular to that packet.

What frustrates me about Net Neutrality is that, in principle in an otherwise-perfect world, Net Neutrality is sub-optimal. There absolutely is such a thing as a higher-priority bitstream. Typically, background software updates (as opposed to user-initiated software updates) could be very low priority compared to streaming video, which shouldn't drop packets. Chat is a little less than streaming but still pretty important. Email a little less.

Support for Net Neutrality therefore stands as the position that these negatives are outweighed by the potential harm in more malicious or incompetent traffic shaping (or censorship, but I don't think censhorship laws have to be tied to arguments about bandwidth prioritization).

Re:What is it?

[Talderas]

Throttle and congestion are two different ways to achieve the same result. Only one of those would be in violation of net neutrality.

Re:What is it?

[Talderas]

"FIFO for packets" is another way you can describe net neutrality.The base philosophy is a good idea but 100% dumb networks are a terrible idea.

Re:Nope

[davester666]

Yes, it will totally be better for 10 ISPs to decide which web sites will work properly or even be accessible by their customers.

"Hi. Would you like to sign up for turbo-speed AT&T Internet? Yes we have AT&T Facebook. Sorry, there is no AT&T Youtube, but we are working with Google to bring it to you soon."

What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[Taco Cowboy]

The US of A was the world's first nation in implementing broadband, to pave the road for the "Information Highway". That was a few decades ago

Now, the US of A trails behind Korea, Japan, Estonia, and a few other countries in the availability of TRUE BROADBAND that is affordable for the masses

The US consumer not only have to pay through their noses for broadband, and what they got are miserably slow, in compared with what the Koreans (for example) are getting

US of A should learn from other countries to find out how to remedy and rectify the current pathetic situation

Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[Harlequin80]

Of course S.Korea has an internet capability funded by the government with multiple low cost loans provided to infrastructure builders over the past 20 years. In addition they have actively blocked any moves towards monopoly status.

Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[currently_awake]

As opposed to the USA, where the government GAVE huge bags of money on condition they roll out high speed.

Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[Harlequin80]

It is the regulatory environment that is different. I'm basing this on what I read here so it could be miles off. But the US seems to have given monopoly status to companies to service an area. And then when someone wants to come along and build a second line they are blocked in the courts.

S.Korea has actively worked against that situation. There will still be monopoly holders in the sense of 1 company owning the only physical connection but they are required by law to allow access to their network at the same cost they provide it to themselves.

Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[WillAffleckUW]

This is correct.

What is sad is that America thinks it's a First World Nation, when it's broadband is barely Second World tier.

Even sadder is there are 100 GB/s and 40 GB/s ports at all major US research universities that make the paltry 1 to 20 MB/s speeds consumers get look like a turtle that has been frozen.

Yes, 50,000 to 10,000 times FASTER than you get thanks to the lack of competition in the US.

Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband

[BCGlorfindel]

The area of South Korea is 100,210 km squared.
The area of New York is 141,300 km squared.

The population of South Korea is 51,302,044.
The population of New York is 19,651,127.

So forget comparisons between America and South Korea. Even the state of New York is spread over a large part of the globe, and with half as many people as South Korea. Why is South Korean internet less expensive? Because per mile of fiber, and per cell tower, and every other piece of infrastructure South Korea has more customers to divide the costs over. And that's just compared to New York. Montana and Texas are just right out there on cost per person.

There is only one way to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

The government builds the pipe, and the companies can manage the routing, with no monopoly contracts allowed. It has to be open to anybody. Until we can circumvent it with wireless mesh neural networks, this is the best we can ever do.

Re:There is only one way to do this

[guruevi]

The governments already built the pipe, the taxpayers paid for it several times over. Wireless is a boondoggle because of the bandwidth limitations and losses. Copper and fiber both have bandwidth well beyond the current necessities. What needs to happen is that our governments need to ask where our money went and mandate the last decade of profits to be spent in the network. This needs to happen for all utilities that have been privatized. Foreign corporations are profiting while the entire US electric, gas, water and digital utilities lie in shambles.

Re:There is only one way to do this

[green1]

In Canada the taxpayers paid for the network up until about 25 years ago. After that it was privatized and every cent spent since has been done by the private companies, not the taxpayers. Given that the past 25 years has included huge amounts of broadband build outs (it effectively didn't exist before that) and entire new technologies (fibre to the home) this becomes a much more complicated question.

What incentive will a big player have to develop it's broadband infrastructure if they legally have to give subsidized access to it to their competition? That's actually the state of affairs right now in the copper/ADSL world. The prices that companies must offer to their competition to use that network don't cover the cost of building or maintaining it. This has been justified by the fact that the original copper plant was built with taxpayer money, however even that is a bit questionable because a lot has happened with private money since (including all the ADSL equipment, and in many cases the wires themselves (any community less than about 25 years old, or anywhere that required replacing the wires for any reason). Fibre to the home platforms have been, up until now, exempt from these sharing agreements, a competitor is welcome to try to negotiate directly with the incumbent for access, but there is no legal requirement that the incumbent allow it. These fibre networks are all new enough that they were paid for 100% with private money, not taxpayer funded. The current CRTC hearings are discussing whether this should continue, or if the fibre too should be required to be open to the competitors at discount prices.

Unsurprisingly, the incumbents don't think they should have to share the networks that they paid for with their competitors, and in any other field it would be considered ridiculous to even ask them to. But there's also the obvious question of how many lines we want to run to each house? We don't want 100 competitors all running their own wires.

I think the best outcome for all involved would be if the incumbents do share their network with their competitors, however, the mandated prices must be more than the cost of building and maintaining that network (which is not currently the case on the copper side of things) I also think that if they do this, it should be done evenly. Currently only telephone companies must share their outside plant, cable companies are immune, as there is no difference anymore between the products provided by either (phone/cable/internet) or the technology used (fibre optics) there is no reason to give the cable companies preferential treatment.

The CRTC...

[Nexzus]

...has done some decent things for Canada.

Unfortunately some strikes against them are not forcing the cable companies to support BYOD (CableCard) and the mandating of playing a Justin Bieber and/or Drake song every 17 minutes on Canadian pop-music stations.

Re:The CRTC...

[Joe_Dragon]

they are pushing a la carte tv

Re:The CRTC...

[rikkards]

Except a la carte will end up costing you more for what you actually want. The cable companies have always been ok with a la carte but CRTC was pushing it for the multicultural aspect. Pretty much most of the french channels wouldn't be here if alacarte was allowed.

Re:The CRTC...

[master_kaos]

Yes and they also pushed 2 year contracts on cell phones vs 3. Guess what happened? Pricing went up at least 20% or more across the board within days, while data was reduced, even for those who didn't want contracts.

What I see of a la carte tv is $10 per channel. or for $20 you get a theme pack of 10 channels!
I bet a la carte will be seldom used because the pricing will be outrageous.

5 Main Canadian companies

[CrashNBrn]

In Canada there are 5 "main" companies.

Telecom: Telus, Aliant,
Cable: Shaw, Rogers, Eastlink

Much like the US, you will never have overlapping Cable service, and Telus and Aliant don't compete with each other either.

Re:5 Main Canadian companies

[Jane Q. Public]

In Canada there are 5 "main" companies.

And similarly in the U.S.

But what TFA says about "failed competition" is false. The regulatory setup fostered oligopoly, not market competition. Today there is scarcely any competition at all... thus the 4 or 5 big companies.

Although it is fair to say that population density (or lack of it) does add a bit to costs, the fact is that what governments called "competition" in the market really wasn't. Instead it was crony capitalism and oligopoly.

In those countries where the giant companies are required to share backbone without discrimination, which fosters actual competition, the service is better and the rates are lower.

In the U.S., Title II and Net Neutrality are definitely the goal The People should aim for.

What is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one correct definition and the rest is noise. Net neutrality is the idea that all packets get equal treatment, regardless of source, destination, or anything in the packet's payload (especially in layers 4+).
Net neutrality has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with usage-based billing or unlimited rates or flat throttling of all traffic after reaching some threshold. This is where I think all the confusion is.

Basically, it's the principle of treading network traffic as a dumb utility like water, where the only metric which should be used to make any sort of decisions (and bills) is the volume; the number of bits moving in and out of a port.

Canadian: No Thank You

[wisnoskij]

The last legislation we had. That only did not pass by a toenail. Was a law for forcing all resellers to charge whatever Bell told them to charge. Basically it was a law that in all but name dismantled every competitor of Bell and made future competition illigal. It would of more than quadrupled my monthly bill, and put my ISP out of business.

Re:Canadian: No Thank You

[fnj]

That's pretty much the BLOODY OPPOSITE of net neutrality, you daft so and so. Are you this irrational on all subjects?

Re: Canadian: No Thank You

[wisnoskij]

No, but it is the type of legislation that the Canadian government will pass.

Doo-doo de-dupe

[seven of five]

What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy

Re:you use too few words to summon HIM

[Mephistro]

Nice to hear from you, Mr. Haselton! ;-)

Re:Nope

[BradMajors]

If I had a choice of 10 ISPs, at least one of them would offer net neutral access without any government regulation.

Re:Nope

[davester666]

Course, I was referring to the current situation, where there are roughly 10 ISPs [cable, dsl, wireless] for the majority of the country, with the usual 1-2 wired choices and 3-4 wireless choices.

Re:Nope

[guises]

The only way you'd have a choice of 10 ISPs is with government regulation.

Re:fuck telus

[green1]

Funny you should bring this up, because that's exactly what this is all about.
Currently the incumbent telephone companies are legally required to offer their network to their competitors at prices that do not cover the costs of build or maintenance. This means that competitors can always undercut prices of the incumbents because they don't have to pay full price for the circuits. Pricing for the customers of the incumbent on the other hand have to cover not only the cost of their own circuit, but also the portion of the cost of the competitor's customer's circuit that wasn't covered by the mandated fees.

Should the CRTC continue to mandate that customers of one provider subsidize customers of another?

The US government and Title II

[Contract Gypsy]

I believe we are missing the main reason of the Govt wanting Title 2 of the Telecommunications Act enforced on broadband... its a nearly limitless source of taxes! They can choose if it is by bit, byte, time, content, political leanings, and so on. This could actually hit the economy harder than raising the national gas tax! Net neutrality is just the guy saying: "Ignore that man behind the curtain... I am the Great Oz"

Re:Canada = No thx

[master_kaos]

Ok, so instead you have obama. Great tradeoff.