Slashdot Mirror


T-Mobile CFO: Less Regulation, Repeal of Net Neutrality By Trump Would Be 'Positive For My Industry' (tmonews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TmoNews: T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter spoke at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York City, and he touched a bit on President-elect Donald Trump and what his election could mean for the mobile industry. Carter expects that a Trump presidency will foster an environment that'll be more positive for wireless. "It's hard to imagine, with the way the election turned out, that we're not going to have an environment, from several aspects, that is not going to be more positive for my industry," the CFO said. He went on to explain that there will likely be less regulation, something that he feels "destroys innovation and value creation." Speaking of innovation, Carter also feels that a reversal of net neutrality and the FCC's Open Internet rules would be good for innovation in the industry, saying that it "would provide opportunity for significant innovation and differentiation" and that it'd enable you to "do some very interesting things."

91 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Would it be positive for your customers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can you name one thing that your customers actually want that is actually being prevented by network neutrality regulations? Or is this more of the same big business "we'll tell you what you want and you'll like it!" bullshit we've gotten for years and years?

    1. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by ichthus · · Score: 2

      Binge On

      --
      sig: sauer
    2. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What carriers REALLY want to do is hit up everyone for protection money by threatening them with slowdowns, delays, and data charges if they don't pony up.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    3. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by fodder69 · · Score: 1

      They already can do that over wireless.

    4. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh yes! I absolutely wanted my ISP to downscale what I'm watching to shit 480p resolutions because they can't be bothered to upgrade their network!

    5. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is AT&T going to upgrade their network to support all that free Game of Thrones they're giving away? Or for those of us who subscribed to Netflix, are we going to get throttled because we want to watch something else?

    6. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Frobnicator · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Stream Game of Thrones now without using your data, exclusively on AT&T" is something that carriers and content providers really want to do.

      Close. They want the MONEY that comes with EXCLUSIVITY.

      Somebody is paying for that. The big companies want it to be HBO or Showtime or Disney or whoever, spending tons of money to other big companies so the big companies can promote their big ideas.

      The problem is that everybody else is excluded. Want to be in the Free Data system? Pay up. This is completely against the concept of net neutrality where all content is treated as equal content.

      Prioritization is a similar issue. It is true that networks need to prioritize some types of data over other types of data. Phone calls shouldn't be buffered behind a large file transfer, so a limited degree of QoS needs to take place. But categorizing one provider over another provider is unfair. Having HBO streaming arrive at a higher QoS priority and Netflix streaming appear dead last in the QoS where it is constantly buffering and suffering lost packets because Netflix refused to pay up, that is unfair to customers.

      If I pay for data it should not matter to the phone company what data I get. They should be treated as common carriers. If I want to stream data from a premium channel, or from youtube, or from a private website, or from a site the phone company thinks is undesirable, it should not matter at all. Customer pays to stream data at a specific speed, then the data should be processed at that speed. Just like common carriers of the postal service or parcel companies, if the customer pays to transfer something then it gets transferred, they don't decide to keep one company's boxes in the warehouse for an extra week just because they didn't pay an extra fee, it arrives in the warehouse it is processed just like every other package. There are still QoS for certain types of packages, a "next day air" versus regular ground shipment, but nothing is delayed because of the carrier's choices.

      Binge-On is great this way. The customer can say "throttle ALL my data", or "stop throttling ALL my data". It isn't the phone company getting paid to bless a specific company with different speeds.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    7. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They already do it. The FCC just told them to stop it again, but they'll find a way to repackage it as a feature while claiming it's not actually the feature they say it is but they're not falsely advertising. Again.

    8. Re: Would it be positive for your customers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You obviously have no idea what net neutrality is actually about. The idea isn't to make your existing service any better. The idea is to keep it from being choked to death by your ISP so they can serve cat videos from YouTube faster than you can fetch your email because Google has an agreement in place for that.

      Net neutrality is an attempt to guarantee that the Big Players can't effectively take-over the Internet so that nobody else can effectively communicate.

    9. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Upgrade? Hah! You're a funny guy. Netflix will be lucky to not get blocked entirely.

    10. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      As he said, it impinges upon creativity...fiscal creativity, that is, not the technological kind...

    11. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      History shows that more competition leads to better products and services. Eliminating net neutrality reduces competition, thereby increasing profit margins and reducing product evolution and the introduction of new features, thereby leading to foreign competition eating your lunch, so it's bad for your industry.

    12. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Free data is something else entirely. We PAY for our ISPs, we PAY for netflix, and yet some carriers want to slow that down in preference for their own offerings.

    13. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by Altrag · · Score: 2

      Not true. Think of how creative the tobacco industry was with their products and advertisements before they were regulated!

      I'm sure AT&T and Comcast will come up with all sorts of creative ways to keep customers paying ever more to receive less and less service!

      Innovation y'all!

      I remember a few years ago up here in Canada when Bell & friends were pushing for data usage caps and they were quick to point out how it cause Netflix to "innovate" the great idea of degrading video quality to near-unwatchable levels (like 360p or even 240p) in order to stay within your cap at a time when we were used to 1080p.

      I mean sure it worked, but that's not really the kind of innovation that moves society forward. Its the kind of "innovation" that we produce as a last resort when we have no other options.

    14. Re: Would it be positive for your customers? by grahamm · · Score: 1

      Has the company lied to you? It is a mobile network, so the company has no control over how many of its subscribers enter the area covered by a particular cell. The more people connected to a cell who are using (or trying to use) a data connection, the slower each one will be.

    15. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by mjwx · · Score: 2

      Yes, more sponsored free data transfer and optimization from content providers. It's a grey area now. But "Stream Game of Thrones now without using your data, exclusively on AT&T" is something that carriers and content providers really want to do.

      You can have this kind of thing with network neutrality.

      What carriers REALLY want to do is hit up everyone for protection money by threatening them with slowdowns, delays, and data charges if they don't pony up.

      This is the problem you have without network neutrality.

      The problem isn't with promoting content or unmetered content. The problem is with deliberately slowing down or shaping content that isn't paying. Hell, you can even prioritise traffic as long as non-priority traffic is delivered at wire speed rather than at a shaped speed.

      Given how national communication grids are designed, chances are at one point your stream of GOT will cross out of an AT&T network and onto another provider who hasn't got an exclusive deal with the content provider. Without network neutrality, they have the capability to slow that traffic.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    16. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Sure. I want to run any server I wish with full speed on my home PC without it being throttled down by my ISP or intermediate ISPs. If it's being throttled down, I want to be able to complain about this to an authority who will then force the provider to fix the issue.

    17. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Forget about it, I misread to original post. Why would anything prevented by network neutrality regulations? The opposite is the case, of course.

    18. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by ausekilis · · Score: 1

      Can you name one thing that your customers actually want that is actually being prevented by network neutrality regulations? Or is this more of the same big business "we'll tell you what you want and you'll like it!" bullshit we've gotten for years and years?

      Nope. Even TFS says it is the T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer. His focus is right there in his job title. I wouldn't expect anything less than "this is great for our bottom line" to ever be said by a CFO. It just feels like he's seeing new ways to pad his wallet.

      Shame too, since T-Mobile's "un-carrier" stuff with unlimited streaming was a breath of fresh air against the 2-year lockdowns, and pay-extra-for-everything-including-breathing of their competitors.

    19. Re:Would it be positive for your customers? by sbrown7792 · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't with promoting content or unmetered content

      Not yet anyway. But once they make enough deals with content providers ("Give us money and your shows will be unmetered for your viewers") all of a sudden the internet providers will proudly boast "90% of our customers only use X GB of data, so that's where we're placing our bandwidth cap", where X is $((Current_cap/10)).

      And then that will effectively stop customers from visiting any content provider that isn't zero-rated, since that eats their data cap. This either forces the remaining content providers to pony up or risk a loss of business, and the cycle continues.

    20. Re: Would it be positive for your customers? by RazorSharp · · Score: 1

      It's hard to image that a company that collects so much data could really be caught that off guard. Sure, there might be a strange situation, like a modern Woodstock where thousands of people suddenly descend upon a low populated area for a weekend, but those situations are rare. For the most part, carriers know how much bandwidth they need where and they have the data necessary to predict most changes in the near future. If they're unable to do this then they're just bad at statistics, which is pretty inexcusable.

      --
      "From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
  2. Brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So brave of Mr. Carter to talk about deregulation at a banking conference. I'm sure his notions were vigorously challenged.

  3. But for consumers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As a consumer; however, it would be painful for both my wallet and my rectum. And they don't even have the goddamn common courtesy to give a reach around.

    1. Re:But for consumers. by Calydor · · Score: 1

      Of course they give a reach around!

      How else are they going to empty your wallet while pounding you from behind?

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  4. Positive for the ISPs by NotInHere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But bad for everyone else. The ISPs control a bottleneck of the usually meshed internet: the last mile. Everywhere else one can route around a bad actor, but there leads only one line to the end users, and it goes through the ISPs.

    1. Re:Positive for the ISPs by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      I'd rather have the last mile be a public utility, giving me a wider choice of providers. If the providers don't have to run wire to every customer's house, merely to a routing node, many more will be able to enter the market.

      Our current specimens of oligopolies here suck rotting bundles of moldy maggot-filled pig feces on a good day.

    2. Re:Positive for the ISPs by NotInHere · · Score: 2

      This is a good idea, and in fact something like that was even required in europe when the old state owned telephone companies (which owned monopolies) were put on the market, to make it possible for competitors to enter it. But its no replacement for net neutrality, because people will still blame youtube for being slow, not the ISP, and they will still only chose one ISP at a time.

  5. Why not eliminate the Sherman Antitrust Act, too? by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By that same standard, the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was designed to prevent precisely the same sorts of abuse that Net Neutrality laws prevent, is also an impediment to innovation and doing interesting things, if by interesting things, you mean using bundling to drive your competition out of the market and creating an oligopoly of content providers owned by the same folks who own the pipes (i.e. the exact opposite of what the Internet was intended to be).

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  6. No shit, Sherlock! by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Who would have thought?

  7. Value creation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  8. Civics class 101 ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... pop quiz:

    Which branch of government deals with this shit?

    One word or less.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:Civics class 101 ... by H3lldr0p · · Score: 4, Informative

      In this case, the FCC is the rulesmaking body that started this particular fight. This makes the answer: Excutive.

      Now, the Legislative branch could get involved by writing up a new law outlining the FCC's authority or amending the FCC's charter. But right now, thanks to the Chevron decision and several decisions since this is clearly in the Executive's bailiwick.

  9. What a coincidence! by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    Wells Fargo says the same thing... Well, minus the 'net neutrality' thing...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:What a coincidence! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Posting AC for obvious reasons.

      Working in the mortgage industry as I do, I wasn't particularly surprised when I heard basically the same thing at a get-together with other mortgage professionals last week. The most fun part was after a few drinks people basically predicted another housing bubble coming out of this administration and suggested to either get in on it and get out fast while the getting is good or to make long-term investments to outlast it.

  10. Not the "innovation" we are looking for by Dorianny · · Score: 5, Funny

    Definition of innovation (merriam-webster) 1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty So new idea's on how to rip off your customers are technically "innovation," just not the sort of Innovation we are looking for in the field

  11. Repeal T-Mobile by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1

    Repealing T-mobile would be good for the phone using public. However, some of us are not going to get what we want.

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  12. Are you sure T-Mobile? by guruevi · · Score: 2

    The reason we need regulation like net neutrality is because of regulation preventing new players to enter the market. I am all for deregulation IF you deregulate completely, not selectively. T-Mobile would love deregulation of net neutrality and the current "rules" don't have teeth to them anyway so I don't see why, they're still happily violating it. I would also love deregulation of the entire wireless market and the government to open the lines the tax payer has paid for. Pretty much all copper, fiber and antennae are heavily subsidized if not completely paid for by the tax payer. Sure let's deregulate those usage rights on federally, state and local levels and give them back to the tax payer.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  13. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  14. Lets turn the dial to zero then by mystik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about we give him exactly what he wants.

    And remove the regulations that forbid or make difficult municipal internet & Wifi?

    And remove the regulations that make it harder for groups to even attempt to enter the last mile to compete?

    I mean, if we're gonna roll back regulations, lets roll them back!

    --
    Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
    1. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by nine-times · · Score: 1

      How about the regulations that give these few companies control over a large portion of the usable radio bandwidth?

    2. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by Desler · · Score: 3, Funny

      Even better: remove all regulations on spectrum use. Why shouldn't I be able to "innovate" with the air waves?

    3. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      Even better: remove all regulations on spectrum use. Why shouldn't I be able to "innovate" with the air waves?

      Because your "innovation" may cause interference with others. And the reverse.

      Radio spectrum belongs to all of us, but the government has a legitimate role in regulating the use of our spectrum so that chaos does not happen. That's why there are portions of the spectrum for various uses, some of them commercial, and others private.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    4. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      Woosh!

      Tell that to the moderator who scored Desler's post as +1 Insightful.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    5. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Better check the batteries in your sarcasm detector. I don't think it's working.

    6. Re:Lets turn the dial to zero then by Desler · · Score: 1

      All I see are regulations that are destroying "innovation and value creation."

  15. Triple-negative by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's hard to imagine, with the way the election turned out, that we're not going to have an environment, from several aspects, that is not going to be more positive for my industry

    If you read this carefully, you'll see that it says the opposite of what CFO Braxton Carter intended.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    1. Re:Triple-negative by Bartles · · Score: 1

      More positive (POSITIVE) --> not "" "" (NEGATIVE) -->not going to have an environment "" ""(POSITIVE) -->Hard to imagine "" ""(NEEGATIVE)

      Yep. You are correct. If he had left out the "hard to imagine", he would have been A-OK.

  16. I think he lost track of his negatives by chispito · · Score: 1

    It's hard to imagine, with the way the election turned out, that we're not going to have an environment, from several aspects, that is not going to be more positive for my industry,

    Let's see:
    It's hard to imagine, with the way the election turned out, that we're not going to have an environment

    Simplifies to:
    We should, with the way the election turned out, have an environment

    from several aspects, that is not going to be more positive for my industry,

    Simplifies to:
    from several aspects, that is going to be more negative for my industry

    Aren't you supposed to be a good communicator to be a CEO? Or did the submitter/TFA misinterpret his statement?

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:I think he lost track of his negatives by chispito · · Score: 1

      Er, CFO.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  17. Welcome to Trump's America! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "It's a cookbook!"

  18. How interesting? by TimothyHollins · · Score: 2

    Are we talking interesting things like Enron? Or interesting things like Fanny Mae?

    The only interesting thing I'm sure will NOT come from this is what the FCC were doing until Trump, - adding consumer protections in a geographical monopoly trying to break into a full-on walled garden monopoly.

  19. A different perspective by alexo · · Score: 1

    The US cotton industry claims that a repeal of the abolition -- which destroys innovation and value creation -- will foster an environment that'll be more positive for their business and would be good for innovation in the industry. They went on to say that it "would provide opportunity for significant innovation and differentiation" and that it'd enable you to "do some very interesting things."

  20. Wizard of Oz by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    I hear the Tin Woodsman did some "very interesting" things with an axe.

  21. Re: buh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When consolidation in both industries let content creators buy the distributors. That's when.

  22. Not how this works by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but that's not how this works. You are supposed to provide counter facts that demonstrate he is wrong.

  23. What carriers want is not to be carriers by presidenteloco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They want to be closed worlds, revenue generating from everything you do on their network and with their business partners only.

    They want perpetual customer lock-in, because each "carrier's" dog's breakfast of apps and locked-content portals would be so different from other carriers' offerings that it would be too confusing and too much work to ever change the "Carrier-net" (as opposed to Internet) that you belong to.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    1. Re:What carriers want is not to be carriers by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There was a point in time when you could only use the startrek.com website if you were on a specific ISP. I don't remember which ISP it was; this was *EONS* ago, probably in the 90s. I vaguely remember getting angry about it and writing a ranty post on Usenet, though I can't find it now in Google Groups.

      This is the kind of crap we might see again if Net Neutrality is tossed to the wind.

      Whoah! I just remembered. It was the Star Trek Continuum site, and it only worked on MSN. Here's a link:

      http://www.trektoday.com/colum...

      The idea of this crap happening again really bothers me.

  24. I agree by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

    Would gladly support repeal of net neutrality just as soon as ALL large providers are broken up into separate companies no bigger than 1M subs each, all incumbent protection laws are outlawed and telecom providers forbidden from owning any stake in content creation or delivery.

    1. Re:I agree by Desler · · Score: 1

      I'll be for it when we repeal the regulations on spectrum use. Let others "innovate" with T-Mobile's allocated spectrum bands.

  25. Good for "the industry"? Meaning higher fees by evolutionary · · Score: 1

    The whole point of net neutrality is to keep people from sabotaging or blacking companies for faster transmission than "preferred" individuals. Communications love it when you can add fees for "preferred" data rates. Companies were "negotiating" with NetFlix and one if their tactics if I remember correctly was slowing their traffic down. When Netflix caved on an issue I cannot recall, their speed when up. Coincidence, I think not.

    --
    "Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
  26. Regulations against Municipal broadband? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

    Oh, regulations are bad? Great, lets set up a municipal broadband everywhere and...

    Oh, I see. By "less regulation" you mean letting private businesses do whatever they want, not anyone else.

  27. FTFY by kevmeister · · Score: 1

    "would provide opportunity for significant monetization and differentiation"

    --
    Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
  28. Glitchless streaming. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can you name one thing that your customers actually want that is actually being prevented by network neutrality regulations?

    Glitchless streaming.

    Streaming (things like audio, video, phone calls) requires relatively small and constant bandwidth (though compression adds variability) but isn't good at tolerating dropouts or variations in transit time. When it does get dropouts it's better to NOT send a retry correction (and have the retry packet risk delaying and/or forcing the drop of another packet).

    TCP connections (things like big file transfers) error check and retry, fixing dropouts and errors so the data arrives intact, though with no guarantee exactly when. But they achieve high bandwidth and evenly divide the bandwidth at a bottleneck by deliberately speeding up until they super-saturate the bottleneck and force dropouts. The dropouts tell them they've hit the limit, so they slow down and track the bleeding edge.

    Put them both on a link and treat the packets equally and TCP causes streaming to break up, stutter, etc. Overbuilding the net helps, but if the data to be tranferred is big enough TCP will ALWAYS saturate a link somewhere along the way.

    Identify the traffic type and treat their packets differently - giving higher priority to stream packets (up to a limit, so applications can't gain by cheating, claiming to be a stream when they're not) - and then they play together just fine. Stream packets zip through, up to an allocation limit at some fraction of the available bandwidth, and TCP transfers evenly divide what's left - including the unused part of the streams' allocation.

    But the tools for doing this also enable the ISPs to do other, not so good for customers, things. Provided they chose to do so, of course.

    IMHO the bad behavior can be dealt with best, not by attempting to enforce "Network Neutrality" as a technical hack at an FCC regulation level, but as a consumer protection issue, by an agency like the FTC. Some high points:
      - Break up the vertical integration of ISPs into "content provider" conglomerates, so there's no incentive to penalize the packets of competitors to the mother-ship's services.
      - Treat things like throttling high-volume users and high-bandwidth services as consumer fraud: "You sold 'internet service'". Internet service doesn't work that way. Ditto "pay for better treatment of your packets" (but not "pay to sublet a fixed fraction of the pipe").
      - Extra scrutiny for possible monopolistic behavior anywhere there are less than four viable broadband competitors, making it impractical for customers to "vote with their feet".

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re: Glitchless streaming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I hate to break it to you, but streaming services use TCP to transfer video for things like Netflix, etc. It sounds insane, since UDP is the "obvious" choice for streaming video, but in fact they make lots of small TCP (actually HTTP) requests because they have to adjust the quality of the stream to meet the quality target (e.g don't stutter and keep playing no matter what). That's why your evening streaming movie sometimes goes to very low quality for a few seconds and then goes back to high-quality.

      Have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1mndAYZlio

    2. Re:Glitchless streaming. by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Streaming (things like audio, video, phone calls) requires relatively small and constant bandwidth (though compression adds variability) but isn't good at tolerating dropouts or variations in transit time. When it does get dropouts it's better to NOT send a retry correction (and have the retry packet risk delaying and/or forcing the drop of another packet).

      Low latency and jitter are only helpful for real-time communications otherwise mostly irrelevant for Internet based content "Streaming" services.

      Put them both on a link and treat the packets equally and TCP causes streaming to break up, stutter, etc. Overbuilding the net helps, but if the data to be tranferred is big enough TCP will ALWAYS saturate a link somewhere along the way.

      Nonsense. You maintain low latency and minimize jitter with queue management. There are a many different fair queues you can pick from that will do this without caring at all about content.

      TCP connections (things like big file transfers) error check and retry, fixing dropouts and errors so the data arrives intact

      TCP can only retransmit. Only place meaningful error correction occurs is link layer. IP layer "checksums" are at best decorative.. at worst a useless waste of bandwidth and silicon.

      Identify the traffic type and treat their packets differently - giving higher priority to stream packets (up to a limit, so applications can't gain by cheating, claiming to be a stream when they're not) - and then they play together just fine. Stream packets zip through, up to an allocation limit at some fraction of the available bandwidth, and TCP transfers evenly divide what's left - including the unused part of the streams' allocation.

      But the tools for doing this also enable the ISPs to do other, not so good for customers, things. Provided they chose to do so, of course.

      Content based prioritization is mostly pointless in the real world. It doesn't work across administrative domains and when it works at all tends to be a result of either a network being hopelessly oversubscribed or not properly managed.

      Treat things like throttling high-volume users

      Metering total packets to or from a customer isn't a net neutrality issue.

    3. Re: Glitchless streaming. by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      I hate to break it to you, but streaming services use TCP to transfer video for things like Netflix, etc. It sounds insane, since UDP is the "obvious" choice for streaming video, but in fact they make lots of small TCP (actually HTTP) requests because they have to adjust the quality of the stream to meet the quality target (e.g don't stutter and keep playing no matter what). That's why your evening streaming movie sometimes goes to very low quality for a few seconds and then goes back to high-quality.

      Content streaming (e.g. Netflix) is bulk transmission. All that matters is whether or not there is sufficient bandwidth available in the aggregate to keep receive buffer from emptying completely.

      UDP is used for "streaming" real-time data such as voice or video calling and has very different channel requirements from that of content streaming. Here latency and jitter are critical to quality of service while these same characteristics are essentially irrelevant for Netflix.

    4. Re:Glitchless streaming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Net Neutrality doesn't say anything about treating TCP and UDP connections the same. If it does, you're reading too much Alt Right Wing news.

      NN says that every similar type of content should be treated the same way. NN does NOT say that all content has to be treated the same way.

      - Someone who's Whatsapp video chatting vs someone who's Skyping should be treated the same, and says nothing about what priority Youtube is compared to the video chat services.
      - Throttling or charging high-usage users is also not covered in NN.
      - Charging users for any streaming video is also allowed.

      Prioritizing JUST Whatsapp is.

    5. Re:Glitchless streaming. by execthis · · Score: 1

      You should work for Donald Trump. Seriously. Please.

    6. Re:Glitchless streaming. by AaronW · · Score: 1

      One way that might help is to use DSCP to assign classes of service to traffic. The problem, of course, is that DSCP can be abused. With proper settings things like bittorrent or downloading files would be assigned a low priority whereas voice traffic would be assigned the highest priority. I do this internally on my own network for upstream bandwidth so my backup traffic does not interfere with other data streams. It also means that no matter what someone may be torrenting it won't affect higher-priority traffic. Right now all traffic is basically treated the same with some heuristics to try and optimize different traffic streams. As long as there's no congestion there isn't any problem. When congestion occurs, though, things break down.

      I think many of us would like to see traffic managed in a fair but responsible way where for example an ISP doesn't give preferential treatment to one video provider over another.

      The problem with all of this is that it requires trust that the content providers are properly marking their packets, i.e. someone isn't marking all their bittorrent packets as high-priority.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    7. Re:Glitchless streaming. by Altrag · · Score: 1

      While not "true" net neutrality, most people, even proponents, don't argue against prioritization of specific, well known protocols. Nobody in the world believes that their neighbor's download of Dog the Bounty hunter should be more important than their work call.

      The trouble comes in when they don't prioritize by protocol, but rather by origin. So Comcast prioritizes Comcast' own VOIP offering but they ignore Skype's VOIP offering unless Microsoft pays them $bignum for prioritization on top of the user and transit fees they're already collecting from both ends of the connection.

      This whole "zero rating" scam is an end-around net neutrality. The transport remains neutral in order to comply with regulations, but their billing system preferentially skips incrementing the usage meter for certain packets.

      Someone like the FTC would probably have to step in for the zero rating BS because its fundamentally an issue at the business level rather than the transport level, but the FCC should still be maintaining net neutrality rules as well, as they address a wider range of problems than just "bad for consumers."

    8. Re:Glitchless streaming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Glitchless streaming.

      You don't understand net neutrality. Seriously. You don't. Glitchless streaming is a solved problem.

      Net neutrality is about not discriminating one streaming service from another, so that when you implement the protocols necessary to support glitchless streaming (look into ECN for a starter) you do it for streaming in general, without preference for any specific provider or service.

      That is what net neutrality is about.

      It is intended to promote actual competition without discrimination.

      Every supporter of true competition should applaud net neutrality.

      Those who do not, either do not understand it, or want their own service to take precedence over others without having to compete on merits.

      It's not that hard, folks.

    9. Re:Glitchless streaming. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      This is not something that network neutrality prevents. QoS is completely allowed. If something on the customer's endpoint (or the remote) marks its packets as more sensitive to bandwidth, latency, or jitter then you are completely free to put them into different queues that priorities one or two of those attributes at the expense of the others. The only catch is that you must do the same for all traffic marked in such a way, irrespective of the remote endpoint. If you offer a VoIP service and mark its traffic as being low bandwidth, but being very sensitive to latency and jitter then you can't special-case this and make sure that the experience for your customers is better than a third-party SIP provider or Skype. Similarly, you can't launch your own video streaming service and give it a bigger share of the bandwidth and you can't take money from Hulu or Netflix to prioritise their traffic over their competitors.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    10. Re:Glitchless streaming. by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Identify the traffic type and treat their packets differently

      Fuck you. If we're all paying for the same class of service why should your packets mean more or less than mine? Why is your desire to watch Game of Thrones in UHD on a 4" screen more important than the webpage that I'm trying to load or the spreadsheet I'm trying to email that my job depends on?

    11. Re:Glitchless streaming. by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      Obligatory 'I-wish-I-had-Mod-Points' reply for taking the piss out of a terrible, quasi-technical justification for shitty carrier practices. Fix your damn network, spend on future growth, and stop banking your business model on the Govt. suddenly making your protected business even more protected...

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
  29. Re:Fog by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Indeed that is true. Crony capitalism.

  30. Sadly, you are mistaken Braxton Carter by cppmonkey · · Score: 1, Troll

    Dear Braxton Carter,

    I'm afraid you do not understand what industry you are in. You are a public utility. As a public utility consumers do not want you to "innovate". The Public, yes with a capital P synonymous with People in "We the People...", have a vested interest in you serving as a public utility and that means not "innovating". Innovation that is simply creative ways of charging people more money for less utility is not in the Public interest. What is good for T-Mobile is not necessarily good for the Public. Net Neutrality even in it's current watered down version was a huge step forward for consumers. No, it did not benefit T-Mobile, but it was one small step forward for the Public and your industry.

  31. 1980s/1990s online service redux by BlytheBowman · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was called AOHell back in the mid 90s. Or Fraudigy. Or Compu$$$erve. The bad old days are (comming) here again!

    1. Re:1980s/1990s online service redux by Joviex · · Score: 1

      I kind of miss the good old days of AOL. Back then you could get the latest and greatest internet connection for only $19.99 a month with no hidden fees and taxes!

      And a swank set of reflective coasters for the holidays aka the spam cds....

    2. Re:1980s/1990s online service redux by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      It went downhill once they started sending out CDs. Back in the day, AOL and Compuserve would send out their client software on floppy disks (one initially, two later). It wasn't until very late that they started popping out the write-protect slider. I'd call them up every few weeks as a child (freephone number) and ask for a trial pack. Most of it went into the bin, but I'd reformat the disks and they'd be good to use.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:1980s/1990s online service redux by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      You realize they're still in business. I can see their building from my office window.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    4. Re:1980s/1990s online service redux by Slashdot+Junky · · Score: 1

      Before AOL flooded the world with install CDs, they did this with 3.5" diskettes. If I only knew back then that acetone could be used to join ABS to itself, I would have hung on to many of them for uses beyond the occasional use for storage.

      --
      .
      Landfill Mining Co.
      Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
  32. Ya, you see... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    T-Mobile CFO: Less Regulation, Repeal of Net Neutrality ... Would Be 'Positive For My Industry'

    ... Net Neutrality is supposed to be for the benefit of the consumer - so I can understand his confusion.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  33. Limited imangination by skids · · Score: 1

    It's hard to imagine, with the way the election turned out, that we're not going to have an environment, from several aspects, that is not going to be more positive for my industry

    I could easily imagine how two dozen people, now homeless, huddling over a burning barrel in a Trumpville, all sharing the same cell phone, would cut wireless provider revenues.

  34. Hope he reads this! by execthis · · Score: 1

    I hope Donald Trump reads /.

  35. I hate to say it by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    but this is what we get for abandoning the blue collar working class. I can't tell you the number of techies who laughed and derided the blue collar guys for not retraining when their factory jobs were shipped to Mexico in the wake of NAFTA. A lot of those folks went to the poll for Trump and a lot who didn't stayed home instead of throwing in for Hilary....

    The working class has lost solidarity. And without that we're getting picked apart.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:I hate to say it by Altrag · · Score: 2

      A lot of those folks went to the poll for Trump

      The working class has lost solidarity

      Not sure those two add up.

      a lot who didn't stayed home instead of throwing in for Hilary

      Unless there's some evidence that only Hilary supporters were too lazy to go out and vote, this doesn't really modify your initial statement to any interesting degree.

      And without that we're getting picked apart

      In what way? Trump was talking up bringing jobs back to America and killing NAFTA and raising import tariffs and yadayadayada. I mean there's little chance he'll manage most of that but if you're living in a factory town that no longer has a factory, the rhetoric sounds a lot better than Clinton's promising to raise minimum wage. Minimum wage is a pretty meaningless concept when you don't have a job.

      Honestly I'm not surprised Trump won. I pretty much expected it when I first heard that he'd gone for the RNC nomination. He says what you want to hear and he says it loudly, no matter how impractical or politically incorrect it is. That's a strong draw after decades of presidents who seem to ignore public opinion.

      Of course whether or not Trump can actually accomplish anything remains to be seen. Obama sounded good in 2008 and spent his first few months trying his damnedest to implement some of the promises he made.. but after being continually blocked and denied his legacy is a healthcare act that got so compromised by private interests that its entire purpose is constantly questioned, even by people who believe in socialized health care as a concept.

      Will Trump repeat Obama's failure? Or will he actually succeed in fulfilling some of his campaign promises? Only time will tell. Some things are almost certainly out -- he can't easily build a wall (never mind making Mexico pay for it.) That's the kind of project that might get started just for the sake of saving face, go 20 miles and then get dropped because its incredibly expensive and relatively pointless.

      Killing NAFTA is perhaps a bit more likely, but it still would require an enormous amount of support in both government and private business. Sure, lots of factory jobs got moved to Mexico after NAFTA but the economy as a whole benefits in other ways (like being able to buy cheaper goods because the companies only have to pay Mexican's 1/2 of what they were previously paying their American workers.) So yeah Flint might get its car factory back, but everyone in the country now has to pay an extra $5000 for a new car. That's an easy sell to the residents of Flint but a lot harder to sell to the rest of the country.

      Raising import tariffs? What, are you going to prevent Walmart from importing 99% of their products from China? How do you propose that all of those low- and even middle-income families that currently rely on cheap goods be able to make ends meet when everything is two or three times the current price? Even if you kill NAFTA, wages won't go up significantly, especially not in the short term.

      Reducing environmental restrictions because he "doesn't believe" in climate change? Obama already ratified the Paris Agreement so unless Trump's willing to break UN protocol, you're stuck with a minimal level of environmental protections. Even the US would have trouble saving face after that kind of turnabout.

      And so on and so on. Turns out that even when you're president, you can't just say something and have it be made so.

      Wow I really ranted well off topic there didn't I? Oh well I'll make up for it by failing to use the Preview button!

  36. Re:Why not eliminate the Sherman Antitrust Act, to by Bob_Who · · Score: 2

    There is honestly nothing in your post that is factual.

    So elect him president...oh, never mind.

  37. Internet Hosts Consortium by BKuhl · · Score: 1

    What I would like to see is all these vendors with critical web services band together. What if Netflix, Microsoft, Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc formed a sort of NATO organization? If you attack one of us we all respond? Say Verizon slows or degrades Netflix in some way? What if then Google and the other members blocked their site\services for all Verizon customers? I know it sounds bad, but what if Verizon customers got a page stating that Verizon was breaking certain services and here is a list of alternative ISPs in your area? Crap, I think they should get together and preemptively attack the ISPs. What if Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Reddit got together a told ISPs if you want to continue to provide access to our service you NEED TO PAY US? That would change their opinion of Net Neutrality QUICKLY! What would internet service from Verizon look like if it didn't include Google services? I think they have the upper hand if they want to play hardball....

  38. Well, duh... by Jawnn · · Score: 1

    I have no doubt that it would be great for your industry, there, Braxton. That means it will be bad for consumers. No. We absolutely do not trust that you will be a responsible steward of your portion of the Internet. We expect that you will squeeze as much profit out of it as possible. That's your job. Furthermore, it is the legal responsibility of the corporation you work for to make profit for it's shareholders. I have no problem with that. But I will do everything in my power to convince my elected representatives to understand the difference and to support regulation that sees to my interests first. Yeah, I know. Probably a pipe dream, but if enough of us are loud enough, maybe someone will finally hear it.

  39. Binge On was pretty Netural by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

    IIRC, Binge On was strictly based on protocols... was it identifiable as video and did it respond to commands to downgrade to 240p

    That is, anyone can do it. Although there was paperwork you had to fill out saying that you abided by those limitations, so possibly it was de facto non-neutral even though it was expressed as a neutral policy.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  40. "Innovate" "Create value" by sound+vision · · Score: 1

    Since when does the telecom industry "innovate" and "create value"? Oh yeah... innovative ways to overcharge, and creating value to the shareholders.Gotta protect that right? Let's remove these regulations that promote the free flow of information and affordable access to it. Only dangerous people want that.