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AT&T Pretends To Love Net Neutrality, Joins Tomorrow's Protest With A Straight Face (techdirt.com)
Karl Bode, writing for TechDirt: You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger enemy of net neutrality than the fine folks at AT&T. The company has a history of all manner of anti-competitive assaults on the open and competitive internet, from blocking customer access to Apple FaceTime unless users subscribed to more expensive plans, to exempting its own content from arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps while penalizing streaming competitors. AT&T also played a starring role in ensuring the FCC's 2010 net neutrality rules were flimsy garbage, and sued to overturn the agency's tougher, 2015 rules. So it's with a combination of amusement and awe to see the company's top lobbying and policy head, Bob Quinn, pen a missive over at the AT&T website proudly proclaiming the company will be joining tomorrow's "day of action protest" in support of keeping the existing rules intact. According to Quinn, the company still opposes the FCC's popular 2015 consumer protections, but wanted to participate in the protest because that's just how much the sweethearts at AT&T adore the open internet.
You're gonna have a bad time.
Maybe you should all sit down and have a long, long think about what it means when an enemy of Network Neutrality finds the "Network Neutrality" that the FCC passed of use to them...
All along, what the FCC provided was never what people thought of when they said they supported Network Neutrality, and furthermore (as with most giant regulatory packages) greatly favors large ISP's over small ones.
If you are protesting the FCC Network Neutrality rules you are supporting AT&T. It's that simple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'll bet this is nothing more than a bargaining chip - AT&T can probably make or break the FCC's repeal of Title II. They want the FTC and DoJ to approve their acquisition of Time Warner. But the Chief Executive has previously suggested he would see the merger blocked, and of late has been agitating against some of the key content producers.
No, they're not really helping "the good guys" but for once the enemy of my enemy may be my ally in this fight, if only incidentally.
At least, until the TW acquisition is approved. Then they'll accept whatever conditions, which probably include backing off Title II and Net Neutrality support.
g=
It was in fact AT&T lobbyists/consultants that wrote the Net Neutrality regulations.
Consider AT&T's position in the ISP market for a moment and you realize that this was all about their DSL bandwidth limitations and how that twisted copper pair can't deliver HD content let alone 4K content at any price level to most of their customers. They can't keep their competitors from delivering high bandwidth, but they can prevent their competitors from optimizing the cost of doing so with selective practices.
Imagine cable companies offering "Base DSL speeds + ultra fast netflix, amazon, hbo, etc" for the same price as AT&T's crap service. It wold obliterate AT&T as an ISP.
"His name was James Damore."
I've said it before, will say it again: Call your Congress thing and tell them there'll be blood at the polls if they don't save NN. And make sure they know you're voting in their primary. Most of 'em can only lose in a primary.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What most people don't realize is that Net Neutrality is a forced equality. That means Hulu and Netflix will be streamed at the same rate as everything else. Right now their Uverse internet service has to give Hulu and Netflix priority because their customers demand it. When Net Neutrality goes into effect Hulu and Netflix will be downgraded to match, or equal, the same service level as everything else.
Customers can't complain because its now the law. But of course AT&T is a VOD, cable, and satellite service you can subscribe to. You AT&T service would not be effected by Net Neutrality since those are not on the internet, Net Neutrality, like almost any new law, takes power away from the individual.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Wow I wonder how Karl found that article that matches his viewpoint so closely, oh yeah, he wrote it. I mean we all know AT&T is bad, some things about the current net neutrality laws are good, some are so flimsy they are worthless and other bits are bad (that is just how government works).
But isn't there some type of ethics where the /. editors won't post crap by the same person who wrote the article?
Actually, it's definitely not that simple. Even if you discount the possibility that this is nothing more than a cynical PR stunt by a net neutrality hating AT&T all it implies is that AT&T prefers to the status quo to what they are anticipating from Trump and Pai's alternative. That does not necessarily preclude them from hating the current regulations as well, just that they might be picking what they see as the lesser of two evils. The real issue here, at least for AT&T et al, isn't really net neutrality, it's whether they get regulated by the mostly toothless FCC, as is currently (and somewhat questionably) the case, or the FTC as Trump and Pai want. Whether they win that battle or not, you can pretty much guarantee they are going to get right back onto trying to scupper net neutrality (which TFS even states they are still opposed to) again.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
You are, still, such a stupid fuck.
ATT doesn't support NN. They are joining the protest just to gain some positive karma from people that hate them for ruining NN. Their "use" of NN is to look like they want it while actively destroying so stupid shits like yourself can say, "Gee, I told yuz net neutrality is realz bad."
You are such a fucking moron.
How do you figure? Is there any information available on Netflix getting priority? My understanding is that they are able to deliver HD content thanks to their network of AWS hosts and CDN hosts.
Not all internet traffic is created equal
You what? I'll have you know my cat video packets are just as important as your tele-surgery packets. Everything for everyone!
This is almost certainly calculated to add to the confusion about whether "Net Neutrality" refers to unregulated capitalism in the internet domain (what AT&T is hoping you're going to think it means), or FCC regulations specifically crafted to ensure neutral treatment of content by the carriers (what techies think it means).
You may notice that on occasion conflicting or competing bills show up in congress that have the same name, pretty much banking on the same principle. In those cases, calling your congressman to "support X" actually does nothing at all because the name is ambiguous.
Removing or defacing net neutrality gives incentives to ISPs to provide bad service on purpose to make people pay for "premium" service which is actually low-end service like phone and cable companies already do.
Well, so then it shouldn't be surprising that they want ISPs to come under the heavy-handed supervision of the FCC.
You don't seriously think that a company that has been manipulating Congress for a century isn't fully capable of using any net neutrality legislation or FCC market interference to its advantage?
dumbest shill shit I've read all week
"The company has a history of all manner of anti-competitive assaults" - You can stop there.
If you want to know how the 'new' at&t will act/behave, look at AT&T in the past.
I can promise you, they will NOT be defending anything except a continued 'monopoly position' for themselves.
Want to set the Internet 'free'?? Dispose of at&t! (not break up! we tried divestiture and look what it did for U.S.)
at&t is a gorilla that NEEDS to be extinct! I remember divestiture and voting for it.
If the old AT&T was "ma bell" ... is the 'new' at&t, uncle, twice removed bell?
The problem you are describing can only exists because of crappy infrastructure and ISP lock in. It's funny how other countries doesn't have this problem - because most of them actually have a competitive market.
And talking about how NN takes power away from the individual is laughable when you look at how it works right now. Most consumers doesn't have any power at all since they have no choices in what ISP to use.
The thing is, without NN there will be no new Netflix's for example because the cost of entering the market will be too high. Or for that matter, the ISP can throttle traffic to sites that they find questionable. There is no end to all the shenanigans they can do with the traffic without NN.
In the end it all boils down to that there is almost no choice for the consumers which the ISP's milk for all it's worth and a bit more.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
The problem i see is letting companies grow and consolidate so much that they start destroying other companies and form drug-like cartels like cable and phone companies already do.
If we had actual choice and real competition for ISPs, AT&T would be playing nice, otherwise their customers would go elsewhere. Even MVNOs leasing out cellular network capacity have significantly improved cellular service.
You what? I'll have you know my cat video packets are just as important as your tele-surgery packets. Everything for everyone!
The telesurgery argument doesn't even pass the laugh test.
There is already a great option for those that want priority for their traffic, guaranteed delivery, etc, etc: Dedicated point-to-point networks & leased lines.
Dedicated point-to-point networks aren't even that expensive, and you get a large number of guarantees you do not get with the public internet, including little things like better security, confidentiality, and reliability. You don't have to worry about somebody firing up a DOS attack & flooding a network branch during the surgery, and so on. It's the internet equivalent of sending a donated organ via courier on a private jet & helicopter instead of dumping it in a post box - you have a much greater ability to guarantee success.
In a somewhat similar fashion, Wall Street uses dedicated point-to-point network links for their trading because it's more appropriate for their needs.
Net Neutrality is about the fact that I've paid to have packets delivered to my network, and the FCC wants to allow an ISP to ensure those packets are delivered late (if at all) because of their point of origin. It's like paying for next-day shipping, and having the package delayed a week and then shredded because it originated in an Amazon warehouse. If it came from a Walmart warehouse, it comes on time and in good condition.
That's the problem: I paid to have the packets delivered to me, the ISP's should have no right to deny or degrade the service I paid for, for any reason.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Just like the old "Ma Bell" AT&T liked government regulation of the phone business.
Do you think that old AT&T like the result of phone deregulation?
Large existing organizations can't engage in regulatory capture of their industry and lock out competition without the government regulation.
Regulatory capture is a form of government failure that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. When regulatory capture occurs, the interests of firms or political groups are prioritized over the interests of the public, leading to a net loss to society as a whole.
But hey, you keep fooling yourself that government "net neutrality" regulations will help you.
Go ahead. Keep telling yourself that.
>Not all internet traffic is created equal
Yet you want to bill grandma an equal $80 to check her email.
Pick one.
The problem you are describing can only exists because of crappy infrastructure and ISP lock in. It's funny how other countries doesn't have this problem - because most of them actually have a competitive market.
...
What in the entire history of government regulation makes you believe that thousands of pages of net neutrality regulations will IMPROVE competition?
ISPs mostly got their monopolies from government in the first place.
Who the hell do you think net neutrality proponent ex-FCC chair Tom Wheeler works for? YOU? Bwaaa haaa haaa.
So is no one looking at the big picture of this? Of course AT&T is going to support this. They were stupid in the past not to probably because they are an old company that has a complex about all thing related to their business model. Someone at AT&T finally woke up. Here is why: (at least why I think)
So AT&T offer service on some of the oldest equipment out there. Their networks in a lot of areas still need upgrading and they can't offer what others do in those areas. That's one reason you have to literally comb through their website to find anything about U-Verse TV that they plugged to no end just 10 years ago. Problem is, they don't have enough bandwidth for the amount of users they had sign up for U-Verse and couldn't expand it in to other areas with out massive costs. So they bought Direct TV and they push that like crazy now. While they have increase speed and reliability in cities and suburbia, even small distances outside of those areas AT&T sucks and satellite is worse. So along comes net neutrality, where everyone needs to be equal and it will be governed by our government. That means tax payer dollars being spent to extend line to areas with low amounts of users that isn't financially possible for AT&T to do. Thus AT&T wouldn't have to shell out a dime and would improve coverage at the same time. A win win for them and the reason they flip flopped.
Really, I think the system we have been using all along has been fine. There are enough watchdogs and the advent of social media calls out ISP's pretty much the second they start doing some funny business that the bad PR makes them reverse their positions. Seems to work to me.
Mod up. Net neutrality will just push the cost of infrastructure to the tax payer, this why the ISP with some of the worst infrastructure is all on board now.
We already paid for it once.
AT&T Pretends To Love Net Neutrality, Joins Tomorrow's Protest With A Straight Face
You shouldn't anthromorphize corporations. They hate that.
I hope the protest doesn't mess up Internet service too badly. According to this article,
Sites that support net neutrality will call attention to their cause by simulating what users would experience if telecom companies were allowed to control web access. Examples will include a simulated “spinning wheel of death” (when a webpage or app won’t load), blocked notifications, and requests to upgrade to paid plans.
And let's never forget that AT&T was the first, and most eager, company to cooperate with the government in installing equipment to capture everything flowing through their part of the internet backbone.
Too late.
When Net Neutrality goes into effect Hulu and Netflix will be downgraded to match, or equal, the same service level as everything else.
Which is a good thing.
You AT&T service would not be effected by Net Neutrality since those are not on the internet
Yes, and so?
Net Neutrality, like almost any new law, takes power away from the individual.
How do you figure that?
Except that's laughable too. A dedicated network or leased lines are fine if you're in one single spot and need to talk to one other single spot, but if you're say a specialist in the UK and trying to do telesurgery around the world, running dedicated lines going to be unfathomably expensive.
The big issue everyone likes to overlook (usually intentionally to muddy the waters and confuse things) is that "network neutrality" has a few different levels. First, there's the absolutely 100% pure neutral networks. This is the raw definition that zealots espouse because they're idiots and don't want to look past their ideals. Under this definition, bittorrent traffic, email spam and other high-capacity but low-value packets are going to end up flooding the entire network. Nobody really wants that.
Then there's packet shaping. This is saying "VOIP packets are more important that bittorrent packets" and similar. This is what most internet users and websites and the such actually want when they say network neutrality. Each person may have a different idea of how the shaping should be done, but almost everybody wants it in one form or another.
But then there's the what AT&T and others want: They want to be able to say "My VOIP packets are more important than your VOIP packets." And of course their definition of important isn't based on the value of the packets, its based on the dollar amount of the contract they've made with each VOIP provider. That is, they want the ability to charge/extort VOIP providers in order to provide better service, above and beyond whatever they're already paying for basic connectivity.
And to make it even worse, as if it needed to be, they can (and want to) do this kind of prioritization against VOIP providers they don't have any other business arrangements with. So if I'm a VOIP provider who purchases my internet access through Verizon, and you're a user of my service but your internet access is through AT&T.. AT&T can still de-prioritize me unless I also pay them off in addition to paying for my Verizon service. So now to be a VOIP provider, not only do I have to buy large bandwidth from my local ISP, I also have to effectively pay "prioritization" fees to literally every single other provider in the country.
(and obviously all of my arguments apply to any protocol.. VOIP vs bittorrent is just a common illustrative dichotomy since most people at least recognize the names of both protocols and understand their relative importance in the world.)
Miss Mash, thanks for the downmod. Funny that you have left samzenpus' login valid. He's got a grin on his face. We aren't stupid about the comments table.
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Hulu and Netflix should be given the same priority as say, Dailymotion. Why should DM (and the people who use it) get screwed just because its not the most popular streaming site on the planet?
But Hulu and Netflix (and DM) all should also be given priority over say, bittorrent. This is called traffic shaping (or sometimes QoS) and most people want this to happen even though, by strictest definition, its not "neutral."
Of course there's absolutely no reason why a law couldn't be written to effectively say "protocol-based traffic shaping is fine but provider-based or user-based prioritization is not fine." Just because "net neutrality" is a catchy phrase doesn't mean we have to accept it as an strictest-sense-all-or-nothing rule. We're can aim for a middle-ground point that allows for necessary shaping practices without also allowing significant abusive practices.
I don't know what you're talking about. Most countries are fighting this same battle. The difference is that most countries (at least most developed countries) lean more toward protecting peoples' rights rather than corporate profits, a strong difference from the US mentality, so quite often NN rules just got implemented right away with little obstruction. It has little or nothing to do with competition in most countries. Just those damned socialist governments protecting peoples' rights like the commies they are.
I haven't read through it all, but Wikipedia has a fairly extensive list of countries and the state of their net neutrality fights. I mean its Wikipedia and who knows how current those entries are (I see some with 2011 dates.. which may mean its been sitting since then or it may mean the wiki just hasn't been updated.) But at the very least, it should give you a place to start further research if you really care about the state of NN around the world.
Infrastructure is one of the things our taxes should pay for. The taxpayers are already paying for it anyway - they just write the checks to AT&T instead of Uncle Sam. In today's society, internet access is as essential as a car or a telephone. You don't get on without it. It's effectively a tax, but we have for-profit companies administering it, skimming their cut off the top. The competition that normally leads to efficiency in a free market doesn't exist when discussing infrastructure. And it's not due to government meddling, it's due to the shared nature of infrastructure itself. If we could somehow alter physical reality to allow 20 sets of roads, comm lines, etc to exist on top of each other... then maybe we could have meaningful competition in infrastructure.
It sure is a good thing that you and Rockoon show up in every net neutrality article to tell us how the telecos love net neutralitt, after we've watched them obviously resist and fight it with paid shills for years
So you losers lost the net neutrality fight, and now you're here to try to trick people into thinking that it was what your overlords wanted all along?
I like how you cited law that supports your claim... Wait--
Except that's laughable too. A dedicated network or leased lines are fine if you're in one single spot and need to talk to one other single spot, but if you're say a specialist in the UK and trying to do telesurgery around the world, running dedicated lines going to be unfathomably expensive.
One surgery operation is already unfathomably more expensive than the monthly price that a leased line would cost. Just run it to a decent global MPLS provider and your connectivity cost will be the least of your problems. I'd be much more concerned about dropped packets that might happen over the open internet, where they're far less likely to happen on a leased line, especially if your provider has redundant circuits along the entire path in their MPLS cloud, which most do. Furthermore, MPLS providers honor your QoS tagging, while the open internet does not.
If you're doing telesurgery over the open internet, you're fucking retarded, with or without net neutrality. I work in the health care industry as a network engineer, and I honestly haven't heard of a hospital that doesn't have its own leased lines. Sure, there may be some in Africa or some third world shithole, but you've got bigger problems with telemedicine out there. If you ever look at global fiber maps, you'll probably notice how around Africa the major transit links all go way out to sea and then back inland. There's a good reason for this: People love to hold them hostage and cut them if ransom demands aren't met. Just don't do telemedicine in these countries, period. Also avoid telemedicine in any area where the CWA Union operates, because their members love to cut fiber links over stupid petty shit.
Yes and once the lines were set up it was supposed to be AT&T upgrading them from then on out. What have they done? Not much other then routine maintenance and upgrades where they can make lots of cash. Does no one remember history? The whole "common carrier " thing that turned AT&T in to a monopoly?? But yeahhhh, I'm sure they are all nicey spicey and will never do that in any areas ever again, scouts honor! I will say this is what Comcast is approaching. NN give AT&T a dog in the hunt again.
There are no levels of net neutrality. You're just lumping net neutrality (source based) in with Quality of Service (type based). Two different things with different discussions and very VERY different implications.
Nothing in the net neutrality legislation ever had any impact on quality of service controls.
all it implies is that AT&T prefers to the status quo to what they are anticipating from Trump and Pai's alternative
Or they know that this won't make a difference and are getting some free PR spin in the process. There's nothing to suggest that they prefer what there is now to what Trump will bring.
Right now their Uverse internet service has to give Hulu and Netflix priority because their customers demand it.
Customers are demanding nothing of the sort, and the ISPs are definitely not giving priority to the biggest horder of traffic on their networks.
What customers demand is fast internet, or internet at the advertised speeds. No one has ever demanded that their Netflix should be faster than Hulu, and why would they, asking for such a thing shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how the internet works.
Meant for this to be a reply to rockoon, not to AC, my bad.
I live in a small rural town in France and get 38Mb download/8Mb upload over DSL. No problem getting three Full HD streams over copper!
Actually if you read more than the first sentence, I was explicitly outlining that distinction.
But there are numbskulls on both sides.. On the NN favoring side are people who are only going to be happy with full neutrality, including type-based neutrality. And on the other side are people who use type-based neutrality as a scare tactic (all those evil pirates with their downloads will block your VOIP calls!)
So what you're saying is exactly my point: We need QoS and other type-based shaping, so we don't get 100% "net neutrality" by the strictest definition. Yet at the same time we don't really want other forms of shaping (such as source-based.)
Also, the current legislation isn't the problem. The current legislation is (mostly) working find, minus a few edge cases like zero rating that try to jump through some loopholes. The problem is that the current legislation is quite likely to be revoked under Pai and the republican administration, and we need to focus this discussion on whatever new rules they come up with (which, barring significant public backlash, will likely be along the lines of "incumbents can do whatever they want and everyone else has the 'freedom' to go offline if they don't like it.")