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AT&T Seeks Supreme Court Review On Net Neutrality Rule (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: AT&T and other broadband providers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Obama-era "net neutrality" rule barring internet service providers from slowing or blocking rivals' content. The appeals, filed Thursday, will put new pressure on a rule enacted in 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission was under Democratic control. Filing a separate appeal from AT&T were the United States Telecom Association, a trade group, and broadband service provider CenturyLink. The embattled net neutrality rules bar internet service providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking or slowing some web traffic in favor of other content -- their own or a paying customer's. "The practical stakes are immense," AT&T said in its appeal of a ruling that backed the FCC. The company pointed to a dissenting opinion that said the regulation "fundamentally transforms the internet" and will have a "staggering" impact on infrastructure investment.
The whole ethos of the IETF and the internet has always been for net neutrality.
Not the way it is being used today. The whole ethos of the IETF is ENGINEERING a network that can provide service in a timely and efficient manner. That might include prioritizing certain kinds of traffic. And gosh if there isn't a flag in every internet packet that deals with that.
But at the same time, if they are providing some parody of the internet, then it is proper that they not mislead their customers.
That's why they define speeds as "up to". And it is not misleading for them to claim a speed "up to" that is not met because there is a bottleneck of all traffic at a border gateway. It is not misleading when they claim an "up to" speed that is not met because the source cannot meet it.
The next time you hear someone demand that their email or web page traffic be given exactly the same priority as a service that requires low latency to be effective, keep in mind that the Internet does, indeed, include provisions for such prioritization and that this demand is NOT what is meant by "net neutrality" in any practical sense.
Then maybe they should stop overselling their bandwidth. Reduce speeds or build out your infrastructure, don't lie about it.
Net Neutrality isn't "e-mails are slightly delayed so video packets can be delivered faster." It's "video packets from Netflix are slowed down because they compete against us and refused to pay us extra for timely delivery of their packets."
ISPs in many areas are monopolies or duopolies for Internet services. They are seeing competition for their video services, however, so they use their Internet monopoly/duopoly to punish any competitors and prop up their video services. Net Neutrality says that you have to treat all data of the same type the same regardless of where it's from. You can't slow down an e-mail from X provider while making Y provider's e-mails go quickly. You can't slow down Netflix because you want your own video service to seem quicker.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The only way this could happen is if the wire were managed by the city and any ISP which desired to use it could connect to it. This raises other questions such as; Will this be financed through taxes or service provider fees?
But again there is an aspect that is not part of the free market.
I honestly don't believe the free market works. The incumbent always seems to have the ear of the politicians who puts stumbling blocks to new entrants. Or we play yo-yo with every new election.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...