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NYTimes Editorial Board: The FCC Wants To Let Telecoms Cash In on the Internet (nytimes.com)
The New York Times' Editorial Board writes: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to let Comcast, Verizon and other broadband companies turn the internet into a latter-day version of cable TV, in which they decide what customers can watch and how much they pay for that content. That's essentially what would happen under the proposal by the chairman, Ajit Pai, to abandon the commission's network neutrality rules, which prevent telecom companies from interfering with how their customers use the internet. Net neutrality prevents those companies from having companies like Amazon pay a fee to get their content delivered more quickly than their rivals', and from having the firms throttle other services and websites, even blocking customer access to, say, Netflix or an online newspaper. Under Mr. Pai's proposal, telecom companies would effectively be allowed to sell you a basic internet plan that might include only limited access to Google and email. For Facebook and Twitter you might need a slightly more expensive deluxe plan. The premium plan might include access to Netflix and Amazon. Oh, and by the way, media businesses eager to gain more users could pay broadband companies to be included in their enhanced basic or deluxe plans. Further reading: Associated Press fact check: Net-neutrality claims leave out key context; The death of the Internet.
they are already doing it but maybe not legally.
This model smacks of 1990's style thinking.
Do they think Amazon and Google won't start building out their own 'internets'? Do they think that this type of fragmentation and duplication of efforts would be anything but harmful for consumers?
This isn't free market capitalism. This is crony capitalism.
NN regulations were never put into effect. If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm shocked. Shocked and chagrined. To think that commercial companies would utilize public weakness, influence the government and engineer a situation in which they can squeeze people for more money? Unthinkable! Only Google, Facebook and Amazon are supposed to be able to cash off of the Internet.
Let's face it, if you let massive telecoms write the bill slashing regulation of themselves, YOU ARE A SELLOUT AND TRAITOR.
So now I know that it's more establishment bullshit that I can safely ignore.
"Establishment" = "Anything that doesn't conform to my worldview"
You're confusing toll roads with member-only access to a building.
If NYTimes requires people to pay to view their articles, it's their business.
But without net neutrality, it would give that power to the ISPs and completely fragment and destroy American's internet access.
#DeleteFacebook
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government. One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected. Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public, and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
Glad I got on about '92-'93 while it was still a bit of the old "wild west" and anything went.
I guess you couldn't expect it to last forever...it caught the govt types off guard and it took a long time for them to catch up to it.
I guess they'll be happy letting the corporate world do what they really never seemed to be able to do and kill it for the masses.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why should Google and Facebook be the only ones able to cash in on the internet?
Because they have a political party in their pocket? One that doesn't believe in free speech?
Personally if I was them, I would not want this. They'll lose their carrier status and will be responsible for the content viewed
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
A la carte cable channels isn't the same thing. Look, through my apartment building, I get basic cable (however that's defined). That gives me a bunch of channels, many of which, I never watch. I pay a little extra for some more channels, but I'm not paying just for those extra three or four channels that I watch. I'm paying for a bundle of channels that include those three or four.
The equivalent, with regards to the internet, would be paid access sites. Right now, with the internet access I have, I can go to CNN, Slashdot, whatever webcomics I read, etc.
I can choose to pay for extra access to the Washington Post, though. (I don't, that's just the first example of a paywalled site that I could think of.)
Under the worst-case scenario should the Net Neutrality rules go away, I'd still be paying for internet access, but I'd be limited to whatever Spectrum feels like is included in their "basic package". Okay, they're probably not so dumb and greedy as to micromanage every single site access out there, but it's easy to bet that things like Netflix will be in a tiered package. (Although that wouldn't affect me at all, as I don't have Netflix, but I digress....)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I've said it before, and will continue to say it.
If the Internet goes "walled garden" i.e. AOL style unless you pony up more money, I will just go without.
Give me a dumb pipe where I can do what I please, thank you very much.
I still maintain the lawsuits will fly if this gets repealed, tying it up in court for years (and hopefully long enough where there will be a different administration in the WH)
It would help if Silicon Valley had some influence with Republicans. The telecoms do. But all the (R)s ever get from Google, Facebook and the rest is opposition funding and virtue signalling. It doesn't surprise me that nothing these people have to say is being heard.
And fuck NYT and their editorial epiphanies. There isn't one new thought being expressed here that hasn't been beat to death years ago. I neither need nor want the validation of the establishment's celebrity editors.
Wait until you see the $50 "international sites" add-on. No longer will the US government have to deal with the masses having access to unbiased outside information. They get to have their own Korean-style walled-garden internet!
So, what will ISP's do with VPN users? I pay $5/mo for mine, and connect through another country. I am effectively able to bypass all of this nickle-and-dime filtering about to happen.
ISP's will therefore need to charge a HUGE premium on VPN users.
This is truly the death of the free internet.
It seems to me that the last-mile providers are trying to charge three time for their service:
First, when you buy internet access you're paying for access at 50/mbps (or whatever speed I want). It seems like this should give you access to the pipe at that speed.
Second, the content providers are paying thousands (millions?) of dollars for their "upload" access. They are contracting with Level 3, or buying their own fiber to provide their content.
And now thirdly, the ISPs want to charge the content providers additional fees to deliver their content (initially, it will be fees for "faster", next it will be fees for "not slowing it down" and finally, the fee will be for "delivery").
The water utility analogy (sorry, no cars), is that if you first bought water from a water supplier (not your local utility), then the local water company charged you for a pipe that could deliver 100 gallons per hour, then the utility charged you for delivering the water that you've bought from the supplier, and finally, the local utility charged the company that supplied the water a fee for delivering it.
If I had mod points today you'd have them. The way you ensure a free and open internet is NOT to regulate it, it's to let companies do what they want, and then let people decide what they want to buy.
What people want to buy is not what the NYT is describing, therefore I am sure it's not something we are going to see more than a blip of, if that.
Internet Access: 40.00/Mo @ 500Gb
Modem Rental: $10.00/Mo - Mandatory Use of Modem
Modem Insurance Fee: $1.00/Mo
Extra Computer Fee: $10.00/Mo/PC -Must use our router
NetFlix Fee: $10.00/Mo/client
Social Network Package Fee: $4.00/Mo
Email Fee: $2.00/Mo
VPN Fee:$50.00/Mo
VoIP Fee: $50.00/Mo
Skype Fee: $5.00/Mo
Non-Approved Browser Fee: $5.00/Mo
Non-Approved Application Fee: $4.00/Mo/application
Non-Approved OS Fee: $10.00/Mo
Mandatory AntiVirus Fee: $4.00/Mo
Blocked: Bittorrent, SSH, Non-Approved VPN, Non-Approved OS, Non-Approved Routers, Non-Approved Sites
Early Payment Fee: $1.00
Late Payment Fee: $10.00
Early Termination Fee: $100
Fee Payment Fee: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge Levy: $1.00
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge Levy Premium: $1.00
Excess Data Fee: $20.00/Gb
Unused Data Fee: $0.10/Gb
Paper Bill Fee: $1.00/pg
You fascist internet regulators keep bringing up that AT&T thing because it's all you have. But what you are missing is how much is speaks against your cause to clamp down on the internet until it chokes.
If lack of NN is such a problem, how come AT&T did not continue blocking FaceTime? Because the truth is the internet does not need regulation for protection, customers simply don't buy services from idiots that block things like AT&T did.
I never said such a thing. All they need is to keep ISPs classified as common carriers, otherwise trouble will follow.
http://bigthink.com/design-for...
#DeleteFacebook
When Obama decreed Net Neutrality he of course fucked it up. Instead of getting new laws passed, he simply had the FCC implement rules treating them like Common Carriers.
The problem with that is a Common Carrier status comes with a boatload of other, unrelated baggage and also results in the Federal Government having defacto control over the internet. Far from Obama's net neutrality returning us to the days of the Wild West, it laid the ground work for complete federal control over it.
What needs to be done is a brand New Law specific to data services that prohibits any kind of traffic shaping or other restrictions.
1. If you sell X speed. That must be available to the user 24/7.
2. If you can't do that, expand your capacity.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Although initially this is described as "fast lanes" (which is another way of saying slow lanes for everyone else), but I can easily see this become add-on fees from the ISPs to access specific content.
There doesn't seem to be anything to stop Verizon (or Comcast) from tacking on a "user fee" of $5 or $10/month to access Netflix. Or the ISPs could just block (slow down to make unusable) competitive services. Verizon (and Comcast) all offer "not quite as good" competitors to Netflix, Google search, news sites. It seems like they could just Netflix or Google and force you to use the Verizon alternative (or perhaps charge a fee for unblocking them).
As long as there is limited alternatives for internet access, the ISPs will have all the power to force customers to use their services or pay premiums. Where there are one or two competitors, similar to the cable TV model, both companies will have almost identical prices.
If you want a free and open internet, the very, very LAST thing anyone should desire is government regulation. The internet has been as free and open as it's been so far precisely *because* there has been no government regulation
To be more precise, you do not want under the control of *ANY* bit entity.
Be it governments, or be it huge corporation.
And here liese the problem...
If it's so terrible, why hasn't all those bad things already happened?
...because it took some time for the big corporation to be big enough and vertically integrated to be able to pull off easily the kind of shit that forced the creation of net neutrality regulations.
There's a difference between what was once just a bunch of universities communicating with each other on equal grounds, and a huge corporation basically having a monopoly on internet over a whole region and deciding what every one will be able to see or not.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So when do you graduate High School?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The internet routes around any damage, even self-inflicted.
The rest of the world won't see any problem, just those in Amerca who voted for those people causing the damage.
win/win situaton.
Americans get what they voted for.
The rest of the world gets less internet stupid.
Please implement user fees!
I WANT to see gmail/hotmail usage drop off to near zero.
I WANT to see nobody using google drive/MSFT storage, etc.
Local storage will be popular again.
Picture all those data centers sitting idle.
Picture none of that sweet sweet meta data being mined as people use the sneakernet.
This model smacks of 1990's style thinking.
Do they think Amazon and Google won't start building out their own 'internets'? Do they think that this type of fragmentation and duplication of efforts would be anything but harmful for consumers?
yes.
This isn't free market capitalism. This is crony capitalism.
You wouldn't really want free market capitalism if you saw it. Yeah, unethical conflicts of interest, often financial, are an unfortunate part of democratic governance. Unfortunately a zero-tolerance policy on there would be as aesthetically unpleasing to view as the war on drugs has been.
The only important part of Net Neutrality is Free Speech. Neither the republicans nor the democrats seem to feel it's important to focus like a laser beam on that issue.
It's really a shame, because Canada is going full Net Neutrality and actually listening to what consumers want, and not the corporate greedheads.
(caveat: I indirectly own shares in many telecom firms, and have worked for them in the past)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government.
bla bla bla
One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected.
bla bla bla
Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
What if we invented a big fantastically complex system that could distribute a channel's worth of video effeciently to every viewer that chose to view it? And make sure that everyone could do this for FREE. Can you imagine such a future?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public,
But what about the people that try to influence legislation *without documents*. What about those ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC SINGERS WITH THEIR MIND CONTROL PERSUASION LYRICS?!?!?!
and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
Because no legilater's friends or family would succumb to satan's temptation to use their position of access to have undocumented persuasion access via spoken word.
Please...
Prior to the rules being adopted, some two years back, had ISP's actually done this thing you fear?
Yes they had and there is proof. They didn't charge their subscribers they extorted money from companies wanting to get to their subscribers. "It would be a shame if everyone of our internet subscribers constantly got **buffering** screens when trying to stream content from your site. If you pay us a % of your revenue we'll make sure that doesn't happen."
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Next you know, supermarkets will be allowed to sell you only Monsanto-derived foods, and clothing stores will be allowed to sell you only clothes made by Old Navy! Quick, we need some "store neutrality"!
I didn't realize that those companies had the power to prevent their customers from accessing any part of the internet without paying more.
No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that.
Have you heard of Comcast?
Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that.
You must not have Comcast.
Under the worst-case scenario should the Net Neutrality rules go away, I'd still be paying for internet access, but I'd be limited to whatever Spectrum feels like is included in their "basic package".
Worst case scenario: Spectrum demands your first born child for ANY access to the Internet, and if you even try to visit a site on the unapproved list they come burn your house down and kill your wife. Beware those embedded links on random web pages, they could cost you more than you know.
If you are going to imagine "worst case scenarios", you should try a little harder. You're not even scratching the imaginary world that could be created here. Go wild! Hyperbole doesn't work if it isn't patently ridiculous. (Well, ok, your scenario is pretty ridiculous, so I guess it counts.)
Why do we ignore that there is more to the government than the FCC? Why should the FCC ignore congress and not let other departments do their job?
Perhaps desktop programming will come back, as a result?
erm I meant USA.
When Comcast started charging Netflix for content to be delivered to Netflix customers who already pay both Comcast and Netflix to wat cg Netflix content.
That's what changed. Sips want to charge content providers for delivering content. You want to use Facebook that's extra. You want to use AMAZON over Wal-Mart that's extra for this isp. Want to visit foxnew.com instead of msnbc.com. That's going to cost Comcast customers extra. Comcast owns manic so all of their content doesn't count againistt you. But fox is extra.
That is exactly what Obama prevented. But morons don't seem to realize the difference between content providers and distribution
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Wow.
Do you know the internet never would've even happened without the government right?
CompuServe, Delpha, Genie -- LOTS of companies were offering "internet-like" services back in the 80s. Want to know where they all are? In the garbage.
Capitalism...the premise of everything "good" only happens via competition (and w/o the Government) -- never could develop the internet. The technology was all there - but let's face it - no Board of Execs would every have bought into the idea of a cooperative agency.
When Al Gore suggested it - they thought he was a nut.
You also probably don't want to own ANY comcast / telecom stock. They're all going to tank...the question is when.
Everyone thinks telecoms can charge more for that last mile service. The problem is that their model is that of a cable company.
Cable companies (generally speaking) do NOT provide content. They PAY for content. ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, etc....they PAY for that. The stuff that is offered for free is "The Shark Vacuum cleaner channel". No one wants it.
These telecoms think they can charge Netflix/Google? But without Google (for most people) and you aren't offering an internet service anymore - all you're offering is an end of cable (perhaps with videos of a "Shark Vacuum Cleaner").
Finally...this "removal of roadblocks" works BOTH ways. Finally Google can run fiber out to Comcast's best (most profitable) areas and charge whatever they want?
Competition? Google can slow Comcast's content in that area to whatever they want. Are you going to pay comcast for an internet that isn't responsive? Or are you going to switch to Google Fiber?
I tell people this. Most don't believe me. That's fine. But I wouldn't own any telecom stock.
Because I'm not seeing it. Data caps have been a thing even on home connections. That obviously took care of any major problems they had. Why change rules around that could be potentially catastrophic?
Thus far, ISPs haven't been given free range to do what they want. While most of us would agree this is a "Good Thing(tm)", the fact that this keeps coming up indicates that some powerful people think otherwise, and we don't really have any counter data to show them other than what we think will happen ( and given the companies involved, it's almost assured that will happen ).
So at this point, given how much the FCC isn't listening to anyone but their corporate sponsors, I'm kinda of the mind to let them do it. Let them give the ISPs free reign, that will generate a TON of data for us to use later. Then, when congress gets involved and enshrines net neutrality in law, we'll know precisely why and be able to point to historical examples.
Given laws are painful to create and pass, while FCC regulations are seemingly easy to overturn, I'm kinda digging the idea of creating a net neutrality law anyway.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Oh you want the internet to be "open" the same way cable TV channel bundling is? You're hilarious.
Guaranteed he works for Comcast.
If they do it to Google I have no problem with it whatsoever. In fact I would welcome it.
Uh. No one gets free access to the net. You want to connect to someoneâ(TM)s network. You have to pay them. And prevent what? Netflix now pays Comcast for a direct connection to their network. Like they should. Iâ(TM)m sick of the Netflix lie.
Comcast was asking Netflix for more money for their CONNECTION based on data rates (supply side). That seems reasonable to me. Comcast wasn't throttling Netflix packets or routing them differently, but the Netflix traffic was swamping various links in Comcast's network. and Comcast was asking them to connect differently to their network, albeit though a connection purchased from Comcast.
So what you are saying is kind of true, but it's not fully explaining all the facts or what each side was saying. You are just parroting what Netflix's PR folks wanted you to hear about this. In reality, both sides had valid points and the compromise solution we now have is working without all the dire consequences you speak of or the massive expense Comcast was complaining about. In short, the market worked, Comcast's customers can stream Netflix again and despite fairly flat rates Netflix is still making money.
Hype always makes bad law and this whole thing was hyped way out of proportion.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Read their Manifesto: https://www.savetheinternet.co...
A little background checking shows that SaveTheInternet is a coalition of organizations lead by the Free Press advocacy group whose chair is Tim Wu who invented the phrase "net neutrality." His Wiki page says "Wu ran for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of New York against a conservative Democrat." So the top name in this effort is a person very much on the left who is also fighting for his legacy. Now that doesn't mean he isn't necessarily correct, but NN was voted in only 3-2 along party lines in 2015 so we'd need someone more neutral to make the case.
But let's look at some of their claims:
"The consequences would be particularly devastating for [...] people of color, the LGBTQ community, indigenous peoples and religious minorities"
"The mainstream media have long misrepresented, ignored and harmed people of color. And thanks to systemic racism, economic inequality and runaway media consolidation, people of color own just a handful of broadcast stations. The lack of diverse ownership is a primary reason why the media have gotten away with criminalizing and otherwise stereotyping communities of color."
"The internet without Net Neutrality isn’t really the internet."
"This would destroy the open internet."
"Without Net Neutrality, the next Google or Facebook would never get off the ground." Well they did get off the ground without Net Neutrality, and have fortified themselves more than ever since NN.
Essentially we must support NN to prevent racism. If they need to bring up that argument, do they really have an argument?
Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that.
You must not have Comcast.
You must take the PR department from Netflix at their word...
That whole episode played out in the court of public opinion exactly how Netflix wanted. But I ask you a serious question. First, has NN gone into effect yet? Nope, it hasn't. So how has this been resolved for Comcast's customers? They ARE watching their Netflix now are they not?
Seems the market worked and the internet sorted the issue out between Netflix and Comcast without any government help... I say NN is unnecessary and should be done away with on the grounds that government involvement is rarely effective or efficient and should be avoided when possible. In this case, the market fixed it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Guaranteed he works for Comcast.
Worse... A defense contractor... ;)
Oh, and I used to work for the phone company way back when...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Apple didn't charge the customers, they extorted money from companies wanting to get to their customers. The only difference? One is "apple" and the other is the hated "internet service provider"...
Please don't trivialize this type of problem.
No, it wasn't. Paying an extortionist for the rest of your life is not a resolution. What people always miss is that the government is ALREADY involved in that it gave the power these telcos turned ISP's have in the first place by granting them exclusive rights of way. If you want to make it right then the infrastructure needs to be taken back and given to a third party to maintain much like the electric grid was when it was deregulated.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Except of course the ISPs will let you have email but only a certain number of messages (or bytes) a month before buying an add-on, and no encryption. OTOH, until they get that figured out, there might be a boom in PGP adoption.
If actual phone service isn't restricted, there might be a small boom in old-fashioned BBS systems with phone (landline or cell) access.
The olde tech isn't dead, and could be reanimated...
You're a fucking ignorant pigfucker
When Comcast started charging Netflix for content to be delivered to Netflix customers who already pay both Comcast and Netflix to wat cg Netflix content.
Comcast did not start charging Netflix for content do be delivered. Netflix started transmitting so much traffic that it made sense for them to set up private peering. However, Comcast refused to do so unless Netflix paid Comcast for the cost.
That is exactly what Obama prevented. But morons don't seem to realize the difference between content providers and distribution
Net Neutrality rules would not prevent the same dispute to occur again, as Comcast was doing nothing to slow down Netflix's traffic.
And the only person with an extra chromosome here is you. You have no idea what you're talking about. Let the grownups discuss this, please.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
You can only blame yourselves. It’s only the Americans who elected Trump, and no one else. From abroad, we’ll enjoy see the US dwindle into total irrelevance.
Don't post hostile comments on Slashdot. They waste everyone's time.
Now that municipalities are building their own fiber to the curb because the big telecoms won't, is a good time for those municipalities to start interconnecting those networks. They can run a neutral network that way. As soon as there is a local alternative to big telecom near me, I'll take it. Currently only 1 ADSL provider and ADSL is less reliable than cable which is less reliable than fiber.
i remember back in the day when the infrastructure providers would ACTUALLY PAY STUDIOS TO LICENSE/PRODUCE CONTENT SO THAT THEY COULD SELL THEIR OVERPRICED CABLE SHAT, now it seems comcast wants money from the studio and the person at home. So it's a little like phone sex, i use my phone to call the phone sex person, the phone sex person charges me a fee, how much of that fee goes to the telecom company is between them, but im sure in the interest of money they'd work it out. and looking at AOL's failed business model, i don't think MOSt people would sign up from an ISP running a closed net. People forget that without government regulation this debate has already played out in the business world, and NN-like provisions have won it over. What people should be concerned about is regulatory capture, with these NN provisions the ISP and Media incumbents can further lock out smaller ISP's who would have a higher financial burden complying.
Oh, so you're from Verizon. Figures.
Without NN, they do now. You corporate zombies got what you wanted, enjoy it while it last.
"Mitch McConnell, fighting the Washington establishment for over 30 years!"
It isn't exactly difficult to set up QOS, or to monitor traffic and identify even encrypted traffic by patterns.
Plus you have to realize that in many places there is less competition of available ISPs in cities than there was in the old dial up days. Not everyone has multiple providers to choose from when they get ticked off by the spurious fees their ISP imposes. Some people have no where else to go.
As far as content control, all I have to do is tunnel thru to my VPS in the Netherlands. I am watching some shows in the states right now that are banned here. This setup is extremely simple and explained here: https://github.com/inwtx/SSH-W...
Charging the customer (you and me) for service while also charging the service provider for the same bits is not "fair". It is like charging UPS a toll for their trucks to drive across a bridge and charge the person who gets packages in the truck a toll for that bridge too. It is a nice mix of greedy and shady.
Once upon a time we had a version of that. Remember "Fair Trade" pricing laws? They allowed the manufacturer to set the selling price. No more, no less, and stores prohibited from selling items by some competitors. Sony was a vicious user of those laws. Most states (are any left?) got rid of those, allowing stores to set their prices according to their view of the market. But you're right: there were multiple stores, and if you were looking for Brand X not-Sony you could still find it someplace. Some states never had such laws, so warehouse operations tended to set up there and ship direct using mailed catalogs.
In this case, it's as if Compuserve or AOL had local monopolies on internet access for retail (non-business) users. Business users could, possibly, insist on simple carriage agreements - pay for access to the internet backbone with no "value added." But retail, non-business users would not be able to do that because ... not businesses. You take what you get and like it, and pay for it. Yes, there will certainly be added fees for any more than basic service, and fairly limited caps on the basic services, for landline or cellular. It simply makes business sense - people insist on doing stuff on the internet because, in many cases, even with government, there's no other way to do it any more - so there's a captive market that will pay nearly any price. See: cable TV until decently fast internet came around. There's also the cooking-a-frog approach, that will almost certainly occur with existing customers who don't sign up for all the "new shiny" services: raise the "rent" by 10% or so a year, dangling some package with several things you don't want or need but a lower price overall (which will then go up 10% a year also).
Are internet, cable, and phone services included in any standard inflation index? If they are, we can expect the index to take a jump over the next few years. I suspect they aren't in any index generally used, though: modern political and economic (Republican, especially) theory holds that all communication is a luxury that should be accessible only to those with the money to pay for it.
Why is the new internet like AOL? Oh yeah, Verizon owns AOL.
(And wait, where did the FCC chairman used to work? Oh yeah, Verizon)
We have a real problem today that would not exist if it weren't for the fact governments around the United States instituted monopolies on telephone and cable companies all pre-1990s. We don't really need net neutrality. What we need is a free market and past government action has given certain entities an unfair market advantage today. The companies which have already invested can out-compete those whom would like to enter the market. We have this same problem with with early companies entering markets. They have what is called a "first mover" advantage. Unlike these companies though monopolies were granted so there was only one company in any given market competing for longer than it would take to pay back the loans thus enshrining we only ever got one ISP per technology (ie cable or telephone).
I'm not against net neutrality given what has occurred, but I think we really need to focus on ISP diversification rather than net neutrality long term.
If comcast cannot handle the traffic on it's own network then that is comcast's problem. They need(ed) to provision better peering and/or internal network infrastructure to deal if that really was the case . Stuff that was already being paid for by their customers who have no reason not to expect the service they are paying for.
It was not netflix "swamping" comcast's network in some sort of nefarious manner to unfairly maximize their profits, it was comcast trying to make it sound that way so they could double dip and unfairly maximize theirs, It might be one thing if the last mile was much more accessible to competitors, or if they had actually paid for their last mile build out without massive government support (tax breaks, fees they are allwoed to collect, and anti competitive rules that prevent anyone esle from getting into the business), or/also if companies like Verizon and AT&T did not have a big presence in the internconnect world, but it is not and comcast and the other last mile providers do everything in their power to prevent that as well.
Comcast did not have a valid point. They just had the leverage to get their way. Perhaps an interconnect battle is not the best example of a net neutrality violation in some's eyes, but it is an good example of how these monopolies will leverage their monopolies in the future if allowed to.
At best, comcast did not provision the network that it's customers had paid for (which only came to light, in this best case, when people actually started trying to use the BW with stuff like netflix), and at worst they were just throttling netflix' traffic to make it seem that way. given that they also want to deliver content and just love love love their old school cable TV model of content delivery pricing, I know which one of these cases passes my bullshit meter. (hint, it ain't the best case scenario)
Because the FTC is ill equipped to manage this and by any reasonable definition ISP's are common carriers (ie, FCC territory) maybe? And why, when there are examples of exactly this type of tired access in place's without these protections (like Portugal) is that such a "ridiculous" scenario?
as an aside, and no offense, but you are clearly a beginner at shilling.
you pay comcast for your internet bandwidth. netflix pays its ISP for its internet bandwidth.
now for some reason comcast wants either you of netflix to pay them again? for what?
but this is just plain false. netflix arranged a more efficient method to get its traffic to comcast, a method that would have been cheaper per bit for both of them. there's no reason for comcast to require additional payment, it just saw that its network wasn't going to be capable to handling the additional bandwidth and wanted to pass the blame/cost onto someone else.
Comcast's own documents show that they had the bandwidth, and the part that was swamped was their connection to the netflix CDN - a connection that netflix offered to upgrade for free.
It was pretty clear looking at comcast's documents that comcast was in the wrong and purposefully throttling.
You make my point... Granting the right of way exclusively was a government action that I feel was a mistake. Now you want to have the government do something else? Might this NN thing be a mistake too? I think that it's likely.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
No.. Never worked for Verizon, though I was a customer at one point.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
i just hope that companies like netflix will give a discount to those users that predominantly use their service over fair (un-classified) internet connections. this would help to promote fair & local ISPs over the likes of comcast & verizon.
Walled Garden Again! Is this what Trump meant by saying he will build a big beautiful Wall !
If there is one bad hombre that needs to be grabbed by his piehole and thrown out of America it is Ajit Pai !
we don't really have any counter data to show them other than what we think will happen
I'm calling bullshit on your claim. Here's the data. Here's more.
Some of us remember things longer than four years.
At what point does this lunatic Ajit Pai cross a line into treason or illicit this as a more graver international matter?
I've got to say, this sounds like willful ignorance from you.
Netflix pays its ISP for a connection to the Internet backbone.
We pay Comcast for a connection to the Internet backbone.
What bits are on those connections (*should*) have no meaning.
By the logic you're presenting Comcast should be trying to bill Level3 networks for all the traffic coming from their backbone customers, or CloudFlare for all the data they're sourcing into Comcast's network, but they don't. They are attacking Netflix because they compete with Comcast's offering and they know they can get away with it.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I fully support net neutrality, but one thing that seems to keep getting lost in discussions about Comcast vs Netflix is that back when Netflix live HD streaming was *new*, Netflix users were consuming *inordinate* amounts of bandwidth relative to "everyone else". On one hand, it was Comcast's fault for overselling their capacity... on the other hand, Netflix was an easy target PRECISELY because it was such a big, easy-to-see target.
The danger isn't that Comcast is going to start charging higher fees for Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, Youtube, and SlingTV... the danger is that Comcast will roll out some $9.99/month (+ thirty dollars of unavoidable fees) plan that provides "100mbps" connectivity ONLY to big, established companies willing to pony up and subsidize their cheap plan, then jack up the price of REAL 100mbps connectivity (to all internet hosts, including RDP servers and non-Facebook/Netflix/Hulu/etc) to $150/month.
It's a variant on Gresham's Law... cheap shitty service drives out good service & makes buying something even *slightly* better than "total shit" WAY more expensive.
Look at laptops... you can buy a shit netbook with 1.2ghz cpu, inadequate ram, useless keyboard that misses 1 in 20 keypresses, and hard drive that isn't even big enough to survive the next big annual Windows update for $199... but getting one that's meaningfully better (i5 or i7, 8-16gb ram, 256gb+ SSD, etc) increases the price to $1,000-2,000 because all of those shit netbooks soak up 99% of the economies of scale & make GOOD computer hardware 4-10x more expensive. And the pervasive existence of under-powered hardware induces companies like Microsoft to take away nice things like Aero Glass & replace it with ugly, awful things like Metro for the sake of making it run semi-acceptably ON shit hardware.
Ah yes, "toll lanes." The lanes whose very existence slows down the rest of the freeway so that some other folks can pay to go faster.
Meanwhile, folks who don't pay find that they're closing slower, and that's the beauty of it it: Make a situation worse so that someone will be willing to also pay you to make it better. That's what you get in a society when the almighty dollar is valued higher than anything else.
That is the only language telecoms will understand. If you're going to whine that you need xxxxx service for yyyyy reasons, then you have already lost, and will continue to lose.
You can't let every mom and pop ISP tear up the roads. Municipalities give monopoly rights to cable and telco companies because easements on private properties suck. Tearing up the streets sucks and is expensive. The Comcasts and Verizons and AT&Ts get away with this because they CAN. Consumers have no choice. They are not able to choose broadband alternatives. In the glory days of the 90s and the early 00s, we had the Golden Age of DSL, when the telcos were required to lease their lines to ISPS. ISPs popped up, all offering up different plans to entice subscribers. We don't live in that world anymore.
You know, I'd actually be fine with no network neutrality. I really would, if the ISPs didn't own the last mile. If they had no way to dictate any terms, and everyone was on the same footing. But no, ISPs DO own the lines, so if they want these guarantees, I think it's reasonable for us to demand decent behavior from them.
I am sure not every country in the world has net neutrality laws. Are they living this scenario right now? Or does consumer demand ensure availability of unrestricted services?
That whole episode played out in the court of public opinion exactly how Netflix wanted. But I ask you a serious question. First, has NN gone into effect yet? Nope, it hasn't. So how has this been resolved for Comcast's customers? They ARE watching their Netflix now are they not?
Yes, Netflix is now paying protection money -- Comcast inserted themselves as a middleman, threatening to choke off access. So now, everyone is going to pay more. Comcast customers pay for their Internet access just like they did before the throttling began. Netflix pays for their Internet access, just like their did before the throttling. That's exactly how the Internet worked for a few decades until the ISPs gained trust power. They now have the ability to choke off huge numbers of customers in ways that ISPs back in the old days were incapable of doing. This is what happens when someone has no choice but to purchase your offering: you can charge all sorts of fees, and they'll pay. They have to. So now a third payment is being made, from Netflix to Comcast, for nothing other than to buy access to Comcast's subscribers. That means Netflix has had to raise prices and eat losses which is fine since the ISPs were also content companies trying to kill Netflix's offerings. So we have higher prices to pay for Netflix, all so those coins can go straight to Comcast's coffers.
A la carte cable channels isn't the same thing. Look, through my apartment building, I get basic cable (however that's defined). That gives me a bunch of channels, many of which, I never watch. I pay a little extra for some more channels, but I'm not paying just for those extra three or four channels that I watch. I'm paying for a bundle of channels that include those three or four.
PEople never really wanted a la carte cable channels either. They just wanted specific shows, but the way cable worked that wasn't technologically feasible. It's now technologically feasible for every "channel," (netflix, amazon, etc) to have every show, all the time, but the content companies don't want that either.
Pfffttt. We have plenty of those. It's called career civil service. Most career government staff are actually quite knowledgable, hard working, and civic minded.
Then the political appointees like Pai come in and fuck it all up. You can't undo corrupt leadership and ideology-based decision making. Doesn't matter how much you reduce lobbying influence when one fuckwit at the top appoints the heads of all executive agencies, and a good deal of the independent agencies - not to mention nine justices to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Yes this all comes down to one man. One orangutan elected by drooling imbeciles. Look what he's doing to the State Dept and every other federal agency. All the protections in the world don't matter when the guy at the top is actively working to destroy the system from the inside.
America. You clowns deserve what you get.
Telecoms ARE the internet so why wouldn't they "cash in" on it?
I lay this at the feet of the corrupt Democrats for running the only candidate who could actually lose to a moronic heel like Trump.
Less demand for shitty web "apps", more demand for real apps on the local device! Suck it Javascript/React monkeys!
Serves America Right, and I hope it gets worse. You get what you get and you don't get upset.
Do you have to work at being this stupid? Net Neutrality was the reality when Facebook and Google got started. It only got codified into regulations when ISPs like Comcast started breaking it.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Well, when the solution is always weaker government and stronger corporations, what did you expect??
Captcha: submit
Net neutrality being allowed to exist is no different than if I were to buy 10k acres of land and I built a system of private roads across that land
and then the government came and told me who was allowed to drive on my private roads, on my private land and in what manner, causing
damage, etc, to my business, to my property and told me that I wasn't allowed to prevent it from happening.
NOTE: for your metaphore to work and actually precisely describe the situation, the 10k acres of land need to be not continuous, but all the free space between the private houses of private home owner that where here before you came.
(i.e.: you only own the land where you build your network of private roads. The people living here aren't living on your privately owned land, they own their own land).
Nice metaphor you have here, because when you look into the details it breaks in the exact same way that anti-net-neutrality-trolling breaks down to.
So you want to decide who can drive on your private roads and who can't ?
On the grounds that it causes you damage to accept any random vehicle to drive there ?
Then why the hell did you pretend your private roads network is "18-wheeler truck ready" when all you build is small gravel bike paths ?
(ISP: Why complaining that traffic from website XyZ that you want to throttle overloads your network ? Should you have provisioned the network well enough to be able to sustain the bandwidth that you sell to your customers. If you complain that youtube causes too much traffic on your network, you're the bloody idiot for having oversold your capacity to your customers. No you can't be an ISP selling "up to 100 mbits connection" to 20'000 customer while only having a 1Gbit upstream, even if you put the magical "up to")
- That point by itself is already very close to false advertising. Something which can get you sued for in some jurisdictions (those with strong consumer protection)
Also, all the people who own houses which are enclosed in enclaves in your territory are already paying for said roads. They are paying all the costs. Then why do you also want to tax incoming delivery trucks into your private network ? The delivery company has paid tax to the government (or whatever entity) for the building and upkeep of public roads. The home owner are paying your for the building and upkeep of your private road network. There isn't a single meter of road that isn't being paid for. But you still want to get profits, just because you happens to be in control of the gates around the private land ?
(ISP: companies such as Netflix are already paying to have a given bandwidth in their data center. Customers are already paying for a certain bandwidth on their data plan. All involved bandwith and interconnection is paid some way or another. Why the fuck to you suddenly want extra money from Netflix ?)
- That point by itself is already very close to raketeering. You can get into real trouble with this in lots of jurisdiction.
Also how can we be sure that you have no vested interests in how you are taxing incoming delivery truck ? It's a bit fun when every milk delivery man needs to pay exorbitant fees to enter your network, except "Joe's Milk Jugs" which happens to be *your uncle joe* who own a dairy farm ? into whose company you're a shareholder ? and sit on its director's board ?
(ISP: the whole point of taxing Youtube and Netflix is to favour ipTV services from a provider who is part of the same mega-corporation).
- That point by itself could bring legal wrath on you because of violation of rule about competition, antitrust, etc.
And by extending further all the above to there most extreme conclusion :
Actually you're in a very critical position : By applying insanely big fees, you can control who goes in, who goes out. You can completely wipe out competition. You can end up deciding which companies are allowed to deliver food. You can severely limits the acces to anygoods. You can bascially decide which news
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I agree.
Shesh... This "Big companies make profits = bad" thing is getting old. You do release that both companies make money right?
Comcast is currently trading at about 19 P/E, earning less than $2.00/share and currently pays under $0.70/share in dividends. I'd be willing to bet that YOU benefit from this, directly, if you have any kind of investment. So Big Bad Comcast is owned by people like you and me and are not making obscene profits if you look at the situation on a per share basis.
Netflix doesn't do badly either. Althogh it's trading at nearly a 200 P/E, it earns more than $1,00 /share. It's obviously the smaller company, but their profits where not bad at over $100 Million/quarter.
So why do we have this attitude about corporate profits being bad? Or that Comcast somehow took advantage of Netflix's customers?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you are tearing up the streets to bury cables, you are doing it wrong... Seriously wrong...
We have things like directional boring machines that allow you to shove cables under the pavement and keeps you from having to dig trenches to bury stuff. Just a couple of hand dug holes every few hundred feet.
Also... If you are a Mom and Pop shop trying to bridge that last mile, then may I suggest you use any number of RF or Laser optical options and not bother burying wires? It's a LOT less expensive than burying wires... Then as your customer base grows in specific areas, then you wire them up as it becomes cost effective? Heck, start with a couple of apartment buildings or something...
Come on, there are lots of options. The way this works is to innovate. Do something the big guys won't or can't. OR buy capacity from them in bulk for that last mile then blow the doors off them with customer service... The possibilities are endless here.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Being we are just spitbaling pet scenarios here...
I don't think that any ISP will bother with this "Cheap but filtered" internet connection thing. Why? It's WAY too hard to make work. Maintaining the route tables will be a horribly complex and labor intensive task so it will cost them a lot to maintain and blow the economics of this idea of yours. Remember, an ISP's highest variable cost here is LABOR, and they are not going to do anything that adds to that expense. Also, the "cheap" priced customers will rarely be happy with them and believe it or not, large ISPs do try to avoid upsetting their customer base (Or perhaps we should say they avoid upsetting a large percentage of customers enough that they will consider alternatives). ISP';s make the most money from the long term paying customer who doesn't consume provisioning labor hours or tech support hours and automatically pays their bill every month. (Which is why they usually give you a break on price for enrolling in auto pay and committing to one or two years).
So I don't think your scenario is likely to happen. ISP's won't bother with this. It's to hard to make work, will actually cost them money and is likely to drive more customers off than it attracts.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Shesh... This "Big companies make profits = bad" thing is getting old.
When there's no competition, yes, it is bad. That's the whole rationale behind various anti-trust actions. "Excess profits" are balanced out by competition, because they allow companies that are better for the consumer to make gains. Get rid of the competition and there is very little upside. It might as well be a utility and should be treated as such.
Comcast is currently trading at about 19 P/E, earning less than $2.00/share and currently pays under $0.70/share in dividends. I'd be willing to bet that YOU benefit from this, directly, if you have any kind of investment.
I find the "don't criticize/take action against this company because most people probably have it as some type of mutual fund" to be a BS argument. I don't particular care if my funds "benefit" from it, I can guarantee we individually pay a hell of a lot more to more than balance that out.
But.... Comcast is a business, albeit a big one. The "Big Business = BAD" mind set is inappropriate. Why does it matter what size a business is? It's not like Comcast is a monopoly in the legal sense. They are big, but that doesn't mean they can or do take advantage of customers.
If Comcast is returning 4% on their investment, but that local corner grocery is turning 20% a year, who's abusing their customers? You see, THAT is the issue I have with this picking on the big companies and assuming they abuse their customers based on the amount of profits they make. Nobody cares to compare what Comcast makes per customer or per share with other businesses we just accept as valid because they may only clear $200k a year, even if their profit per customer is an order of magnitude greater than Comcast.
PLUS, if you own a part of Comcast in some mutual fund, it DOES matter. Share holders are the owners of Comcast. Share holders pick the board of directors who pick the management staff at Comcast. You may not have much control, but ALL of you DO and if enough of you don't like what Comcast is doing, you could stop it. So you carry at least some responsibility for what Comcast does if you own part of the company. Then you bite your own hand when you nip at Comcast.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Don't forget that we should make all financial political contributions subject to disclosure all the way back to the first person who wrote a check to any entity that is - or that contributes money to, however indirectly - a political campaign.
I just realized I left out a major detail from my "$9.99/mo (plus fees)" scenario -- non-partner services wouldn't be BLOCKED... that would be too blatant & would guarantee pushback. They'd just be throttled to some point that's not glacial, but not fast enough to sustain realtime high-quality HD streaming video (say, 3-5mbps).
If your choices were:
a) $9.99/mo (+ fees) for (up to) 100mbps to "partners" (with nearly every major service being a partner) and 3-5mbps to "everyone else"
b) $99.99/mo (+ fees) for (up to) 100mbps to "partners" and 10mbps to "everybody else"
c) $249/mo (+ fees) for (up to) gigabit speeds to everyone
(all with "up to" gigabit local loop down & ~20-50mbps up... throttled speeds are per-host) ... you'd probably agonize long & hard between 'a' & 'b' (unless you really, really NEEDED 'c'). And you'd probably end up grudgingly choosing 'a' & hating them for charging SO MUCH MORE just to get the next step up.
Oh, and I forgot the other detail... $9.99/mo is the 6-month "promo" rate, with $69.99 regular price, 2 year contract, and outrageous ETF. Ditto, for the $99 plan... $99 for 6 months, jumping up to $149 thereafter with 2 year commitment.
You can actually voice your opinion directly from this link: http://gofccyourself.com/ [gofccyourself.com] It takes you directly to the FCC website page to voice your opinion. Click the "Express" link there to get to the relevan case page. Then, finish filling-out the info and submit. It is EASY! it is your duty to chime-in! We, the People, really need to understand and demand what truly serves the People! (This link was created/maintained by John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" organization.)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
You can actually voice your opinion directly from this link: http://gofccyourself.com/ [gofccyourself.com]
It takes you directly to the FCC website page to voice your opinion.
Click the "Express" link there to get to the relevan case page.
Then, finish filling-out the info and submit.
It is EASY! it is your duty to chime-in!
We, the People, really need to understand and demand what truly serves the People!
(This link was created/maintained by John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" organization.)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
but this is just plain false. netflix arranged a more efficient method to get its traffic to comcast, a method that would have been cheaper per bit for both of them. there's no reason for comcast to require additional payment, it just saw that its network wasn't going to be capable to handling the additional bandwidth and wanted to pass the blame/cost onto someone else.
On the contrary, your assessment is faulty. Netflix started using Cogent as their transit provider, and this caused the links between Cogent and Comcast to become saturated. The solution was for Netflix and Comcast to setup private peering, which Comcast refused to do settlement free. Either way it would not have been "cheaper for both" to use Cogent. It would have been cheaper for Netflix.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
No. It would have been cheaper for both of them. The reason Comcast wanted to charge more is 1) because their existing infrastructure wasn't capable of handling the reduced congestion, and 2) because they're greedy fucks.