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'Netflix and Alphabet Will Need To Become ISPs, Fast' (techcrunch.com)
Following the recent official repeal of net neutrality and approval of AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, an anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via TechCrunch, written by Danny Crichton. Crichton discusses the options Alphabet, Netflix and other video streaming services have on how to respond: For Alphabet, that will likely mean a redoubling of its commitment to Google Fiber. That service has been trumpeted since its debut, but has faced cutbacks in recent years in order to scale back its original ambitions. That has meant that cities like Atlanta, which have held out for the promise of cheap and reliable gigabit bandwidth, have been left in something of a lurch. Ultimately, Alphabet's strategic advantage against Comcast, AT&T and other massive ISPs is going to rest on a sort of mutually assured destruction. If Comcast throttles YouTube, then Alphabet can propose launching in a critical (read: lucrative) Comcast market. Further investment in Fiber, Project Fi or perhaps a 5G-centered wireless strategy will be required to give it to the leverage to bring those negotiations to a better outcome.
For Netflix, it is going to have to get into the connectivity game one way or the other. Contracts with carriers like Comcast and AT&T are going to be more challenging to negotiate in light of today's ruling and the additional power they have over throttling. Netflix does have some must-see shows, which gives it a bit of leverage, but so do the ISPs. They are going to have to do an end-run around the distributors to give them similar leverage to what Alphabet has up its sleeve. One interesting dynamic I could see forthcoming would be Alphabet creating strategic partnerships with companies like Netflix, Twitch and others to negotiate as a collective against ISPs. While all these services are at some level competitors, they also face an existential threat from these new, vertically merged ISPs. That might be the best of all worlds given the shit sandwich we have all been handed this week.
For Netflix, it is going to have to get into the connectivity game one way or the other. Contracts with carriers like Comcast and AT&T are going to be more challenging to negotiate in light of today's ruling and the additional power they have over throttling. Netflix does have some must-see shows, which gives it a bit of leverage, but so do the ISPs. They are going to have to do an end-run around the distributors to give them similar leverage to what Alphabet has up its sleeve. One interesting dynamic I could see forthcoming would be Alphabet creating strategic partnerships with companies like Netflix, Twitch and others to negotiate as a collective against ISPs. While all these services are at some level competitors, they also face an existential threat from these new, vertically merged ISPs. That might be the best of all worlds given the shit sandwich we have all been handed this week.
They were fine before the FCC neutrality regs a few years ago, and they will continue to be fine now under FTC control
People act like YouTube and Netflix don't already pay ludicrous amounts for their hosting. Any deals between them and an ISP is double dipping. Fuck that.
[Cue the Jurassic Park Music]
Greed will find a way.
Despite almost every person in the world now having a common benefit for accessing a world-wide open information network - greed always find a way to add in barrier and costs wherever it can.
Greed finds a way to play groups against groups - so that large numbers in effect demand that everything become more expensive for little real benefit, other than some easily disprove set of things their leaders are saying unbacked by any science or reasoning.
Greed finds a way to find joy in cruelty a stronger motivator than any actual reason-based motivation - so that open trolling takes the place of any debate across most open forums.
Because greed fed by fear is self-reinforcing in a way that reason and actual self-interest aren't anymore.
Ryan Fenton
So how about electrical utilities and powerline? They all already go where the customers are. Most utilities already have fiber for their smart-grids. And none of that regulatory crap that holds back everyone else.
Haven't they learned the lesson of Modern American Capitalism(TM) yet? Crikey, for a tenth of the money they'd spend to start an ISP, they could just buy a few carefully chosen politicians and - voila!
Net Neutrality isn't dead, its just not being reinforced by the FCC, the FTC now owns it.
FTC will have to handle bad throttling practices by mega corps of Comcast and ATT.
Comcast offers unlimited for 50 extra a month, so they can cover that loss in the NFL/ESPN sports ball licenses...
Binge netflix all you want. I'm too busy watching twitch.
Because not every company that will get shafted by greedy ISPs will be able to just roll out their own nation-wide fiber network. Christ, spend 3 seconds thinking before you type.
Netflix and Alphabet will need to get involved with political campaigns fast!
Seriously, it's not a complex equation: promote the people that benefit you and bad mouth the ones that don't. While it may benefit me in this particular case, corporate involvement in politics still something that needs to be stopped.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Between Comcast and AT&T, they pretty much own the entirety of the Last Mile, and the only way anyone else gets to use those is if they lease them from them. Unless Google/Alphabet, Netflix, and whoever else wants to get into the infrastructure business, too, then they'll either be entirely denied by Comcast and AT&T, or they'll get price-gouged so much that there's no way they could be competitive. Then there's the problem of Comcast and AT&T having regulators and legislators more or less in their hip pockets; they'd use politics to prevent more infrastructure being built in the first place, and anything else they can get away with to stifle competition and ensure their monopolies. The problem is very far along and that asshole Pai has just made it that much worse starting now, it's a steep uphill battle from here-on out to reverse the damage and break the monopolies, if it's even possible to do. As I've said before, between this and so many other problems for the Internet in the world, we may be seeing the beginning of the end for the Internet so far as it being anything useful to anyone other than greedy corporations and nosy governments.
The solution to this is really quite simple. If these services would allow VPNs then there would be no way to throttle the services. But then the content holders would whine up a storm. It's like the are begging us to use bittorrents!
If every service provider had to run their own infrastructure just to serve their customers, there would be no point to the existence of the ISPs. The internet is for transmitting all packets regardless of source reliably. A cable company's lines only serve their own content offerings. Nobody wants to have to have a Facebook modem and a Netflix modem next to their "Internet" modem. Choosing the cable company model, over the internet model, is not just bad network design, it's a ridiculous waste of resources and open for abuse.
The current cable companies in the US are among the worst companies in existence due to their monopolies, poor customer service, high fees, arbitrary caps, unwillingness to invest in improvements, and service agreements with each other. We don't need Netflix and the other streamers becoming their obsolete enemies, just to be successful. We need the ISPs to play fairly and provide a level playing field to all participants. By force if necessary.
The amusing thing is if they actually do that they prove that the free market works and that net neutrality was holding it back.
okay, say Alphabet does built out fiber. Now there's 3 big ISPs. What does Netflix do, if Alphabet doesn't partner with them? What does Hulu do? Crunchyroll? The next streaming startup, who didn't exist when Alphabet was signing up partners?
Oh, you sweet summer child. Bless your heart.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If Comcast throttles YouTube, then Alphabet can propose launching in a critical (read: lucrative) Comcast market.
You mean like Google did to Microsoft Office with Google Docs? Years later, that's still costing MS big-time.. way more than they'll ever make from Bing. Didn't cost Google much, but it sure put MS on notice.
There's lots more where that came from.
FTC will have to handle bad throttling practices by mega corps of Comcast and ATT.
This is some clever misdirection on the part of Trump's FCC Butt-buddy Ajit Pai. The FTC has nowhere near the regulatory power to reign in the ISPs that the FCC has, and they cannot achieve anything close to the common-carrier status that the Obama-era regulations guaranteed.
To stretch an analogy to near breaking point: when ISPs once again choose to break the Internet's legs with traffic mangling, slow-lanes, site-blocking, etc. like some of them did before the Obama administration stepped in, then the FTC may (I stress *may*, because remember, the FTC too is beholden to Herr Trump) try to do the most that they can: apply a bandage. The problem is we'll need a cast, not a bandage, and only the FCC can provide that.
We're screwed, pure and simple -- even though we all want to believe we aren't, and will desperately cling to any suggestion things might not be as bad as they seem, just like an abused spouse suckered into sticking with her violent husband because he turns on the waterworks when she threatens to leave ... until the next beating. Which is about what our relationship with the Trump administration has become.
which means the death of Cox, Spectrum and others.
Don't believe me? Who uses Cox (or Spectrum) to see that SPECIFIC content?
No one.
Hell, cable companies couldn't get people to watch their own cable TV shows...you think suddenly cable companies are going to be start being great content providers? Nope. That's why cable companies PAY cable stations to carry their content.
Now...thanks to this....Google and NetFlix can offer Cox special deals to allow them to carry Youtube and NetFlix at a faster rate....or lose subscribers to competitors if they don't.
Let's say, for instance, that Google maintains its current stance, which is: limited (and dwindling) rollout of Google Fiber.
Thus, there will be no real threat from Google
No threat. Well that opens the door to higher prices for consumers
So keep believing your speculation that Google might increase its fiber footprint to perhaps threaten parity with the ISPs, in the hopes that that will make this all go away. Don't forget to click your heels together three times.
Google changes its mind and abandons projects all the time. Don't be surprised when it happens again. Enjoy your shit sandwich.
Slashdot is now apparently just siphoning off HN's front page, just about half a day late.
Might as well read HN (but never comment there, because their moderation system blows more goats than Reddit and Voat combined.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
People act like YouTube and Netflix don't already pay ludicrous amounts for their hosting. Any deals between them and an ISP is double dipping.
Seems to me that we, the consumer suckers, are the ones getting double-dipped. I was pretty clearly under the impression that I already pay for high-speed internet access, including YouTube, Netflix, ...
You really do love being ass fucked by corporations don’t you SuperKunt.
It is more likely you would get a situation like this;
Step 1
Alphabet threatens Comcast. Comcast board sees it's profits/share price going down which impacts their bonus. Board tells Alphabet to jump and charges them the maximum they can legally get away with then they take part of that money and hire lawyers(eg;community groups) to object to everything Alphabet does.
Step 2
After five or six more years (maybe ten) Alphabet looks like it is going to get somewhere so, before the profits go down, the old board members leave with their sterling reputations and fat pockets having raked it in from both sides for a decade.
Step 3
Alphabet is in the market! Yay! Unfortunately they have spend so much money that they need to keep their prices high to protect their investment.
Benefit to consumer....zero.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Google Fiber is not coming to your neighborhood no matter how much you might wish it to be true, Danny Crichton.
#DeleteChrome
Netflox is Boring & Alphabet has a lot more invested they don't need an ISP.
We know how AT&T handles this sort of thing with TV networks.
Next week, you'll go to Netflix.com and they'll start showing modal popups saying AT&T has decided to deny access to Netflix in a few weeks, and to call AT&T and let them know how you feel.
Three weeks later, you'll go to Netflix.com and get a certificate error: bad CNAME. Users who are idiots enough to click through the errors will see a marketing-crafted propaganda video about how Netflix has chosen not to share their content anymore with AT&T subscribers, and to call Netflix and let them know how you feel.
Invariably, this will occur right when some major season finale is supposed to air.
The Internet should be a utility. It should just be metered and paid for by the consumers, who should be able to freely change their caps. Who cares how they use the bandwidth they pay for?
I agree, more competition in the realm of internet service provision is indeed sorely needed. However, what's missing from Danny's analysis is the regime uncertainty related to a potential congressional act to bring back Net Neutrality. If I were Google, I would be very cautious about sinking billions of dollars into building out rival network infrastructure if there's still a real possibility that you can wrest some control of existing infrastructure. Net Neutrality is the cheapest and most effective option for Google, hence their staunch support of it. We will not see anything approaching free-market competition while so many people believe that there needs to be a "right to internet access" that the government should ensure.
When they are neutral they are fine. The aggressors will be destroyed by the consumer and their brands ruined.
The trouble is the aggressors are going to seem like they are the ones giving a discount.
Fuck the lot of them. Fuck you silicon valley douche bags. Have some sympathy for us onion farmers.
The Netflix app is shipped on every new Comcast DVR. Seems like they have been negotiating fine.
In reality what will happen are deals behind closed doors the public plays no part in.
You will not be given the opportunity to vote with your wallet. Why that would mean giving you a voice and vote!
You will be silenced and stomped upon.
The feet in the free market are all fleeing from the foot of the giant that stomps them to death.
CAPTCHA: whisks (away your fantasy)
Right but they don't have to. The point is there will be more competition, and then they can compete on factors like ... gasp... being content neutral. However some people might prefer cheaper but more restricted pipes, like the "social media package + wikipedia" for $20/mo instead of $60 for totally unrestricted internet.
It isn't required for EVERY site to become their own ISP, only enough to finally seed some competition and give consumers meaningful choices.
Owning content might be a really bad business move for an ISP. It makes them competitors. Being an ISP with only customers/viewers is better. Everyone wants to be your buddy because you aren't a threat.
Have gnu, will travel.
If this article was correct, then Verizon stock would be up 10-20%. It was down 3% today.
How is ANY of that a shit sandwich for people that matter - we the consumers?
Alphabet buys Comcast and AT&T. Trump fires anyone who threatens to block the merger. Game fucking over.
Oh please. Any ISP that does not deliver Netflix well will continue to blame it on Netflix and comfortably expect 99% of their customers to believe it without so much as blinking an eye.
Net Neutrality could very well be the thing that ends America's tech dominance. Hosting Web hosting can now move off shore to locations where bandwidth is cheaper. It's going to look mighty tempting to host content in other countries.
Alphabet buys Comcast and AT&T. Trump fires anyone who threatens to block the merger. Game fucking over.
How is that game over?
It still would improve on the current situation, where both AT&T and Comcast suck horribly and are the only (single) options for most consumers across various markets. Or am I wrong to say that? How would an Alphabet takeover of either one not improve things for consumers immeasurably?
I mean, I was seriously considering moving to a Google Fiber (sorry, Alphabet Fiber) market. I can't tell you how delighted I would be to have Alphabet replace Comcast which is currently my ONLY real broadband choice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everyone is worried that ISPs will start charging more money for faster content. So, Netflix should beat them to the punch. Netflix should create NIPP (Netflix ISP Partner Program), where partners pledge to not charge customers more money for decent bandwidth, and that they will not charge Netflix a premium transit fee to keep from slowing them down. ISPs that don't sign up for NIPP get videos to their IP space automatically downgraded to a lower quality. If it is impossible to get full resolution videos on Comcast, you can bet I'll be moving to AT&T Fiber, or Sonic, or somebody who is partnered with Netflix.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Any ISP that does not deliver Netflix well will continue to blame it on Netflix
Netflix viewers will not care what anyone says, what they will DO is take whatever action they need to improve Netflix access - including greater use of wireless, or even moving.
Yes Netflix is now that much a force.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Netflix can't do this, because they actually charge fees, and it would be bad publicity, but Youtube could easily stop serving videos for a day to any non paying viewer, and instead send them to their congressman to fix the situation. If Youtube did this once, instant fix for them and everyone else. And these idiots would get the thing the Romans knew, keep the public fed with entertainment if you like the way things work for you now.
This merger is only the beginning of the end. Between this, Net Neutrality getting canned and the EU's broken mandates regarding the internet......
Yeah, it was fun while it lasted.
Now we'll have AT&T Net, Comcast Net, Verizon Net, and you can bet they absolutely do not want to talk to each other, or have their customers streaming content from their competitors.
Wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not, the ground work began for this with NN getting kicked to the curb. Now that the gloves are off, these big conglomerates can strangle the internet however they please.
The reason we need net neutrality to begin with is the telcos and cablecos leveraged government granted monopolies for their telephone/cable services and used them for their new internet service. They successfully prevented new ISPs from entering their markets by barring use of the infrastructure already in place and the new ISPs were barred from running their own by said government mandate. Had the government repealed the mandate to allow other entities to negotiate running their own cable perhaps your argument would be valid. But since the mandate is still in place and existing ISP companies are spending billions lobbying state governments to keep any competition out we end up here with content providers also being the gatekeepers to subscribers. We've already seen the result. Netflix offered to save AT&T millions of dollars by placing content delivery network (CDN) servers inside AT&T's network. This would have alleviated hundreds of terabytes of traffic through the backbone. AT&T refused for years and Netflix subscribers on AT&T (Verizon too) got buffering signals frequently. Then when enough AT&T customers complained about it AT&T told Netflix they could alleviate the buffering by paying AT&T a toll! Why? Because AT&T has their own PPV content they want to sell and Netflix is a competitor to that service. The Time Warner acquisition will only increase the animosity to third party content providers. AT&T's only real competition to their ISP is Comcast or Charter (Spectrum) depending on what market it is. Alphabet and any other company looking to become an ISP still has an uphill battle in the majority of US states with local municipalities going to war against state government to get permission to let them in.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
He should be IMPEACHED over this. I suspect a Russian-Comcast tie. It may unfold in the weeks to come.
-=Beau=-
I cancelled Netflix and it felt great. Not supporting Obamas new platform.
comcast can pull an ATT and block steaming on some plans just like how ATT blocked facetime on some data plans.
What Netflix DOES, my dear child, is play the three off against each other since it has the most desirable online resource in America, and any ISP that does not deliver it well is open to customers being poached by other ISP's (or even wireless carriers if they can deliver a decent base video quality).
Netflix might have the power to do this... smaller companies do NOT.
It's also a pretty big assumption that Alphabet/Google would compete with Comcast or Verizon everywhere. More likely they'll start gradually adding a market here and a market there like they were before. There will likely still be a large portion of Americans with only one "choice" of realistic ISP for a long time to come.
And if it weren't for regulatory capture at the local level eliminating competition that wouldn't even be an issue.
dateline 2019 Winter is coming but not for Comcast subs. Game of thrones season 8 is starting but comcast subs are unable to watch on tv or on hbo now and on comcast network going HBO.com just get pushed to some ATT website. ATT says it's about playing fair and that Comcast has been offered a deal.
Comcast says ATT is wants to have other NBC owned stuff as part of the HBO deal and We just want the deal to be about HBO like how it's been since 1972
No need to mod down. It was intended as a joke.
The most effective option giving the longest benefits would actually be eliminating regulatory capture at the state level.
Look, Net Neutrality is the Law of the Land in CA, OR, WA, and a few other states.
They can just walk away from the unprofitable other states and let you freeze in the net dark.
All the profit is in the West.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
TFS says:
--
If Comcast throttles YouTube, then Alphabet can propose launching in a critical.
--
Alternatively, YouTube could display that fact, honestly, with text such as:
--
Comcast is degrading the quality of this video.
To speak to Comcast about that, call them at Call (866) 828-4407
For full quality YouTube videos, you can switch to LocalISP.net
--
Most of Comcast's customers use YouTube, so they'd get calls from a million customers within hours.
I select my ISP based on Netflix performance.
If netflix performance is bad, the ISP performance will be bad.
I don't want to subscribe to stale static, commercial-laden content to watch netflix.
VPNs are also a good idea. I use 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 as my DNS anyway.
I still have netflix DVD, and handbrake, and a few 4TB drives.
a VPN and bittorrent takes care of the reset.
I can always "Borrow" cable from the neighbors.
Not every company can do a lot of things. Do you cry for them too or do you just champion what works for you and cry like a child until it's a company you like then cheer them on for being pricks to those that don't have the resources to compete?
You're probably one of the assholes that cheered on a number of companies without regard to what happened to others.
When everyone sees the abuses the Everyone will Anonymous and make the Businesses who do a living Hell.
How is it a shit sandwich? Lets start with no choice of cable provider. ISPs should never have been allowed to buy content producers/providers.
Because less incentive for net neutrality is bad. How you hope companies respond to less incentive is irrelevant to the point that regulation removes the requirement for hope. Net nuetrality good. Laws increasing good things good.
Hope they rot
Couldn't Netflix create a VPN endpoint service for the streaming devices to connect to, and then access the Netflix content near the VPN? Comcast/AT&T won't know what is in the traffic to throttle it. Does Comcast/AT&T then begin to throttle or block endpoint IPs?
Fuck Netflix and fuck Alphabet. They both run streaming video platforms, which are the bread and butter of anti-neutral "fast lanes", so what is to stop them from running their own non-neutral ISPs that favour themselves?
Elon Musk, please launch your satellites. You're the only one who can save us.
So in other words the major tech companies finally realize how the internet works and all the fanatic basement dwellers If your getting stiffed by an upstream carrier just route around them. This is how a free market is supposed to work and how the internet is supposed to work.
Yeah I live in BFE. I can choose between cable, dsl, satellite or LTE or a wireless ISP. I have 5 choices living 20 miles from the nearest town.
However some people might prefer cheaper but more restricted pipes, like the "social media package + wikipedia" for $20/mo instead of $60 for totally unrestricted internet.
Have you ever tried to use social media without being able to follow off-site links? Nobody wants this except the social media sites.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The so called net neutrality is nothing more than government control. The internet prospered tremendously before obumma. It is called competition. The best service for the lowest cost will prevail.
Fine. Let small companies either pay for their bandwidth or stop using so much. Let their investors raise more money or go out of business. If I as a consumer wish to have their content, I can choose to pay for it. What I DO NOT want is a socialist system which FORCES ME to pay for their business model.
That which is free is wasted. Should be taught in 3rd grade or at least econ 101.
What is is taught in 3rd grade is that you get what you pay for. You already pay for bandwidth, the content provider also pays for bandwidth. Now they just have to pay more so they won't be slowed down. How in the world are you thinking any of this is about anyone getting anything for free? The ISPs get more money though.
Socialism is not forcing competition or having reasonable rules such as getting what you pay for.
I live in a country with net neutrality, it means I pay for X amount of data, 250 GBs in my case. How I use that data is up to me. I can watch cat videos all day from joes_cat_video.com or Netflix. Either way costs the same for both me and my ISP.
Why does it cost Americans more to stream 720 Netflix then the 8k video from joes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
So who want to be the lucky one guessing the reasons behind "Google Fiber cutbacks"?
A hint: it starts with "regu" and ends with "lations"
So in the end companies once again compete instead of collude....
What are you? A zombie Reagan?
"Compete"? How quaint!
"Collude"? Why bother? They will merge...
The only viable solution is to eliminate the need for an ISP. Internet, water, electricity, etc should be a public works program. But nobody, least of all the damn voters, want to deal with the necessary oversight.
Oh, and good drive by there. Your dead cat got lots of attention...
The only part of the network missing for some of these giant companies is the last mile - to the consumer.
Their backbone of already vastly beyond even most tier-1 ISPs.
"Alphabet creating strategic partnerships with companies like Netflix, Twitch and others to negotiate as a collective"
if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for their workers.
the rich get richer.
the powerful gain even more.
film at 11.
if they fuck with the internet just end them and send a message. make these fucks fear for their lives as the price for fucking over millions of people.
They could send shows on DVDs by USPS to customers instead.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a mail truck full of DVDs.
Because in many places there is ONLY 1 ISP and they can do whatever they want. They will now double the price and half the speed, and then ask you for even more to get back what you already had.
What about my right to fire my guns anywhere and anytime I want? You may not need to get out of the way, since you can wear body armour or a tank suit, but I shouldn't have to look before shooting. Or stop even if I see you.
That is freedom. Or did you mean freedoms for you and not for me?
Disney is the eventual Netflix competitor. They've already announced pulling their content deals from Netflix to go it on their own. Comcast has already tried to buy Disney, perhaps in anticipation of the end of net neutrality. Now would be a very good time to revive that discussion. They could go from positioning to be a strong Netflix competitor to a position of dominance overnight.
"... is as old as civilization (truth tables are). The sorcerors of antiquity called this language spells, but if that offends your modern sensibilities you can call it a program" https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12229650&cid=56781352/ - the sourcecode that SHAPES REALITY (thru force of will & the GREATEST POWER, knowledge). I harness energy drawn from OTHER PARTS of the INTERNET MULTIVERSE (for real) to cast spells, to create shields (no weapons) to MAKE MAGIC..."
* :)
Giving you those shields & WARP SPEED too in more ways than ANY other competing method, period...
( You like? Bet ya do - & question since you're ITALIAN - ever seen "D'oic a Maloc"? I have...)
APK
P.S.=> Big INFLUENCE on me that last part - & hope you enjoy what you tried (it works, bigtime & better/more efficiently/faster)... apk
See subject & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6JFVQfwp8/ + my other reply to you https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12229688&cid=56781466/
* :)
(... & like I said there? Enjoy... it rocks)
APK
P.S.=> LIKE ME, lol... apk
Except for the part where last-mile cabling is a natural monopoly. Fix that, and then I'd agree with you.
They do pay for their bandwidth, just like everyone else on the internet. Net neutrality, when done right, says they shouldn't have to pay twice for bandwidth just because the isp's CEO's daughter got a bad review for her restaurant. That sort of favoritism has no place in a capitalist, competitive society.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Because if the increase means another wire run to every house, it will mean expensive service.
I am (slightly) hopeful that 5g will offer a low overhead deployment option for at least dense areas.
There's a company doing line of sight wireless in my city, but I don't think they'll make it, I have two spots within range, but blocked by trees, I'm willing to bet they only cover around 50% of their "covered" area (I'm not is an area so full of trees or low laying ground).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Because in many places there is ONLY 1 ISP and they can do whatever they want. They will now double the price and half the speed, and then ask you for even more to get back what you already had.
Many areas? Probably. It's a big country. But here's the kicker: 4G Wireless is "good enough" in many cases for a good video/OTT phone internet experience (and, let's face it, video is what consumers want here...). The vast majority of America that's not completely rural has reasonable competition for internet service when you add in wireless providers and maybe a MiFi device.
Is it as good as the cable vs DSL competition at par we had in the dot-com era? No, it's not. Is it good enough? Pretty much.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I swear 95% of the arguments and complaints and "let's mess with the business model!" movements are complaints from Comcast customers about Comcast.
As a former ISP employee who doesn't live in a Comcast area, complaints about how your ISP's service sucks is not a persuasive argument for how the rest of the industry has to function. I'm really sorry, but if you have a problem with your cable monopoly, take it up with your local representatives to find a solution. Or switch services to something else.
Plenty of the rest of us think this is a workable solution for dealing with the fact that Netflix and Youtube can something comprise almost half of all domestic internet data traffic during peak periods. Running any size ISP isn't cheap, and your ISP horror story doesn't mandate changes everywhere else.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
As another has state, the last mile is a natural monopoly. And that would require the cities to own it and lease it out for any real competition to exist. Which we refuse to do even if the taxpayers fund it.
Also, much of that regulatory capture happens at the state level which is why you see cities and counties banned from running their own internet when the ISP's refuse to do their jobs and the national level where you have people trying to repeal Net Neutrality and strip away consumer protections.
You have to actually have the cities own that last mile or you won't have any real competition and you have to remove the state and national capture before you ever hope to do anything else at the local level.
If it's a natural monopoly, how come I have four different hard-wired ISP options (Cable, two fiber offerings, one DSL) at my suburban house? Did someone forget to send them all the memo?
It's typically only a monopoly if at some point the government prevented any competition to allow their favored choice to have all the customers. Nothing "natural" about that.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
To respond in kind: if it's not a natural monopoly, how do you not have dozens of choices? I have a choice of something like 50 ISPs.
Perhaps calling it a "naturally monopolistic market", or a "natural oligopoly" would be more to your taste. The point is that there's a high barrier to entry due to the costs of physically sticking cables in the ground, and getting rid of anti-competition regulation doesn't make those costs go away.
So, in other words, NN is gone and none of the bad things people were predicting have come to pass yet.
Wake me up when this isn't all much ado about nothing.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
A monopoly literally means one single option, hence "mono" in the word.
Every business has barriers to entry. Typically, regulatory capture by industry incumbents (which is what happens when a regulator like the FCC micro-manages what's allowed) increases barriers to entry in that industry. Comcast or whatever can afford to comply with whatever paperwork/weird rules the FCC comes up with. A single-guy sharing bandwidth with his neighbors can't hope to.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Well the post I responded to said, "What I DO NOT want is a socialist system which FORCES ME to pay for their business model. " in reference to Netflix, which seems to be a common idea that they're subsidizing Netflix.
As for the future, favouritism is very likely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Alright, this bullshit is gone so far out of hand, it looks like some fucking cartoon. The Retard-o-meter is about to expode.
Time to take our government back from the hands of corporations, demand full reinstatement of Net-neutrality with additional protections incase everything is about to fly off of the rails again, and for fucks sake, stop electing people like Donald Trump, who BTW does not give a rats ass about anyone, including his suporters as he just uses everyone any way he can to inflate his own power, wealth, and ego, and will discard them in an instant when they are no longer useful (look how he used Catlyn Jenner during the electorial race).
Have you ever considered why that last mile is a monopoly?
Your city sold you out so it could have a telephone, and then cable service.
There is no need for just one set of wires to go to your house. An empty pipe that any company can ram a cable into word do.
But no, YOU like the power of government and they used it to get you pics to your idiot tube a few years earlier than they would have come naturally.
And now, rather than realize the mistake, most just want more of the same damn abuse. More government to solve a problem government made for you.
Stop giving them the gun, suck up the fact that it's gonna be tough for a bit weaning yourself away from the government solutions and just maybe the market will run that empty pipe to your house.
Or why not roll the dice a third time? Maybe this time you'll finally roll doubles!
Posting as AC because I work for Google.
Netflix and YouTube and Vimeo and Hulu and ... are enjoyed around the world. Many of these companies make arrangements with ISPs to host front end content caching servers in ISP data centers to give users lower latency access to streams. Users with money choose between ISPs in their region based on which provides better content delivery.
Assume for a moment that the article headline is right and that performance will deteriorate (in a local US market, because the FCC doesn't change the laws in Europe, for example) if content companies don't own the last mile. What are the consequences? Let's do a user story.
Joe is an ISP employee. Joe's friend Doug invites Joe and his family to their house for dinner and a movie. The kids meanwhile play in the den with their electronics. Doug uses ISP high speed internet, and while the friends are there, YouTube fails to work. The children are upset, and come upstairs because they can't watch their latest YouTuber friend's stream in Fortnite because the network is so crappy. Doug tells Joe this is becoming more frequent, and he has been thinking about ditching ISP for ISP2 high speed that just got installed in their neighborhood, because all the neighbors are getting a better deal and faster networking.
When ISPs don't provide, the people with real money to spend on their ISP (parents) don't screw around. We move to the best one. It takes me less than 2 months from the first time I have a problem before my bill is settled and I have a new ISP. I don't have time or money to waste on companies that screw me or my children over.
My parents are in a different boat. They are business owners. When their ISP fails to deliver, the ISP can lose more than one home customer. As an ISP, you don't really know which of your customers you can screw over without losing a much more valuable account. In both of these cases, whether it be children or business owners, one bad experience of one customer account translates to a switch of a different customer account.
And one of the ways google can compete with Comcast is offering better service to the other 3rd parties Comcast att etc won't. The reality is a more competitive market place will ultimately be better for consumers. We need to work on ending the franchise and exclusivity agreements that keep others out not just add more regulation on top which is what NN always was. Good riddance to bad rubish
It's a disaster for consumers. You want to watch Netflix... ok get your service from this provider. You want to watch TV... get an extra service from that other provider. If you love TV bundles and having to buy a bunch of extra crap to see what you want, you're going to love this.
Do you mean to tell me that repealing net neutrality will create more competition for Internet service and lower prices for consumers?!?!?
SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!
I thought the repeal of net neutrality (which really wasn't even net neutrality at all) was THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT????
Now you're telling me we're going to have MORE choices for Internet access? THE HORROR!
telcos and cablecos leveraged government granted monopolies for their telephone/cable services and used them for their new internet service. ...
Had the government repealed the mandate to allow other entities to negotiate running their own cable perhaps your argument would be valid.
Solution for bad government interference is MORE government interference. Yet, in the middle of the rant you ADMIT that removing government interference would have fixed it up. I guess you are making money off the bribes to politicians to keep it in place. Its the only reasonable conclusion to support more regulation when regulation is the issue.
Glad you cleared up that you support corruption.
I WISH I had 4. I've got 2. ATT (6mb DSL) or Comcast (not much better and I have NEVER had good dealings with Comcast). Same thing in the place I am living now and the place I just left just 7 miles away. BOTH within city limits. I know other people that have only 1 choice, Comcast. This being the 3rd largest city in the state.
Because not every company that will get shafted by greedy ISPs will be able to just roll out their own nation-wide fiber network
That doesn't make sense to roll out nation-wide fiber when you're just going to throttle it back to T1 speeds...
We'll make great pets
"SuperKendall" in dickhead opinion shocker.
The reason why Google Fiber rollout did not happen as expected, and Alphabet eventually got tired of the whole thing is exactly because of the corporations they are supposed to be fighting against. Redoubling efforts won't do much because ISPs already win this game. And they were forcing the end of net neutrality with this in mind.
Just search back and read Google's statements on why Fiber didn't go as planned. You'll see articles and comments about ISPs blocking and delaying as much as possible access to infrastructure to lay down cables and whatnot.
The game for Netflix and Google to play here, like it or not, is to wait for ISPs to get even more greedy, unpopular, start using net neutrality to their own benefit, burn the house down, and only then start offering alternatives at a bigger cost which will enable using some different tech like 5G or something else.
Here is the problem. _I_ pay for bandwidth and I have every right to expect and demand that all of the traffic I request be delivered to me with the same priority. If my ISP is making it difficult to access any site because they are slowing down traffic from it's servers or speeding up traffic from someone else. I as a customer can should and will complain. Further, if I don't have a choice about ISP's it is time to make the ISP fight a million little anti-trust suits.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
You're replying to SuperKendall, a cursory glance at his posting history would have revealed that he has never, ever taken more than 2 second to think about anything.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
We are going to have to have different internet providers to get different content. Fuck that.
No doubt. On top of that, there seems to be a lack of awareness here. The Telcos etc. are bad enough, I wouldn't entrust my puppy to Google, Amazon, or Netflix, let alone literally everything I do online. Give me a break. They are all cut from the same cloth. The saddest thing to me about this whole thing is that the conversation wasn't even about you or I, everyday people were erased from it long ago. The web already belongs to corporations, regardless of who is controlling the pipes.
Willfully obtuse.
Last Mile isn't a hard situation to understand. If Crapcast already has your area wired for cable, it means it has a huge edge over any would-be competitor as they can go on making money with their own wires while the competitor has to make a massive investment that wont pay off for years, at best. The other part your ignoring is the fact that market consolidation will naturally lead to buyouts and mergers, leaving you with less than a handfull of players in the end, anyway.
Three different types of wires, that's why.
You need to do more to defend this claim. You trot it out every time there's a story about network neutrality, but I haven't seen you make a thorough defense (maybe you have, and I've just missed it) and one is really called for here because this claim is not at all intuitive.
What you seem to be implying is that regulatory capture is the only barrier to competition, and that without this barrier a significant number of competitors will spring up out of nowhere with the hundreds of billions of dollars that it takes to create new last-mile networks. This, despite the fact that a third of Americans still have no broadband, thus no regulatory capture, and thus, according to you, no barrier to entry.
And that ignores the other problem that removing such regulation would create.
So... if you're going to just state this as though it were a given, I would like to see a little more backing it up.
Government regulations always have uninted consequences. Naming a book full of beurocratic language "net neutrality" doesn't make the regulations in the book good.
Corporations usually lime regulation that benefits them. Lack of regulation is usually good for consumers.
Of there is no free market in the ISP business then the regulations which caused it to disappear should also be removed.
Great, when do Americans get Net Neutrality?
Dear Jealous JOWIE my ac stalker you were born wrong (lol) & you get no sex. You DO bow to me as you've never even written "Hello World" for a program.
SysAdmins? Pfah, lol - mere USERS with a BETTER PASSWORD only, nothing more, & HELPLESS minus guys like myself in programmers (who usually have NETWORK WIDE ADMIN RIGHTS to write enterprise class systems as I have STUPID fuck that you are OR we can't write & test them otherwise) who write what those LIMITED STOOGE "SysAdmin" WANNABES MERELY USE (inescapable fact).
1 law I know is I can say ANYTHING I WANT to an UNIDENTIFIABLE no good "ne'er-do-well" DO NOTHING anonymous "weezil" like YOU & get away with it as you STALK ME by your UNIDENTIFIABLE "courageous" (not) you anonymous posts, worm OR when you IMPERSONATE me showing us all how WEAK you are as the not man soyboy whimp that you are (lol, you're too STUPID to EVER get the best of me & you KNOW it (or @ least NOW your dull brain does)).
APK
P.S.=> PUNY Inferior WORM that you are with your SHOCKINGLY LIMITED doltish BRAIN, lmao... apk
Well i think once you have one fiber ISP then everyone is forced to come up to speed. I believe i have 4 gigabit options (since I believe my zip has both comcast and centurylink fiber service) and I can get municipal fiber and also gigabit cable.
But if there's no real competition then the existing ISPs don't seem to care.
Netflix is entrenched and large enough that ISPs have to negotiate with them. If anything the loss of Net Neutrality will be a win for them as it'll create a further barrier for entry for new competitors in their space.
Losing NN will hurt the people that might try to unthrone netflix or google, it won't hurt netflix or google.
I'd love to see content monopolists like google
What content does Google have a monopoly on? Virtually everything they do is offered by one or more competitors in some form or another. In fact, the only thing I can think of is the Usenet archive they brought into Google Groups. Other than that... What?
Any one who blames everyday Americans for world wars that happened well before they were born is the true arrogant prick with an air of superiority common to most Europeans and thouroughly mocked by us.
Stop with the whole consumer thing (and also retail stores calling customers "guests.")
It's a monopoly in my community: 1 choice for cable internet, 1 choice for DSL (which is about 40% of the speed of cable internet). Or, I suppose, you could go with a satellite. In short, it may not be a monopoly everywhere, but in many places, for all practical purposes, it is.
The incumbent ISPs are the ones fighting tooth and nail to keep their monopoly franchise agreeements.
With neither Net Neutrality nor any meaningful competition amongst ISPs, the consumer is well and truly fucked.
Ssh, grown ups are talking.
So, in other words, NN is gone and none of the bad things people were predicting have come to pass yet.
Wake me up when this isn't all much ado about nothing.
It's only been a few days. Give them some time to figure out the best way to squeeze the most money out of their captives...er...customers.
How is two low latency broadband options a monopoly?
Because not every company that will get shafted by greedy ISPs will be able to just roll out their own nation-wide fiber network
That doesn't make sense to roll out nation-wide fiber when you're just going to throttle it back to T1 speeds...
Tell that to Comcast...
I think it was Comcast not AT&T that did that to Netflix, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was both.
horror vacui
You are severely lacking the details to even discuss this issue.
This, mod up.
Cable:
TV networks, previously privately owned, given public tax money (despite what the companies want to claim about doing things 'at their own expense') at a regional level to expand their service in those areas as well as utility-like dispensations for use of public right-of-way, land-use, etc.. Contracts bidded and offered to the winner for issuing the public tax money and the utility rights. Until the 1996 Telecom act in the USA, cable companies were categorized as non-essential and so not regulated as common carriers with inter-state standards.
DSL:
Common Carrier networks, regulated since the 1934 telecom act as an interstate carrier with standards for data transit nation-wide. Given public tax money and "true" utility dispensations for use of right-of-ways, poles, attachment to external networks, and so forth
With the telecom act of 1996, both of these networks were re-categorized as basically 'data' networks rather than being recognized as seperate types of networks with divided regulations. The history of the different ownership of the networks meant that there had been dual rollouts of both cable and common carrier networks. In other words, cities and regions had contracted for both types of networks locally and given them public tax money to help the rollouts as separate entities. This is why most areas in the nation have both. They wrere "monopolies" within their realms of category since regions did not want multiple line rollouts and since hte rollouts required public funding, did not want to simply hand tax money to any compnay that cam knocking.
Fiber:
Rollouts of fiber occur in similar ways to the Cable rollouts. They are not listed as common carrier (which is a big reason ATT and others want everyone to switch to fiber, and why they're basically letting their copper networks rot). Very few regions have multiple, physical fiber rollouts. It's usually coming from the "cable company" doing a fiber rollout and the previous common-carrier company doing a fiber rollout, or even places where the city owns the fiber and rents the use to competing services at cost (The best idea in the first place).
IN strongly suspect that your two "fiber" options are the cable company, the old phone company, or Google fiber.
Recent competitive offerings like Google fiber, again despite claims, were hardly privately funded. Free usr of land, free use of right-of-ways, contructions of power and building facilities at the local region's cost, cable-laying at the region's cost, and so on. Google got alot of free stuff from the public to help roll out the fiber.
So.. surprise, all telecom rollouts in the US have had major public-funding and facilities subsidies. There are no entirely private competitors.
When you care enough about it to vote on it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For me, there are about three cable channels we use in my house, and only one that personally tune to. If that channel were likely to disappear because the company I pay to get it is going to stop carrying it, that's relevant to me. I would want to know of I was losing the one channel I watch.
What I just said may not be clear. One time I saw an ad like that. It was referencing losing a different channel. If I'm watching the History Channel, I probably don't care about whether OWN is available or not. So don't tell me "you could lose the Oprah Winfrey Network" with an ad on History.
On the other hand, if I'm watching History, I probably do care whether History is available. I do want to know in that case.
Try $60 for the social media package and $180 for unrestricted.
I think we tried that, and our supreme overlords faked a DDoS attack and bots entered fake posts. Color me skeptical on a clean vote coming through.
Great, when do Americans get Net Neutrality?
As soon as we throw those corrupt bums out of the government and get some regulators with half a brain. Don't hold your breath.
I'd be delighted to have more ISPs. My question is about how small content providers who are not ISPs handle the situation.
Netflix does have a pretty decent bargaining position. You have not addressed the smaller scale players, however, and I brought them up specifically because Netflix does have the advantage of an existing large following. Hulu has an existing following as well, but not as large; Crunchyroll smaller yet, and the hypothetical upcoming startup has of course none.
It sounds like "natural oligopoly" would indeed be more to your taste then.
You're right that regulatory capture also tends to raise the barrier to entry, and that's obviously a problem, but let's not pretend that it's the only barrier to entry involved in doing last-mile telecommunications. You can fix the regulatory capture issue, but burying thousands of miles of fibre is still inherently going to be expensive -- that's the "natural" part (as opposed to the regulatory capture, which obviously isn't natural).
Unfortunately 4G is really limited to the big city's. I service a lot of rural areas and am lucky to get 3G which is great for a phone call but horrible for data. Many places you get no phone service at all. Get away from the major cities in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas and you will see just what I mean. Cable TV companies came into a lot of these small towns because they could easily sell TV to everyone and make money. Now that they are the only game in town they provide Internet for $150, $200, and in one place $350 a month.
You keep using that word, socialism. It does not mean whatever it is you think it means.
When I say, "care enough to vote on it," I mean, will you vote against your senator if he opposes net neutrality? The reality is most people don't care, and of the ones who do care, a good chunk oppose net neutrality (because they oppose regulation of all types).
The FCC request for comments wasn't an election, obviously.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The problem here is that the AT&T/Time Warner merger reinforces a vertical offering that makes it more difficult for new entrants into the market.
Legislation should be introduced that prohibits a cable company from providing anything more than the physical cables, prevent companies providing Internet access from also owning cables/content and to prohibit content providers from also being in the business of providing cables, etc. There's not much that can be done to increase competition at the physical level because of the huge cost in deploying infrastructure.
On top of that, the company providing physical connectivity must be required to charge all ISPs the same unit cost per dwelling, so that an ISP that has 100 customers gets the same per-capita bill as an ISP with 1,000,000 customers. This opens up the Internet service layer to competition from many.
Finally, both ISPs and "cable companies" must provide Internet service without favour or priority to individual content providers.
Google has a monopoly on search, and thus detailed profiles of their users. Via their free Gmail, they have unique insights into people that Facebook would like a larger slice of. YouTube provides more... their browser and OS give them even more details.
But Facebook has a monopoly in certain content... theoretically. Every user has to give Facebook consent to use, in perpetuity, anything they upload, in order to use their platform. G+ did not do that, IIRC.
Videos, pics, STORIES (fact or fiction), random literature, etc... anything Facebook thinks they can profit from, they will.
Just like Amazon and their popup stores inside Whole Foods featuring new Kindles and the Echo. Uggg, no thanks. I'm not a cantaloupe and I'll not be buying them from you anymore...lost my appetite.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
maybe one of you stupid lazy fat americans should leave the schoolchildren alone and go shoot Pai and his crew in the head, instead?
( or better yet, rout all of the corrupt government and their corporate masters )
perhaps time for a civil war, take back what is yours?
America, Inc.
Land of the Fee!
Home of the Slave!
ps -- the entire world is ashamed of what you've become.
My distinction wasn't that some (many?) areas have a single reasonable provider and hence a local monopoly, it was that Internet access isn't a "natural monopoly".
Typically, at some point the government gave someone an exclusive and set them up to not have to compete. That's changed somewhat since they forced many local communities to loosen the rules, but we're still seeing the results of that head start in many places.
Eventually, if someone doesn't get in the way, we'll see technological innovation over time overcome that previous initial advantage.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
None of those things you've listed are Google monopolies.
There are numerous other options for search, email, video hosting,