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US Telcos Are Slowing Internet Traffic To and From Popular OTT Apps Like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video, New Research Finds (bloomberg.com)
The largest U.S. telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix, according to new research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bloomberg: The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by about 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services are being throttled when and by whom, in what likely is the single largest running study of its kind. Among U.S. wireless carriers, YouTube is the No. 1 target of throttling, where data speeds are slowed, according to the data. Netflix's video streaming service, Amazon.com's Prime Video and the NBC Sports app have been degraded in similar ways, according to David Choffnes, one of the study's authors who developed the Wehe app. From January through early May, the app detected "differentiation" by Verizon Communications Inc. more than 11,100 times, according to the study. This is when a type of traffic on a network is treated differently than other types of traffic. Most of this activity is throttling. AT&T Inc. did this 8,398 times and it was spotted almost 3,900 times on the network of T-Mobile US and 339 times on Sprint's network, the study found.
And they had no plans for paid prioritization.
I'm so glad that the ISPs and the Administration didn't lie to us. And I'm glad that this all benefits me, the consumer, and allows me to get my money's worth.
After all, paying $50 a month for 1.5 Mbps down/.25 up at AT&T and having people in Third World shithole countries laugh at my connection let's me know that America and our Capitalist system is the best in the World!
I can just vote with my dollars and have no internet connection. Because of our free markets, I have the same number of choices as a communist country - and the privilege of paying more for less service.
Trump! Making America Great Again!
FCC should be regulating to make sure that the telecoms are providing enough bandwidth and interconnection to meet the demand. Those are technical issues.
FTC should be regulating the business practices to make sure that telecoms which have regional monopoly power are not using that power to extend their monopolies or colluding to restrain trade in violation of the law.
Meanwhile, the ISPs are trying to claim that the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction. They pushed for the FCC to push it off to the FTC and now are trying to push the FTC off. They also want the FCC to rule that states can't make their own rules. If the ISPs succeed, then they'll be immune to any regulatory agency.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Or, Pornhub.com isn't being throttled. Kind of a large gap in your reasoning there. Remember, YOU aren't being throttled. The web site is.
They created this mess by blocking multicast and web caching to the home because they couldn't bill it. If multicast had been widely available then multiple people streaming the same thing at more or less the same time would not occupy any more of the net than one.
Nobody blocks multicast. Multicast simply doesn't work like that: it doesn't mean that people can simultaneously stream Youtube or Netflix. That would only work if two or more subscribers would start the same video at the same quality at the same time.
Furthermore, multicast addresses are limited to 224.0.0.0/4, or 268,435,454 addresses. Not to mention that there is no global multicast infrastructure in place.
If caching had remained in place, the bulk of the Internet would have remained clear.
And who do you think is blocking caching? Hint: it's not the ISP. The ISP wants to cache, but in order to do so the content must be clear-text. Oh wait: everyone is moving to HTTPS, which cannot easily be broken.
Back in 2013 I was working for a large telecom equipment provider on a joint project with a large CDN provider to build a CDN/TIC solution. Youtube, Netflix and all major streaming sites were supported and cached. Until [b]they[/b] decided to break caching by switching to HTTPS.
Your ignorance in this matter cannot be understated.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.