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Net Neutrality Gives 'Free' Internet To Netflix and Google, ISP Claims (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Frontier Communications is asking employees for help in its fight against state net neutrality rules in California, claiming that the rules will give "free" Internet to major Web companies while raising costs for consumers. From a report: The Internet service provider urged employees to submit a form letter asking Governor Jerry Brown to veto the net neutrality bill that was recently approved by the state legislature. Frontier sent an email to employees and set up an online form for them to send the form letter to Brown. "I am proud to work at Frontier and help operate a network that is part of an incredibly successful Internet ecosystem that is the backbone of our economy and daily life," the form letter says. But net neutrality rules "will harm consumers and impose complex layers of costly regulation," and therefore "deter investment and delay broadband deployment in California, especially in rural areas that still lack high-speed Internet access," the letter says. The letter claims that net neutrality rules "will create significant new costs for consumers" but did not make it clear what those new costs would be.

22 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by RickyShade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why are corporations all a bunch of lying-ass trash?

    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's the easiest way to make money.

    2. Re:Why? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Informative

      with net neutrality, content publishers and distributors get to peer directly with an isp and flood their network with whatever data the content provider wants

      They are only sending content that the end user has requested. The content publishers are paying their ISP for every bit that they send out and receive (via a leased line of a specified bandwidth) and the end user is paying for every bit that they send out and receive from their ISP. They want to be able to double charge though. They want to charge the end user to receive the data, but also want to charge the content publisher for letting the customer receive the data.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Why? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why are corporations all a bunch of lying-ass trash?

      It's all about feedback loops. There is no penalty for them to constantly lie but there is plenty to gain from deceiving people.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    4. Re:Why? by kqs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is my favorite quote. It turned out that less than 1.5% of people had to change their insurance plans due to the ACA. Which means that Obama's biggest lie was when he was only 98.5% correct. Compare/contrast with what the current president says this week. (I don't know what he'll say, and it doesn't matter; we all know it will be far less than 98.5% correct).

      Back to the original point: certain people and organizations lie because their followers will believe them no matter how ludicrous their claims may be. In the case of most ISPs, the people who matter (lawmakers) believe them because their campaign contributions depend on it. In the case of politicians, well, you can tell a lot about a person by seeing what political folks they vote for.

    5. Re:Why? by reg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      content publishers and distributors get to peer directly with an isp and flood their network with whatever data the content provider wants

      What utter nonsense. The content providers are what make the internet work - without content there is no internet. The ISP's users are who is "flooding the network with whatever data they want", because they are requesting it. If the ISP has too much traffic they need to ask their users to stop asking for it.

      Don't be a stooge for the ISPs.

    6. Re:Why? by ilsaloving · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes yes, we know that argument. It's been passed around for a while now. It's no less bullshit now than it was then. The customers are paying for their pipe. The content producers are paying for their own pipe. Everyone is *already* paying for their access.

      The reality that has been demonstrated is that ISPs only want to double-dip, making their customers pay AND make the content-providers pay for the exact same traffic. There is absolutely no evidence that says ISPs ever have or ever will lower prices for consumers by having content-creators pay the difference.

      https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

    7. Re:Why? by Xylantiel · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was a well-known business model to offer cheap insurance and then drop people or charge them 10 times as much when they got sick. This isn't possible anymore under the ACA. A huge fraction of those saying "I can't get cheap insurance anymore" are people who were being ripped off and now are not. But they complain anyway.

    8. Re:Why? by gnunick · · Score: 5, Informative

      > Nonsense. ACA banned catastrophic health insurance/health saving accounts.

      Not even remotely true. I still have my HSA.

      --
      I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
    9. Re:Why? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      but also want to charge the content publisher for letting the customer receive the data.

      Which is why this whole entire scheme is utterly dependent on the monopolies granted to the ISPs by the local government. If you had a choice of multiple ISPs and your ISP began throttling a content publisher for not paying them, you would simply cancel service and subscribe to a different ISP. The only reason they have the temerity to try to charge content publishers is because they know their customers are captive, and cannot flee to a different ISP. Essentially, not only do they have a monopoly on providing service to their customers, they also have a monopoly on giving content publishers access to those customers.

      The whole thing is probably the best current example of government regulation run amok. The initial service monopolies granted by the local governments may have been well-intended (to prevent telephone poles from being strung up with dozens of unsightly wires, for guarantees to provide services to low income areas, etc). But it should be clear by now that they're doing far more harm than good, and should be abolished. We've tried government regulation of ISPs for 20+ years and it's failed miserably. Give competition a chance. Aside from access speed, things were actually better back in the 1980s and early 1990s when everyone used dialup connections. I remember canceling service with several ISPs which dissatisfied me before I found one I liked.

    10. Re:Why? by jeff4747 · · Score: 5, Informative

      ACA banned catastrophic health insurance/health saving accounts.

      Since I currently have a HSA, I'm gonna have to point out you're wrong.

      The ACA banned catastrophic health insurance plans and HSA-backed plans from the ACA marketplace. The ACA marketplace is not "insurance". In fact, it's a small percentage of insurance plans. Employer-based plans can still be HSA plans, and employer-based insurance dwarfs the ACA marketplace insurance.

      Where you pay for your own routine doctor visits and only have coverage for actual medical emergencies.

      The problem with this plan is people just don't do routine doctor visits when they have this plan. Which means they end up getting far more medical emergencies.

      If your response is something like "but I paid for my checkups!!!!", you're forgetting the cost-sharing aspect of insurance. You paid more for your insurance because the vast majority on these plans did not get regular medical care

      It's much cheaper to pay for someone's $100 annual visit for a couple decades and catch that they have high blood pressure instead of waiting for them to show up in an ER with complications. Strokes aren't cheap.

      When they pass 'ACA for car insurance', it will require coverage for oil changes, which will cost you $5,000 once all the costs are rolled in.

      This might be funny if you forget most states have mandatory car insurance, as well as minimum requirements for that insurance.

    11. Re:Why? by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Does lying on the behest of your boss pay that well?

      with net neutrality, content publishers and distributors get to peer directly with an isp

      False. Netflix pays an ISP, just like anyone else. That gives them an Internet connection with a specific bandwith limit.

      and flood their network with whatever data the content provider wants

      Again, their Internet connection has a specific bandwith limit. If your network can't handle the bandwith you've sold, that's you committing fraud, not the "content provider" being a free rider.

      ISPs eat the cost

      False. ISPs sold bandwith to a customer (Netflix). They also sold bandwith to consumers. There is no cost to eat, they are being paid for what they sold.

      Without net neutrality, content publishers must pay the transit costs

      Oh, I see. You didn't sell any bandwith to Netflix, and want to charge them anyway. That's not how peering works.

      If you're peering agreement is not currently making enough money for you greedy fuckholes, then you need to renegotiate your peering agreement.

      in the end, we the consumer will pay more

      Yes, that is currently your plan, thanks to the lack of net neutrality. Your C-suite is masturbating over the thought of selling a "Streaming package" and "gaming package" to consumers to turn off the arbitrary throttling you are applying. Heck, when they want a bigger bonus, they can just turn down the bandwith a little more.

      you are never prevented from going with a non-subsidized provider (e.g. cogent, xo, or running and lighting up your own fiber).

      I am fascinated by your delusional world where every ISP serves every geographic location.

    12. Re:Why? by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      with net neutrality, content publishers and distributors get to peer directly with an isp and flood their network with whatever data the content provider wants.

      No, that's not how that works. Content publishers' ISPs get to peer with other ISPs because that's how the Internet works. Without peering, there's just a bunch of unconnected networks, of "walled gardens", and not the Internet. You want to go back to the days of AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe? Fine. Go start that business and see how it goes. Meanwhile, the rest of us want access to the Internet.

      And content providers don't "flood their networks". That shows another fundamental misunderstanding of what's going on. This is not a broadcast network. A company like Netflix isn't just sending out all their video, all the time, to everyone. Their users request the video, and then the request goes over the ISP's network, over to Netflix's ISP, to Netflix's server, and Netflix allows the download. Verizon is trying to charge Netflix for Netflix allowing Verizon customers to download something.

      Without net neutrality, content publishers... have an incentive to keep spurious traffic low

      They have an incentive to keep their traffic low regardless. Again using Netflix as an example, they already pay a boatload of money for internet access. They have to move massive amounts of information very quickly, and that's expensive. If they could cut their bandwidth needs by 20%, they'd save a bunch of money. They'd do it if they could.

      ... and pass on the costs to the consumer.

      This is another one of those fundamental misunderstandings of how things work. While it's true that when a company has to pay more, they sometimes "pass on the cost to consumers," that's not necessarily how that works. That economic model imagines a world where businesses set their prices by figuring out their costs and just adding a set percentage to everything. Businesses don't set prices that way!

      Let's say you were paying $100 for a product last year, and this year the price is increased to $110. Was that because prices went up somewhere in the supply chain and the product now costs $10 more to produce?

      Probably not. Yes, it's possible that the product costs $85 to bring to market, and the cost went up to $95, and they increased their price to account for the difference. Or it might be that it costs $70 to bring to market, and the price went up to $90, but they decided that they could only get away with raising the price by $10. Or it might even be that the price went down from $85 to $75, but they raised the price anyway because demand was high and they thought people would still buy it at the higher price.

      Companies don't just transparently pass costs on to consumers. They set the price based on supply and demand, with varying levels of profit margin.

  2. Last I checked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Netflix/google/whomever is paying for internet access, in a different way then regular consumers.

    The teleco's can go fuck themselves.

    1. Re:Last I checked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      BS.

      The internet was doing just fine before the corporations took it over.

      It was actually better.

    2. Re:Last I checked by HiThere · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From my perspective it was considerably better. Tech sites were easier to find, and there was a lot less garbage. And almost no spam.

      OTOH, there are lots of different use cases, and mine is a small subset. And if my use case were dominant, we'd all still be on dial-up.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  3. I hope Frontier burns... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I paid for it. I the customer. I already paid for it.

    When you say free, you mean you want to double-charge. You want to charge them to get to me, as much as you want to charge me to get to them. But they make all their money from me. This really boils down to, you want to double-charge me.

    I already paid for it.

    It doesn't cost you $100/month to move the electrons. You aren't buying $100/mo worth of equipment. Be honest. It is all profit, and you like profit with minimal cost. If you could get all your profit that way, you would love it. You prefer slavery. If you could, you would do it.

    You drink blood. Eventually, you end up drinking your own, along with the vast pool of mine and everyone like me. It kills you when you do it. To watch you die at your own hand I just have to be able to wait long enough to see it.

  4. AT&T's "our pipes" BS all over again by bersl2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    https://web.archive.org/web/20...

  5. ISP gets free Google and Netflix by Njovich · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They are right and it's called market power. ISP's should thank god Google and Netflix aren't charging ISP's yet for the privilege of having their service, as consumers would be happy to ditch any service that doesn't offer them.

  6. Former ISP Employee by The+Raven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All the whining about Net Neutrality is garbage. Running an ISP is an inexpensive task, relatively, and it scales very well. The larger you are, the cheaper each additional customer is. I am literally baffled how large megacorps like Frontier, Spectrum nee Charter, and Comcast don't have 50% profit margins at their prices.

    For all I know they do have 50% profit margins, and all this garbage about rising costs is just that... garbage.

    The only reason that this has lasted so long, and the incumbent idiocy has not been ousted by competition, is because they don't have competition in most of their markets. Monopoly pricing has become the norm rather than the exception in the US. In the EU, which is no easier or more difficult to provide Internet to, consumer internet costs 1/2 to 1/4 what it does in the US. As far as I can tell the primary driver between the difference in price is that the EU municipalities never created monopoly markets for Internet.

    --
    "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
  7. Corps are like spoiled 10 year old kids.... by gatfirls · · Score: 4, Informative

    Help, government we are dying without corporate welfare and bailouts!!!! We need you and appreciate how much you do for us! ...15 minutes later
    Whateva government you can't tell me what to do, I do what I want, you don't own me.

    Ad nauseam.

  8. Telcos are upset because they oversold themselves by atrex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Frontier and other ISPs are upset because they spend the minimum amount necessary on infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. They oversold their minimalist networks as much as they possibly could, and then the likes of Netflix and YouTube came along and ISP customers started all consuming massive amounts of bandwidth instead of it just being the file sharers that ate bandwidth like mad.

    So now, in order to meet customer demand, ISPs have to use some of the profits they've been racking in hand over fist to go out an upgrade their networks. But, instead of just getting the job done, they'd rather spend a few million on a political propaganda campaign and buying off politicians to try and kill Net Neutrality so they can keep their grubby mitts on the most profit possible.

    Now, make no mistake, either way consumers are still going to get screwed in the end, but, better they get screwed while getting an upgraded infrastructure, instead of letting the ISPs rip off Netflix and others for the crime of serving content. Because without Net Neutrality, the ISPs get to demand tolls from Netflix, and Netflix's prices go up, while the ISPs sit back and do nothing. With Net Neutrality, the ISPs will raise prices and implement data caps - but they also build infrastructure to handle the demand.

    And Netflix already has all the incentive in the world to research, develop, and adopt new video codecs like AV1 to make their content smaller, because they still need to pay to have their content mirrored all around the country. And the smaller that content is, the less they have to pay.