agreed in concept, other than "So competition drives companies towards 3)"... monopolies have the same incentive to reduce cost as competitive companies and this is what drives them to manage bandwidth allocation and congestion in ways that reduce cost - except they go further with service degradation, discrimination and anti-competitive conduct which would generally not appear under competition
disagree that it's "non-neutral" - net neutrality as it should be defined would not influence internal, fixed allocations and assignments of bandwidth loaded for particular protocols and applications by route or session - instead, it begins at the level of the access and use of the corresponding bandwidth - the general presumption is that under net neutrality, the company will have incentives to reduce cost as you describe and would not "over or under" load bandwidth for certain targets - absent anti-competitive incentives - another, separate problem, which indeed belongs at the FTC - but the rest belongs at the FCC
widely misunderstood is that net neutrality interferes with the "good" discrimination of differences in bandwidth, GB and service quality - it does not (beyond my comment above of large minimum requirements) - a company could have 10 different pricing plans, 4 levels of service quality and a variety of price and non-price rationing devices to control congestion, none of which violate net neutrality as long as they are not tied to content and are accessible by all customers - a primary problem with Comcast is that it exploited its market power and refused to engage in the "good" discrimination by not providing limits on GB use at all, which enabled it to engage in the "bad" case-by-case arbitrary, intimidating discrimination
Depending on anti-trust to enforce net neutrality may result in a built-in failure. The FTC already abandoned net neutrality last year in a formal report against it. Failing to distinguish between the thriving, effective competition in the content market which flows over and depends exclusively on the underlying monopoly-duopoly broadband pipe market in most places, the FTC chose to favor deregulation of market power at the expense of effective competition in the content market.
Meanwhile, bringing anti-trust charges before the FTC is so cost prohibitive for many, they can only depend on the deterrent effect (very weak in this case) rather than actual enforcement after the fact.
A potential critical flaw in the bill is language that states network providers can provide favored service to specific types of data but if so, must offer the same option to anyone else transmitting the data without extra charges. Therefore, if large content providers against net neutrality strike a private deal for "fast lane" privileges, that implies "special service" must be "available" to all who may seek it.
The problem is this can be interpreted to mean very large minimums of bandwidth and GBs, rather than uniform, neutral access to divisible, tiered units of bandwidth in "per Mbs" units or flow volume in units of GBs. Most content providers cannot justify the excess capacity and will be bumped into the slower "bus lanes", while consumers of "fast lane" service will pay higher prices for what they get today.
In other words, it can turn net neutrality on its head technically through severe price discrimination by content size rather than "neutral access" to bandwidth and GBs by content of any size. It's like an electric company providing premium uninterrupted service to a coalition of "air conditioner users" who as one legal entity, meet the minimum requirements of total use, but denying the same service to an identical group of unaffiliated air conditioner users and therefore denied the price, terms and conditions of "special service" at an individual level - even though collectively, they impose identical cost on the network.
What happens then? The smaller content providers would have little choice but to join the large ones directly to avoid degraded service and get exposure in the "fast-lane", or form their own critical mass necessary to qualify for the "favored service" rate. Either way, it suppresses and undermines the existing competition in the content market.
In classic monopoly fashion, Comcast reduces supply and raises price by maximizing the number of low GB subscribers at the expense of high GB ones, which are intentionally cherry picked for delay or cancellation in discriminatory fashion to avoid congestion or undermine competitive content. This allows Comcast to push network bandwidth capacity to the limit of peak congestion, and at the margin, adding low users is more profitable than high ones at identical fees.
When congestion does occur, Comcast blames the customers, like P2P, when Comcast actually manufactures the congestion itself by overselling available bandwidth in "up to" maximums of burst use but then sharply curtails the total GB available rather than providing a sufficient buffer of network capacity to avoid congestion.
Placing an upper 250GB limit on total use coupled with a bandwidth maximum gets Comcast off the hot seat of violating net neutrality by providing an implied assurance that 250GB is actually available to any customer on a neutral basis.
Comcast would be obligated to provide sufficient network bandwidth to meet this cap during peak periods, or degrade service with the new agnostic tool for managing peak congestion, both potentially neutral in application.
A 4Mbs connection run at maximum 24/7 would produce well over 1,000 GBs/month, where 250GB/mo represents a resale ratio of dedicated bandwidth to retail use of 1:4 for uncongested service based on 25% maximum occupancy of the retail bandwidth slots at any given time. Comcast is gambling that this is the "sweet spot" for pulling in the most subscribers after adjusting for the lost high users, who will be forced to a higher service grade.
However, this may be a stalling tactic to ward off net neutrality by regulation or legislation, as opponents of net neutrality like the RIAA, MPAA and Hulu prepare to cut deals in the back room with broadband providers like Comcast for "fast lane" packages that look like the forced bundling and packaging of cable tv content, pushing what content remains remains into the slow "bus lane". When this happens, users can say goodbye to net neutrality and the competition it enables among content producers and consumers.
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agreed in concept, other than "So competition drives companies towards 3)" ... monopolies have the same incentive to reduce cost as competitive companies and this is what drives them to manage bandwidth allocation and congestion in ways that reduce cost - except they go further with service degradation, discrimination and anti-competitive conduct which would generally not appear under competition
disagree that it's "non-neutral" - net neutrality as it should be defined would not influence internal, fixed allocations and assignments of bandwidth loaded for particular protocols and applications by route or session - instead, it begins at the level of the access and use of the corresponding bandwidth - the general presumption is that under net neutrality, the company will have incentives to reduce cost as you describe and would not "over or under" load bandwidth for certain targets - absent anti-competitive incentives - another, separate problem, which indeed belongs at the FTC - but the rest belongs at the FCC
widely misunderstood is that net neutrality interferes with the "good" discrimination of differences in bandwidth, GB and service quality - it does not (beyond my comment above of large minimum requirements) - a company could have 10 different pricing plans, 4 levels of service quality and a variety of price and non-price rationing devices to control congestion, none of which violate net neutrality as long as they are not tied to content and are accessible by all customers - a primary problem with Comcast is that it exploited its market power and refused to engage in the "good" discrimination by not providing limits on GB use at all, which enabled it to engage in the "bad" case-by-case arbitrary, intimidating discrimination
Depending on anti-trust to enforce net neutrality may result in a built-in failure. The FTC already abandoned net neutrality last year in a formal report against it. Failing to distinguish between the thriving, effective competition in the content market which flows over and depends exclusively on the underlying monopoly-duopoly broadband pipe market in most places, the FTC chose to favor deregulation of market power at the expense of effective competition in the content market.
Meanwhile, bringing anti-trust charges before the FTC is so cost prohibitive for many, they can only depend on the deterrent effect (very weak in this case) rather than actual enforcement after the fact.
A potential critical flaw in the bill is language that states network providers can provide favored service to specific types of data but if so, must offer the same option to anyone else transmitting the data without extra charges. Therefore, if large content providers against net neutrality strike a private deal for "fast lane" privileges, that implies "special service" must be "available" to all who may seek it.
The problem is this can be interpreted to mean very large minimums of bandwidth and GBs, rather than uniform, neutral access to divisible, tiered units of bandwidth in "per Mbs" units or flow volume in units of GBs. Most content providers cannot justify the excess capacity and will be bumped into the slower "bus lanes", while consumers of "fast lane" service will pay higher prices for what they get today.
In other words, it can turn net neutrality on its head technically through severe price discrimination by content size rather than "neutral access" to bandwidth and GBs by content of any size. It's like an electric company providing premium uninterrupted service to a coalition of "air conditioner users" who as one legal entity, meet the minimum requirements of total use, but denying the same service to an identical group of unaffiliated air conditioner users and therefore denied the price, terms and conditions of "special service" at an individual level - even though collectively, they impose identical cost on the network.
What happens then? The smaller content providers would have little choice but to join the large ones directly to avoid degraded service and get exposure in the "fast-lane", or form their own critical mass necessary to qualify for the "favored service" rate. Either way, it suppresses and undermines the existing competition in the content market.
In classic monopoly fashion, Comcast reduces supply and raises price by maximizing the number of low GB subscribers at the expense of high GB ones, which are intentionally cherry picked for delay or cancellation in discriminatory fashion to avoid congestion or undermine competitive content. This allows Comcast to push network bandwidth capacity to the limit of peak congestion, and at the margin, adding low users is more profitable than high ones at identical fees.
When congestion does occur, Comcast blames the customers, like P2P, when Comcast actually manufactures the congestion itself by overselling available bandwidth in "up to" maximums of burst use but then sharply curtails the total GB available rather than providing a sufficient buffer of network capacity to avoid congestion.
Placing an upper 250GB limit on total use coupled with a bandwidth maximum gets Comcast off the hot seat of violating net neutrality by providing an implied assurance that 250GB is actually available to any customer on a neutral basis.
Comcast would be obligated to provide sufficient network bandwidth to meet this cap during peak periods, or degrade service with the new agnostic tool for managing peak congestion, both potentially neutral in application.
A 4Mbs connection run at maximum 24/7 would produce well over 1,000 GBs/month, where 250GB/mo represents a resale ratio of dedicated bandwidth to retail use of 1:4 for uncongested service based on 25% maximum occupancy of the retail bandwidth slots at any given time. Comcast is gambling that this is the "sweet spot" for pulling in the most subscribers after adjusting for the lost high users, who will be forced to a higher service grade.
However, this may be a stalling tactic to ward off net neutrality by regulation or legislation, as opponents of net neutrality like the RIAA, MPAA and Hulu prepare to cut deals in the back room with broadband providers like Comcast for "fast lane" packages that look like the forced bundling and packaging of cable tv content, pushing what content remains remains into the slow "bus lane". When this happens, users can say goodbye to net neutrality and the competition it enables among content producers and consumers.