5 ms·

I'm quite opposed to the guy's ideas from what I've read so far, but here's one perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html http://ww

by entee 10y ago

I'm quite opposed to the guy's ideas from what I've read so far, but here's one perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services. I could see an argument in favor if the rest of the marketplace was highly competitive and you could just switch to a different provider if the provider you had was behaving abusively. That's not the case in most of the US where you have a duopoly at best for fast internet. Personally, I find this guy's proposals to be bad policy for individual consumers, but they're pretty great for ISPs. They would argue that in the end that's great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen.

rhizome 10y ago
What's a good reason for medical devices and emergency services to use the public internet? I feel like the idea of fast lanes is being imposed to avoid more difficult tasks on companys' part, to our detriment. Aside from that, Netflix is already cheap.
- wmf 10y ago
  A physically separate network for medical devices in your home is too expensive to justify.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Medical devices and emergency services are a red herring. They're the ISPs' "think of the children" play.
    - mywittyname 10y ago
      The most effective counter argument is that ISP want to be allowed to slow these same services down. "Well, you bought an ADT security system, and they are not a Preferred Security Service for Time Warner, so even though you pay for 40Mb internet, we can only allocate 4Kb to ADT."
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    What is an example of a medical device that needs a physically separate network?
    - rsynnott 10y ago
      Possibly some sort of telesurgery device? It'd never be acceptable to have something like this in the home, though, really, for all sorts of reasons, so it's not a good excuse. Network prioritisation or no network prioritisation, telesurgery over your cable connection is not a good idea.
    - wmf 10y ago
      It depends how crappy the Internet becomes. If ISPs are allowed to deliberately crappify the Internet [1] then medical devices may need either need a fast lane or a separate network. And then ISPs will argue that the fast lane is the cheaper option. [1] If you think this is hyperbole, consult the Comcast Backdoor Santa leaks.
    - metaobject 10y ago
      There are remote monitoring services that track the status of various medical devices geared towards detecting anomalies in things like heart rate or heart rhythm. The ones that I've heard about use the cell network to report updates back to the monitoring company.
rashkov 10y ago
I completely agree with you, but I would put it into even stronger terms. Paid fast lanes are not an experiment worth performing, in the hope that ISPs pass the savings down to consumers. The ISPs have absolutely zero incentive to pass the savings onto consumers when they have no real competition. Any free-market thinker should recognize this to be self-evident, so if they really want to give ISPs the freedom to offer paid fast-lanes, then they have to solve the competition problem first.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  It should be pointed out that these people are not creating "fast lanes," they're creating slow lanes and selling the idea with marketing buzzwords.
gshulegaard 10y ago
> if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Historically, this is not shown to be how companies act. The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire. But the reality is that if a company can increase revenue, they will do so without redistributing it to the benefit of their customers or even employees. > They would argue that in the end that's great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen. We have seen it, and it's not great for consumers. Trickle-down economics is a fallacy. It's also been debunked by Economists very thoroughly.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  > The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire. The assumption is not a bad one in general, and it doesn't depend on benevolence (if anything, most people's cartoonish view of corporations occasionally involves them hurting their bottom line to screw the consumer). It depends on a somewhat competitive market; as such, it's not a particularly valid assumption for the telecom market.
  - vanattab 10y ago
    The problem with monopolies in critical utilities is that screwing over customers does not hurt the bottom line. My only choice for ISP (excluding 4g cell, dsl) is twc they flat out lied to me when I was signing up, the service while fast most of the time suffers random spikes frequently. The only other choice I have is forego the Internet but let's be honest thats not an option at all.
    - NoPiece 10y ago
      Is your DSL option so bad that it is worse than foregoing the internet in your choice space?
      - rhizome 10y ago
        Yeah, I've been using DSL for 15 years without hassle and never understand the exclusion. Sure, I don't get to brag about the 1.21 gigabits my bill says I'm supposed to be receiving (and constantly complain about not actually getting), but otherwise it's pretty much anything I could ask for in an internet connection.
jackmott 10y ago
if they sell a fast lane to netflix, any savings you might get, you then pay for because netflix costs more. nobody wins here except the people with the more creative sales team.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > if they sell a fast lane to netflix, any savings you might get, you then pay for because netflix costs more. Well, some would argue that those who don't use Netflix pay less subsidized by Netflix. But that's only true if they are selling to Netflix as a monopoly with pricing power (otherwise, competition would drive this down to leave no excess to subsidize anything but the cost of providing the fast lane), which is unlikely unless they are also selling to consumer as such a monopoly, in which case whole they could use the surplus Netflix payment to subsidize lower prices for non-Netflix users, their ore likely to just use the monopoly rents on both sides to increase corporate profits.
tzs 10y ago
> Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services. I don't have a problem (with one big reservation) with that PROVIDED that the "fast lane" is faster than the service that the consumer is paying for. For example, supposed I am paying for 20 mbit/second network service from my ISP, and I subscribe to a video streaming service that offers streams at two resolutions. One takes 15 mbit/second and one takes 30 mbit/second. I wish to watch a 2 hour movie stream. Assume that my data cap is high enough that I will not be going anywhere near it. If the video service wants to pay my ISP to give me 30 mbit/second when I view their higher definition streams, I can see that being OK from a network regulation point of view. (It may not be OK from an antitrust point of view, but that is out of scope). The lower definition stream, though, is only 15 mbit/second. That's below the 20 mbit/second my IPS sold me, so I'd not be OK with it if the video service had to buy a "fast lane" to make the 15 mbit/second stream work. For the "fast lane" scenario I described in the first paragraph, where it is faster than the service I'm paying for, I do have one big reservation. There needs to be something in place to ensure that the base service is reasonable. I do not want to see the ISPs advertise their base service as something ridiculously low, like 1 mbit/second, and throttle everything down to that except from sites that have paid for a "fast lane". The above is also how I would approach "zero rating" and "sponsored data". In summary, these would be my network rules: 1. the ISP must provide the data rate and cap (if any) that the consumer has paid for. 2. The user can use that for whatever they want, with no throttling or blocking by the ISP (other than reasonable network management, such as to deal with congestion). 3. If the ISP wants to provide something beyond what the consumer paid for at no charge to the consumer that's fine, including allowing others to pay the ISP to give the consumer that extra service.
- amazon_not 10y ago
  #3 is basically zero rating, which is another form of discrimination, a way for the ISP to play gatekeeper and favorites. We, as a society, do not want that. As to dynamic bandwidth offerings, there is no need for the content provider to pay for this or administer it. They are an unnecessary layer of friction. The ISP can provide a portal for the end customer to self provision whatever bandwidth they want.

by entee 10y ago

rhizome 10y ago

What's a good reason for medical devices and emergency services to use the public internet? I feel like the idea of fast lanes is being imposed to avoid more difficult tasks on companys' part, to our detriment. Aside from that, Netflix is already cheap.

wmf 10y ago
A physically separate network for medical devices in your home is too expensive to justify.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Medical devices and emergency services are a red herring. They're the ISPs' "think of the children" play.
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    The most effective counter argument is that ISP want to be allowed to slow these same services down. "Well, you bought an ADT security system, and they are not a Preferred Security Service for Time Warner, so even though you pay for 40Mb internet, we can only allocate 4Kb to ADT."
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  What is an example of a medical device that needs a physically separate network?
  - rsynnott 10y ago
    Possibly some sort of telesurgery device? It'd never be acceptable to have something like this in the home, though, really, for all sorts of reasons, so it's not a good excuse. Network prioritisation or no network prioritisation, telesurgery over your cable connection is not a good idea.
  - wmf 10y ago
    It depends how crappy the Internet becomes. If ISPs are allowed to deliberately crappify the Internet [1] then medical devices may need either need a fast lane or a separate network. And then ISPs will argue that the fast lane is the cheaper option. [1] If you think this is hyperbole, consult the Comcast Backdoor Santa leaks.
  - metaobject 10y ago
    There are remote monitoring services that track the status of various medical devices geared towards detecting anomalies in things like heart rate or heart rhythm. The ones that I've heard about use the cell network to report updates back to the monitoring company.

rashkov 10y ago

I completely agree with you, but I would put it into even stronger terms. Paid fast lanes are not an experiment worth performing, in the hope that ISPs pass the savings down to consumers. The ISPs have absolutely zero incentive to pass the savings onto consumers when they have no real competition. Any free-market thinker should recognize this to be self-evident, so if they really want to give ISPs the freedom to offer paid fast-lanes, then they have to solve the competition problem first.

mywittyname 10y ago
It should be pointed out that these people are not creating "fast lanes," they're creating slow lanes and selling the idea with marketing buzzwords.

gshulegaard 10y ago

> if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Historically, this is not shown to be how companies act. The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire. But the reality is that if a company can increase revenue, they will do so without redistributing it to the benefit of their customers or even employees. > They would argue that in the end that's great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen. We have seen it, and it's not great for consumers. Trickle-down economics is a fallacy. It's also been debunked by Economists very thoroughly.

wutbrodo 10y ago
> The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire. The assumption is not a bad one in general, and it doesn't depend on benevolence (if anything, most people's cartoonish view of corporations occasionally involves them hurting their bottom line to screw the consumer). It depends on a somewhat competitive market; as such, it's not a particularly valid assumption for the telecom market.
- vanattab 10y ago
  The problem with monopolies in critical utilities is that screwing over customers does not hurt the bottom line. My only choice for ISP (excluding 4g cell, dsl) is twc they flat out lied to me when I was signing up, the service while fast most of the time suffers random spikes frequently. The only other choice I have is forego the Internet but let's be honest thats not an option at all.
  - NoPiece 10y ago
    Is your DSL option so bad that it is worse than foregoing the internet in your choice space?
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Yeah, I've been using DSL for 15 years without hassle and never understand the exclusion. Sure, I don't get to brag about the 1.21 gigabits my bill says I'm supposed to be receiving (and constantly complain about not actually getting), but otherwise it's pretty much anything I could ask for in an internet connection.

jackmott 10y ago

if they sell a fast lane to netflix, any savings you might get, you then pay for because netflix costs more. nobody wins here except the people with the more creative sales team.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> if they sell a fast lane to netflix, any savings you might get, you then pay for because netflix costs more. Well, some would argue that those who don't use Netflix pay less subsidized by Netflix. But that's only true if they are selling to Netflix as a monopoly with pricing power (otherwise, competition would drive this down to leave no excess to subsidize anything but the cost of providing the fast lane), which is unlikely unless they are also selling to consumer as such a monopoly, in which case whole they could use the surplus Netflix payment to subsidize lower prices for non-Netflix users, their ore likely to just use the monopoly rents on both sides to increase corporate profits.

tzs 10y ago

> Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services. I don't have a problem (with one big reservation) with that PROVIDED that the "fast lane" is faster than the service that the consumer is paying for. For example, supposed I am paying for 20 mbit/second network service from my ISP, and I subscribe to a video streaming service that offers streams at two resolutions. One takes 15 mbit/second and one takes 30 mbit/second. I wish to watch a 2 hour movie stream. Assume that my data cap is high enough that I will not be going anywhere near it. If the video service wants to pay my ISP to give me 30 mbit/second when I view their higher definition streams, I can see that being OK from a network regulation point of view. (It may not be OK from an antitrust point of view, but that is out of scope). The lower definition stream, though, is only 15 mbit/second. That's below the 20 mbit/second my IPS sold me, so I'd not be OK with it if the video service had to buy a "fast lane" to make the 15 mbit/second stream work. For the "fast lane" scenario I described in the first paragraph, where it is faster than the service I'm paying for, I do have one big reservation. There needs to be something in place to ensure that the base service is reasonable. I do not want to see the ISPs advertise their base service as something ridiculously low, like 1 mbit/second, and throttle everything down to that except from sites that have paid for a "fast lane". The above is also how I would approach "zero rating" and "sponsored data". In summary, these would be my network rules: 1. the ISP must provide the data rate and cap (if any) that the consumer has paid for. 2. The user can use that for whatever they want, with no throttling or blocking by the ISP (other than reasonable network management, such as to deal with congestion). 3. If the ISP wants to provide something beyond what the consumer paid for at no charge to the consumer that's fine, including allowing others to pay the ISP to give the consumer that extra service.

amazon_not 10y ago
#3 is basically zero rating, which is another form of discrimination, a way for the ISP to play gatekeeper and favorites. We, as a society, do not want that. As to dynamic bandwidth offerings, there is no need for the content provider to pay for this or administer it. They are an unnecessary layer of friction. The ISP can provide a portal for the end customer to self provision whatever bandwidth they want.