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I still can't get excited about net neutrality, but maybe that's because I'm from a country (UK) where telco competition is strong enough - and number porting e

I still can't get excited about net neutrality, but maybe that's because I'm from a country (UK) where telco competition is strong enough - and number porting etc easy enough - that anything that's anticonsumer will get punished by the market.

Spooky23 10y ago
The problem in the US is that the people who are against consumer focused regulation have no problem with regulation that locks out competition.
cylinder 10y ago
Nobody's going to switch carriers because of free data. I think you're missing the point here
- toast0 10y ago
  If people are paying for data on one carrier, that another carrier is offering for free (for whatever reason), that can be a reason to switch; that's why T-Mobile is offering it. In the US, it's relatively simple to switch your cell phone service, and there are many choices: 4 mainstream national carriers, all of them have prepaid brands, and many MVNO options as well. For home internet, if you have a choice, it's usually between only two companies with different technology, and often significantly different bandwidth options, there's not much room to compare on price, and very little room to compare on routing or terms of service.
  - cylinder 10y ago
    My point was saying nobody is going to switch away from a carrier because that carrier is offering free data. I think people are missing the point of the posted article, or maybe I am. As I understand it, the complaint is that giving free data for the incumbent tech giants' products gives them a distinct advantage in the marketplace over small / startup offerings which do not have deals for free data. This advantage means the "level playing field" of the internet frontier is dead.
- peteretep 10y ago
  I have switched carriers several times in the last 15 years, usually for data or pricing reasons. I'm not atypical. It's easy to switch in the UK, easy to port your number, and people have little carrier loyalty. Switching home broadband is more of a pain, but switching cell carriers (or, rather, "mobile providers") takes a phone call and a day of questionable connectivity and that's it.
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  Anecdotal (counter)evidence: in India, Reliance ("Jio") has been offering free (which is a first) 4G (I believe only one other carrier offers that) data for a few months now, ending March of this year. (I believe they're using this to both draw users and give people a taste of what a fast mobile data connection can be like as well as to work out teething problems. Nobody's a saint, etc.)
skewart 10y ago
Net neutrality only helps consumers at a big scale in the long run. It's not really beneficial in a direct way for any individual in the short run. So suppressing net neutrality is not something that a lot of consumers are likely to punish. Though it's clearly better for everyone overall. The situation is a bit like drug addiction. Obviously it's better for a person's health to not shoot heroin. But an addict will always find the immediate benefit of one more hit more compelling than the vague, long-term benefits of getting clean. Telcos understand this dynamic, and they're trying to play up the short-term pleasure - by offering so-called "free data" - in order to distract people from the long-term harm and drum up support for suppressing net neutrality.
- coldpie 10y ago
  To be a little more explicit about why net neutrality is important in the long-term, it's to allow small companies to compete on the Internet. If Google or Facebook can pay for faster access than some new startup, they'll have an innate advantage over the startup. It increases the barrier to entry for companies on the Internet, all so ISPs can make a few extra bucks.
hug 10y ago
As an Australian, me too. Kinda. Except in the opposite direction: I've never had net neutrality, and I'm not sure I care. We've always had data-caps that would sound insane to those of you in the Americas or Europe, and we've always dealt with them by not having net neutrality. As an example, I remember the first time coaxial cable Internet started becoming something that was really purchasable by a large number of residential users. The speed was 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up. The data limit for the month was 10GB. Extra data was available at the low low rate of 14c/MB (or $140/GB, for those who don't want to do the math). The provider, though, maintained a large private mirror of downloads that were "free" -- they didn't count towards your monthly cap. They mirrored things like patches for games, linux ISOs, and they had a fairly large shareware repository. I couldn't get cable Internet at home -- they never ran the cable down my street -- so I was stuck on 28k dial-up. I would have killed for cable, data restrictions or not. But that was back then. What about now? Now? We have companies that deliver data over LTE who do similar-but-different things. I have a cellular plan with Optus (AKA Singtel), which is $80 a month. For that, I get 20GB worth of downloads, but I also get absolutely unlimited streaming of Netflix, and unlimited streaming from most of the popular music services (Spotify, Google Play, I Heart Radio, Apple Music, and maybe others I can't remember). I stream tens of gigabytes of video and audio every month, and I can do this because of the lack of net neutrality here. Some other provides on pre-paid services which typically have tiny data caps will provide "unlimited social media access" -- because that's how they draw in teens, what I assume is the most valuable market segment for pre-paid. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that when a service becomes big enough that it's marketable to with free data, then one of the providers will pick up on it as a value-add. Something they can do that improves their service so they can grab more market share. Some of you are probably going to argue that this is a symptom of a broken market, and I'm not sure that's the case. Networking in Australia is hard. We have 1/10th the population of the US in a country about the same physical size. It's possible I'm really very wrong about how this all works. Maybe I'm naive and it's all really terrible and I should be upset. It's just hard to see from here how perfect net neutrality is an issue.
- whytaka 10y ago
  Are any "value-add services" Australian-borne?
toast0 10y ago
UK has strong telco competition because of a strong local loop unbundling program (BT OpenReach), the US had that at one point (Telecom act of 1996), but the FCC progressively weakened it to the point that it only remains applied to phone lines served from a central office, which limits the number of serviceable users as well as the capacity of internet service. Since overbuilding is expensive very few areas have meaningful choices, so we're left with trying to regulate good service, instead of having poor service punished by the market.
arjie 10y ago
The UK extensively regulates and censors Internet access. It's possible you can't get excited about it because you don't have a culture of a free Internet. British providers have happily performed deep packet inspection in order to "prioritize" traffic with little to no resistance from the public. Britain just doesn't share this principle.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I remember getting a 3 sim card in the UK, going to erowid.org and getting a screen saying the site was blocked. If you wanted the block lifted, you'd have to go to a 3 store and present an ID to show you were over 18 (and I assume that ID would be forever associated with your account).
  - codedokode 10y ago
    In many countries you cannot even buy a SIM card without providing an ID.
    - aangjie 10y ago
      Welcome to India.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    This is no issue with a VPN. My "real" number is registered with a VOIP provider, and I just buy a new SIM card from a vending machine at the airport with cash every so often. I'm not even trying to be particularly anonymous, it's just easy.
    - mysticmarvel 10y ago
      You'd also need to create new accounts for all your services each time, or any basic logging of access will trivially link your SIM, data provider's IP, your VPN, and your endpoint services. You only need to mess up once and your "anonymity" is compromised. In this instance it would be the IMEI of your phone, the tracking data used by advertisers and data miners to fingerprint your devices, and whatever services and accounts you use for email or social networking on your device. Real anonymity is hard, and takes a level of paranoia not many can sustain without suffering mental health issues.
Chris2048 10y ago
The UK increasingly restricts net access to certain sites (piratebay ban), and the telcos are not competitive everywhere. > that anything that's anticonsumer will get punished by the market many large telcos are going the way of mobile networks, by tying you in with complex, one-sided contracts, salesmen-sold "bundles" etc. How many inexpensive, short-term mobile contracts can you get? If internet contracts aren't there now, they will be soon.

Spooky23 10y ago

The problem in the US is that the people who are against consumer focused regulation have no problem with regulation that locks out competition.

cylinder 10y ago

Nobody's going to switch carriers because of free data. I think you're missing the point here

toast0 10y ago
If people are paying for data on one carrier, that another carrier is offering for free (for whatever reason), that can be a reason to switch; that's why T-Mobile is offering it. In the US, it's relatively simple to switch your cell phone service, and there are many choices: 4 mainstream national carriers, all of them have prepaid brands, and many MVNO options as well. For home internet, if you have a choice, it's usually between only two companies with different technology, and often significantly different bandwidth options, there's not much room to compare on price, and very little room to compare on routing or terms of service.
- cylinder 10y ago
  My point was saying nobody is going to switch away from a carrier because that carrier is offering free data. I think people are missing the point of the posted article, or maybe I am. As I understand it, the complaint is that giving free data for the incumbent tech giants' products gives them a distinct advantage in the marketplace over small / startup offerings which do not have deals for free data. This advantage means the "level playing field" of the internet frontier is dead.
peteretep 10y ago
I have switched carriers several times in the last 15 years, usually for data or pricing reasons. I'm not atypical. It's easy to switch in the UK, easy to port your number, and people have little carrier loyalty. Switching home broadband is more of a pain, but switching cell carriers (or, rather, "mobile providers") takes a phone call and a day of questionable connectivity and that's it.
mrkgnao 10y ago
Anecdotal (counter)evidence: in India, Reliance ("Jio") has been offering free (which is a first) 4G (I believe only one other carrier offers that) data for a few months now, ending March of this year. (I believe they're using this to both draw users and give people a taste of what a fast mobile data connection can be like as well as to work out teething problems. Nobody's a saint, etc.)

skewart 10y ago

Net neutrality only helps consumers at a big scale in the long run. It's not really beneficial in a direct way for any individual in the short run. So suppressing net neutrality is not something that a lot of consumers are likely to punish. Though it's clearly better for everyone overall. The situation is a bit like drug addiction. Obviously it's better for a person's health to not shoot heroin. But an addict will always find the immediate benefit of one more hit more compelling than the vague, long-term benefits of getting clean. Telcos understand this dynamic, and they're trying to play up the short-term pleasure - by offering so-called "free data" - in order to distract people from the long-term harm and drum up support for suppressing net neutrality.

coldpie 10y ago
To be a little more explicit about why net neutrality is important in the long-term, it's to allow small companies to compete on the Internet. If Google or Facebook can pay for faster access than some new startup, they'll have an innate advantage over the startup. It increases the barrier to entry for companies on the Internet, all so ISPs can make a few extra bucks.

hug 10y ago

As an Australian, me too. Kinda. Except in the opposite direction: I've never had net neutrality, and I'm not sure I care. We've always had data-caps that would sound insane to those of you in the Americas or Europe, and we've always dealt with them by not having net neutrality. As an example, I remember the first time coaxial cable Internet started becoming something that was really purchasable by a large number of residential users. The speed was 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up. The data limit for the month was 10GB. Extra data was available at the low low rate of 14c/MB (or $140/GB, for those who don't want to do the math). The provider, though, maintained a large private mirror of downloads that were "free" -- they didn't count towards your monthly cap. They mirrored things like patches for games, linux ISOs, and they had a fairly large shareware repository. I couldn't get cable Internet at home -- they never ran the cable down my street -- so I was stuck on 28k dial-up. I would have killed for cable, data restrictions or not. But that was back then. What about now? Now? We have companies that deliver data over LTE who do similar-but-different things. I have a cellular plan with Optus (AKA Singtel), which is $80 a month. For that, I get 20GB worth of downloads, but I also get absolutely unlimited streaming of Netflix, and unlimited streaming from most of the popular music services (Spotify, Google Play, I Heart Radio, Apple Music, and maybe others I can't remember). I stream tens of gigabytes of video and audio every month, and I can do this because of the lack of net neutrality here. Some other provides on pre-paid services which typically have tiny data caps will provide "unlimited social media access" -- because that's how they draw in teens, what I assume is the most valuable market segment for pre-paid. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that when a service becomes big enough that it's marketable to with free data, then one of the providers will pick up on it as a value-add. Something they can do that improves their service so they can grab more market share. Some of you are probably going to argue that this is a symptom of a broken market, and I'm not sure that's the case. Networking in Australia is hard. We have 1/10th the population of the US in a country about the same physical size. It's possible I'm really very wrong about how this all works. Maybe I'm naive and it's all really terrible and I should be upset. It's just hard to see from here how perfect net neutrality is an issue.

whytaka 10y ago
Are any "value-add services" Australian-borne?

toast0 10y ago

UK has strong telco competition because of a strong local loop unbundling program (BT OpenReach), the US had that at one point (Telecom act of 1996), but the FCC progressively weakened it to the point that it only remains applied to phone lines served from a central office, which limits the number of serviceable users as well as the capacity of internet service. Since overbuilding is expensive very few areas have meaningful choices, so we're left with trying to regulate good service, instead of having poor service punished by the market.

arjie 10y ago

The UK extensively regulates and censors Internet access. It's possible you can't get excited about it because you don't have a culture of a free Internet. British providers have happily performed deep packet inspection in order to "prioritize" traffic with little to no resistance from the public. Britain just doesn't share this principle.

djsumdog 10y ago
I remember getting a 3 sim card in the UK, going to erowid.org and getting a screen saying the site was blocked. If you wanted the block lifted, you'd have to go to a 3 store and present an ID to show you were over 18 (and I assume that ID would be forever associated with your account).
- codedokode 10y ago
  In many countries you cannot even buy a SIM card without providing an ID.
  - aangjie 10y ago
    Welcome to India.
- peteretep 10y ago
  This is no issue with a VPN. My "real" number is registered with a VOIP provider, and I just buy a new SIM card from a vending machine at the airport with cash every so often. I'm not even trying to be particularly anonymous, it's just easy.
  - mysticmarvel 10y ago
    You'd also need to create new accounts for all your services each time, or any basic logging of access will trivially link your SIM, data provider's IP, your VPN, and your endpoint services. You only need to mess up once and your "anonymity" is compromised. In this instance it would be the IMEI of your phone, the tracking data used by advertisers and data miners to fingerprint your devices, and whatever services and accounts you use for email or social networking on your device. Real anonymity is hard, and takes a level of paranoia not many can sustain without suffering mental health issues.

Chris2048 10y ago

The UK increasingly restricts net access to certain sites (piratebay ban), and the telcos are not competitive everywhere. > that anything that's anticonsumer will get punished by the market many large telcos are going the way of mobile networks, by tying you in with complex, one-sided contracts, salesmen-sold "bundles" etc. How many inexpensive, short-term mobile contracts can you get? If internet contracts aren't there now, they will be soon.