7 ms·
Comcast Has Always Opposed Internet Freedom
- colanderman 9y agoIf you are, like I once was, hesitant to leave Comcast for a competitor because of their IPv6 support: just do it, and get a (free) IPv6 tunnel via Hurricane Electric: https://www.tunnelbroker.net/ https://www.tunnelbroker.net/
- larrik 9y agoIt must be nice to have reasonable competitors. When I first moved into this house 2 years ago, I needed to wait for Comcast to dig me a new cable line, and in the meantime I had to use Frontier "fiber" DSL (it's not fiber). What a joke that was. The idea that my internet, phone, AND TV all came over a single telephone line was fascinating, but the internet was total crap. Those are my options, so I'm stuck with Comcast.
- colanderman 9y agoOnly since recently do I live somewhere with actual competition (RCN, Comcast, and FiOS; only Comcast providing IPv6). I do count myself lucky. It's amazing what a difference competition makes; I pay the same price today ($40/mo) for 50 Mbps from RCN as I did a month ago for 3 Mbps from Comcast. Regulation cannot come soon enough; we as a tech community must do all we can to oust that corporate capitalist tool Ajit Pai from the FCC.
- accountyaccount 9y agoBoston?
- colanderman 9y agoMoved from Boston to Arlington (MA).
- accountyaccount 9y agoI was in one of the Comcast-only-zones with no RCN, FiOS is a godsend.
- ajmarsh 9y agoUh, what you seem to have is actual competition going on in your area. More regulation will not necessarily help bring about more of that. I do agree that Ajit Pai seems to be a giant toolbox.
- colanderman 9y agoIt was regulation (specifically, antitrust) that broke up Ma Bell.
- juliangoldsmith 9y agoRegulation has also been used by companies like Comcast to stifle competition, in addition to the large initial cost to starting an ISP.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoIt's almost as though regulation is a complicated subject and can have more than one type of effect...
- pasbesoin 9y agoThe FCC, pre-Trump, was starting to take down state legislation prohibiting community based/owned deployments. Both the physical layer and ISP service; and as regards the service, at least some community deployments allowed private ISP's to purchase capacity/access and resell their service as a competitor to the public service. Federal regulation trumping (or not, as it were) state xxxxxxxxxx [edit out "regulation"; I meant to type "legislation"] that had been purchased and manipulated by large, private ISP's (the Bell babies, Comcast et al.) to eliminate competition. Note further that those big ISP's often secured substantial (i.e. enormous) tax breaks and other incentives, in return for agreeing to "universal broadband deployment" in the relevant state/community's service area. They have almost universally reneged on their side of these agreements, sometimes e.g. lobbying the state legislature to let them out of their side of the agreement almost before the ink is dry on their signature to it. Going back in time, early trunk capacity was to a significant extent government built and government owned. There wouldn't have been an "Internet" without the Feds. And, once opened up, they kept access on a rather equal footing. This might not have all been "codified" regulation -- though I guess that and/or a set of "operating rules" grew somewhat organically. But it certainly controlled and set precedent. So, both presently and in the past, "regulation" has actually fostered competition. And yeah, the corporate lawyer is a giant tool. Quelle surprise!
- tbyehl 9y agoAT&T knocked on my door recently to sell "fiber" -- in reality, 50/10 over 4-pair. I get 360/30 on Comcast.
- Retric 9y agoMost people are not going to notice the difference from 50/10 vs 360/30. As long as you can download 20+GB/hour you can get multiple HD streams faster than you can watch them and not much else needs that kind of bandwidth.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- toast0 9y agoUsing HE tunnels isn't all roses; Netflix treats them as a VPN and blocks streaming access (on the plus side Roku boxes don't do IPv6, so you don't have to figure out how to block Netflix IPv6 if you watch on a Roku), and some of the ATT CPE equipment blocks IPv6 tunnels (probably unintentionally, some of their CPE equipment is pretty stupidly implemented)
- bubblethink 9y agoIsn't that really slow though ? I thought this is essentially like a VPN. Also, it'll create problems with Netflix etc.
- chrisper 9y agoNot slow at all for me.
- mmanfrin 9y agoI am hesitant to leave because I have literally no other broadband options in one of the home cities of the first networked machine, Berkeley. Sonic can't give me more than 15mbps, ditto AT&T. LMI is dialup, Pax is dialup. I own my own home, so I can't get Webpass. Comcast can get away with shit like this because people realistically have no other options. I am damnned in to paying such an evil company thousands of dollars a year because of their monopoly and the supposed "free market" party passes laws and pushes policy to further entrench the status quo. It is maddening.
- Veratyr 9y agoSince you own, there's a chance you can get fiber. Unwired and Paxio are doing it in Berkeley. Here's Unwired: http://unwiredltd.com/fiber.php http://unwiredltd.com/fiber.php Wireless is also potentially an option.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- microDude 9y agoMy only other option is a 3Mb DSL line. For the past few years I have subscribed to DSL, just to avoid feeding Comcast. Comcast/Cable Internet should be regulated like a utility.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoI had 4Mb DSL once. It was okay, then water got into the line somewhere and I was moved to a different pair that could only manage 2Mb. Naturally the phone company couldn't GAF and I had no way to remedy the problem other than cable. The existing utilities should be forced to maintain a suitable quality of service.
- doctorshady 9y agoYeah, the way they neglect their infrastructure is an incredible load of shit. If you have phone service (real phone service; a voip service like the one AT&T tries to push with Uverse is basically unregulated) on the same line and it's experiencing problems however, you can get the FCC involved if they refuse to fix it.
- RunawayGalaxy 9y agoI'm quite ignorant on how the industry has gotten to this state. I don't understand why the cable companies are private in the first place. Wasn't the infrastructure they leverage heavily subsidized by the public? There are no consumers I can think of who are against net neutrality if given the option, yet it's still a battle. What can we do about this? I'm not asking rhetorically.
- rhino369 9y ago>Wasn't the infrastructure they leverage heavily subsidized by the public? Not directly so, no. If anything they get taxed very heavily because they are an easy target (because they can't pick up and leave. Some argue that some local governments signed exclusivity deals, which can be considered an indirect subsidy. But that was usually only one side of the quid pro quo. In exchange, the cable company had to wire up poor neighborhoods, submit themselves to price regulation, etc. But exclusive deals were banned before cable internet was even invented.
- amelius 9y agoGreed (state sells right to place land lines), lobbying, ignorance and lack of interest of consumers.
- dsr_ 9y agoHow did we get here? History. The original cable companies were community antenna television (CATV) providers. They would find high ground with good signal reception, or make it with antenna masts, and send an amplified signal to their subscribers. The service was relatively cheap and very desirable in areas where putting up your own antenna wasn't useful. Towns easily granted licenses to their local companies to put up wire on the telephone poles. The first added services were satellite channel reception and local channel insertion. These cost little to add. Then pay channels were invented - HBO among the first. In order to differentiate non-subscribers from subscribers, the cable companies came up with a clever idea: they would add a transmission to each pay channel that would interfere with the signal. Subscribers would get a notch filter that would cut out the interference. It was easy when you only had one channel to block or allow, but handling several meant multiple filters. It was much cheaper to maintain a few sets of multiple-filter enabling devices than to customize them for every subscriber, and that's where tiers of channels originally came from. All of these things were handled by more or less local companies, and towns and cities didn't have a problem handing them pole access. But the companies consolidated into larger franchises, 800 becoming 20 or so companies covering populations of a million or more subscribers each and 82 much smaller businesses. The top five have about 235 million people in their coverage zones. The next five cover 43 million. And the next ten have about 15. Now, once you have wired infrastructure covering that number of people, coupled with a tradition of granting local monopoly access to the wires, you get to hire lawyers and lobbyists who convince legislatures to make your traditional de factor monopoly a de jure monopoly. So that's how we got here. What can we do? Mostly what we have to do is to make net neutrality and infrastructure reform a priority for our state legislators and congressional reps and senators. Talk to them about your concerns. With Republicans, concentrate on arguments about enabling small business innovation and improving the economy. With Democrats, use arguments about freedom and consumer rights. Talk to your neighbors. Nobody wants a high cable bill, and the only way to lower it is to break the monopoly.
- rch 9y agoComcast is currently working on LoRa networks and lobbying for control. The economics of a low power wide area network don't really favor a monopoly, but they might get one if nobody is paying attention.
- infocollector 9y agoIn our locality, unfortunately, Comcast is a monopoly. Is there a way to complain about ISPs (about Comcast) to FCC or another regulator?
- youdontknowtho 9y agoLiterally, they have opposed an open internet for as long as they have been involved with it. They have been one of the larger IPv6 deployments, which is good for the network. That being said, they have always wanted to use "Qos" to bias some traffic against others. I really think that the answer here is non-profit carriers providing fiber to everything. As long as carriers can compete in the content space they are going to have a monetary incentive to screw people.
- dsr_ 9y agoThey could even be for-profit companies if they were willing to accept regulation (like utility companies ) and a low but guaranteed profit (like utility companies.)
- youdontknowtho 9y agoAgreed. The weird thing is that the constitution actually tasks the Postal Service with interstate messaging. They even have local offices where they could issue smartcards/hardware tokens for authentication. It's more likely that I will grow wings and fly away, but they would be in a great position to build a national content agnostic network.
- colanderman 9y agoThey don't just want to use QoS, they actively do. All non-Comcast TV traffic entering a Comcast customer's network is tagged with DSCP 8, which basically means "bottom feeder" in terms of network priority (below even untagged traffic). For many this is not a problem. But if you have a router with WMM (WiFi QoS) enabled, the above setting destroys your connection quality, since inbound data takes a back seat to basically anything on the airwaves. I had to start stripping DSCP off of incoming packets to regain any semblance of a functioning internet connection. And of course Comcast doesn't care about this, it combined with their bufferbloat problems just serve as a means to convince subscribers that the really need to upgrade to some $100/mo package to be able to browse Facebook…
- 9y ago
- speedgeek 9y agoIn other news, Exxon Mobil opposes the use of non fossil fuels and water is wet.
- raarts 9y agoI don't know if I should flag this or not. Most every post gets the obligatory reply like this one, stating 'this is not news', 'what do you expect', maybe there's even a term for it. Does this really add value to the discussion?
- MaymayMaster 9y agoJust flag it then, you twat.