4 ms·

What do you mean by token offenses? "Fast lanes" as a general product aren't likely going to be offers on the company home page, they're going to be in the pri

What do you mean by token offenses? "Fast lanes" as a general product aren't likely going to be offers on the company home page, they're going to be in the private peering agreements they have with larger companies. This has already happened. [Netflix had to pay Comcast](https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/ https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-com...), and [Comcast throttled their VoIP competitor Vonage](https://www.wired.com/2006/03/comcast_throttling_vonage_users/ https://www.wired.com/2006/03/comcast_throttling_vonage_user...). Vonage and Netflix started working again but the why was never made public. It seems likely that paying for fast lanes was involved. These aren't the cold hard facts we'd like to have about what exactly happened, but they're clear violations of Net Neutrality that were resolved ambiguously. As far as negative effects in general, beyond fast lanes, there's more than a few examples: * [AT&T blocked FaceTime](https://www.savetheinternet.com/att-facetime https://www.savetheinternet.com/att-facetime) * [Verizon blocked Google Wallet](http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/06/technology/verizon_blocks_google_wallet/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/06/technology/verizon_blocks_go...) * [Verizon throttles video](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/verizons-throttling-of-video-should-be-investigated-by-fcc-petition-says/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/verizons-throttl...) * And [a lot more](https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...). The violations are often subtle, and haven't always affected everyone, but the negative effects of the lack of NN are not hypothetical.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
As I suggested, if you look at these incidents individually, there's very different perspectives you can glean: Netflix gets free colocation from ISPs through Netflix Open Connect. (Hilariously, Netflix claims it "offers this for free to ISPs", whereas if you realize it is colocation, it is obviously Netflix should be paying for it.) Net neutrality cripples ISPs' negotiating position with Netflix (since it prevents ISPs from controlling their traffic in other ways), which protects their special treatment, ironically, since only Netflix has the market share to dictate terms to ISPs. If you made a startup video competitor, you'd have to pay for the service net neutrality guarantees Netflix gets for free. ISPs must host Netflix's boxes for free, or get hit by a deluge of upstream Netflix traffic. FaceTime is an excellent example of a reasonable reason a provider may wish to get involved in content for performance reasons: Everyone switching to video chat would have a massive and immediate impact on that ISP's network traffic. With "unlimited data" models, ISPs don't necessarily get increased revenue to offset massively increased bandwidth use and network congestion. It's understandable why AT&T moved here. I actually prefer a pay-as-you-go data model, because it incentivizes carriers to provide neutral data as fast as possible: The more you use, the more money they make. Verizon blocking Google Wallet stands in a long line of incidents where good PR has reversed the blame. ;) Google refused to allow competitors' payment systems from using the secure element in phones... a market Google has monopoly control of. Eventually, Verizon's hardline stance on being able to offer a competing service forced Google to rework Wallet to be more fair, and not get an exclusive security feature everyone else was prohibited from using. Of course, Google just moved to kill their competition another way: They bought out Softcard/ISIS and turned it into Android Pay. (And kicked Windows Mobile Softcard users to the curb too, hurting a second competitor in the process! Efficiency!) NFC payment competitors to Android Pay on Android phones like Samsung Pay only exist today thanks to Verizon's hardline stance.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

As I suggested, if you look at these incidents individually, there's very different perspectives you can glean: Netflix gets free colocation from ISPs through Netflix Open Connect. (Hilariously, Netflix claims it "offers this for free to ISPs", whereas if you realize it is colocation, it is obviously Netflix should be paying for it.) Net neutrality cripples ISPs' negotiating position with Netflix (since it prevents ISPs from controlling their traffic in other ways), which protects their special treatment, ironically, since only Netflix has the market share to dictate terms to ISPs. If you made a startup video competitor, you'd have to pay for the service net neutrality guarantees Netflix gets for free. ISPs must host Netflix's boxes for free, or get hit by a deluge of upstream Netflix traffic. FaceTime is an excellent example of a reasonable reason a provider may wish to get involved in content for performance reasons: Everyone switching to video chat would have a massive and immediate impact on that ISP's network traffic. With "unlimited data" models, ISPs don't necessarily get increased revenue to offset massively increased bandwidth use and network congestion. It's understandable why AT&T moved here. I actually prefer a pay-as-you-go data model, because it incentivizes carriers to provide neutral data as fast as possible: The more you use, the more money they make. Verizon blocking Google Wallet stands in a long line of incidents where good PR has reversed the blame. ;) Google refused to allow competitors' payment systems from using the secure element in phones... a market Google has monopoly control of. Eventually, Verizon's hardline stance on being able to offer a competing service forced Google to rework Wallet to be more fair, and not get an exclusive security feature everyone else was prohibited from using. Of course, Google just moved to kill their competition another way: They bought out Softcard/ISIS and turned it into Android Pay. (And kicked Windows Mobile Softcard users to the curb too, hurting a second competitor in the process! Efficiency!) NFC payment competitors to Android Pay on Android phones like Samsung Pay only exist today thanks to Verizon's hardline stance.