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> On top of that, there are articles going around like these: https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.free

by mbesto 9y ago

> On top of that, there are articles going around like these: https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio... …listing situations that have taken place where it’s claimed that net neutrality was violated. I wanted to take a moment to discuss these arguments honestly And then the author doesn't address AT&T blocking Skype, Comcast blocking P2P, Telecoms blocking Google Wallet, and on and on. This is basically an article of whataboutisms. "ISP's aren't the problem with Freedom of Speech, companies are". Ya but if a private company (Facebook, Google, etc) blocks dissenting opinions, we can simply chose to read/visit another site. That's the point. If your ISP blocks a site, you don't have the choice to get another ISP.

glassrye 9y ago
Let us not forget Level3 and Verizon having peering relationship issues in high use markets.... sigh
- bifrost 9y ago
  Consumers do suffer when lastmile carriers don't work to find solutions, however the solution is for customers to complain to their provider. The more people who complain the faster it'll get fixed, NN absolutely won't solve that, and to be honest I think it could make it worse.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dominotw 9y ago
>you don't have the choice to get another ISP Is this a problem that cannot be solved?
- chrisan 9y ago
  Not easily. In most places I have lived you have at most 2 options. DSL (if you are close enough) or cable. I guess anyone can do satellite but... shudders Cable is like fiefdoms of old Europe and I'm they would like to keep it that way vs actually competing on the same lines
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    I live 15 miles from Google HQ and those are the choices, DSL/cable/satellite and I don't want to support the cable company so it's DSL for me.
    - floren 9y ago
      If you're in the Bay Area, sonic.net was always great for me. Despite being DSL, it was pretty fast, good uptime, good customer service. I wish I could get them here.
      - stevenwoo 9y ago
        Thanks, I should have mentioned I am using sonic.net. It is pretty good and I don't understand how but it's more reliable than AT&T (the second time I had to stay home from work and the AT&T technician didn't show up I had to switch to something else) when I assumed it was over the same copper wires to the nearest telco office and same telco office.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    I'm pretty optimistic on the future of wireless technology. So far it has been pretty terrible, but amazing things are coming.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  All you need to do instead is regulate or even nationalize the last mile infrastructure and then allow anyone to start an ISP and use that infrastructure to provide service anywhere in the country. If you do that you don't need Net Neutrality. It's not clearly a good idea because it creates a disincentive for ISPs to lay down last mile infrastructure and there's no way you'd be able to do it in the US anyway. All in all net neutrality is just good regulation. It's basically disallowing ISPs from abusing their natural monopoly to extract rents from other companies. If you're going to regulate anything in this market at all that seems like a bare minimum.
- SteveNuts 9y ago
  Not really, at least in all the places I've ever lived in, there's only a single ISP available, you have no choice. The only way this will get any better is by WISPs to become more common, which will take a lot of time and money.
paulddraper 9y ago
> you don't have the choice to get another ISP Patently false. Of the several million developed US census blocks, 100% have multiple ISPs offering 10Mbps+. [1] In fact, I daresay it is easier to switch your ISP than to switch your social network. The hooplah around NN is an effective distraction; ISPs aren't even close to being the monopoly to worry about. [1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.p...
- british_india 9y ago
  Ridiculous. Over the past 15 years, I have lived in Phoenix, Houston, Salt Lake City, New York City, Cincinnati and NOT ONCE did I have a choice.
- mindslight 9y ago
  At first I was wondering how I could turn your citation into a referral to an actual provider! But thinking about the technicals, the unit of a census block is basically meaningless. DSL can easily achieve 10MBit+ when close to a central office. There will tend to be a CO close enough to somewhere in each census block, making that class of speed technically "available". But this is ultimately meaningless when it comes to the actual distances involved for most of the people within.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    I'll concede that a census block isn't a perfect measure. There are 11 million of them in the US, and I don't know of a comprehensive study with better units.
- epicide 9y ago
  They should have put "you don't have a REAL choice to get another ISP". 10Mbps would not be enough for me nor most of my (even non-technical) family members. Beyond that, the ones that do offer faster speeds have a cap that I would go past pretty much every month. I even live in a fairly sizeable city. If I had another realistic option than cable, I would've already taken it. The issue comes from the fact that a lot of ISPs are, for reasons above, basically monopolies. This is, by itself, a really bad thing™. Lack of NN just lets them blackmail everybody from both sides on top of having practically 0 competition. EDIT: your link actually shows you're wrong. The graph on page 6 (which I assume you're referring to) shows that 100% have multiple choices of 3+ Mbps, not 10+. 10+ only has 97%. Sure, it's only 3%, but that's still not 100% and not "patently false". In that document, they don't mention prices, anywhere. Also, on that same page, they mention: > A provider that reports offering service in a particular census block may not offer service, or service at that speed, to all locations in the census block. Accordingly, the number of providers shown in Figure 4 does not necessarily reflect the number of choices available to a particular household and does not purport to measure competition.
tooltalk 9y ago
Sure, and you don't have the choice to get another ISP, because of, as the author notes in his article, the problem of regional monopoly created by local gov't regulation.
- sagichmal 9y ago
  > regional monopoly created by local gov't regulation. Lol.
  - coliveira 9y ago
    This is a common tactic of so-called libertarians: claim that competition is good so that the best is able to win against everybody else. Then, claim that monopolies/oligopolies are the sole responsibility of bad government.
    - soberhoff 9y ago
      > tactic of so-called libertarians You make it sound as if nobody could ever support libertarianism honestly.
  - okreallywtf 9y ago
    FWIW I downvoted you because I don't think that your comment is productive. I agree with your sentiment though, I have no idea what local regulations supposedly have caused there to be little or not competition in internet providers. My understanding is that it is incredibly expensive to build and maintain an internet infrastructure. Coupling that with the recent rules that do not require ISPs to sell bandwidth and basically it becomes economically infeasible to build a new ISP from the ground up (if google can't afford to do it, who can?)
  - 1_2__4 9y ago
    This is exactly the correct reply.
- mtgx 9y ago
  The two are not connected other than by the word "regulation". You can still have local governments not give ISPs local monopoly over laid cables, but you can also have net neutrality, which says that companies shouldn't be messing with the traffic that passes through their pipes. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Also, some have mentioned in other similar threads that sometimes the monopoly is (sort of) natural because no other ISP even wants to lay the cables in a certain area. I do believe that to be true, but I don't think it's "case closed," either. Many other countries have solved this issue by either mandating that whoever is laying the cables would then have to license them to competitors (which could also bring them their return on investment faster), or they could have a public-private partnership, where the government invests alongside the initial company that is laying the cables, to reduce its costs, and then similarly they license them to new competitors later on.
bifrost 9y ago
I'll briefly address this having worked on multiple sides of this argument; Your examples were all sorted out pre-NN. The Skype/GWallet issues are more related to mobile carriers having control over your mobile devices than anything else. Your carrier controlling your device is not something that would be sorted out by NN, and for the most part "the market" has sorted out a lot of phone control issues.
leereeves 9y ago
> Ya but if a private company (Facebook, Google, etc) blocks dissenting opinions, we can simply chose to read/visit another site. That's the point. If your ISP blocks a site, you don't have the choice to get another ISP. ISPs aren't the only kind of company that has high barriers to entry and tends toward a natural monopoly/duopoly. There are only 2 major search engines (Google and Bing, DDG uses Bing), only 1 major video sharing site (and 2 minor sites), only a few messaging services, only 1 major link sharing site (HN is great but not competitive with reddit). Worse, most of these services are owned by the same few big tech companies.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "And then the author doesn't address AT&T blocking Skype, Comcast blocking P2P, Telecoms blocking Google Wallet, and on and on." The thing is AT&T and Comcast ended their blocking of Skype and P2P voluntarily once their actions were exposed. Turns out American customers generally don't like censorship. Made for a very bad public image. These ISP's probably then realized it was more profitable to NOT block packets.

by mbesto 9y ago

glassrye 9y ago

Let us not forget Level3 and Verizon having peering relationship issues in high use markets.... sigh

bifrost 9y ago
Consumers do suffer when lastmile carriers don't work to find solutions, however the solution is for customers to complain to their provider. The more people who complain the faster it'll get fixed, NN absolutely won't solve that, and to be honest I think it could make it worse.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dominotw 9y ago

>you don't have the choice to get another ISP Is this a problem that cannot be solved?

chrisan 9y ago
Not easily. In most places I have lived you have at most 2 options. DSL (if you are close enough) or cable. I guess anyone can do satellite but... shudders Cable is like fiefdoms of old Europe and I'm they would like to keep it that way vs actually competing on the same lines
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I live 15 miles from Google HQ and those are the choices, DSL/cable/satellite and I don't want to support the cable company so it's DSL for me.
  - floren 9y ago
    If you're in the Bay Area, sonic.net was always great for me. Despite being DSL, it was pretty fast, good uptime, good customer service. I wish I could get them here.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Thanks, I should have mentioned I am using sonic.net. It is pretty good and I don't understand how but it's more reliable than AT&T (the second time I had to stay home from work and the AT&T technician didn't show up I had to switch to something else) when I assumed it was over the same copper wires to the nearest telco office and same telco office.
- freedomben 9y ago
  I'm pretty optimistic on the future of wireless technology. So far it has been pretty terrible, but amazing things are coming.
pedrocr 9y ago
All you need to do instead is regulate or even nationalize the last mile infrastructure and then allow anyone to start an ISP and use that infrastructure to provide service anywhere in the country. If you do that you don't need Net Neutrality. It's not clearly a good idea because it creates a disincentive for ISPs to lay down last mile infrastructure and there's no way you'd be able to do it in the US anyway. All in all net neutrality is just good regulation. It's basically disallowing ISPs from abusing their natural monopoly to extract rents from other companies. If you're going to regulate anything in this market at all that seems like a bare minimum.
SteveNuts 9y ago
Not really, at least in all the places I've ever lived in, there's only a single ISP available, you have no choice. The only way this will get any better is by WISPs to become more common, which will take a lot of time and money.

paulddraper 9y ago

> you don't have the choice to get another ISP Patently false. Of the several million developed US census blocks, 100% have multiple ISPs offering 10Mbps+. [1] In fact, I daresay it is easier to switch your ISP than to switch your social network. The hooplah around NN is an effective distraction; ISPs aren't even close to being the monopoly to worry about. [1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344499A1.p...

british_india 9y ago
Ridiculous. Over the past 15 years, I have lived in Phoenix, Houston, Salt Lake City, New York City, Cincinnati and NOT ONCE did I have a choice.
mindslight 9y ago
At first I was wondering how I could turn your citation into a referral to an actual provider! But thinking about the technicals, the unit of a census block is basically meaningless. DSL can easily achieve 10MBit+ when close to a central office. There will tend to be a CO close enough to somewhere in each census block, making that class of speed technically "available". But this is ultimately meaningless when it comes to the actual distances involved for most of the people within.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  I'll concede that a census block isn't a perfect measure. There are 11 million of them in the US, and I don't know of a comprehensive study with better units.
epicide 9y ago
They should have put "you don't have a REAL choice to get another ISP". 10Mbps would not be enough for me nor most of my (even non-technical) family members. Beyond that, the ones that do offer faster speeds have a cap that I would go past pretty much every month. I even live in a fairly sizeable city. If I had another realistic option than cable, I would've already taken it. The issue comes from the fact that a lot of ISPs are, for reasons above, basically monopolies. This is, by itself, a really bad thing™. Lack of NN just lets them blackmail everybody from both sides on top of having practically 0 competition. EDIT: your link actually shows you're wrong. The graph on page 6 (which I assume you're referring to) shows that 100% have multiple choices of 3+ Mbps, not 10+. 10+ only has 97%. Sure, it's only 3%, but that's still not 100% and not "patently false". In that document, they don't mention prices, anywhere. Also, on that same page, they mention: > A provider that reports offering service in a particular census block may not offer service, or service at that speed, to all locations in the census block. Accordingly, the number of providers shown in Figure 4 does not necessarily reflect the number of choices available to a particular household and does not purport to measure competition.

tooltalk 9y ago

Sure, and you don't have the choice to get another ISP, because of, as the author notes in his article, the problem of regional monopoly created by local gov't regulation.

sagichmal 9y ago
> regional monopoly created by local gov't regulation. Lol.
- coliveira 9y ago
  This is a common tactic of so-called libertarians: claim that competition is good so that the best is able to win against everybody else. Then, claim that monopolies/oligopolies are the sole responsibility of bad government.
  - soberhoff 9y ago
    > tactic of so-called libertarians You make it sound as if nobody could ever support libertarianism honestly.
- okreallywtf 9y ago
  FWIW I downvoted you because I don't think that your comment is productive. I agree with your sentiment though, I have no idea what local regulations supposedly have caused there to be little or not competition in internet providers. My understanding is that it is incredibly expensive to build and maintain an internet infrastructure. Coupling that with the recent rules that do not require ISPs to sell bandwidth and basically it becomes economically infeasible to build a new ISP from the ground up (if google can't afford to do it, who can?)
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  This is exactly the correct reply.
mtgx 9y ago
The two are not connected other than by the word "regulation". You can still have local governments not give ISPs local monopoly over laid cables, but you can also have net neutrality, which says that companies shouldn't be messing with the traffic that passes through their pipes. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Also, some have mentioned in other similar threads that sometimes the monopoly is (sort of) natural because no other ISP even wants to lay the cables in a certain area. I do believe that to be true, but I don't think it's "case closed," either. Many other countries have solved this issue by either mandating that whoever is laying the cables would then have to license them to competitors (which could also bring them their return on investment faster), or they could have a public-private partnership, where the government invests alongside the initial company that is laying the cables, to reduce its costs, and then similarly they license them to new competitors later on.

bifrost 9y ago

I'll briefly address this having worked on multiple sides of this argument; Your examples were all sorted out pre-NN. The Skype/GWallet issues are more related to mobile carriers having control over your mobile devices than anything else. Your carrier controlling your device is not something that would be sorted out by NN, and for the most part "the market" has sorted out a lot of phone control issues.

leereeves 9y ago

> Ya but if a private company (Facebook, Google, etc) blocks dissenting opinions, we can simply chose to read/visit another site. That's the point. If your ISP blocks a site, you don't have the choice to get another ISP. ISPs aren't the only kind of company that has high barriers to entry and tends toward a natural monopoly/duopoly. There are only 2 major search engines (Google and Bing, DDG uses Bing), only 1 major video sharing site (and 2 minor sites), only a few messaging services, only 1 major link sharing site (HN is great but not competitive with reddit). Worse, most of these services are owned by the same few big tech companies.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

> "And then the author doesn't address AT&T blocking Skype, Comcast blocking P2P, Telecoms blocking Google Wallet, and on and on." The thing is AT&T and Comcast ended their blocking of Skype and P2P voluntarily once their actions were exposed. Turns out American customers generally don't like censorship. Made for a very bad public image. These ISP's probably then realized it was more profitable to NOT block packets.