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I'm still anti-NN because I hate how disingenuous and alarmist the pro-NN crowd has been. I don't think adding more regulation will fix anything. But at least

by pitaj 7y ago

I'm still anti-NN because I hate how disingenuous and alarmist the pro-NN crowd has been. I don't think adding more regulation will fix anything. But at least now we'll get to witness the power of federalism with regulatory comparisons between states. Reasons: - general opposition to regulation, because compliance costs burden smaller firms more, raising the barrier to entry - does not address the root problem, lack of competition - reduces choices for consumers Lack of competition is caused by onerous local regulations which incumbents use to raise the barrier to entry. See: Google Fiber Because NN does not address the root cause, and in fact the support for NN has not resulted in any significant support for addressing the root cause, it can only serve to further enforce the status quo or makes things worse. Some examples of failed predictions / misleading statements made by NN supporters: - Most Americans have less than 3 ISPs. This may be true depending on how you restrict which ISPs you're referring to. Mobile carriers cover almost the whole US, so there's 3 or 4 right there. - ISPs will produce different packages for internet access. This hasn't happened. - Speeds will reduce. This hasn't happened.

smolder 7y ago
Being upset by "alarmism" when you haven't learned the facts and why it's worth being alarmed about is a disturbing trend.
- gardnr 7y ago
  That is a vacuous and irrational accusation that you have butted with weasle words. Are you attacking OP or "the world"? What are you basing your assumption on that she hasn't learned the facts?
  - behringer 7y ago
    I don't know what parent meant but I would personally say that fits OP to a T. All of OPs claims of "this hasn't happened yet" have happened outside of the US where there is no NN.
marmada 7y ago
Please add evidence to the comment. A lot of your statements are vague rhetoric that could be flipped in the other direction.
- pitaj 7y ago
  Edited
Karunamon 7y ago
>general opposition to regulation, because compliance costs burden smaller firms more, raising the barrier to entry In your favor, I'm aware of at least one regional co-op ISP in Minnesota that either shut down or sold out due to the reporting/compliance overhead that Title 2 placed on them. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is simple organizational dynamics - larger corporations are able to absorb larger regulatory burdens that smaller players cannot. This is something that NN advocates seem to have a very hard time accepting. The law that was shot down wasn't "net neutrality", it was classifying ISPs whole of Title 2 (which is a ginormous blob of legislation, minus a couple of "forbeared" provisions) which had a specific form of net neutrality as one of its many provisions. >reduces choices for consumers This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? >Most Americans have less than 3 ISPs. This may be true depending on how you restrict which ISPs you're referring to. Mobile carriers are not realistic internet providers for daily home use because of draconian bandwidth caps and other forms of fuckery (like restricting video streams to 480p) even when "unlimited", and that's not getting into the latency/reliability issues that make things like online gaming difficult. Most people will have a telephone company and a cable TV company to choose from, with a smattering of third party DSL carriers (that still require the telephone company's lines), and some very niche options like fixed wireless (see latency/reliability) or satellite (high pings and bandwidth caps). ---- I do think it's interesting that most of the doomsaying has yet to come true. I don't think there's any demand for these tightly segregated services NN people seem to think we'll get, or else we would have seen meaningful, industry-wide pushes in that direction, and as for speeds, they've only been increasing.
- pitaj 7y ago
  > > reduces choices for consumers > This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? Let's say an ISP offers a plan allowing their users to have full-speed access to partner video steam providers, and slower access to their main competitors. This plan is half the price of their main plan, which gives full-speed access to everyone. The plan I described would be illegal, as I understand it, under NN. This means that that choice had been removed as an option for consumers. There are many consumers who would use this plan: people who do very little video streaming at all, people who use their partner's video streaming service, and people who use very small competing services which fly under the radar of their throttling. Those people now have to pay more because a choice that would have benefitted them is illegal.
gardnr 7y ago
I would venture to guess that the majority of the HN crowd is pro-NN. You are correct in that the real problem is that, starting in the 90s, municipalities traded exlusive rights for quick rollouts. The "onerous local regulations" are what created the unfair monopolies in so many cities. In San Francisco, you have AT&T still offers 10Mbit DSL because the only other game in town is Comcast (or MonkeyBrains). Mobile/Wireless ISPs and fiber providers are not in the same universe when it comes to where we want to go. If you are talking about crossing the digital divide to get marginalized groups of rural people connected to the internet then, yes, wireless is an answer. If you want to start building the next generation of infrastructure that will support the next generation of technology then we need to be rolling out fiber to as many places as we can. To do that we need to undo the regulations that prevented the appropriate competition from growing alongside the lazy incumbants, and, we need to protect the internet as it is today with net nuetrality regulations. Just because we haven't seen an ISP charge for different packages doesn't mean that it won't happen. It is legal after all. Why wouldn't a free market take advantage of that? Especially when I can only choose between Comcast or 10Mbit AT&T DSL? There needs to be a transitionary period. Open up all the municipalities to new broadband companies. Wait 20 years, then sunset net nuetrality.
Lukeas14 7y ago
General opposition to regulation - NN is not a cost regulation as far as I know. It's preventing companies from doing something, not requiring them to do anything extra. Lack of competition, reduces choice - These are the same thing and NN is not meant to be a solution to the lack of ISP competition. I think you're right that local regulations are the root case of that though. NN is meant to prevent reduced competition of services that rely on the internet, particularly those that require heavy data use. Would someone be able to start a Netflix today and compete with the media services owned by the ISPs? Less than 3 ISPs - Mobile service is not a replacement for home internet service. Even with tethering most households would go way over their mobile data caps if that's all they used. ISPs will produce different packages - This happens all over the world in places without NN. But since most of the major ISPs are also media companies in the US they simple zero-rate their own media. This has the same effect of reducing competition among online services. Also your username switched around is Ajit P. That's a little suspect ;)
- pitaj 7y ago
  NN, as it was proposed, as implementation of Title II for ISPs, is a large bundle of regulations. Regardless, every regulation has a cost to compliance. I explained how NN reduces options for consumers in a different reply. 5G is meant to be a replacement for home internet service. Its primary features: high bandwidth, low latency, etc. are specifically meant for that purpose. The one example I saw of this was a Portuguese mobile carrier. I didn't see any other examples. And zero-rating would be allowed under Title II. > your username switch around is Ajit P That's actually a pretty funny coincidence. Never recognized that before.
  - cogman10 7y ago
    > Regardless, every regulation has a cost to compliance. I don't buy this. Is there a cost to statutes against murder? What about trespassing laws? How about loitering laws? How about road laws, is there a cost to automakers for speed limit compliance? while regulations CAN have costs for compliance (see FDA testing for an extreme example), they don't ALL have costs. NN falls in the low to no cost bucket. "treat all traffic fairly" is a much easier algorithm and maintenance scheme than "Slow down netflix because we are partners with AT&T" or even "Slow down netflix because the user hasn't purchased the fast netflix plan". That is MORE costly to maintain for a network provider, not less. About the only way to spin it as costly is if you talk about opportunity losses (IE, they can have higher profits with shittier plans). I'd be more sympathetic if ISPs hadn't attained regional regulatory capture basically everywhere. If there were true competition in the ISP market then you could sway me to thinking NN could go. However, as it stands, most areas have only 2 competitors. In that case, either we need NN or we needs some trust busting.
ahoy 7y ago
Found ajit pai's hn account

by pitaj 7y ago

smolder 7y ago

Being upset by "alarmism" when you haven't learned the facts and why it's worth being alarmed about is a disturbing trend.

gardnr 7y ago
That is a vacuous and irrational accusation that you have butted with weasle words. Are you attacking OP or "the world"? What are you basing your assumption on that she hasn't learned the facts?
- behringer 7y ago
  I don't know what parent meant but I would personally say that fits OP to a T. All of OPs claims of "this hasn't happened yet" have happened outside of the US where there is no NN.

marmada 7y ago

Please add evidence to the comment. A lot of your statements are vague rhetoric that could be flipped in the other direction.

pitaj 7y ago
Edited

Karunamon 7y ago

>general opposition to regulation, because compliance costs burden smaller firms more, raising the barrier to entry In your favor, I'm aware of at least one regional co-op ISP in Minnesota that either shut down or sold out due to the reporting/compliance overhead that Title 2 placed on them. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is simple organizational dynamics - larger corporations are able to absorb larger regulatory burdens that smaller players cannot. This is something that NN advocates seem to have a very hard time accepting. The law that was shot down wasn't "net neutrality", it was classifying ISPs whole of Title 2 (which is a ginormous blob of legislation, minus a couple of "forbeared" provisions) which had a specific form of net neutrality as one of its many provisions. >reduces choices for consumers This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? >Most Americans have less than 3 ISPs. This may be true depending on how you restrict which ISPs you're referring to. Mobile carriers are not realistic internet providers for daily home use because of draconian bandwidth caps and other forms of fuckery (like restricting video streams to 480p) even when "unlimited", and that's not getting into the latency/reliability issues that make things like online gaming difficult. Most people will have a telephone company and a cable TV company to choose from, with a smattering of third party DSL carriers (that still require the telephone company's lines), and some very niche options like fixed wireless (see latency/reliability) or satellite (high pings and bandwidth caps). ---- I do think it's interesting that most of the doomsaying has yet to come true. I don't think there's any demand for these tightly segregated services NN people seem to think we'll get, or else we would have seen meaningful, industry-wide pushes in that direction, and as for speeds, they've only been increasing.

pitaj 7y ago
> > reduces choices for consumers > This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? Let's say an ISP offers a plan allowing their users to have full-speed access to partner video steam providers, and slower access to their main competitors. This plan is half the price of their main plan, which gives full-speed access to everyone. The plan I described would be illegal, as I understand it, under NN. This means that that choice had been removed as an option for consumers. There are many consumers who would use this plan: people who do very little video streaming at all, people who use their partner's video streaming service, and people who use very small competing services which fly under the radar of their throttling. Those people now have to pay more because a choice that would have benefitted them is illegal.

gardnr 7y ago

I would venture to guess that the majority of the HN crowd is pro-NN. You are correct in that the real problem is that, starting in the 90s, municipalities traded exlusive rights for quick rollouts. The "onerous local regulations" are what created the unfair monopolies in so many cities. In San Francisco, you have AT&T still offers 10Mbit DSL because the only other game in town is Comcast (or MonkeyBrains). Mobile/Wireless ISPs and fiber providers are not in the same universe when it comes to where we want to go. If you are talking about crossing the digital divide to get marginalized groups of rural people connected to the internet then, yes, wireless is an answer. If you want to start building the next generation of infrastructure that will support the next generation of technology then we need to be rolling out fiber to as many places as we can. To do that we need to undo the regulations that prevented the appropriate competition from growing alongside the lazy incumbants, and, we need to protect the internet as it is today with net nuetrality regulations. Just because we haven't seen an ISP charge for different packages doesn't mean that it won't happen. It is legal after all. Why wouldn't a free market take advantage of that? Especially when I can only choose between Comcast or 10Mbit AT&T DSL? There needs to be a transitionary period. Open up all the municipalities to new broadband companies. Wait 20 years, then sunset net nuetrality.

Lukeas14 7y ago

General opposition to regulation - NN is not a cost regulation as far as I know. It's preventing companies from doing something, not requiring them to do anything extra. Lack of competition, reduces choice - These are the same thing and NN is not meant to be a solution to the lack of ISP competition. I think you're right that local regulations are the root case of that though. NN is meant to prevent reduced competition of services that rely on the internet, particularly those that require heavy data use. Would someone be able to start a Netflix today and compete with the media services owned by the ISPs? Less than 3 ISPs - Mobile service is not a replacement for home internet service. Even with tethering most households would go way over their mobile data caps if that's all they used. ISPs will produce different packages - This happens all over the world in places without NN. But since most of the major ISPs are also media companies in the US they simple zero-rate their own media. This has the same effect of reducing competition among online services. Also your username switched around is Ajit P. That's a little suspect ;)

pitaj 7y ago
NN, as it was proposed, as implementation of Title II for ISPs, is a large bundle of regulations. Regardless, every regulation has a cost to compliance. I explained how NN reduces options for consumers in a different reply. 5G is meant to be a replacement for home internet service. Its primary features: high bandwidth, low latency, etc. are specifically meant for that purpose. The one example I saw of this was a Portuguese mobile carrier. I didn't see any other examples. And zero-rating would be allowed under Title II. > your username switch around is Ajit P That's actually a pretty funny coincidence. Never recognized that before.
- cogman10 7y ago
  > Regardless, every regulation has a cost to compliance. I don't buy this. Is there a cost to statutes against murder? What about trespassing laws? How about loitering laws? How about road laws, is there a cost to automakers for speed limit compliance? while regulations CAN have costs for compliance (see FDA testing for an extreme example), they don't ALL have costs. NN falls in the low to no cost bucket. "treat all traffic fairly" is a much easier algorithm and maintenance scheme than "Slow down netflix because we are partners with AT&T" or even "Slow down netflix because the user hasn't purchased the fast netflix plan". That is MORE costly to maintain for a network provider, not less. About the only way to spin it as costly is if you talk about opportunity losses (IE, they can have higher profits with shittier plans). I'd be more sympathetic if ISPs hadn't attained regional regulatory capture basically everywhere. If there were true competition in the ISP market then you could sway me to thinking NN could go. However, as it stands, most areas have only 2 competitors. In that case, either we need NN or we needs some trust busting.

ahoy 7y ago

Found ajit pai's hn account