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The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes

• angela-misan 3y ago
  [dead]
• KaiserPro 3y ago
  The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FCC should either be breaking up infrastructure from retailers (ie allowing regulated priced access like openreach) or splitting up operators and fining ones that dont provide proper access.
  • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
    I think there is limited room for competition in many of these categories. For example, the infrastructure costs for telecoms make it very difficult for new competition (like a startup) to enter the market. The existing ones benefited from past funding and a lack of competition, but have captured market share. In some cases, there are other practical limitations, for example, splitting up wireless spectrum. Apart from Starlink I’m not sure there can be viable alternatives in this space
    • dave4420 3y ago
      You force the infrastructure operator to allow competitors to use their infrastructure on a fair basis. It’s what happens in Europe (including the UK). It works.
      • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
        In Europe they only do this for the last mile as far as I know, and this actually also prevents innovation since again there isn’t competition that can meaningfully introduce alternatives (let’s say cable versus fiber versus whatever). But I agree that approach is still an important tool (certainly better than nothing) and the US should adopt it.
        • cycomanic 3y ago
          > In Europe they only do this for the last mile as far as I know, and this actually also prevents innovation since again there isn’t competition that can meaningfully introduce alternatives (let’s say cable versus fiber versus whatever). But I agree that approach is still an important tool (certainly better than nothing) and the US should adopt it. Actually many places offer choice between cable and DSL variants. But once there is fiber in the ground it actually doesn't make much sense to go with anything else, so choices disappear (only for connection type, not ISP). With fiber it's much cheaper to provide high speed access (and there is a much clearer update path).
      • ryandrake 3y ago
        OR, (and I know this is near heresy) you force the infrastructure operator to allow competitors to use their infrastructure regardless of whether it is fair to that operator. This isn't a schoolyard playground. We don't have to play fair and treat these megacorporation with kid gloves. When the shoe is on the other foot, corporations don't play fair with us. "Fair" doesn't even come into the picture when they are in the conference room deciding their prices and terms. So why should the government treat them fairly when it comes to a regulatory solution?
        • dave4420 3y ago
          “Fair” as in “on the same terms that their own retail unit gets”, without any terms that would be anticompetitive. And no cross subsidisation. (I meant “fair to competitors”, but I think you thought I meant “fair to the infrastructure owner”.)
    • tuwtuwtuwtuw 3y ago
      I live in sweden and can pick from roughly 30 different ISPs where I live. I don't live in some big city, but in a smaller village. There is tons of room for competition if the laws are set up to push for it.
      • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
        Do you know how they are set up? What elements of their networks they share?
  • throwaway35777 3y ago
    > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite... Speak for yourself, but I live on the west coast and my Internet connection is great. Edit: downvoters, what are the problems with U.S. internet?
    • seattle_spring 3y ago
      What's your Internet speed up and down, provider, and monthly cost? Actual monthly cost, not temporary promotions.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • throwaway35777 3y ago
        It's like $50/mo for 200/50 I think. Why, what are yours?
        • seattle_spring 3y ago
          The GP is comparing the US to the rest of the world, and they're correct: the US (including yours) lags behind other modern countries. Singapore, for reference, offers 500/500 symmetric connections for approximately the same price as you're paying. 2gbps symmetric is less than $200/mo. You're saying your Internet is fast enough for you, and that's fine and probably correct, but you're still getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should. You're also likely better situated than much of the rest of the country.
          • deleted 3y ago
            [deleted]
          • throwaway35777 3y ago
            > but you're still getting slower speeds for higher prices than you should And what is your solution to that?
  • marcinzm 3y ago
    Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality Regulation 2015). > In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. They do that because speeding up/slowing down apps is illegal and they are using loopholes in the law to get around that.
    • terse-broccoli 3y ago
      Yeah, but the loophole is also illegal. (so it’s not a loophole?)
    • godelski 3y ago
      > Yes I'm sure it's all due to competition and not the EU's 2015 law that explicitly requires net neutrality (Net Neutrality Regulation 2015). Why do these have to be in contention? Regulations are a critical factor in ensuring competition in markets. Without regulations monopolies quickly come to power because your power and influence is not linearly (or sublinearly) correlated to your size (even excluding lobbying power). A free market is a ,,well'' regulated market. A laissez-faire market is only free in passing.
      • kristopolous 3y ago
        One is an explicit policy stating expectations and the other is a speculative hypothesis that the same policy will naturally happen through some form of economic osmosis if only we leave things unmolested enough for an unspecified duration. I for one, would rather not rely on the assumption of magic. We know what we want and it's achievable directly. Let's not Rube Goldberg it.
      • itopaloglu83 3y ago
        A free market is not a lawless market but instead free within regulations. However, the amount of regulation should not make it impossible for competitors to join the market either. With the amount of subsidies in the US for ISPs, I think the services they render might be event called a public service, more than a utility.
  • jszymborski 3y ago
    > and to a lesser extent Canada's Not to turn this into a pissing contest, but Canada's internet is far more shite and far more captured by an oligopoly. Independent ISPs are harder to find than competition up here in the North.
    • parrot987 3y ago
      This is similar to what I see too. I've actually gotten a borderless phone plan from AT&T just so I don't have to deal with the Canadian oligopoly.
    • randomdata 3y ago
      Canada isn't so bad off when it comes to wired service. Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest. And many more are co-operatives owned by the customers. The mobile space is more challenging. A number of those co-ops and government ISPs were running mobile service back in the mid 2000s, but they never found the customer base and most of them eventually shut it down, Tbaytel and Sasktel being the exceptions. That said, many of those ISPs have more recently turned to reselling Big 3 service, so you can still at least minimize how much the Big 3 take, giving the small guy at least some of the cut. Maybe some day they can take that small cut and build out their own network again? But, you get what you choose to become a customer of, I suppose.
      • gruez 3y ago
        >Several ISPs are owned by the government: Sasktel, Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, CityWest That's cold comfort to the overwhelming majority of people who aren't served by such ISPs. Population of... Saskatchewan (Sasktel): 1.1M Bruce County (Bruce Telecom): 66.5k Thunder Bay District (Tbaytel): 146k Prince Rupert, British Columbia (CityWest): 13k That makes up a total of 1.3M, against Canada's population of 37.0M. Moreover, looking at Sasktel's website[1], their prices don't look too competitive. They're asking for $105/month for 1G (promotional offer, regular price $150), which is actually worse than what corporate ISPs offer, eg. $110/month for 1.5G (promotional offer, regular price $130)[2]. [1] https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Internet/Internet-plans/_/N-satbeg https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Internet/Inter... [2] https://www.rogers.com/internet/packages https://www.rogers.com/internet/packages
  • wkat4242 3y ago
    > In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. That's also in breach of EU net neutrality laws. A Dutch ISP lost a lawsuit over this for providing free Spotify traffic. I don't remember which one, I think it was T Mobile (now called Odildo or something lol)
    • f1shy 3y ago
      Odildo? Cant be truth in a country where almost all people speak english!
      • wkat4242 3y ago
        It's actually Odido but everyone I know calls it Odildo :P it was really a stupid name choice
        • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
          I suspect it's a brand name they tested across multiple languages, etc
          • beeboobaa3 3y ago
            Most countries are somewhat familiar with english slang, such as the word dildo.
            • arp242 3y ago
              It's not slang, it's just a word. And the Dutch for dildo is ... dildo (I would have expected shared roots in French or some such, but apparently it's a loanword from English since the 70s).
        • blackbeans 3y ago
          I must be weird, but I like the name. It's a palindrome and I dig their symmetrical logo. And of course, it is clever marketing. Even here we are talking about it.
  • yftsui 3y ago
    Giving “free data pass” to limited set of apps is even more harmful IMO, the monopolies can afford pay the network infrastructure but small app developers will not be able to.
    • ethbr1 3y ago
      This. If ISPs want to QoS traffic into different lanes... fine. But those lanes should: - Be general categories of use - Only be created by regulation - Be freely accessible to any app - Not involve any app-ISP payment
      • itopaloglu83 3y ago
        Or, or, hear me out. The companies that need such high speed networks, should pay the infrastructure companies and get their own communication lines built, instead of buying QoS access on publicly funded projects.
        • ethbr1 3y ago
          I don't think any company should be able to buy QoS access. They should simply qualify for it on the basis of their use case. E.g. "video streaming" or "real-time telecom"
          • itopaloglu83 3y ago
            I agree. What do you think about fair use policies? Things like having 250GB/Month kind of limits. The internet infrastructure was built with certain utilization and speed in mind. Instead of owning up to the fact that it’s not as good as it used to be, these companies are selling quality of service products. Otherwise it’s too much of a publicity hit if they admit it.
            • ethbr1 3y ago
              I'm in favor of things that ultimately benefit the consumer. "Unlimited" plans have always irked the hell out of me, because they rarely are. I think capped totals (ideally without overage charges and with slow-lane bandwidth until reset) are perfectly fine. But I'm 100% against named exclusions that don't count against a cap -- that's unfairly preferring an existing incumbent, and doesn't benefit the consumer in the larger/competition sense.
  • spullara 3y ago
    Best internet in the country is offered by a monopoly in Chattanooga. Up to 25 Gbit up/down.
    • glitchc 3y ago
      That's amazing. I just upgraded my home network to 10G to take advantage of my 1.5G internet connection.
    • CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Why are you calling their municipal fiber internet a monopoly? Not only is it a utility, here is a list of 10 other broadband providers including att fiber, xfinity and verizon 300mb 5g: https://broadbandnow.com/Tennessee/Chattanooga https://broadbandnow.com/Tennessee/Chattanooga Pretty ridiculous and disingenuous to call it "monopoly".
      • spullara 3y ago
        Does someone else have access to that infrastructure that can offer the service? Utilities are granted monopolies.
        • CyberDildonics 3y ago
          > Utilities are granted monopolies. You can say that as many times as you want, but you don't have any evidence or even an explanation. If there were ten power lines and ten water pipes to your house would say each of those twenty companies had a monopoly? Repeating something isn't evidence of anything.
    • godelski 3y ago
      Monopoly? That's a bit bold of a claim. The provider you're talking about is the utility company. You might not know why the utility company provides the internet either. It's because before that they couldn't get the other companies (AT&T, Comcast, Hughe, Verizon) to offer good speeds and reasonable rates. The utility also doesn't take a profit. Mind you, those other companies still operate and no one is holding them back. They just decided that the profit margins weren't worth it, though they did lobby against NoogaNet. It's not a monopoly. It's a city coming together and saying Fuck you, give us good internet or we're going to build our own internet w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶j̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ And overnight all those companies increased their speeds. They found what they were happy with and NoogaNet still decided "fuck it, we're going to just be better." I really REALLY wish more people/cities would take this "fuck you, we'll do it ourselves" attitude. Waiting on others to fix our problems clearly isn't working.
  • lolinder 3y ago
    This was my thought. My municipality has been working towards laying a city-owned fiber network that ISPs compete on, and if that goes through I would have no problem with some of them running the kind of programs described in TFA. If consumers want it they'll choose those ISPs, if they don't they'll choose ones that offer flat rates for all traffic. The problem with unregulated broadband isn't the lack of regulation in the abstract, it's the lack of regulation over a sector that has 2(±1) choices per household and no easy path for new entrants.
  • EPWN3D 3y ago
    I was definitely someone who wrote the FCC (futilely) in support of net neutrality in 2017, and I figured the inevitable outcome of the FCC decision back then would be skyrocketing broadband costs, fast lanes, etc. Except none of it happened. It turns out there's actually kind of okay competition in this space. Maybe not as much as there should be, but prices have stayed reasonable, broadband access is expanding, and people by and large don't seem bothered by data caps when they're subject to them, and they have access to reasonably priced, uncapped plans. All that said, I certainly won't say no to reinstating net neutrality, since I don't think you can argue it'll make anything worse. In fact it might make competition easier. But it's not the existential pillar to online existence that we seemed to think it was.
    • PoignardAzur 3y ago
      Yeah, the discourse around the Net Neutrality thing was intense. I was one the few people who argued it wouldn't change much, and I remember being struck by the state of near-internet-apocalypse people were predicting at the time. Helps that I was seeing the whole thing from the outside as a non-US-resident.
      • doublepg23 3y ago
        I have to take the L on going with the flow there. It's impossible to build a case that repeal of net neutrality was apocalyptic.
        • ethbr1 3y ago
          That the potential of a future FCC reinstating it precluded ISPs' baser instincts? Their goal was to avoid excess, so maybe they could argue that net neutrality wasn't a good idea anyway, so they could gradually introduce new revenue streams from apps/platforms.
          • PoignardAzur 3y ago
            That repeal lasted five years, with virtually none of the visible effects people predicted. By contrast, when the Trump administration started tearing down environmental regulations, mining companies jumped on the occasion within months. If ISPs are playing the long game, they're being incredibly patient about it.
  • ThatMedicIsASpy 3y ago
    All the free access has been removed in Germany a while ago because of net neutrality. The free access also came with a limit like bitrate and video resolution.
  • kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    The FCC did that with DSL. The incumbent telcos retaliated by not maintaining their copper plant and killing their own line of business as an ISP.
    • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      The mistake there was in leaving the private monopoly intact whatsoever. If you want to have ISP-level competition, one of the better ways to do it is to have the government install cable trenches along the roads which the government then owns and provides cheap access for anyone to lay cable. Once the trenches exist, wiring a neighborhood with fiber is then far less expensive and makes it feasible to have multiple competitors.
  • passwordoops 3y ago
    The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) {insert industry} is shite is because of the monopolies that exist.
    • spxneo 3y ago
      ppls comments on this thread towards Canada really struck a nerve with their cluelessness about Canada. People from other countries always act like it's some shining example of the Western world, but that's not the real deal at all. Canada is basically just three big resource companies propped up by a massive housing bubble that traps newcomers in debt slavery in a form of reverse colonialism where they trick immigrants to become serfs paying rent so people who bought homes in the 80s (after working for like 6 months) can keep flipping it to the next wave of immigrants and blame them with the media owned by the very oligarchs that are supposed to regulate the real estate industry (lol!). They don't even bother using or valuing the skills and experience these immigrants bring - you've got surgeons from the UK working as cashiers, immigrants without income so all they can do is start businesses or become traders, all to line the pockets of the ultra-rich oligarchs who get everything for cheap and flip at insane markups. They have every Prime Minister wrapped around their little finger, letting them monopolize everything and then screwing over everyone that comes to this miserable piece of land. Take this one famous billionaire in Vancouver - I'm not gonna name names, but this dude practically owns all the salmon in BC, along with Aboriginal monopolies that were handed out just because of what has been described in anthropology textbooks as "white guilt". Then there's another billionaire from Ottawa who has a monopoly on the legal drug market - guy ended up getting choked out with a wire, and the RCMP just called it an "accident." Oh, and let's not forget the billionaire who somehow scored the exclusive rights to run the only online casino in BC. The list goes on and on. There's no such thing as a free market in Canada - it's just a banana republic country club for the rich old Canadians at the top. Actually, I'm not even sure if the casino guy was born in Canada, but he definitely looks like he could be. So yeah, to a lesser extent makes no sense here as somebody that has decades of experience with that country. At least America still recognizes the value of some free market and competition with or without a housing bubble.
  • godelski 3y ago
    I lived in Tennessee when Google Fiber was announced there. At the time Chattanooga (and a few small towns) already had fiber internet that were offered by the utilities companies. It was an absolute shitshow. Actually, a shitshow would have been cleaner. Immediately AT&T rolls out gigabit internet, but not everywhere. I was in one of the small towns with gig and the previous renter had AT&T. AT&T literally cut the lines into the apartment instead of disconnecting them, causing me to have a $50 install fee (the technician was clearly also annoyed). Then Google, AT&T, and Comcast got into a big fight and it got political. Politicians would talk about how Google coming in was preventing competition (I shit you not) and attacking the little guys. Then a judge ruled that Google couldn't operate on telephone polls because Google would "cause danger to employees" and "be a union violation" (not the unions saying these things, it was AT&T. Obviously this made people think the unions were blocking things and continued to get mad at unions)[0]. So basically one of a Comcast and AT&T technician had to be there while Google would place in fiber and you know how it goes. It was a literal circus and the whole while it was politicized and misinformation was spreading like wildfire. Big Tech screwing over the little guys. Big Tech coming after the public utilities (never happened). Unions making everything impossible. Something about Big Tech and liberals/trans/gays taking over at some point. Like the on the ground conversations that would happen were mindbogglingly dumb. It actually was hard to figure out what was actually going on because every person and news article would have a unique story to tell. But the weirdest thing to me is about how nearly everyone I knew was a self-proclaimed Libertarian who hated government yet was licking their boots ad propping them up because they didn't want those gay/liberal/furry/godless/<insert random insult> techies rolling in decreasing competition and destroying the free market. That's when I truly started to believe that there's no such thing as a Libertarian (or any other cleanly encapsulated idea, but Libertarians are in your face), it's just a label. Because I watched anti-government free market devotees bend over backwards to protect monopolies and not even have a clue of the cognitive dissonance. It also made me really pay attention to how this happens more often than we care to think (including how we ourselves do it). [0] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-rules-against-metro-blocks-google-fiber-backed-utility-line-policy-at-t-poles/889313001/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-rule...
    • freedomben 3y ago
  • Xelbair 3y ago
    >In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. there were such offers. about 10 years ago, but they are illegal EU-wide.
  • wredue 3y ago
    Canadas ISP situation was far better when Crown corporations were providing better, cheaper services. In standard fashion, conservative government successfully convinced half the population that it’d be better if the crowns were sold. Spoiler: it has gotten way way worse. Not better.
  • holmesworcester 3y ago
    Actually, the empirical record on this shows that we see more net neutrality violations by ISPs in marketplaces with high competition.[1] This is counter-intuitive but here's how it works: In a competitive marketplace ISPs have tighter margins and look for every opportunity for cost savings, so if throttling a high-bandwidth application only affects a small percentage of customers, and only a tiny tech-savvy minority of those affected will accurately attribute the effect to ISP throttling, it will incur only the tiniest competitive pressure on the ISP, so the ISP will do it to increase profits. We actually saw more net neutrality violations in competitive EU markets than in the US, until EU-level net neutrality rules passed. Another way to look at the limits of competitive pressure is from a startup's point of view: if your startup is offering a new videoconferencing service, how will competition help you when a rogue ISP breaks your service for 10% of your customers by throttling your service but putting Zoom in a fastlane? Your customers will not think "oh, I'd better switch to a better ISP," when ~10% of call participants are unintelligible. They will think, "oh, this new service sucks, I'm going to stick to Zoom." Competitive pressure on ISPs does not protect nascent startups with small userbases from ISPs. And yet, everything we care about on the Internet started as a nascent startup with a small userbase. Competition is great for keeping prices down and the US needs more of it. But to protect the long tail of startups and all the new ways people use the Internet from ISPs you need net neutrality laws. 1. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2700055 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2700055. Key finding: Relying on consumer switching behavior to provide more comprehensive competitive discipline was insufficient for a variety of reasons, including the presence of switching costs.
    • jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
      Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins?
      • HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
        If the FCC does not do something, they will. As to why it has not happened yet: it is easier to corrupt a new infrastructure from the beginning than change one that is already entrenched.
  • alephnerd 3y ago
    > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist Hot take - Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and NTT+KDDI are basically duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our 5G nationwide in just 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while keeping competitive pricing, and make the US market look free in comparison. The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of the FCC and regulators, along with issues around deprecating older infra. This doesn't mean we should go all Reagan, but if this is streamlined at the executive level, it would really simplify everything.
  • lostlogin 3y ago
    > The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. New Zealand went from having a single provider for service and infrastructure, to having actual options. The breakup of the monopoly was imposed by regulation [1]. Following this there was a lot of taxpayer investment in fibre and while it’s been a flawed rollout, it’s made a hell of a difference. I’m on symmetric gigabit and have 2gb/s, 4gb/s and 8gb/s options if I pay more. [1] under history section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_New_Zealand
  • WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    Broadband funding just funded some competition here. Before: One ISP. Spectrum $120/mo 1Gb down & 40Mb up. After: New choices of 8 fiber ISP. Opts inc $35 250Mb/250Mb, $50 1Gb/1Gb, $70 2.5Gb/2.5Gb, $120 10Gb/10Gb. ISPs spend billions on politicians to make sure (the most possible) Americans don't have choices. They get their money's worth. ref: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/28/infuriating-telecom-lobbyists-spending-big-money-keep-gigi-sohn-fcc https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/28/infuriating-tel...
  • thomastjeffery 3y ago
    I live in a city with a competitive municipal network and Google fiber. If you live in a house down the street from me, you can get 1gbit for $70. Yet somehow, I'm paying $100 for 190mbit. The price and ISP (not the speed) are literally written into my apartment's lease agreement. This is an apartment managed by the same developer who owns every other apartment I can afford, so it's not as if I have any bargaining power here, either. My parents, who live in a remote area, but happen to be next to a major fiber line, pay even more than I do for less than 20mbit FTTH! I think we have made a grave mistake obsessing over the word, "monopoly". It doesn't take a monopoly for anti-competitive behavior to absolutely ruin a market. Even if healthy competition thrives in a market, some participants will find a way to abuse some customers. We shouldn't be so lazy that we point a finger at what's working, and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
  • wzyboy 3y ago
    I immigrated from China to Canada and I'm not sure if monopoly is the root cause. In China, ISP is state-controlled and 100% monopoly, yet the plans are dirt cheap compared to those in Canada. I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV = 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR) The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TVs) I have in Canada is $65 + tax. And it's a discounted plan. The price on the ISP website is $100. Also in China phone plans have fast lanes as well. SNS and video streaming data are treated separately (cheap or even free).
    • gswdh 3y ago
      Communist and capitalist monopolies are two completely different things.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      I lived in China for 9 years and always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow. Like sure you have 5G, but the overall internet trunks are just saturated and not built out enough. Maybe it has gotten better since I left Beijing in 2016? It was definitely cheap and affordable. But I always felt a huge speed bump (along with easy access to foreign web sites) when I went to Thailand or Indonesia for vacation.
      • alephnerd 3y ago
        > always found the internet, even for going just to Chinese sites, to be really slow A lot of that is because of the GFW. MITM/TLS decryption/DPI has a massive performance overhead (and why the first question any agent based security product is ask is whether it is "in the path of traffic"). It's basically a giant version of Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) The performance hit is a major reason why a lot of edge computing development has happened in the Chinese ecosystem (you can't guarantee stuff works with latency, so how do you solve that) This is an older investigation (2017) by ThousandEyes about this - https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/benchmarking-network-performance-china https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/benchmarking-network-perfo... Note that the infra has changed drastically since 2017.
  • mardifoufs 3y ago
    If that's true, then why does the US have higher average and median broadband speeds than pretty much every European country[0]? The narrative that is seen online isn't necessarily representative of the reality, Americans just like to complain more. In my experience, bundled data whatsapp/YouTube or whatever else is much more common in Europe too and no one really complains because again, Americans are just that much more vocal. [0] for mobile, they are also in the top 15. For fixed broadband, they are 5th. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed
    • iknowstuff 3y ago
      Here’s some better research https://research.rewheel.fi/downloads/Wireless_market_operator_competitiveness_2023_PUBLIC.pdf https://research.rewheel.fi/downloads/Wireless_market_operat...
  • Larrikin 3y ago
    I haven't checked lately, but Comcast tried that data cap crap and was completely pushed back on in every economically important state they tried it in or there was actually an option someone could switch too. I was shocked in Chicago when I got an overage fee, but I promptly switched to RCN even before Illinois shut it down.
  • deanishe 3y ago
    The worst part is, imo, US taxpayers paid for all that infrastructure. These ISPs absolutely should be forced to open their infrastructure to other providers, like in Europe, and for the same reasons.
    • palata 3y ago
      > The worst part is, imo, US taxpayers paid for all that infrastructure. Isn't that exactly how it always worked? Whatever public service works well is privatised (for some reason I don't get), and whatever is a source of cost stays public. Such that the taxpayer keeps paying, and some people get rich by screwing them.
      • palata 3y ago
        Not sure why I got downvoted for that. It seems only rational that private actors may want to privatise and buy any public service that is profitable. Because private actors seek profit. Now many times I don't think it is a good idea (why in the world would one privatise public transports? "Public" is in the title...), but that is another question.
  • scarface_74 3y ago
    There is no “monopoly” on cellular service. There are three national carriers and a few regional carriers that have their own network. How exactly do more carriers competing locally even work? You slice the spectrum they are allowed and have worse service? Do you remember when t-mobiles spectrum allocation was so bad that you couldn’t get a signal inside of a building?
  • nostromo 3y ago
    I'd agree with this comment if it was 2010. But today the US has good internet speeds -- in general much better than Europe despite it's bigger geographic size and less-dense population. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...
    • fulafel 3y ago
      Despite the category mismatch (continent vs country) .. Europe and USA have very similar population densities (~35 p/km2) [0] [1] [2] [3] Also, many sparsely populated European countries have relatively good internet speeds (eg Iceland, Sweden). [0] https://database.earth/population/europe/density https://database.earth/population/europe/density [1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-popula... [2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-population-density.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-po... [3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=U...
  • jabroni_salad 3y ago
    T-mobile offers it in the US still: https://www.t-mobile.com/tv-streaming/binge-on https://www.t-mobile.com/tv-streaming/binge-on In this mode, video streams will be limited to 480p but will not count against your bandwidth cap.
    • remram 3y ago
      And by "video" we mean "Netflix". There goes neutrality and fair competition.
  • rjzzleep 3y ago
    > the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite Why to a lesser extent? In my experience Canada's was way worse than the US, which I honestly didn't think would be possible.
  • rayiner 3y ago
    The OpenReach model doesn’t make much sense for wireless, where the market can support three competing providers (plus a ton of MVNOs) and overbuilding is necessary to provide sufficient capacity anyway. (E.g. AT&T couldn’t serve everyone with just its own cell towers.) I think the more salient issue is the market simply doesn’t care about this stuff. As long as you can get on Facebook and instagram they are not mo rd by what’s going on behind the scenes.
• imwillofficial 3y ago
  “The FCC is set to vote on April 25 to restore its authority” This needs to be controlled by congress. Directly.
  • burnte 3y ago
    The thing about administrative government is that you free up congress by allowing them to approve the creation of administrative bodies. It was pretty much the only good thing President Wilson did, help create the administrative state. FCC already HAS the authority designated by Congress. This is about choosing to use it.
    • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
      I think he means we need this to specifically is important enough to society that it should be a matter of law, so it doesn’t change every administration due to people like Ajit Pai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai) coming into FCC positions
    • photonbeam 3y ago
      It means congress is out of practice doing routine policy, and instead has big fights over very little
      • masklinn 3y ago
        Why do you think abolishing independent agencies will change that in any way?
  • tootie 3y ago
    Congress approves the governors and they held up the appointment of the deciding vote for years.
  • deleted 3y ago
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• burnte 3y ago
  ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a glass of water than a toilet flush.
  • lsllc 3y ago
    Well they sort of do already — typically you pay less for water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it’s not going down the drain). In places like Florida however irrigation water is reclaimed and not treated the same was as drinking water and has totally separate plumbing and metering (and pricing).
    • loeg 3y ago
      I'd push back on "typically." In my municipality, they have no way of measuring water used for gardening / lawncare independently from drinking water. So it all gets billed to the same drinking water and sewage rate.
      • deleted 3y ago
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    • toast0 3y ago
      > Well they sort of do already — typically you pay less for water for irrigation (usually because sewerage is metered by water usage and obv if it goes on the lawn it’s not going down the drain). Aren't you paying more for your lawn water then? If your sewer bill is based on your water bill[1]: a gallon of water for drinking results in a bill for a gallon of sewage treatment, which you'll use. A gallon of water for irrigation results in a bill for a gallon of sewage treatment which you won't use. Caveats: maybe you pee on the lawn, probably you perspire, sewer pipes are leaky: some of your sewage escapes out, some of your irrigation water escapes in. [1] this is common, but I don't think anywhere close to universal; even ignoring lack of universal municipal water and lack of universal municipal sewage. Flatrate by connection size is also common. Approximately zero households have individual sewer meters, but some commercial/industrial customers may have them so they can be billed on actual usage.
• blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
  We need neutrality up and down the stack elsewhere too. I would consider hosting (including DNS, cloud infrastructure), financial services (banks, PayPal, stripe), and others as needing their version of net neutrality laws, where they cannot refuse customers or treat them differently or pick winners/losers or charge differently for different use cases. These are all utilities that are necessary to survive in today’s societies, and therefore they must be treated as if they were publicly run, through the power of regulations.
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    You cannot mandate both neutrality and liability for things on the payment stack, it is too burdensome. Personally I would prefer neutrality over liability.
    • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
      Agree, and I like the phrasing of neutrality over liability - captures this tradeoff well.
  • Aurornis 3y ago
    > where they cannot refuse customers Having seen the degree to which spammers, scammers, and malicious hackers will abuse services to no end (often while carefully avoiding explicit violations of the law) I can assure you that you do not want this. Forcing every company to host everyone only sounds good in theory.
    • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
      We force power utilities and such to support all users. These companies can solve the problem and pay the costs. But if the laws for scammers aren’t adequate that’s a separate issue that should be solved on its own.
• cjs_ac 3y ago
  For anyone confused by the headline, this has nothing to do with 5G conspiracy theories: it's about net neutrality.
• extheat 3y ago
  My views on this have changed over time. More and more it seems like policy people encroaching on technical decisions without fully understanding the rationale behind them. Is there a good reason to segment different types of content, such as for optimal network performance? Ultimately all wireless communications have to work within the bounds of physics no matter what the made up human laws say. If there's a limited amount of bandwidth you have to work with, does it make sense to waste all the bandwidth on streaming HD videos and block off all the other traffic in the name of "neutrality"? I would understand if there's some profit motive behind this, but I'm not seeing it.
  • blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
    If it’s pricing meant to protect limited bandwidth and not a profit motive, I think this regulation has to make it so that neither content providers nor consumers are charged differently. The proposed regulation lets the carriers charge consumers (you and I) different prices for different packages that treat traffic differently.
  • orev 3y ago
    ALL discussions of Net Neutrality allow providers to prioritize traffic for capacity management purposes. This so well known by now that I have to wonder if this comment is part of an astroturf campaign (or maybe you’ve been influenced by one).
    • extheat 3y ago
      I'm not sure how much people actually read the link, but I'm talking about this "problem point" specifically relating to network congestion: > However, there’s a huge problem: the proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane - where they’ll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested. > T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are all testing ways to create these 5G fast lanes for apps such as video conferencing, games, and video where the ISP chooses and controls what gets boosted. They use a technical feature in 5G called network slicing, where part of their radio spectrum gets used as a special lane for the chosen app or apps, separated from the usual internet traffic. > The FCC’s draft order opens the door to these fast lanes, so long as the app provider isn’t charged for them.
• dbuder 3y ago
  How many times do we need to fight the same battle? Where I live Netflix has a fast lane and from 6:30pm to 10:30pm every night my internet is unusable.
  • seattle_spring 3y ago
    Yikes, where do you live and how is that sort of thing justified?
    • jazzyjackson 3y ago
      not OP but i could see this being normal traffic shaping netflix users are going to complain and change providers if their tv show buffers at all, so it makes sense to prioritize that traffic - not for netflix's benefit but to avoid angry customers
  • room500 3y ago
    I don’t think Netflix has a fast lane anywhere. Netflix does offer to give servers to ISPs to put in their datacenters. So if your ISP is seeing congestion on the IX links, it is entirely possible that Netflix still works fine (because the traffic doesn’t leave the ISP and is therefore not hitting the congestion). But that is not a “fast lane”
    • xiphias2 3y ago
      At that point Netflix should just provide its own VPN / internet access for paying users
      • riku_iki 3y ago
        Netflix puts servers in datacenters to cache content, so you access it much faster. Not sure what problem Netflix VPN will solve.
      • drewg123 3y ago
        You're missing the point. Netflix is fast in these situations because your client can access the server in the ISP's data center and video traffic remains local to the ISP and doesn't traverse the congested link to the IX. Other companies embed servers with ISPs as well.
• Olesya000 3y ago
  [dead]
• throwaway918274 3y ago
  i spend way too much time around friends that indulge in conspiracy theories, my first reading of the headline was NOT AT ALL what it is lol
  • lukan 3y ago
    Yeah, I am tempted to post it into certain channels, where it will probably relinked a couple of times, before anyone reads it, (and understand enough) to get confused.
  • riku_iki 3y ago
    I also was thinking some conspiracy theory now is served from stanford domain..
• Zigurd 3y ago
  I think the article gets network slicing wrong. Using network slicing instead of the traffic shaping that the mobile edge router probably supports is a strange idea. The showcase network slicing use case was public safety comms. Network slicing is AFAIK not much used because it clashes with roaming. The article describes network slicing as reserving spectrum for certain apps. That's not how it works. It reserves capacity. Still, zero-rating and traffic shaping should not be used to favor apps, especially not on a pay to play basis, for all the same net neutrality arguments as ever.
  • 310260 3y ago
    This is correct. Slicing can offer significant performance gains in certain situations. For example, lower latency when certain users need it while not overburdening the network by having to give that to every user.
  • _pigpen__ 3y ago
    So surprised I had to scroll too far for this reply. I actually work for one of the major US carriers. My job is literally to figure out how to apply the technical capabilities of 5G to solve business problems. NONE of the US carriers have figured out how to actually deliver network slicing beyond, say, reserving capacity for first responders. And, as you say, it’s about capacity, not speed per se. We want to make sure that, say, an AGV can offload kinematics to the MEC and navigate in real time in dynamic environments. The poster child for network slicing is the surgeon doing telesurgery over a 5G network (But that’s likely to remain a poster child). We’re figuring out how to provide network slices for autonomous vehicles, mobile teleoperation, etc., in all use cases we’re examining it because something BAD could happen absent guaranteed capacity. I have never ever heard anyone talk about using network slicing for QoS for consumer apps.
    • m0dest 3y ago
      iOS 17 added explicit support for 5G slicing for QoS in consumer apps: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/network/nwparameters/2998708-serviceclass https://developer.apple.com/documentation/network/nwparamete... Android 14 added 5G slicing upsell for consumer apps: https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/5g-slicing#5g-slicing-upsell https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/5g-slicing#5g-s... This is imminent.
• rogerthis 3y ago
  Sort of related: "GSMA Open Gateway", specially the quality related APIs.
• huytersd 3y ago
  [flagged]
• BigBalli 3y ago
  I'm totally for net neutrality but I think the article focuses on the wrong "consequence". Do you really need superfast internet to scroll tiktok? if you think you do then you're probably willing to pay more vs a cheaper plan if you don't care. It might even backfire and stifle the good parts of the proposal. As mentioned by someone else, the title wording really appeals to conspiracy theorists.
• ddingus 3y ago
  Recently Jon Stewart talked about the burden we struggle with having to deal with an obviously corrupt government: In order to make this world one where I would consider living... It is a day in, day out, lunch pail type job. Thousands of people banging on doors, until they get something done. And then, keeping it done takes thousands more doing the same thing DAY IN, DAY OUT, FOREVER. Truth! People ask, "How many times?" Now they have their answer. We either give a shit and act, or we fund others who can act , or Our lives are going to be enshittified. The lure of creating near infinite artificial value means Net Neutrality is a constant fight, ever present for the remainder of our lives.
  • ddingus 3y ago
    I see that sentiment isn't popular. Yeah, join the club. I don't like it either, but I can tell you Stewart is awful close to truth on this. Lived experience. In his case, getting and maintaining services for 9/11 responders and then keeping that in place happened to be his heavy lift for the decade he was away from "The Daily Show" Mine was a ton of activism last decade. Bumped into that "thousands of people" myself and saw the need first hand. Those people need to eat and fund their work somehow, or it does not get done.
• willcipriano 3y ago
  "We could see offerings like this" At least get a new trick.
• deleted 3y ago
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• j45 3y ago
  This is one of the few cases where there could be a better title on this for HN. "FCC May Let Mobile Providers Speed Up or Slow Down Individual Apps and Website, Risking Open Internet"
• friend_and_foe 3y ago
  How is this different from the last "net neutrality" mess? I remember shortly after commercial activity on the internet came under the purview of the FCC, all these mobile carriers started offering deals, T-Mobile in particular offered "YouTube doesn't count against your data cap" and basically we got the opposite of what we were sold with the pitch "net neutrality". Then, when online commerce was restored to being under the purview of the FTC, all those special deals stopped. No ISP gave special fast lane access to any content service provider. Perhaps "net neutrality" is a lie, like "patriot act"? What we hear when we hear the term is not what lawmakers mean. We hear "ISPs must treat all traffic the same" (except for content with a DMCA takedown notice, of course) but what they mean is "move regulatory authority over commercial activity online from the FTC to the FCC." I'm curious why this, the crux of the matter, is never addressed in these articles. In any case, it seems to me like we get more net neutrality when the FTC is in charge of the commerce. Commerce online seems to be much more neutral when the FTC is in charge, to me at least. I don't think it's a stretch to say that big multinational corporations like Alphabet want the FCC to regulate the internet for selfish reasons, and if I have to guess, I'd guess that it's because they don't want to fall under the FTCs regulations pertaining to anticompetitive behavior.
• declan_roberts 3y ago
  The prior FTC rule stopped this before it became a problem, which is probably why we are battling it again. Politicians are very reactive, hesitant to fix a problem until they're unable to ignore it. Obviously not a good way to govern, but it's the way things are now.
  • holmesworcester 3y ago
    FCC*
• apitman 3y ago
  My experience with 5G is that it's strictly worse than LTE. At this point, if I see the 5G symbol on my phone I'm conditioned to expect the internet to barely work. Requests frequently seem to just hang.
  • lxgr 3y ago
    Then something is definitely up with either your device or your local network base station(s). I used to have major problems with one network one particular street corner where data throughput would reliably drop to zero on 5G, but calls still went through somehow (even though they're also data on 5G, albeit with a different QoS). Signal strength was always shown as full. A phone restart would sometimes, but not always, fix it – without moving anywhere! Never happened again since switching away. 5G is a standard/protocol; it doesn't somehow inherently prevent bad network management.
  • wreckdropibex 3y ago
    My experience with 5G is that it's strictly better than LTE. At this point, if I see the 5G symbol, I'm conditioned to expect there to be 10-100x more bandwidth available than with LTE and latencies to be at levels at par with wired connections.
  • r00fus 3y ago
    Are you possibly on a 2nd-tier plan (like mine, I have grandfathered T-Mobile "simple choice" @ $10/line)? MNVOs like Mint, etc are also typically 2nd-tier. Telcos typically downrate 2nd-tier data, so if it's there's congestion, we feel it most.
• alephnerd 3y ago
  Hot take from rest of HN: I don't think lack of competition is the cause for the slow uptake in the US. Reliance Jio+Bharti Airtel, China Mobile+Telecom+Unicom, and NTT+KDDI are basically duo/triopolies yet were able to roll our 5G nationwide in just 2-4 years in India, China, and Japan while keeping competitive pricing, and make the US market look free in comparison. The issue seems to be the relative lethargy of the FCC and regulators, along with issues around deprecating older infra. This doesn't mean we should go all Reagan, but if this is streamlined at the executive level, it would really simplify everything.
  • bongodongobob 3y ago
    I think when people talk about lack of competition, the argument really isn't framed as the government just mandating things as an option. It's the free market solution. Of course we could just say "it's illegal to have shitty internet". I would support that, but, y'know, we love our freedom to have shit infrastructure here in the US. It's our goddamn right.
    • alephnerd 3y ago
      "Lack of competition" implies an antitrust solution, yet I have examples of countries where markets are extremely consolidated (and would be a slam dunk FTC case) yet are able to benefit the consumer. My argument is that the amount of litigation needed in coordination with the FTC, FCC, and others makes an opaque system. The American system isn't truly a free market - it's increasingly ossified, with decisions immediately litigated following a regulatory decision. This incentivizes larger organizations with the capital to initiate litigation and continue to be players at the expense of potentially disruptive upstarts (ie. Startups). At the end of the day, some industries are suboptimal if following a New America/Warren style vision of antitrust. I don't disagree with the notion of antitrust, but I think "consumer harm" is a better heuristic than an "open markets" approach. If an oligopoly arises yet is able to keep inflation down and production high, so be it. If a monopoly or oligopoly is abusing it's position to extract higher than needed costs, then it's time to use the DoJ hammer. An "open market" approach can be diametrically opposed to "consumer benefit" as it can prevent the economies of scale needed for commercial players to meet their financial needs. Instead, a subsidy or PLI driven approach to build more players would be a much better option, and we've already seen the positive impact that has had via the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. This is also the approach used by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and has helped minimize the amount of financialization compared to the US or the EU, and has helped maintain their commanding heights.
• pokstad 3y ago
  Fast lanes are the biggest selling point of 5G due to limited backhaul bandwidth. Instead of eliminating fast lanes, force ISPs to provide access to fast lanes equally ( must issue, not may issue).
  • deleted 3y ago
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• amluto 3y ago
  I’d like to see a lot more nuance. > For example, would it be “unreasonably discriminatory” to create a 5G fast lane that includes the most popular apps in a category since it responds to consumer preferences? What’s in it for the ISP if they can’t collect money for it? > There’s lots of ways for ISPs to use slices for things that are not normal internet service such as a dedicated slice for a farming operation using remote controlled tractors, slices for telemetry data and oversight of autonomous cars, or providing a slice for a stadium’s video system at a crowded game. Really? Will the ISP allow anyone to get such a slice under fair, reasonable, and non discriminatory terms? Or will this just favor companies with a cozy relationship with an ISP? Just because these industries aren’t direct-to-consumer doesn’t mean the same issues don’t exist?
  • itopaloglu83 3y ago
    I have another proposal. I think ISPs should provide the same QoS options to everyone. With guaranteed speeds and also data caps and all. At least this option would make things more transparent. AFAIK, most of the backbone and rural networks were subsidized with public funds to provide broadband internet. I find it disturbing that some private companies are trying to secure high QoS for themselves without paying for the infrastructure itself. It's like crony capitalism where losses are socialized while profits are privatized.
• nashashmi 3y ago
  Why do I get the feeling that this is overly dramatic? A network operator works to install exceptionally fast internet for limited applications and the data transfer. But this exceptionally fast internet is seen as biased. And instead it is better if the network operator didn’t install any such service. What kinds of limited applications will be given priority? The network operators’ own information systems; their own services; and their partners. This is a threat to companies who are operating in industries that network operators could compete with. “Network neutrality” is meant to protect them from competition from network providers. And this is not right.
  • itopaloglu83 3y ago
    I must be missing something in the discussion. My perception of the network neutrality is that it is supposed to force ISPs to treat every traffic the same. The network operator can still prioritize packages about network balancing etc. There is no need for routing update after a node goes down to wait thousands of packages for streaming. However, this doesn't mean that they can favor their own streaming service over any other. Regarding the high speed connections. There is only one issue in mind. Did the network operator install these new high speed lines as a network operator or as a streaming service provider? Nobody is expecting a streaming service to favor their competition. It's a complete conflict of interest though that such companies have multiple hats.
    • nashashmi 3y ago
      The conflict of interest part is a bit funny. Keeping network operators from participating and competing with other web services is going to weaken the network industry. Losses in one sector will cause bankruptcy, if other sectors do not make fill in the losses. A similar situation occurred with transportation companies in the US. Rail companies were prohibited from operating buses because of a conflict of interest. Rail failed. Busses prospered. Until both industries failed. And now airlines prosper. We are just one stone throw away from causing network operators to be bored with their jobs. And then abandon ship until some weak dipstick can’t get a job anywhere else and ends up with securing your boring network.
• ukuina 3y ago
  Preventing fast lanes will likely hamper the development of novel applications that we cannot even conceive of today. Banning throttling while keeping speedups open (subject to review) seems like a good balance.
  • itopaloglu83 3y ago
    On the contrary, net neutrality would ensure that the innovation can continue. Here's why I think this way. Networks are getting clogged down due to increased usage in the last 15 years and big companies want to ensure that they are not affected by this. Whatever new technology we create will surely need open access to the internet. So, we should invest in improving the infrastructure itself, not grant favors to some private companies. This is the only way we can give change to the new technologies and other applications of the internet. When Netflix first came along, ISPs wanted to charge them because of the high traffic usage. Some even slowed down their traffic. ISP networks were designed with a particular usage pattern in mind and things were changing. ISPs couldn't ask their customers to watch less Netflix and didn't want to put data caps etc. for obvious public relations reasons. What customers do with their internet connection is up to them, ISPs should never have a say in this. Just like the electric companies should have no say in which kitchen appliance I use. ISPs can sell different packages with various limits in speed quota etc. but favoring private companies with lucrative deals, or tracking the DNS traffic and selling marketing information about their customers should not be an option.
• brcmthrowaway 3y ago
  Sunnyvale, CA has the worst service ever (Verizon)
• deathlight 3y ago
  Tacking on to this, what is the justification for charging for tethering and would net neutrality do anything about this?
  • avidiax 3y ago
    The justification is that they can. This is all marketing. All the speed tiers, all the add-ons, etc. are all marketing. There's no technical reason for any of it. 5G has huge bandwidth, and the fiber backhaul has huge bandwidth. The most that can be argued is that a saturated link needs fair queueing applied to it to give customers fair bandwidth while the company installs more capacity. But you can't underprovision and then charge a premium for a fast lane if you are running the company on technical principles. If you asked for justification, the carrier would say that tethering is usually used for business needs, and the increased use would be unfair to non-business users.
• 1oooqooq 3y ago
  summary of all the comments: mental gymnastics to not say the obvious: municipal internet provider everyone will say more regulation, more competition... while drinking their municipal internet and using their municipal electricity
• deleted 3y ago
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• lupire 3y ago
  Why does Stanford want everyone to have unusable congested 5G experience, instead of letting people who want more bandwidth to pay for it? BTW is mobile networking finally turning linespeed "bandwidth" back into true bandwidth? That's a glorious victory for language!