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Intuitively, I would have thought that this would be horrible news for content providers/distributors, and great news for wireless carriers. However, today, Goo

by kolbe 13y ago

Intuitively, I would have thought that this would be horrible news for content providers/distributors, and great news for wireless carriers. However, today, Google, Facebook, Amazon &etc are flying, while Verizon and AT&T are falling. Does anyone in the industry know what this is all about, and what importance this decision really has on the future of mobile?

venomsnake 13y ago
Well right now carriers can be gatekeepers until the SCOTUS takes stand or FCC pick up their game if I understand the whole mess correctly. Everybody loses in the short term because the future is uncertain. Edit: Wrong TLA agency
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Well right now carriers can be gatekeepers until the SCOTUS takes stand or FTC pick up their game if I understand the whole mess correctly. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has nothing to do with this. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does. > Everybody loses in the short term because the future is uncertain. The incumbent carriers that had already been instituting practices that violate the at least the non-discrimination provision clearly benefit in the short term.
VLM 13y ago
Note that your flying providers are huge. The hope of network neutrality is to turn the networks into gatekeepers to eliminate competition. So say I want to create in my garage, an online store to compete with Amazon selling in the pet rock market. Oh what a pity, all your online shopping traffic got dropped at our border routers. We can "fix things" for you for a modest fee, just like Amazon. Of course we have a minimum payment of $50M/month to "fix" things. Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore. So yes, its very good news for large content providers because it eliminates any need for product development and eliminates competition. The other way it eliminates competition is Amazon might be able to afford a department of a couple people to do nothing all day but negotiate with ISPs, but a startup could never spare the manpower. So startups could only release on TWC or Charter or AT&T or ... rather than everywhere on the internet.
- kolbe 13y ago
  This all sounds like a negative for the large companies I mentioned. Yeah, it's a lot worse for the small guys, under your assumptions[1], but in the end, the ISP is still taking money out of Amazon's pocket. Relatively speaking, this sounds like better news for ISPs than it is for Amazon's potential to squeeze out competition. [1] Though, I think small sites would just engage in collective bargaining of sorts.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore. The fact that it doesn't work that way already is largely just an accident of history, and I don't know if its necessary to keep that status quo artificially. Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure. Look at the app market. The people selling the infrastructure (Apple, Samsung) make all the money, because lots of people can write apps but very few can build cell phones. That's the natural state of things.
  - revelation 13y ago
    That is an odd analogy, and I don't think infrastructure providers making all the money is "the natural state of things". The people actually building the infrastructure (Android) arent't making much any money with it, while those using it (Samsung) are. That is how its supposed to work; if power companies and utilities had been able to extract all the profit from manufacturing companies and discriminate against specific ones or have the ability to simply deny necessary upgrades, we would still be using oil lights. I also respectfully disagree on the "very expensive" part. Internet access is one of the cheapest basic services, trivial to scale and the variable costs are basically zero. There is no inherent difficulty in transporting bits! Consider other infrastructure. Providing reliable electricity is very difficult (you need to balance demand and supply at all times), there is a very harsh regulatory environment that is constantly changing (in some countries, pocos need to prioritize renewable energy and pay guaranteed prices to customers inserting it), the hardware necessary is copper-heavy and poses significant reliability and safety issues. Meanwhile, we are being reluctant to regulate internet providers to the point where they are the fast, dumb pipe we need, because lawmakers are clueless how this internet thing works (the 'cloud' isn't helping) and internet providers have this dream where they are the premier entertainment and media source (wakeup; YouTube and Netflix exist).

by kolbe 13y ago

venomsnake 13y ago

Well right now carriers can be gatekeepers until the SCOTUS takes stand or FCC pick up their game if I understand the whole mess correctly. Everybody loses in the short term because the future is uncertain. Edit: Wrong TLA agency

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Well right now carriers can be gatekeepers until the SCOTUS takes stand or FTC pick up their game if I understand the whole mess correctly. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has nothing to do with this. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does. > Everybody loses in the short term because the future is uncertain. The incumbent carriers that had already been instituting practices that violate the at least the non-discrimination provision clearly benefit in the short term.

VLM 13y ago

Note that your flying providers are huge. The hope of network neutrality is to turn the networks into gatekeepers to eliminate competition. So say I want to create in my garage, an online store to compete with Amazon selling in the pet rock market. Oh what a pity, all your online shopping traffic got dropped at our border routers. We can "fix things" for you for a modest fee, just like Amazon. Of course we have a minimum payment of $50M/month to "fix" things. Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore. So yes, its very good news for large content providers because it eliminates any need for product development and eliminates competition. The other way it eliminates competition is Amazon might be able to afford a department of a couple people to do nothing all day but negotiate with ISPs, but a startup could never spare the manpower. So startups could only release on TWC or Charter or AT&T or ... rather than everywhere on the internet.

kolbe 13y ago
This all sounds like a negative for the large companies I mentioned. Yeah, it's a lot worse for the small guys, under your assumptions[1], but in the end, the ISP is still taking money out of Amazon's pocket. Relatively speaking, this sounds like better news for ISPs than it is for Amazon's potential to squeeze out competition. [1] Though, I think small sites would just engage in collective bargaining of sorts.
rayiner 13y ago
> Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore. The fact that it doesn't work that way already is largely just an accident of history, and I don't know if its necessary to keep that status quo artificially. Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure. Look at the app market. The people selling the infrastructure (Apple, Samsung) make all the money, because lots of people can write apps but very few can build cell phones. That's the natural state of things.
- revelation 13y ago
  That is an odd analogy, and I don't think infrastructure providers making all the money is "the natural state of things". The people actually building the infrastructure (Android) arent't making much any money with it, while those using it (Samsung) are. That is how its supposed to work; if power companies and utilities had been able to extract all the profit from manufacturing companies and discriminate against specific ones or have the ability to simply deny necessary upgrades, we would still be using oil lights. I also respectfully disagree on the "very expensive" part. Internet access is one of the cheapest basic services, trivial to scale and the variable costs are basically zero. There is no inherent difficulty in transporting bits! Consider other infrastructure. Providing reliable electricity is very difficult (you need to balance demand and supply at all times), there is a very harsh regulatory environment that is constantly changing (in some countries, pocos need to prioritize renewable energy and pay guaranteed prices to customers inserting it), the hardware necessary is copper-heavy and poses significant reliability and safety issues. Meanwhile, we are being reluctant to regulate internet providers to the point where they are the fast, dumb pipe we need, because lawmakers are clueless how this internet thing works (the 'cloud' isn't helping) and internet providers have this dream where they are the premier entertainment and media source (wakeup; YouTube and Netflix exist).