13 ms·

Let’s Keep the Internet Dumb

64 points by sdfjkl 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago
This article is a mishmash of ideas that don't really work together. The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure as a public utility, but then uses AT&T as an example of an "intelligent" network that wasn't innovative. But the phone system, under the AT&T monopoly, was regulated as a public utility! It was a system that prioritized stability, universal access, and yes, neutrality, over innovation. That's the nature of public utilities. The author suggests that the cable companies should be forced to lease out their hybrid fiber-coax networks to competitors. Leaving aside the fact that these are private networks built with private money, there is the issue that this would destroy any incentive on the part of the cable companies to enhance and upgrade that infrastructure. Why pour billions of dollars into upgrading a system only to get razor-thin returns?
- ds9 12y ago
  Public-utility "last mile", far from being opposed to competition, would facilitate it. The local or state government would own the ROW and maintain the fiber - maybe thru a contractor whose role is restricted to that function. Then your household or business line goes to a box where different companies can compete for slots/ports/whatever, and then you would choose which provider to connect you from there to the big pipes. The "to the premises" provider would make a regulated profit, just like utility-model water and power companies, and the upstream providers would pay the going rate for their connections to customers, and compete for customers with rates, policies and over-the-top services.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Having a "last mile" monopoly, either embodied in the municipal government or in a regulated utility like British Telecom, can work. However, ensuring that the monopoly has sufficient incentives to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure is complex. See this article which discusses the issues presented by the British Telecom privatization: http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/1909801.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/1909801.pdf. While it's theoretically possible, it's not what the author actually suggests. He suggests forcing Comcast, TWC, etc, to simply lease out their networks wholesale to competitors. This destroys the incentive these companies have to continue to upgrade their networks. There is an obvious reason why the author advocates that approach instead of the one you suggest: state and local governments have no money, and are extremely inefficient at building infrastructure projects to begin with.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      We recently moved back to using BT as an ISP with their Infinity 2 FTTC service and I have been very pleasantly surprised, both with the installation (which was very quick and painless) and the resulting service. It also looks like we might get full FTTP in the next year or so which will be even better. Worth noting that we had BT as an ISP years ago and they were awful so I was reluctant to switch back - but the seem to be making significant investments in their network and their customer services - as well as some pretty good add on offerings like their sports channels. What was most interesting is that Sky, he had bought the ISP we used to use (Be), were desperate to keep our business - they offered to reduce the 20Mbs connection we had to £8 a month... So from what I can tell, the regulation of the BT-owned "last mile" seems to have created a market with real competition - which can only be good for consumers.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 12y ago
        > So from what I can tell, the regulation of the BT-owned "last mile" seems to have created a market with real competition - which can only be good for consumers. You shouldn't conflate the "regulation" that net-neutrality proponents are calling for in the U.S. with the "regulation" of BT. BT started out as a public corporation, which was privatized in the late 1980's and early 1990's. This privatization was accomplished with an express eye to ensuring that BT would continue to have incentives to invest in its network, and investors had notice of the terms of the arrangement. What net neutrality proponents in the U.S. are arguing for is an additional layer of restrictions on existing networks that were built with private capital.
        arethuza 12y ago
        Yes, I didn't think the UK style regulation would apply at all in the US - just pointing out that it does seem to have worked here, which I think we can all agree is actually fairly surprising. After all, I don't think the other privatised services - particularly energy, water and railways, have worked out quite as well for consumers.
- tjgq 12y ago
  > The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure like public utilities, but then says that competition is the answer. These are not compatible ideas! They are compatible if you decouple the infrastructure owner from the service providers, as it happens in other industries.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure like public utilities, but then says that competition is the answer. These are not compatible ideas! Why not? I can choose to get my electricity and gas from any of about 6 different companies, and water from at least 4. They still come in through the same cables and pipes, but price and packaging varies. >The author suggests that the cable companies should be forced to lease out their hybrid fiber-coax networks to competitors. Again, here, BT have to do that as part of being able to have a (near-[1])monopoly on building those networks in the first place. That means people can get fibre to the cabinet/premises without having to pay for BT's overpriced and underreliable service, even if it runs over their fibre network for the last mile. [1] BT have a near-monopoly nationwide, while some areas have their own local networks in addition, but these can not be nationwide. Virgin (formerly NTL/Telewest) have a parallel national network, which uses coax for the last mile more like US cable[2], but has a far lower overall availability, being in a general case only available in cities and major towns, and in many of those then only in certain areas of them. [2] BT's network is fibre to the cabinet with copper from the cabinet to premises in most populated areas now(up to 80 mbit), with some lucky area having fibre to the premises(up to 1 gbit), and rural/undersubscribed areas having copper to the cabinet (generally, maximum rates of ~12mbit or worse; many can only get 0.5 mbit). Virgin's network can generally get 100mbit to most/all premises it serves, which is a far more limited subset of BT's. Local ones vary wildly and may be anything up to 10gbit, but are generally around 100mbit.
  - breischl 12y ago
    >>I can choose to get my electricity and gas from any of about 6 different companies, and water from at least 4. Huh, seriously? I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that didn't have monopoly gas, electric, water and sewer providers. Monopoly trash pickup is not that uncommon either. Perhaps that's a UK vs. US thing.
    - jonnathanson 12y ago
      It struck me as weird, too. I dunno. I've lived in or spent time pretty much all over the US in the last 10 years, and as far as I could tell, I've never had a choice in my local water provider. Gas and electric, usually not, though I suppose there are places where some choice is available.
ds9 12y ago
With this author and a lot of people, I agree that network neutrality is vital to the social benefits of the internet, and that the "public utility" model is best. The question, however is how to get there. Historically, once big-money, rent-seeking [1] entities start profiting from some arrangement, it becomes extremely hard to dislodge them, because they protect their position by hijacking the government to their interests. There's a little cause for hope in that there might be a mass protest like with SOPA. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
- gldalmaso 12y ago
  There is hope still. At least in Brazil we just recently got a net neutrality law passed. The bill existed before, though after everything with the NSA, it got moving pretty fast.
kikki 12y ago
Off topic but that blog is really hard to read with those distracting background patterns. Interesting topic but I came away needing an eye break.
danielweber 12y ago
Most calls for net neutrality read more as polemics ("cable companies suck!") rather than calls for what should and should not be allowed. My two big issues with lots of net neutrality proponents are: 1. Priority of traffic. If my neighbor is bit-torrenting The Avengers I still want to be able to have my VoIP call work. He doesn't really care if his packets move marginally slower while I really care that my packets get through nearly all the time. The rejoinder here is "well the ISPs should always make enough bandwidth for both of us." But the very nature of shared networks is that what my neighbor does can affect me. If you want a channel reserved for yourself, get a leased line and pay the expensive premium for it. (Or buy a guaranteed channel on the shared pipe, but that runs into the same issue with net neutrality.) 2. Companies with more money will always be able to buy better access. You can say "well we shouldn't make it even easier to them to be faster," but at a certain point this logic leads to crazy things like making it illegal for Netflix to use a private network running parallel to the Internet to move things faster to their CDN end points. I want a net neutrality that stops my cable company from interfering with my Vonage packets because they want me to sell me their own VoIP service. I want a net neutrality where my ISP doesn't care if my video packets are coming from Microsoft or Netflix or YouTube. But that doesn't mean I'll sign up for anything wrapped in a "net neutrality" flag that is trying to nail jelly to a tree.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Traffic priority is very game-able and subjective, though. You can easily argue VoIP versus bulk transfer, but where's the application boundary between "necessary" and "not necessary" - music streaming? SSH? Online games? Who decides this? It might be workable if it came with a guarantee that rates below (max bandwidth/contention ratio) would always be delivered from each customer, and traffic above that would be at risk from contention.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    It is extremely easy test. Are you costrained by latency or bandwidth. If it is latency - to have VOIP you need 200ms round trip top. That is the first lecture in Communication Technology 101. Video streaming is latency tolerant but bandwidth sensitive. You moderately don't care if a packet gets lost or spikes as long as you have long enough buffer. So any kind of conversation needs a fast lane. Downloading and streaming don't. But they need bulk.
smutticus 12y ago
So many of these net neutrality initiatives seem to think "the Internet" is a strictly American phenomenom. The Internet at large cares very little about what the FCC or anyone in America does. The USA might have an outsized influence over what other countries do with their Internet, but that appears to be waning in recent years. In short, I would appreciate if these recent net neutrality initiatives stopped insinuating that US telecoms policy, FCC action, or Comcast/Verizon/Large US ISP, have any effect on the Internet at large.
leccine 12y ago
The biggest shock for me when I moved to US was to get to know that my apartment complex has an exclusive contract with one cable company. I think they would be sued out of existence (both of them) in Europe for trying to do the same. Net neutrality starts here, so that I have access to at least 3 major service providers in my home and nobody can get an exclusive deal on providing internet to a certain area. You could see how fast Comcast and Verizon disappears when the real competition comes in play...
magice 12y ago
You know what I love about these kinds of posts and articles? It's their awesome logics: private entities (who, naturally, seek to maximize their profits) are damaging net neutrality (to make profit); therefore, we should limit the government (FCC). My natural reaction whenever I see FCC being bashed over net neutrality is, "either there is some weird causal fuckup somewhere, or logics stops working; either way, WTF?"
- zhemao 12y ago
  What part of the argument do you see as trying to limit the FCC. If anything, it is telling the FCC to regulate more sternly by enforcing the line-sharing rule.
iterationx 12y ago
The only tool of the common man against centralized monopolies seems to be to innovate faster than the monopoly power can centralize. I think the only hope for the free Internet is some kind of p2p wireless mesh network or other mechanism to circumvent Comcast altogether. Comcast and Monsanto are untouchable. (Thinking about Monsanto because of some lame GMO prop I heard on NPR this morning)
- Istof 12y ago
  "Super Wi-Fi" looks like it could be a great technology for this p2p mesh network, but I don't think there is consumer devices available yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  You can not economicaly circunvent cable (or fiber). P2p networks are not efficient. What you can do is include the cable and fiber into the p2p network. People can bill routing with some Bitcoin like tech (altough I doubt Bitcoin itself could be used), and let Comcast et al. completely in the dark about whose data they are carrying.

64 points by sdfjkl 12y ago

This article is a mishmash of ideas that don't really work together. The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure as a public utility, but then uses AT&T as an example of an "intelligent" network that wasn't innovative. But the phone system, under the AT&T monopoly, was regulated as a public utility! It was a system that prioritized stability, universal access, and yes, neutrality, over innovation. That's the nature of public utilities. The author suggests that the cable companies should be forced to lease out their hybrid fiber-coax networks to competitors. Leaving aside the fact that these are private networks built with private money, there is the issue that this would destroy any incentive on the part of the cable companies to enhance and upgrade that infrastructure. Why pour billions of dollars into upgrading a system only to get razor-thin returns?

ds9 12y ago
Public-utility "last mile", far from being opposed to competition, would facilitate it. The local or state government would own the ROW and maintain the fiber - maybe thru a contractor whose role is restricted to that function. Then your household or business line goes to a box where different companies can compete for slots/ports/whatever, and then you would choose which provider to connect you from there to the big pipes. The "to the premises" provider would make a regulated profit, just like utility-model water and power companies, and the upstream providers would pay the going rate for their connections to customers, and compete for customers with rates, policies and over-the-top services.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Having a "last mile" monopoly, either embodied in the municipal government or in a regulated utility like British Telecom, can work. However, ensuring that the monopoly has sufficient incentives to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure is complex. See this article which discusses the issues presented by the British Telecom privatization: http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/1909801.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/1909801.pdf. While it's theoretically possible, it's not what the author actually suggests. He suggests forcing Comcast, TWC, etc, to simply lease out their networks wholesale to competitors. This destroys the incentive these companies have to continue to upgrade their networks. There is an obvious reason why the author advocates that approach instead of the one you suggest: state and local governments have no money, and are extremely inefficient at building infrastructure projects to begin with.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    We recently moved back to using BT as an ISP with their Infinity 2 FTTC service and I have been very pleasantly surprised, both with the installation (which was very quick and painless) and the resulting service. It also looks like we might get full FTTP in the next year or so which will be even better. Worth noting that we had BT as an ISP years ago and they were awful so I was reluctant to switch back - but the seem to be making significant investments in their network and their customer services - as well as some pretty good add on offerings like their sports channels. What was most interesting is that Sky, he had bought the ISP we used to use (Be), were desperate to keep our business - they offered to reduce the 20Mbs connection we had to £8 a month... So from what I can tell, the regulation of the BT-owned "last mile" seems to have created a market with real competition - which can only be good for consumers.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 12y ago
      > So from what I can tell, the regulation of the BT-owned "last mile" seems to have created a market with real competition - which can only be good for consumers. You shouldn't conflate the "regulation" that net-neutrality proponents are calling for in the U.S. with the "regulation" of BT. BT started out as a public corporation, which was privatized in the late 1980's and early 1990's. This privatization was accomplished with an express eye to ensuring that BT would continue to have incentives to invest in its network, and investors had notice of the terms of the arrangement. What net neutrality proponents in the U.S. are arguing for is an additional layer of restrictions on existing networks that were built with private capital.
      - arethuza 12y ago
        Yes, I didn't think the UK style regulation would apply at all in the US - just pointing out that it does seem to have worked here, which I think we can all agree is actually fairly surprising. After all, I don't think the other privatised services - particularly energy, water and railways, have worked out quite as well for consumers.
tjgq 12y ago
> The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure like public utilities, but then says that competition is the answer. These are not compatible ideas! They are compatible if you decouple the infrastructure owner from the service providers, as it happens in other industries.
blueskin_ 12y ago
>The author advocates for treating telecom infrastructure like public utilities, but then says that competition is the answer. These are not compatible ideas! Why not? I can choose to get my electricity and gas from any of about 6 different companies, and water from at least 4. They still come in through the same cables and pipes, but price and packaging varies. >The author suggests that the cable companies should be forced to lease out their hybrid fiber-coax networks to competitors. Again, here, BT have to do that as part of being able to have a (near-[1])monopoly on building those networks in the first place. That means people can get fibre to the cabinet/premises without having to pay for BT's overpriced and underreliable service, even if it runs over their fibre network for the last mile. [1] BT have a near-monopoly nationwide, while some areas have their own local networks in addition, but these can not be nationwide. Virgin (formerly NTL/Telewest) have a parallel national network, which uses coax for the last mile more like US cable[2], but has a far lower overall availability, being in a general case only available in cities and major towns, and in many of those then only in certain areas of them. [2] BT's network is fibre to the cabinet with copper from the cabinet to premises in most populated areas now(up to 80 mbit), with some lucky area having fibre to the premises(up to 1 gbit), and rural/undersubscribed areas having copper to the cabinet (generally, maximum rates of ~12mbit or worse; many can only get 0.5 mbit). Virgin's network can generally get 100mbit to most/all premises it serves, which is a far more limited subset of BT's. Local ones vary wildly and may be anything up to 10gbit, but are generally around 100mbit.
- breischl 12y ago
  >>I can choose to get my electricity and gas from any of about 6 different companies, and water from at least 4. Huh, seriously? I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that didn't have monopoly gas, electric, water and sewer providers. Monopoly trash pickup is not that uncommon either. Perhaps that's a UK vs. US thing.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    It struck me as weird, too. I dunno. I've lived in or spent time pretty much all over the US in the last 10 years, and as far as I could tell, I've never had a choice in my local water provider. Gas and electric, usually not, though I suppose there are places where some choice is available.

ds9 12y ago

With this author and a lot of people, I agree that network neutrality is vital to the social benefits of the internet, and that the "public utility" model is best. The question, however is how to get there. Historically, once big-money, rent-seeking [1] entities start profiting from some arrangement, it becomes extremely hard to dislodge them, because they protect their position by hijacking the government to their interests. There's a little cause for hope in that there might be a mass protest like with SOPA. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

gldalmaso 12y ago
There is hope still. At least in Brazil we just recently got a net neutrality law passed. The bill existed before, though after everything with the NSA, it got moving pretty fast.

kikki 12y ago

Off topic but that blog is really hard to read with those distracting background patterns. Interesting topic but I came away needing an eye break.

danielweber 12y ago

Most calls for net neutrality read more as polemics ("cable companies suck!") rather than calls for what should and should not be allowed. My two big issues with lots of net neutrality proponents are: 1. Priority of traffic. If my neighbor is bit-torrenting The Avengers I still want to be able to have my VoIP call work. He doesn't really care if his packets move marginally slower while I really care that my packets get through nearly all the time. The rejoinder here is "well the ISPs should always make enough bandwidth for both of us." But the very nature of shared networks is that what my neighbor does can affect me. If you want a channel reserved for yourself, get a leased line and pay the expensive premium for it. (Or buy a guaranteed channel on the shared pipe, but that runs into the same issue with net neutrality.) 2. Companies with more money will always be able to buy better access. You can say "well we shouldn't make it even easier to them to be faster," but at a certain point this logic leads to crazy things like making it illegal for Netflix to use a private network running parallel to the Internet to move things faster to their CDN end points. I want a net neutrality that stops my cable company from interfering with my Vonage packets because they want me to sell me their own VoIP service. I want a net neutrality where my ISP doesn't care if my video packets are coming from Microsoft or Netflix or YouTube. But that doesn't mean I'll sign up for anything wrapped in a "net neutrality" flag that is trying to nail jelly to a tree.

pjc50 12y ago
Traffic priority is very game-able and subjective, though. You can easily argue VoIP versus bulk transfer, but where's the application boundary between "necessary" and "not necessary" - music streaming? SSH? Online games? Who decides this? It might be workable if it came with a guarantee that rates below (max bandwidth/contention ratio) would always be delivered from each customer, and traffic above that would be at risk from contention.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  It is extremely easy test. Are you costrained by latency or bandwidth. If it is latency - to have VOIP you need 200ms round trip top. That is the first lecture in Communication Technology 101. Video streaming is latency tolerant but bandwidth sensitive. You moderately don't care if a packet gets lost or spikes as long as you have long enough buffer. So any kind of conversation needs a fast lane. Downloading and streaming don't. But they need bulk.

smutticus 12y ago

So many of these net neutrality initiatives seem to think "the Internet" is a strictly American phenomenom. The Internet at large cares very little about what the FCC or anyone in America does. The USA might have an outsized influence over what other countries do with their Internet, but that appears to be waning in recent years. In short, I would appreciate if these recent net neutrality initiatives stopped insinuating that US telecoms policy, FCC action, or Comcast/Verizon/Large US ISP, have any effect on the Internet at large.

leccine 12y ago

The biggest shock for me when I moved to US was to get to know that my apartment complex has an exclusive contract with one cable company. I think they would be sued out of existence (both of them) in Europe for trying to do the same. Net neutrality starts here, so that I have access to at least 3 major service providers in my home and nobody can get an exclusive deal on providing internet to a certain area. You could see how fast Comcast and Verizon disappears when the real competition comes in play...

magice 12y ago

You know what I love about these kinds of posts and articles? It's their awesome logics: private entities (who, naturally, seek to maximize their profits) are damaging net neutrality (to make profit); therefore, we should limit the government (FCC). My natural reaction whenever I see FCC being bashed over net neutrality is, "either there is some weird causal fuckup somewhere, or logics stops working; either way, WTF?"

zhemao 12y ago
What part of the argument do you see as trying to limit the FCC. If anything, it is telling the FCC to regulate more sternly by enforcing the line-sharing rule.

iterationx 12y ago

The only tool of the common man against centralized monopolies seems to be to innovate faster than the monopoly power can centralize. I think the only hope for the free Internet is some kind of p2p wireless mesh network or other mechanism to circumvent Comcast altogether. Comcast and Monsanto are untouchable. (Thinking about Monsanto because of some lame GMO prop I heard on NPR this morning)

Istof 12y ago
"Super Wi-Fi" looks like it could be a great technology for this p2p mesh network, but I don't think there is consumer devices available yet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi
marcosdumay 12y ago
You can not economicaly circunvent cable (or fiber). P2p networks are not efficient. What you can do is include the cable and fiber into the p2p network. People can bill routing with some Bitcoin like tech (altough I doubt Bitcoin itself could be used), and let Comcast et al. completely in the dark about whose data they are carrying.