4 ms·

NYC politicians’ one-word case for net neutrality: Skype

54 points by Libertatea 12y ago

busterarm 12y ago
Very excited to see my old friend Ben Kallos on the right side of the news again. I know a few folks from my high school and college years who've gone into politics. He's the only one who was a cool, level-headed intelligent guy then and still seems to be one now. I need to see if he wants to play Diplomacy again.
johnkpush 12y ago
Bringing immigrants and the poor inexpensive, neutral broadband is the best argument for net neutrality.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  The anti-immigrant crowd is gonna hate that one ... even more if they can figure out which bus it's on.
- wmf 12y ago
  Unfortunately, it's possible that net neutrality will increase broadband prices (or reduce service for the same price).
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Conceivable, but far from proven. An apparent employee of a major ISP+TV firm (username started with a "g") claimed that all company decisions were weighed against hurting TV profits. If neutrality could eventually force them to decouple those decisions, prices could go down and performance up. Further, ISPs are currently profitable by a hefty margin, so they could continue operating the same network at the same price, but neutrally WRT to content. Actually, I can't think of any reason why net neutrality would ever cause prices to increase. All ISPs need to do is give customers a dedicated allotment of priority/low latency inbound and outbound traffic, with the rest of their "advertised speed" served as best effort. Then the customer can decide what matters to them (or the application designers for less technical customers), and that should be cheaper for ISPs since they need no DPI hardware and fewer employees deciding what to throttle for profit.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindslight 12y ago
    "Possible", in that it cannot be categorically ruled out over scenarios and timescales, sure. But a lack of "net neutrality" isn't going to cause broadband providers to magically freeze their prices either. So it's a choice between a one time "possibly more expensive", and continual raising every time providers buy more advanced dpi gear, segment offerings into more proprietarily-priced "services", and slowly dismantle the end-to-end principle.
mseebach 12y ago
Wow, grandstanding much? There's no evidence ISPs have throttled VoIP or plan to, but if they did it would be REALLY BAD for $key_voter_demographic. Sorry guys, even if the end result is commendable, this is literally just FUD. If there's to be any hope of better politics, we need to reject this BS.
- altcognito 12y ago
  They don't need to. They just need to neglect their peer infrastructure and the desired effect will be the same.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    Net neutrality doesn't require ISPs to maintain their infrastructure to any particular standard. It's fine that it's crap as long as it's equally crap for all traffic.
    - sp332 12y ago
      If you neglect peering, gradually some peering points will become more congested than others. So it won't be equally crap for all traffic. Some sources will get crappier service than others.
      - mseebach 12y ago
        Of course. There's just no language in any net neutrality proposals that will avoid that. The net neutrality crime in the Netflix debacle was trying to charge Netflix for access, not refusing to upgrade the peering point (since all traffic is equally/neutrally affected by the congestion).
- jamroom 12y ago
  The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior - we know ISP's have throttled streaming video to enhance their own streaming video offerings, so is it that far fetched to believe they would do the same with VOIP? Most of these large ISP's are heavy into bundling and offer their own VOIP packages, so I think it is fairly logical to assume this is being discussed internally somewhere. Definitely not FUD.
codyb 12y ago
I really like this as a NYC resident. It shows there are some people (I've only lived here for about 9 months so I'm not too familiar with the political scene) who are concerned about the residents of their city (local politics in general seem to be more citizen oriented than national politics (to me, however that could be an erroneous or anecdotal position I hold) but you could certainly see the case where NYC could be a distortion of that generality) and it's also an argument which goes beyond the "these companies might not have made it" and gives a good concrete example or how millions of people might be tremendously hurt by the proposed changes to net neutrality. I know that I would feel tremendous emotional pain at the thought of not being able to communicate with my family effectively and easily when all of the technology is there and established. Hopefully some of the people who need swaying can feel with their hearts instead of their wallets and ensure that these millions will not feel that pain.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

54 points by Libertatea 12y ago

Very excited to see my old friend Ben Kallos on the right side of the news again. I know a few folks from my high school and college years who've gone into politics. He's the only one who was a cool, level-headed intelligent guy then and still seems to be one now. I need to see if he wants to play Diplomacy again.

johnkpush 12y ago

Bringing immigrants and the poor inexpensive, neutral broadband is the best argument for net neutrality.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
The anti-immigrant crowd is gonna hate that one ... even more if they can figure out which bus it's on.
wmf 12y ago
Unfortunately, it's possible that net neutrality will increase broadband prices (or reduce service for the same price).
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Conceivable, but far from proven. An apparent employee of a major ISP+TV firm (username started with a "g") claimed that all company decisions were weighed against hurting TV profits. If neutrality could eventually force them to decouple those decisions, prices could go down and performance up. Further, ISPs are currently profitable by a hefty margin, so they could continue operating the same network at the same price, but neutrally WRT to content. Actually, I can't think of any reason why net neutrality would ever cause prices to increase. All ISPs need to do is give customers a dedicated allotment of priority/low latency inbound and outbound traffic, with the rest of their "advertised speed" served as best effort. Then the customer can decide what matters to them (or the application designers for less technical customers), and that should be cheaper for ISPs since they need no DPI hardware and fewer employees deciding what to throttle for profit.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 12y ago
  "Possible", in that it cannot be categorically ruled out over scenarios and timescales, sure. But a lack of "net neutrality" isn't going to cause broadband providers to magically freeze their prices either. So it's a choice between a one time "possibly more expensive", and continual raising every time providers buy more advanced dpi gear, segment offerings into more proprietarily-priced "services", and slowly dismantle the end-to-end principle.

mseebach 12y ago

Wow, grandstanding much? There's no evidence ISPs have throttled VoIP or plan to, but if they did it would be REALLY BAD for $key_voter_demographic. Sorry guys, even if the end result is commendable, this is literally just FUD. If there's to be any hope of better politics, we need to reject this BS.

altcognito 12y ago
They don't need to. They just need to neglect their peer infrastructure and the desired effect will be the same.
- mseebach 12y ago
  Net neutrality doesn't require ISPs to maintain their infrastructure to any particular standard. It's fine that it's crap as long as it's equally crap for all traffic.
  - sp332 12y ago
    If you neglect peering, gradually some peering points will become more congested than others. So it won't be equally crap for all traffic. Some sources will get crappier service than others.
    - mseebach 12y ago
      Of course. There's just no language in any net neutrality proposals that will avoid that. The net neutrality crime in the Netflix debacle was trying to charge Netflix for access, not refusing to upgrade the peering point (since all traffic is equally/neutrally affected by the congestion).
jamroom 12y ago
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior - we know ISP's have throttled streaming video to enhance their own streaming video offerings, so is it that far fetched to believe they would do the same with VOIP? Most of these large ISP's are heavy into bundling and offer their own VOIP packages, so I think it is fairly logical to assume this is being discussed internally somewhere. Definitely not FUD.

codyb 12y ago

I really like this as a NYC resident. It shows there are some people (I've only lived here for about 9 months so I'm not too familiar with the political scene) who are concerned about the residents of their city (local politics in general seem to be more citizen oriented than national politics (to me, however that could be an erroneous or anecdotal position I hold) but you could certainly see the case where NYC could be a distortion of that generality) and it's also an argument which goes beyond the "these companies might not have made it" and gives a good concrete example or how millions of people might be tremendously hurt by the proposed changes to net neutrality. I know that I would feel tremendous emotional pain at the thought of not being able to communicate with my family effectively and easily when all of the technology is there and established. Hopefully some of the people who need swaying can feel with their hearts instead of their wallets and ensure that these millions will not feel that pain.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]