4 ms·

Yes; as they should. Net neutrality is (and always has been) a good philosophical idea that is completely impractical to implement given the business structure

by exelius 12y ago

Yes; as they should. Net neutrality is (and always has been) a good philosophical idea that is completely impractical to implement given the business structure that has arisen around content distribution. Right now, we have a situation where the big guys (i.e. the major ISPs) can effectively force companies that are pushing large amounts of bandwidth to sign private interconnect agreements. This is less onerous than it seems, because the industry is already largely split functionally into creation and distribution. The only companies this really affects significantly are the ones who are big enough that having vertically integrated creation and distribution functions create a cost savings. Paying interconnect fees cuts into margins for those companies. Smaller companies are just going to pay CDNs (who have always paid ISPs for interconnects) for delivery anyway: the value a CDN provides is more than just network connectivity. With true net neutrality, we would have a situation where the big guys (in this case, large traffic generators like Netflix/Amazon/YouTube/Akamai etc.) flood the small guys off the net. The popular assumption is that ISPs would throw more money into upgrading their networks to deal with the flood of data; but every industry person I've spoken with believes the opposite. It would lead to a mass exodus of investment dollars from wired broadband because there would be no way for the ISPs to recover those dollars in the future. These companies have other things they can invest in; and they will likely choose to spend the money they would have spent on infrastructure on restructuring their companies to look more like Netflix because the FCC has effectively blessed that business model. This would be bad for the consumer and bad for companies like Netflix. Net neutrality is a good idea in principle, but there is no good way to get to true net neutrality from where we are. If the goal of net neutrality is to create a faster Internet, it would need to be accompanied with about a half a trillion dollars of government money over the next decade; and the FCC doesn't have the power to do that without Congress.

kristopolous 12y ago
Alright but (1) why should I publicly subsidize a private company who can't manage to fit a project like that on its balance sheets? (1a) Isn't that a sign they need to be a public utility? Furthermore, (2) the last time we did this (1996 Telecommunications act), wasn't it no strings-attached? (3) Wasn't it widely seen as the private companies not coming through with the intention of the legislation? (4) What do you mean "flood the small guys off the net"? Are you saying they would maliciously do denial of service attacks on smaller companies, as in a "Trespass to chattels"? If not, then what do you mean, in concrete terms, without platitudes? (5) "no way for the ISPs to recover those dollars in the future" - Isn't it true that other companies in other countries can do it without government subsidies and are yet, still profitable? (6) [background] It seems like you are outlining an industry-wide endemic attitude which belies service. Although I agree that there are institutions structured this way, there are others, such as Level3, or my ISP, Sonic.net, which appear to be committed to tendering networking services. [question] Wouldn't it be better if companies who do not value providing high quality service actually do exit to a NetFlix model ... as service-providing doesn't seem to be the right industry for their culture (they are entertainment companies such as Paramount, not utilities such as PG&E). Thoughts? Thanks.
- exelius 12y ago
  (1) It's more that they would have no incentive to do so themselves. Businesses do not exist to serve the public good; they exist to make money. I agree that consumers may be better served by a public utility structure; but it's hard to get the will in government to spend the money when a commercial alternative already exists. (2) No; there were plenty of strings attached. (3) This can be attributed to the line-sharing rules on DSL. It became less profitable to invest in landline infrastructure, so the telcos started buying up wireless companies instead because it was a better investment. (4) No, I mean that there will be congestion in any large networked system. In any congestion scenario, low bandwidth applications get squeezed, while video just sends crap along without worrying about congestion / latency. It may have to downscale, but by and large big bandwidth generators will continue to dominate traffic scales and cause latency and throughput issues. Without the ability to perform QoS at the link level (a legitimate conern given that layer 7 QoS may not be viable much longer if everything gets wrapped in SSL) these problems become worse. (5) I'm guessing you speak of Europe. The structure of their bandwidth markets are much different and can't be compared. Telecom in Europe is largely a public/private partnership, where in the US it is privately owned. (6) They could provide better customer service, but it would cost more (in fact, many of the large ISPs do offer a "premium support" option for a fee). But customers are not willing to pay more for better customer service, because generally you call customer service once or twice a year at most. Additionally, most utilities I've had to deal with also have terrible customer service. Furthermore, it's disingenuous to compare B2B companies like Level3 with consumer ISPs. B2B is a totally different market: business customers expect a certain level of support and are willing to pay more for it. Support is a feature of the product in the B2B space; in the B2C space it's just a necessary cost center. Furthermore, if you're a consumer who does value business-class support, you're free to purchase access from a B2B provider: you just may not like the price.
  - kristopolous 12y ago
    ok, I think we are quite different but let me address just two things. For (4), are you suggesting that a company first pays for the bandwidth, and then pays again, for essentially the privilege to use the bandwidth paid for? (Given the Verizon/Level3 debacle, it was clearly shown that the networks are at about 40% capacity - so the narrative of scarcity or oversubscription is false - can't be used, sorry.) And for (6), I'm suggesting that conglomerate companies have industries they are good at, and those they aren't. I wouldn't expect to buy an automobile manufactured by starbucks - and furthermore if starbucks went out to manufacture automobiles, everything from the board of directors down would be poorly suited for the task - they are in the food services business - it's fundamentally different. So the idea here is that perhaps some of these modern cable service providers should be entertainment companies and not distributing in-house hardware or laying out the internet infrastructure - they may be terribly structured for that job.
swalsh 12y ago
" It would lead to a mass exodus of investment dollars from wired broadband because there would be no way for the ISPs to recover those dollars in the future." There is a way, I pay a bit over a hundred dollars a month to the cable company for an internet connection. Some of that money should surely be ear marked for taking care of infrastructure? Why does it matter if i'm using it to watch Netflix?
tjoff 12y ago
Funny how only internet in the US is broken. The rest of the world can combine net neutrality with superior performance to that of the US monopolies. Why on earth should you try to put a bandage on the symptoms by throwing away net neutrality instead of focusing on the cause. Not all businesses are suitable to deliver content over CDNs (and not all wants to anyway), thanks for forcing that part of a business in to a third party.
ASneakyFox 12y ago
What am I paying my isp for then? If subscription fees don't cover bandwidth costs how have they been doing business up to this point?

by exelius 12y ago

kristopolous 12y ago

Alright but (1) why should I publicly subsidize a private company who can't manage to fit a project like that on its balance sheets? (1a) Isn't that a sign they need to be a public utility? Furthermore, (2) the last time we did this (1996 Telecommunications act), wasn't it no strings-attached? (3) Wasn't it widely seen as the private companies not coming through with the intention of the legislation? (4) What do you mean "flood the small guys off the net"? Are you saying they would maliciously do denial of service attacks on smaller companies, as in a "Trespass to chattels"? If not, then what do you mean, in concrete terms, without platitudes? (5) "no way for the ISPs to recover those dollars in the future" - Isn't it true that other companies in other countries can do it without government subsidies and are yet, still profitable? (6) [background] It seems like you are outlining an industry-wide endemic attitude which belies service. Although I agree that there are institutions structured this way, there are others, such as Level3, or my ISP, Sonic.net, which appear to be committed to tendering networking services. [question] Wouldn't it be better if companies who do not value providing high quality service actually do exit to a NetFlix model ... as service-providing doesn't seem to be the right industry for their culture (they are entertainment companies such as Paramount, not utilities such as PG&E). Thoughts? Thanks.

exelius 12y ago
(1) It's more that they would have no incentive to do so themselves. Businesses do not exist to serve the public good; they exist to make money. I agree that consumers may be better served by a public utility structure; but it's hard to get the will in government to spend the money when a commercial alternative already exists. (2) No; there were plenty of strings attached. (3) This can be attributed to the line-sharing rules on DSL. It became less profitable to invest in landline infrastructure, so the telcos started buying up wireless companies instead because it was a better investment. (4) No, I mean that there will be congestion in any large networked system. In any congestion scenario, low bandwidth applications get squeezed, while video just sends crap along without worrying about congestion / latency. It may have to downscale, but by and large big bandwidth generators will continue to dominate traffic scales and cause latency and throughput issues. Without the ability to perform QoS at the link level (a legitimate conern given that layer 7 QoS may not be viable much longer if everything gets wrapped in SSL) these problems become worse. (5) I'm guessing you speak of Europe. The structure of their bandwidth markets are much different and can't be compared. Telecom in Europe is largely a public/private partnership, where in the US it is privately owned. (6) They could provide better customer service, but it would cost more (in fact, many of the large ISPs do offer a "premium support" option for a fee). But customers are not willing to pay more for better customer service, because generally you call customer service once or twice a year at most. Additionally, most utilities I've had to deal with also have terrible customer service. Furthermore, it's disingenuous to compare B2B companies like Level3 with consumer ISPs. B2B is a totally different market: business customers expect a certain level of support and are willing to pay more for it. Support is a feature of the product in the B2B space; in the B2C space it's just a necessary cost center. Furthermore, if you're a consumer who does value business-class support, you're free to purchase access from a B2B provider: you just may not like the price.
- kristopolous 12y ago
  ok, I think we are quite different but let me address just two things. For (4), are you suggesting that a company first pays for the bandwidth, and then pays again, for essentially the privilege to use the bandwidth paid for? (Given the Verizon/Level3 debacle, it was clearly shown that the networks are at about 40% capacity - so the narrative of scarcity or oversubscription is false - can't be used, sorry.) And for (6), I'm suggesting that conglomerate companies have industries they are good at, and those they aren't. I wouldn't expect to buy an automobile manufactured by starbucks - and furthermore if starbucks went out to manufacture automobiles, everything from the board of directors down would be poorly suited for the task - they are in the food services business - it's fundamentally different. So the idea here is that perhaps some of these modern cable service providers should be entertainment companies and not distributing in-house hardware or laying out the internet infrastructure - they may be terribly structured for that job.

swalsh 12y ago

" It would lead to a mass exodus of investment dollars from wired broadband because there would be no way for the ISPs to recover those dollars in the future." There is a way, I pay a bit over a hundred dollars a month to the cable company for an internet connection. Some of that money should surely be ear marked for taking care of infrastructure? Why does it matter if i'm using it to watch Netflix?

tjoff 12y ago

Funny how only internet in the US is broken. The rest of the world can combine net neutrality with superior performance to that of the US monopolies. Why on earth should you try to put a bandage on the symptoms by throwing away net neutrality instead of focusing on the cause. Not all businesses are suitable to deliver content over CDNs (and not all wants to anyway), thanks for forcing that part of a business in to a third party.

ASneakyFox 12y ago

What am I paying my isp for then? If subscription fees don't cover bandwidth costs how have they been doing business up to this point?