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I am in favour of net neutrality but worry that everyone is defending a status quo that is still bad. For most consumers and buisness access to the net is hard

by 7952 12y ago

I am in favour of net neutrality but worry that everyone is defending a status quo that is still bad. For most consumers and buisness access to the net is hardly free in a financial sense. Entry level bandwidth on AWS/Azure/App engine is still very expensive and seems completely overpriced compared to storage. For the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. An entrepreneur could setup a WiFi hotspot in an area with poor coverage but no one would use it because we are all trying to do everything on a 3g data plan. I want competition for last mile access that allows the consumer to connect based on the best connection available regarldess of who has provided it. Companies should be paid for providing bandwidth and it makes sense to ask large players like Facebook and Nextflix to pay the bill ($0.2 per GB to guarantee a fast connection to the user should be reasonable). The only way to break the telcos is to fund open compeition.

Vendan 12y ago
If you are looking for a way to pay for last mile improvements, maybe you should look at the $75 million a year cable companies spend to try to make sure they won't have to? https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/05/16/how-telecoms-and-cable-have-dominated-net-neutrality-lobbying/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/05/16/how-telecoms-...
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> For the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. In the USA. In the UK I can choose between about half a dozen companies with prices as low as $5 per month for usable broadband. I don't think I've been 100% satisfied with any ISP but only in the customer service area (and mainly because network issues are hard to diagnose). Speed and price are generally OK and there is a lot of variety.
- 7952 12y ago
  There is little incentive to provide FTTH or to connect rural areas. In some places there is only one 3g provider who you can only use if you have a billing account with that company. I agree that the UK is miles ahead of the US but can that last forever? What happens when FTTC and 4g are saturated? We are still mostly reliant on a few mobile operators + BT/Virgin for the last mile.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mhurron 12y ago
> Entry level bandwidth on AWS/Azure/App engine is still very expensive How is that a net neutrality issue? > Companies should be paid for providing bandwidth They are, that's what you pay your ISP for and that's what Facebook pays their ISP for. However why should your ISP be able to demand money from Facebook? What you are proposing is exactly what the cable companies are proposing. Guess what, it doesn't fund competition because if, say Netflix, doesn't pay the protection money, they get throttled to hell where the cable companies service obviously doesn't. Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so you say we have 'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that isn't large yet? That is where competition dies and that is what the cable companies plans are protecting.
- 7952 12y ago
  >> Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so you say we have 'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that isn't large yet? That is where competition dies and that is what the cable companies plans are protecting. That is why I mentioned AWS bandwidth pricing. Because bandwidth is usually much more expensive for a low usage startup than a big established. How is that not already a constraint to growth? Also, I am absolutely not in favour of throtteling connections based on payment. We need a fair system that can be applied with the same terms to everyone. If bandwidth is the big technical constraint why not regulate that instead of protecting shadowy peering agreements that only benefit large players.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    How is that not already a constraint to growth? It makes growth easy; the more you grow, the cheaper your bandwidth. Hosting bandwidth is already significantly cheaper than consumer bandwidth, and nobody is forcing you to use AWS. Bandwidth is not the "big technical constraint" as Level3 and Netflix have shown in various blog posts.

by 7952 12y ago

Vendan 12y ago

If you are looking for a way to pay for last mile improvements, maybe you should look at the $75 million a year cable companies spend to try to make sure they won't have to? https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/05/16/how-telecoms-and-cable-have-dominated-net-neutrality-lobbying/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/05/16/how-telecoms-...

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> For the consumer lack of last mile competition and monthly contracts make competition almost impossible on a day to day basis. In the USA. In the UK I can choose between about half a dozen companies with prices as low as $5 per month for usable broadband. I don't think I've been 100% satisfied with any ISP but only in the customer service area (and mainly because network issues are hard to diagnose). Speed and price are generally OK and there is a lot of variety.

7952 12y ago
There is little incentive to provide FTTH or to connect rural areas. In some places there is only one 3g provider who you can only use if you have a billing account with that company. I agree that the UK is miles ahead of the US but can that last forever? What happens when FTTC and 4g are saturated? We are still mostly reliant on a few mobile operators + BT/Virgin for the last mile.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

mhurron 12y ago

> Entry level bandwidth on AWS/Azure/App engine is still very expensive How is that a net neutrality issue? > Companies should be paid for providing bandwidth They are, that's what you pay your ISP for and that's what Facebook pays their ISP for. However why should your ISP be able to demand money from Facebook? What you are proposing is exactly what the cable companies are proposing. Guess what, it doesn't fund competition because if, say Netflix, doesn't pay the protection money, they get throttled to hell where the cable companies service obviously doesn't. Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so you say we have 'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that isn't large yet? That is where competition dies and that is what the cable companies plans are protecting.

7952 12y ago
>> Now, Netflix might be large enough now to pay it so you say we have 'competition.' What about the next startup? The company that isn't large yet? That is where competition dies and that is what the cable companies plans are protecting. That is why I mentioned AWS bandwidth pricing. Because bandwidth is usually much more expensive for a low usage startup than a big established. How is that not already a constraint to growth? Also, I am absolutely not in favour of throtteling connections based on payment. We need a fair system that can be applied with the same terms to everyone. If bandwidth is the big technical constraint why not regulate that instead of protecting shadowy peering agreements that only benefit large players.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  How is that not already a constraint to growth? It makes growth easy; the more you grow, the cheaper your bandwidth. Hosting bandwidth is already significantly cheaper than consumer bandwidth, and nobody is forcing you to use AWS. Bandwidth is not the "big technical constraint" as Level3 and Netflix have shown in various blog posts.