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F.C.C. Asks AT&T for Details on Plans to Halt Fiber Expansion

107 points by gordon_freeman 12y ago

programminggeek 12y ago
It's almost as if AT&T was only planning on rolling out fiber if they could sell it at a premium and effectively end around the cable companies in the next 5 years by replacing traditional TV charges with premium on-demand Netflix/Hulu/Whatever else. That would be a smart move for AT&T, but would be bad for the consumer. Just think, instead of spending $10 for Netflix, you could spend $15-20 to have FAST NETFLIX (and probably other bundled junk you don't care about). Even better, they could bundle internet with netflix with phone with dvr for like $150 a month!!!!! Think of the margin on that!!!!! Seriously though, it's good that the FCC is looking into this, but I doubt they will do much about it. At some point there is just too much money involved for the "right thing" to happen when it comes to your average consumer/citizen.
akersten 12y ago
I can't think of a clearer indication that a monopoly needs to be broken up than when they hold the customer hostage after their lobbying doesn't affect legislation to their benefit.
- hughw 12y ago
  Every thirty years, we have to break up AT&T again.
  - JadoJodo 12y ago
    The crazy thing is they've re-acquired almost all companies that were broken off. The rest went on to form Verizon.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      No, it's crazier than that. One of the broken off companies reacquired them. What is currently AT&T is really SBC. SBC acquired AT&T and adopted the AT&T name.
      - gknoy 12y ago
        Stephen Colbert had a really funny explanation of it. I can't seem to find it on youtube, so apologies for the quality: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/ http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/
      - seanp2k2 12y ago
        Here's a diagram of what happened to each company: http://subjunctive.net/klog/images/2008/Att_history.jpg http://subjunctive.net/klog/images/2008/Att_history.jpg
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      The rest went on to form Verizon. Which from a lobbying/public policy perspective, is often indistinguishable from ATT. They certainly don't act like they view each other as competitors.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    You did it entirely wrong last time - you split it up geographically, but still had the ISPs owning the last mile infrastructure. You only actually have to split it into two companies - one which owns the cables, and the other which runs an ISP. Then you write a charter which requires the company which owns the cables to sell access to any ISP at the same terms and cost. Then you implement a law which says that no ISP may own a last mile, and all last mile infrastructure past and future must be under those terms. That way, you entirely skip the issue of the cable owners having no competition or incentive to expand, and you have competition between ISPs as well, without tying one to the other. ISP implements throttling? You can use another ISP that uses the exact same neutral last mile. This is more-or-less what the UK does, with the addition of the no-ISP-may-own-a-last-mile law, which I strongly believe we should implement.
    - wmf 12y ago
      To be fair, last time they did split local and long distance.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > You did it entirely wrong last time - you split it up geographically, but still had the ISPs owning the last mile infrastructure. The last time AT&T was split up, there weren't any "ISPs". And at that time AT&T was split into (for the telephone service parts): 1. The reduced AT&T -- long-distance and some other things 2. The "baby bells" -- local service in different geographical regions. > Then you write a charter which requires the company which owns the cables to sell access to any ISP at the same terms and cost. Common carrier rules were applied to AT&T's telephone lines, and DSL was also common carrier, covered under Title II until it was reclassified in 2005 (so much of the Title II hand-wringing over Open Internet rules misses the point that consumer internet in the US grew up when the lines were covered by Title II, and it manifestly did not kill innovation.)
      - vertex-four 12y ago
        > The last time AT&T was split up, there weren't any "ISPs". Indeed, there were phone companies. It seems obvious now that the breakup was done wrong, but with the technology at the time it likely couldn't have been done how I'd like it to be done today. I over-simplified when I said "you did it wrong". > Common carrier rules were applied to AT&T's telephone lines, and DSL was also common carrier But they didn't split last mile cabling from whatever runs on top of it, which is the main issue and the only thing that'd actually work to allow quick reactions to a failure to provide adequate service. Otherwise, you have the ISP giving preferential treatment to itself, even though the law says it really shouldn't be.
  - jrjr 12y ago
    AT&T = KiloQuads & Byte Reversals. Same old song. Some day they might realize that faster service leads to empty slots in the mux stream that they can sell. Call in Google, they get it. jr
- rhino369 12y ago
  AT&T can hardly be called a monopoly. Cable broadband has a much larger marketshare. It only has 16 million wire line subscribers. Edit: Though obviously some areas, AT&T is the only broadband providers. But breaking it up won't solve that issue at all.
nostromo 12y ago
Question: why do we need net neutrality right now? It seems to be pre-emptive legislation. (The ISPs might do something bad, so we need to prevent it.) I hear a lot of concerns about internet access costs. If that's the true problem, then let's enable more competition. The last thing I want, personally, is an internet provider as innovative as PG&E.
- azinman2 12y ago
  Because they're actively slowing connections to their benefit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/netflix-slow-fcc-verizon_n_5492542.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/netflix-slow-fcc-ve... When was the last time an ISP actually truly did something innovative that has stood the test of time outside of offering faster internet speeds? Or multiplexing cable/telephone (aka more delivery of content aka a utility)?
  - nostromo 12y ago
    Let's assuming they did something bad here. Is the best response to give the FCC more control over the internet? Before answering, consider that the current head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for ISPs including Comcast and TimeWarner. Or is the best response to increase competition among ISPs? How many people would choose the ISP that throttles Netflix?
    - lhc- 12y ago
      And how do you plan to increase competition? The current climate doesn't do that. The barriers to entry are far too great for realistic threats outside of companies like Google that have money to burn. By regulating the ISP as common carrier, you are actively encouraging competition, by forcing them to lease out the last mile to smaller providers who can give real service and actually have to compete. Net Neutrality is aimed directly at providing more competition on the last mile, where our current providers have failed so badly.
      - nostromo 12y ago
navyrain 12y ago
It should be obvious that AT&T's "concerns" are simply a thinly-veiled threat to withhold high-speed access from the citizenry unless they get guarantees that they can manipulate said access with impunity. The thing is that AT&T and others won't just pack up their broadband monopolies and go home; they'll respond to whatever market conditions the regulatory regime shapes. They can complain all they like, but the citizenry overwhelmingly wants more integrity guarantees for their internet connections. This sort of threat is akin to a tantrum from a spoiled child.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >AT&T's "concerns" are simply a thinly-veiled threat I don't even think they are a threat. They're a rhetorical point that their lobbyists and bought and paid for supporters in government are going to drum endlessly leading into the 2016 elections. ----- Do you remember how Obamacare said you could keep your policy, but it turned out that there were many horrible policies that wouldn't turn a profit if there were better policies with lower prices available from exchanges, so the insurance companies stopped offering them? Obama 'lied'. Just wait for Obamanet, where Obama told everyone that net neutrality would guarantee equal access for everybody, but AT&T couldn't afford to roll out to your town because of the burden of his new regulations. Regulations that didn't exist during the Internet's rise, and if they had existed would have strangled it in it's crib. It is simply unprofitable to operate under regulations that micromanage every aspect, every packet that is delivered to every home. The rollout of gigabit internet to 2M homes over the past two years (to wealthy/gentrified portions of a few, big, prosperous cities) shows you how wonderful your internet could have been if AT&T could have figured out to make their original plan to roll that same speed out to 100 cities profitable under Obamanet. They couldn't; nobody could - the only reason they rolled out to the 2M households was as an extortion payment because Obama threatened to hold up their acquisition of DirecTV if they wouldn't do what he wanted. Obama wants to treat every piece of the internet equal[sic] - hardcore child pornography and stolen music should download exactly as fast as your netflix that you paid for downloads to your TV, or your electronic medical records (that keep your family safe) download to your family doctor. That seems like something that should be managed by the technicians and job creators that actually built the networks, and have run the networks since the beginning - maybe they know a little more about your internet than some jerks in Washington that are worried that their fancy wine and cheese magazine website won't download fast enough because no real people want to read it. They don't like what we like, so their socialist instincts kick in, and they get scared that what they like can't survive in the market without cheating (Solyndra!!! Solyndra!!! They're trying to kill us!!!), so they regulate that their things must always have as much of the internet as everybody else's things do, even if nobody has ever visited those websites in so long that when you go there, you get spiderwebs on your keyboard (chortle!) It's socialism for their internet, but not for yours. When you hear them talking about this 'net neutrality' being 'fair' for everyone, look at all of those people in Brooklyn with their super-fast internet while your netflix is freezing so long that you can make a sandwich before it comes back and ask yourself - is this fair???. ----- If AT&T weren't confident it had the political support, it would do whatever it was told. It would still be absurdly profitable. Profit levels might even end up being written into the law. AT&T knows that they have all of the Republicans (even the libertarians), they have the head of the FCC, and they have plenty of individual Democrats. I think it's a good thing because the industry is going to pull out all stops and show all of their cards in order to kill this. We'll know who to target politically and who to support. I have little doubt that they will win, though, and this push will be entirely killed for some legislative procedural reason or in the courts on a technicality. Obama is terrible, always loses because he doesn't actually care, and the only reason he's pushing this is political pandering to people like me. /rant
azinman2 12y ago
Seems to me that they're trying to strong arm the government to get what they and all the major ISPs (especially those with media services to offer) into more ways to double dip revenue streams. It's kind of an odd double edged play, in that trying to purposefully prevent faster internet nationally (to get the gov't to change its tactics) also makes AT&T less competitive at a time that they offer only DSL to most of the country. Guess that since wired data is only 30% [1] of they revenue they make enough money on mobile+voice that they have this potential revenue stream to dwindle in their arrogance? Or are they just knowing that G.Fast [2] and other ways of extending copper will come so they're playing a fiber card more willingly? Unfortunately enough money is being exchanged between all the major players & politicians that no matter what we won't end up with a clean net neutrality. This is just a public display of that -- it would be infuriating to know the conversations we don't hear about. I'd love to hear someone finally understand that this is making the US less competitive and get it as a proxied issue in the 2016 race. [1] http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_ar_2013_highlights.pdf http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_ar... [2] http://www.cnet.com/news/lowly-dsl-broadband-poised-for-gigabit-speed-boost/ http://www.cnet.com/news/lowly-dsl-broadband-poised-for-giga...
- ep103 12y ago
  It would only windle if people could leave their service
- wtracy 12y ago
  > also makes AT&T less competitive I'd bet dollars to donuts that the proposed cancellations only affect areas where no competition exists to begin with.
- xaa 12y ago
  No, they are seriously expanding fiber. Almost all of their new hires are trained on and working on building out fiber, and minimal resources are devoted to repairing copper. It would be a complete reversal of their strategy to stop expanding fiber (Source: my dad works there). In that light I think this is just a rhetorical gambit, and the FCC should call the bluff.
maxlybbert 12y ago
Reasoning by analogy ( http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that , "proof by analogy is fraud"), I can't help but compare this to toll roads and roads that are free to drive on. I don't know anyone who likes toll roads or toll bridges, and I grew up in an area where they weren't common: I was a married adult before I actually saw a real toll booth. If the choice is between "toll road" and "non-toll road," then voters always choose a non-toll road. So toll roads are only ever built when the alternative is "no road." Clearly AT&T and others have the ability to abuse their power over the infrastructure in ways that aren't possible in the world of toll roads. But, fundamentally, why would AT&T upgrade the infrastructure if they can't guarantee they'll get a profit from the improvements? In other words, is the debate really between "net neutrality, with little or no infrastructure improvements" versus "no net neutrality, but the infrastructure gets upgraded regularly?" For the record: AT&T's current move is a simple strong arm tactic: they were willing to install fiber last month when they had no guarantee of an ability to collect a "toll" over it, the world hasn't changed so much that the project won't turn a profit. But I still think it's a useful question to ask: how do the companies providing infrastructure get paid, and why would they bother upgrading that infrastructure?
- fernly 12y ago
  Would it not be the case that if ATT ran fiber to my home, they would charge me a fee to connect to it? (And possibly an installation fee to plug it in, and a rental fee for a modem to connect to it, but set those aside.) The point is that each terminus of a fiber is a cash generator, just as each landline telephone connected to ATT's voice network is a cash generator. They would invest in "infrastructure" in order to ensure a long-term flow of small cash payments -- exactly as they did for telephones in the 1920s, just as electrical and gas utilities did in the 1890s.
  - maxlybbert 12y ago
    They have some costs running and maintaining the system. Connection fees aren't enough, of course people pay monthy subscription fees. Again, I realize there are obvious ways to abuse its control of its network. I'm a big fan of net neutrality, I just want to know that we've considered what the world will look like down the road. And, really, I can see valid reasons to treat different traffic differently. If Netflix wants to send 2GB of data to a person, there is a deadline of how quickly that data should arrive for a good viewing experience. If somebody wants to deliver 2GB of data to an email server, they're probably OK if it takes a while. Then again, under the current system, there's no way to say what kind of latency or throughput data needs. The best AT&T can do is guess based on who the endpoints are.
grecy 12y ago
Exactly this happened to the monopoly ISP/telco up here in the Yukon, Canada. When the CRTC announced they were slashing the prices of the telco's proposed "bulk data pipe" products by more than 70%, the telco responded by saying they were no longer going to keep expanding their fiber network to more communities, because "it wouldn't be profitable to do so given this harsh pricing scheme". There was huge outcry, and everyone pointed out this is exactly the reason a monopoly is bad, because they can hold everyone hostage, etc. etc. The final result? The CRTC caved, and let the ISP/Telco charge whatever they wanted for the "bulk data pipe" products.
- xeroxmalf 12y ago
  Not quite the same, given Yukon has a population density (2011) 0.07 /km2 (0.18 /sq mi), which is actually fairly hard to make a profit on.
  - grecy 12y ago
    It's not hard at all when the CRTC subsidies said Telco/ISP for tens of millions of dollars annually. The internet products are some of the most expensive in the entire world.[1] [1]http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/the-most-expensive-bandwidth-in-the-world-yukons-northwestel/ http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/the-most-expensive-ban...
adventured 12y ago
I haven't figured out why the government doesn't focus on spurring a large increase in competition, rather than trying to shoehorn existing monoliths into a regulatory package that nobody can seem to agree upon. Net neutrality or not, I'd like to see a lot more competition in the market, such that your average consumer has, say, three high quality fixed broadband options. We're only going to get to universal 1gbps consumer broadband speeds in the next decade with a lot more competition. Nothing about net neutrality will encourage the sloth telecom companies to boost speeds faster. Google demonstrated very eloquently that with a slight prod, companies including Comcast will dramatically boost internet speed.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I haven't figured out why the government doesn't focus on spurring a large increase in competition, rather than trying to shoehorn existing monoliths into a regulatory package that nobody can seem to agree upon. Spurring a large increase in competition would involve shoehorning the existing monoliths into a regulatory package that would be even harder to agree on that some form of net neutrality -- and would probably include some form of net neutrality to prevent the newly-spurred ISP competitors from having an incentive to consolidate in order to extract rents from a non-neutral internet.
FlyingLawnmower 12y ago
I don't really understand what people are getting upset about. Isn't this just a business decision on their part not to invest $XXmillions on deploying out fiber when there's uncertainty about what regulations they will be subjected to? The big debate around net neutrality is that Comcast throttled Netflix users, but I can't help but think that there's a real cost associated with the massive amounts of bandwidth that hi-def video streaming consumes. If AT&T has no scope to offset that cost to either Netflix or the customer, then doesn't it make perfect sense for them to not deploy this until they know all the details? Granted, I have absolutely no knowledge about any of this stuff...I'm hoping someone on HN can educate me about why this isn't just a logical business decision, and why I should be upset about this as a whole.
- revelation 12y ago
  Right, that massive 4MBit of bandwidth that passes for Netflix HD. I think thats about the state of art in 1970. Not to mention that the Netflix congestion isn't happening in the last mile, it's at interconnection points that could be trivially upgraded for very, very little money (compared to expanding fiber). Unless they are trying to hide that they have been massively overselling bandwidth to customers, in which case a class lawsuit would probably be in order.
  - FlyingLawnmower 12y ago
    Gotcha. I guess I've had some misconceptions after viewing charts like this: http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/sandvine-2h-2013.png http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/sandvine-2h-2013.png that show huge amounts of (relative) netflix consumption.
- guelo 12y ago
  Net neutrality is not about Netflix vs Comcast. It's about preserving the internet as a free speech venue.
- tzs 12y ago
  AT&T has said they had plans for fiber expansion in 100 cities, and they have had to halt those plans because of uncertainty over net neutrality regulation. Many suspect that this is simply not true--they never actually had plans in the first place. Hence, the FCC would like to know what plans they have actually halted.
vmarsy 12y ago
So AT&T threatens by halting their fiber expansion [1] but at the same time they try to beat Google in some fiber race [2]. Isn't Google actually 'enjoying' this news? [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-at-t-regulations-internet-idUSKCN0IW1JC20141112?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-at-t-regulation... [2] http://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-attempts-to-out-google-google-in-austin-fiber-race/ http://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-attempts-to-out-google-google-...
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Not sure if I'd say they are "enjoying" it. I don't think Google really wants to be in the ISP business, I think they just felt that moving into it would be the best way to stimulate the existing ISPs to raise bandwidth and lower prices (on the premise that as an Internet ad company, the more Internet people consume the better Google does). Which has worked, but only hyper-locally (eg. Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T customers in areas served by Google Fiber get much better deals from those carriers pre-Google Fiber, but the rest of us get just as fucked as always).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
golemotron 12y ago
AT&T really doesn't understand yet that they are a utility.
- wmf 12y ago
  AT&T was a utility for decades. I'm not surprised that they don't want to go back.
brownbat 12y ago
If the current "complaint" from ISPs is that a few single sources are hogging all the bandwidth (and their response is to both throttle those services and offer upload speed match promotions[1]), why isn't there a Netflix / YouTube torrent app, where we end users all pass around encrypted traffic to each other that's hard to signature?[2] Nails that stick up get hammered down. If our favorite services are getting pounded, why don't we all just work together to offer cryptographically obscured asylum? [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/08/25/verizon-fios-speed-match/ http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/08/25/verizon-fios-speed-match... [2] Acknowledging that "hard to signature" means there's a cat and mouse game in store. It'd be worth it.
exabrial 12y ago
You know, at first, I really was like "yee yee" when I heard the news about reclassification of broadband as a regulated common carrier. YAH, we're really stickin it to the man in the suit at Comcast and TWC! It got me thinking... this is like, the nuclear option. Innovation around telephony stagnated. Since everyone and everything was the exact same, there was no need for innovation and competition was pretty much illegal. I'm not so sure I want the same for broadband. I'm starting to think it's not such a good idea. Ideally, we need some middle ground. TWC shouldn't be able to slow youtube down because it competes with their cable business. Actually no one should be able discriminate based on content, period. We should maybe think about classifying ISPs and Transit providers as official legal terms, and the types of contracts you're allowed to enter depend on what type of business you are. Anyway, flame away, I know this won't be a popular opinion. But that's my thoughts on the subject currently

107 points by gordon_freeman 12y ago

It's almost as if AT&T was only planning on rolling out fiber if they could sell it at a premium and effectively end around the cable companies in the next 5 years by replacing traditional TV charges with premium on-demand Netflix/Hulu/Whatever else. That would be a smart move for AT&T, but would be bad for the consumer. Just think, instead of spending $10 for Netflix, you could spend $15-20 to have FAST NETFLIX (and probably other bundled junk you don't care about). Even better, they could bundle internet with netflix with phone with dvr for like $150 a month!!!!! Think of the margin on that!!!!! Seriously though, it's good that the FCC is looking into this, but I doubt they will do much about it. At some point there is just too much money involved for the "right thing" to happen when it comes to your average consumer/citizen.

akersten 12y ago

I can't think of a clearer indication that a monopoly needs to be broken up than when they hold the customer hostage after their lobbying doesn't affect legislation to their benefit.

hughw 12y ago
Every thirty years, we have to break up AT&T again.
- JadoJodo 12y ago
  The crazy thing is they've re-acquired almost all companies that were broken off. The rest went on to form Verizon.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    No, it's crazier than that. One of the broken off companies reacquired them. What is currently AT&T is really SBC. SBC acquired AT&T and adopted the AT&T name.
    - gknoy 12y ago
      Stephen Colbert had a really funny explanation of it. I can't seem to find it on youtube, so apologies for the quality: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/ http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/955486/
    - seanp2k2 12y ago
      Here's a diagram of what happened to each company: http://subjunctive.net/klog/images/2008/Att_history.jpg http://subjunctive.net/klog/images/2008/Att_history.jpg
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    The rest went on to form Verizon. Which from a lobbying/public policy perspective, is often indistinguishable from ATT. They certainly don't act like they view each other as competitors.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  You did it entirely wrong last time - you split it up geographically, but still had the ISPs owning the last mile infrastructure. You only actually have to split it into two companies - one which owns the cables, and the other which runs an ISP. Then you write a charter which requires the company which owns the cables to sell access to any ISP at the same terms and cost. Then you implement a law which says that no ISP may own a last mile, and all last mile infrastructure past and future must be under those terms. That way, you entirely skip the issue of the cable owners having no competition or incentive to expand, and you have competition between ISPs as well, without tying one to the other. ISP implements throttling? You can use another ISP that uses the exact same neutral last mile. This is more-or-less what the UK does, with the addition of the no-ISP-may-own-a-last-mile law, which I strongly believe we should implement.
  - wmf 12y ago
    To be fair, last time they did split local and long distance.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > You did it entirely wrong last time - you split it up geographically, but still had the ISPs owning the last mile infrastructure. The last time AT&T was split up, there weren't any "ISPs". And at that time AT&T was split into (for the telephone service parts): 1. The reduced AT&T -- long-distance and some other things 2. The "baby bells" -- local service in different geographical regions. > Then you write a charter which requires the company which owns the cables to sell access to any ISP at the same terms and cost. Common carrier rules were applied to AT&T's telephone lines, and DSL was also common carrier, covered under Title II until it was reclassified in 2005 (so much of the Title II hand-wringing over Open Internet rules misses the point that consumer internet in the US grew up when the lines were covered by Title II, and it manifestly did not kill innovation.)
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      > The last time AT&T was split up, there weren't any "ISPs". Indeed, there were phone companies. It seems obvious now that the breakup was done wrong, but with the technology at the time it likely couldn't have been done how I'd like it to be done today. I over-simplified when I said "you did it wrong". > Common carrier rules were applied to AT&T's telephone lines, and DSL was also common carrier But they didn't split last mile cabling from whatever runs on top of it, which is the main issue and the only thing that'd actually work to allow quick reactions to a failure to provide adequate service. Otherwise, you have the ISP giving preferential treatment to itself, even though the law says it really shouldn't be.
- jrjr 12y ago
  AT&T = KiloQuads & Byte Reversals. Same old song. Some day they might realize that faster service leads to empty slots in the mux stream that they can sell. Call in Google, they get it. jr
rhino369 12y ago
AT&T can hardly be called a monopoly. Cable broadband has a much larger marketshare. It only has 16 million wire line subscribers. Edit: Though obviously some areas, AT&T is the only broadband providers. But breaking it up won't solve that issue at all.

nostromo 12y ago

Question: why do we need net neutrality right now? It seems to be pre-emptive legislation. (The ISPs might do something bad, so we need to prevent it.) I hear a lot of concerns about internet access costs. If that's the true problem, then let's enable more competition. The last thing I want, personally, is an internet provider as innovative as PG&E.

azinman2 12y ago
Because they're actively slowing connections to their benefit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/netflix-slow-fcc-verizon_n_5492542.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/netflix-slow-fcc-ve... When was the last time an ISP actually truly did something innovative that has stood the test of time outside of offering faster internet speeds? Or multiplexing cable/telephone (aka more delivery of content aka a utility)?
- nostromo 12y ago
  Let's assuming they did something bad here. Is the best response to give the FCC more control over the internet? Before answering, consider that the current head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for ISPs including Comcast and TimeWarner. Or is the best response to increase competition among ISPs? How many people would choose the ISP that throttles Netflix?
  - lhc- 12y ago
    And how do you plan to increase competition? The current climate doesn't do that. The barriers to entry are far too great for realistic threats outside of companies like Google that have money to burn. By regulating the ISP as common carrier, you are actively encouraging competition, by forcing them to lease out the last mile to smaller providers who can give real service and actually have to compete. Net Neutrality is aimed directly at providing more competition on the last mile, where our current providers have failed so badly.
    - nostromo 12y ago

navyrain 12y ago

It should be obvious that AT&T's "concerns" are simply a thinly-veiled threat to withhold high-speed access from the citizenry unless they get guarantees that they can manipulate said access with impunity. The thing is that AT&T and others won't just pack up their broadband monopolies and go home; they'll respond to whatever market conditions the regulatory regime shapes. They can complain all they like, but the citizenry overwhelmingly wants more integrity guarantees for their internet connections. This sort of threat is akin to a tantrum from a spoiled child.

pessimizer 12y ago
>AT&T's "concerns" are simply a thinly-veiled threat I don't even think they are a threat. They're a rhetorical point that their lobbyists and bought and paid for supporters in government are going to drum endlessly leading into the 2016 elections. ----- Do you remember how Obamacare said you could keep your policy, but it turned out that there were many horrible policies that wouldn't turn a profit if there were better policies with lower prices available from exchanges, so the insurance companies stopped offering them? Obama 'lied'. Just wait for Obamanet, where Obama told everyone that net neutrality would guarantee equal access for everybody, but AT&T couldn't afford to roll out to your town because of the burden of his new regulations. Regulations that didn't exist during the Internet's rise, and if they had existed would have strangled it in it's crib. It is simply unprofitable to operate under regulations that micromanage every aspect, every packet that is delivered to every home. The rollout of gigabit internet to 2M homes over the past two years (to wealthy/gentrified portions of a few, big, prosperous cities) shows you how wonderful your internet could have been if AT&T could have figured out to make their original plan to roll that same speed out to 100 cities profitable under Obamanet. They couldn't; nobody could - the only reason they rolled out to the 2M households was as an extortion payment because Obama threatened to hold up their acquisition of DirecTV if they wouldn't do what he wanted. Obama wants to treat every piece of the internet equal[sic] - hardcore child pornography and stolen music should download exactly as fast as your netflix that you paid for downloads to your TV, or your electronic medical records (that keep your family safe) download to your family doctor. That seems like something that should be managed by the technicians and job creators that actually built the networks, and have run the networks since the beginning - maybe they know a little more about your internet than some jerks in Washington that are worried that their fancy wine and cheese magazine website won't download fast enough because no real people want to read it. They don't like what we like, so their socialist instincts kick in, and they get scared that what they like can't survive in the market without cheating (Solyndra!!! Solyndra!!! They're trying to kill us!!!), so they regulate that their things must always have as much of the internet as everybody else's things do, even if nobody has ever visited those websites in so long that when you go there, you get spiderwebs on your keyboard (chortle!) It's socialism for their internet, but not for yours. When you hear them talking about this 'net neutrality' being 'fair' for everyone, look at all of those people in Brooklyn with their super-fast internet while your netflix is freezing so long that you can make a sandwich before it comes back and ask yourself - is this fair???. ----- If AT&T weren't confident it had the political support, it would do whatever it was told. It would still be absurdly profitable. Profit levels might even end up being written into the law. AT&T knows that they have all of the Republicans (even the libertarians), they have the head of the FCC, and they have plenty of individual Democrats. I think it's a good thing because the industry is going to pull out all stops and show all of their cards in order to kill this. We'll know who to target politically and who to support. I have little doubt that they will win, though, and this push will be entirely killed for some legislative procedural reason or in the courts on a technicality. Obama is terrible, always loses because he doesn't actually care, and the only reason he's pushing this is political pandering to people like me. /rant

azinman2 12y ago

Seems to me that they're trying to strong arm the government to get what they and all the major ISPs (especially those with media services to offer) into more ways to double dip revenue streams. It's kind of an odd double edged play, in that trying to purposefully prevent faster internet nationally (to get the gov't to change its tactics) also makes AT&T less competitive at a time that they offer only DSL to most of the country. Guess that since wired data is only 30% [1] of they revenue they make enough money on mobile+voice that they have this potential revenue stream to dwindle in their arrogance? Or are they just knowing that G.Fast [2] and other ways of extending copper will come so they're playing a fiber card more willingly? Unfortunately enough money is being exchanged between all the major players & politicians that no matter what we won't end up with a clean net neutrality. This is just a public display of that -- it would be infuriating to know the conversations we don't hear about. I'd love to hear someone finally understand that this is making the US less competitive and get it as a proxied issue in the 2016 race. [1] http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_ar_2013_highlights.pdf http://www.att.com/Investor/ATT_Annual/2013/downloads/att_ar... [2] http://www.cnet.com/news/lowly-dsl-broadband-poised-for-gigabit-speed-boost/ http://www.cnet.com/news/lowly-dsl-broadband-poised-for-giga...

ep103 12y ago
It would only windle if people could leave their service
wtracy 12y ago
> also makes AT&T less competitive I'd bet dollars to donuts that the proposed cancellations only affect areas where no competition exists to begin with.
xaa 12y ago
No, they are seriously expanding fiber. Almost all of their new hires are trained on and working on building out fiber, and minimal resources are devoted to repairing copper. It would be a complete reversal of their strategy to stop expanding fiber (Source: my dad works there). In that light I think this is just a rhetorical gambit, and the FCC should call the bluff.

maxlybbert 12y ago

Reasoning by analogy ( http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that , "proof by analogy is fraud"), I can't help but compare this to toll roads and roads that are free to drive on. I don't know anyone who likes toll roads or toll bridges, and I grew up in an area where they weren't common: I was a married adult before I actually saw a real toll booth. If the choice is between "toll road" and "non-toll road," then voters always choose a non-toll road. So toll roads are only ever built when the alternative is "no road." Clearly AT&T and others have the ability to abuse their power over the infrastructure in ways that aren't possible in the world of toll roads. But, fundamentally, why would AT&T upgrade the infrastructure if they can't guarantee they'll get a profit from the improvements? In other words, is the debate really between "net neutrality, with little or no infrastructure improvements" versus "no net neutrality, but the infrastructure gets upgraded regularly?" For the record: AT&T's current move is a simple strong arm tactic: they were willing to install fiber last month when they had no guarantee of an ability to collect a "toll" over it, the world hasn't changed so much that the project won't turn a profit. But I still think it's a useful question to ask: how do the companies providing infrastructure get paid, and why would they bother upgrading that infrastructure?

fernly 12y ago
Would it not be the case that if ATT ran fiber to my home, they would charge me a fee to connect to it? (And possibly an installation fee to plug it in, and a rental fee for a modem to connect to it, but set those aside.) The point is that each terminus of a fiber is a cash generator, just as each landline telephone connected to ATT's voice network is a cash generator. They would invest in "infrastructure" in order to ensure a long-term flow of small cash payments -- exactly as they did for telephones in the 1920s, just as electrical and gas utilities did in the 1890s.
- maxlybbert 12y ago
  They have some costs running and maintaining the system. Connection fees aren't enough, of course people pay monthy subscription fees. Again, I realize there are obvious ways to abuse its control of its network. I'm a big fan of net neutrality, I just want to know that we've considered what the world will look like down the road. And, really, I can see valid reasons to treat different traffic differently. If Netflix wants to send 2GB of data to a person, there is a deadline of how quickly that data should arrive for a good viewing experience. If somebody wants to deliver 2GB of data to an email server, they're probably OK if it takes a while. Then again, under the current system, there's no way to say what kind of latency or throughput data needs. The best AT&T can do is guess based on who the endpoints are.

grecy 12y ago

Exactly this happened to the monopoly ISP/telco up here in the Yukon, Canada. When the CRTC announced they were slashing the prices of the telco's proposed "bulk data pipe" products by more than 70%, the telco responded by saying they were no longer going to keep expanding their fiber network to more communities, because "it wouldn't be profitable to do so given this harsh pricing scheme". There was huge outcry, and everyone pointed out this is exactly the reason a monopoly is bad, because they can hold everyone hostage, etc. etc. The final result? The CRTC caved, and let the ISP/Telco charge whatever they wanted for the "bulk data pipe" products.

xeroxmalf 12y ago
Not quite the same, given Yukon has a population density (2011) 0.07 /km2 (0.18 /sq mi), which is actually fairly hard to make a profit on.
- grecy 12y ago
  It's not hard at all when the CRTC subsidies said Telco/ISP for tens of millions of dollars annually. The internet products are some of the most expensive in the entire world.[1] [1]http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/the-most-expensive-bandwidth-in-the-world-yukons-northwestel/ http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/the-most-expensive-ban...

adventured 12y ago

I haven't figured out why the government doesn't focus on spurring a large increase in competition, rather than trying to shoehorn existing monoliths into a regulatory package that nobody can seem to agree upon. Net neutrality or not, I'd like to see a lot more competition in the market, such that your average consumer has, say, three high quality fixed broadband options. We're only going to get to universal 1gbps consumer broadband speeds in the next decade with a lot more competition. Nothing about net neutrality will encourage the sloth telecom companies to boost speeds faster. Google demonstrated very eloquently that with a slight prod, companies including Comcast will dramatically boost internet speed.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> I haven't figured out why the government doesn't focus on spurring a large increase in competition, rather than trying to shoehorn existing monoliths into a regulatory package that nobody can seem to agree upon. Spurring a large increase in competition would involve shoehorning the existing monoliths into a regulatory package that would be even harder to agree on that some form of net neutrality -- and would probably include some form of net neutrality to prevent the newly-spurred ISP competitors from having an incentive to consolidate in order to extract rents from a non-neutral internet.

FlyingLawnmower 12y ago

I don't really understand what people are getting upset about. Isn't this just a business decision on their part not to invest $XXmillions on deploying out fiber when there's uncertainty about what regulations they will be subjected to? The big debate around net neutrality is that Comcast throttled Netflix users, but I can't help but think that there's a real cost associated with the massive amounts of bandwidth that hi-def video streaming consumes. If AT&T has no scope to offset that cost to either Netflix or the customer, then doesn't it make perfect sense for them to not deploy this until they know all the details? Granted, I have absolutely no knowledge about any of this stuff...I'm hoping someone on HN can educate me about why this isn't just a logical business decision, and why I should be upset about this as a whole.

revelation 12y ago
Right, that massive 4MBit of bandwidth that passes for Netflix HD. I think thats about the state of art in 1970. Not to mention that the Netflix congestion isn't happening in the last mile, it's at interconnection points that could be trivially upgraded for very, very little money (compared to expanding fiber). Unless they are trying to hide that they have been massively overselling bandwidth to customers, in which case a class lawsuit would probably be in order.
- FlyingLawnmower 12y ago
  Gotcha. I guess I've had some misconceptions after viewing charts like this: http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/sandvine-2h-2013.png http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/sandvine-2h-2013.png that show huge amounts of (relative) netflix consumption.
guelo 12y ago
Net neutrality is not about Netflix vs Comcast. It's about preserving the internet as a free speech venue.
tzs 12y ago
AT&T has said they had plans for fiber expansion in 100 cities, and they have had to halt those plans because of uncertainty over net neutrality regulation. Many suspect that this is simply not true--they never actually had plans in the first place. Hence, the FCC would like to know what plans they have actually halted.

vmarsy 12y ago

So AT&T threatens by halting their fiber expansion [1] but at the same time they try to beat Google in some fiber race [2]. Isn't Google actually 'enjoying' this news? [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-at-t-regulations-internet-idUSKCN0IW1JC20141112?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-at-t-regulation... [2] http://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-attempts-to-out-google-google-in-austin-fiber-race/ http://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-attempts-to-out-google-google-...

georgemcbay 12y ago
Not sure if I'd say they are "enjoying" it. I don't think Google really wants to be in the ISP business, I think they just felt that moving into it would be the best way to stimulate the existing ISPs to raise bandwidth and lower prices (on the premise that as an Internet ad company, the more Internet people consume the better Google does). Which has worked, but only hyper-locally (eg. Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T customers in areas served by Google Fiber get much better deals from those carriers pre-Google Fiber, but the rest of us get just as fucked as always).

deleted 12y ago

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golemotron 12y ago

AT&T really doesn't understand yet that they are a utility.

wmf 12y ago
AT&T was a utility for decades. I'm not surprised that they don't want to go back.

brownbat 12y ago

If the current "complaint" from ISPs is that a few single sources are hogging all the bandwidth (and their response is to both throttle those services and offer upload speed match promotions[1]), why isn't there a Netflix / YouTube torrent app, where we end users all pass around encrypted traffic to each other that's hard to signature?[2] Nails that stick up get hammered down. If our favorite services are getting pounded, why don't we all just work together to offer cryptographically obscured asylum? [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/08/25/verizon-fios-speed-match/ http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/08/25/verizon-fios-speed-match... [2] Acknowledging that "hard to signature" means there's a cat and mouse game in store. It'd be worth it.

exabrial 12y ago

You know, at first, I really was like "yee yee" when I heard the news about reclassification of broadband as a regulated common carrier. YAH, we're really stickin it to the man in the suit at Comcast and TWC! It got me thinking... this is like, the nuclear option. Innovation around telephony stagnated. Since everyone and everything was the exact same, there was no need for innovation and competition was pretty much illegal. I'm not so sure I want the same for broadband. I'm starting to think it's not such a good idea. Ideally, we need some middle ground. TWC shouldn't be able to slow youtube down because it competes with their cable business. Actually no one should be able discriminate based on content, period. We should maybe think about classifying ISPs and Transit providers as official legal terms, and the types of contracts you're allowed to enter depend on what type of business you are. Anyway, flame away, I know this won't be a popular opinion. But that's my thoughts on the subject currently