5 ms·

This is what scares me the most because I fear Title II may be used to open the Internet to greater regulation. Hopefully this fear is unfound.

by iends 12y ago

ep103 12y ago
Can't be worse than what we have, and our current course
- twoodfin 12y ago
  It can't? I don't know about you, but my Comcast performance, both promised and real, has been growing steadily for over a decade, at a much higher rate than the price has increased. That's not a natural law, that's investment in technology and infrastructure. As that investment looks to be worth less, it'll slow down or cease. Look at Verizon's dramatic reduction in FiOS deployment, for example.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... It's worth "less" (and essentially from their market perception today) which doesn't mean it's worth little or worthless, but of course in a monopoly/oligopoly your profits are bigger and you control the market.
    - twoodfin 12y ago
      Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... If Google really believed in the potential profitability of fiber, they could spend $20 or $30 billion over the next few years to get it in every major metro area. But they won't, because it wouldn't be.
      - wtallis 12y ago
        If you're considering a multi-year nationwide build-out, what's the harm in another year or two delay to allow the regulatory situation to change to make the expansion drastically easier? If it were the actual digging of trenches that were expensive, Google Fiber would have never happened at any scale in the first place. Google's words and actions make it clear that the deciding factor is the costs of the permits and other local regulatory overhead, not the physical installation.
    - SEJeff 12y ago
      Google fiber is plain an simple a serious enough competitor to the major telcos that they'll continue to invest in fast internet tech such as infra upgrades and fiber optics. Google stands to make money from more people using the internet and being able to send more content to users. If they can spend enough money to force the incumbents to improve performance, they still win. Pretty sure the point of google fiber was to break even, but not really to ever be profitable. It is more of an insurance policy. They could light up all of the dark fiber they own and be a real problem with the major ISPs if they so chose.
  - zipwitch 12y ago
    I had better (in terms of both cost and quality) internet living in rural southeast Asia five years ago than I do now, living in a million+ metropolitan area in the US. From my perspective, it realistically can't get worse.
  - rnovak 12y ago
    You're one person, there are 300,000,000 others that matter as well, and it's an established fact that Comcast, as a whole, is a horrible company. Their customer service is atrocious, and something I myself have had to deal with. John Oliver had it right, it is literally "preventing Cable Co. Fuckery"
  - tbyehl 12y ago
    The existence and decline of FiOS is the perfect example of unintended regulatory consequences. FiOS never would have happened if fibre hadn't been excluded from unbundled access requirements. Line-sharing was eliminated around the same time, bringing on the decline of alternative DSL providers. So Verizon spends a few years doing FiOS build outs instead of improving their copper networks, the DSL competition dies off, and now they've stopped investing in their whole wireline business in favor of wireless. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-verizon-fios-ripoff_b_1529287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-veriz... I don't know what Title II means for ISPs. I see nothing wrong with companies paying for a "fast lane", if we define the fast lane as paying for a level of service to my devices in excess of what I'm buying (ie: If I'm paying for 6Mbps of service, Netflix can buy me an extra 10Mbps to guarantee a better streaming experience). I do have a problem with ISPs purposefully allowing their peering connections to become overloaded in order to extract payment from content companies. I'm not paying Comcast for 100Mbps of bandwidth to their speedtest servers; I'm paying for 100Mbps of bandwidth to the content companies' networks!
    - geoelectric 12y ago
      I don't think a fast lane means what you're saying. It means packet prioritization, so that a saturated network delivers the "fast" packets sooner and/or more reliably. Companies that push data to consumers (Netflix, etc.) would pay for this prioritization. Think QoS rules, but with companies that have paid for preferential treatment at the top.
      - tbyehl 12y ago
        Fast lane is a made up political gobbledygook. I think it's fine for an ISP to sell whatever kind of preferential treatment they like to any company which freely chooses to purchase it, with the caveat that they service I'm paying for isn't being degraded. If Microsoft wants to pay so that streaming stuff to my Xbox doesn't affect my data cap, that's goovy. If Netflix wants to pay to guarantee they can stream 10Mbps to my devices while my other devices are using the whole 100Mbps that I'm paying for, that's cool too. If Hulu wants to pay for QoS that prioritizes their traffic to me above my other traffic, that's not cool. Bandwidth management within my home is my domain and I've got my own QoS rules, thank you very much. When Comcast lets their peering links get saturated in order to force Netflix to pay them, that's absolutely bad. I'm paying for access to the Internet and purposefully withholding the necessary peering to the content I'm interested in means that I'm being ripped off. TLDR; I believe that ISPs should peer on a settlement-free basis with anyone who can deliver a commercially reasonable level of traffic to any of their peering points, without regard to ratios. And I believe they should be able to sell any kind of paid prioritization they like that does not degrade my other traffic.
  - geoelectric 12y ago
    That's only half the equation, though. The other half is whether Comcast allows you full use of the line in terms of what services can push to you. As far as whether your bandwidth will continue to go up and prices go down (comparatively), it almost certainly will if more competitors are allowed to deliver to your house. What's trickier there is new deployment, but that's what the utility model is all about: protect new deployment of infrastructure for long enough to make rollout worth it, in exchange for a guarantee that it will be usable by the public at large without preference. That gives you, in essence, the telephone model: copper lines protected until (probably subsidized) costs to the provider are recouped, they're a commodity and no further enhancement will occur, then alternate providers let in on them for competition. Tech changes, protect that tech rollout, repeat.
geoelectric 12y ago
Either the ISP aspect of the Internet is open to regulation or it's not. That's true right now. If it isn't, any net neutrality effort is going to get knocked down sooner or later. You have little to worry about. If it is, this is the right kind of regulation to have, because it prevents a potential (and arguably current) oligarchy from effectively regulating the service aspect of the Internet. I'm all for free market economics as the rational default when starting from an even playing field. However, the current market leaders got where they are by being treated as utilities from the start, in terms of subsidy and privilege for placement of infrastructure. It doesn't make sense to give them protectionist advantages, then go hands off from there. There's a great argument for not doing the former in the first place (albeit one that probably would have prevented the Internet at current scale), but once you've committed you have to follow through. I'll worry about the slippery slope of further regulation when it starts happening. Right now, I'm considerably more worried about ICE and ICANN jurisdiction issues and copyright/trade treaties, as far as threats to the Internet by the American government and corporate structure go. What's more interesting about this to me is the "only 25Mbps+ is broadband" news bit from yesterday. Does that create a big loophole for exemption from Title II for the grand majority of US internet service that doesn't meet that bar?

This is what scares me the most because I fear Title II may be used to open the Internet to greater regulation. Hopefully this fear is unfound.

by iends 12y ago

This is what scares me the most because I fear Title II may be used to open the Internet to greater regulation. Hopefully this fear is unfound.

ep103 12y ago

Can't be worse than what we have, and our current course

twoodfin 12y ago
It can't? I don't know about you, but my Comcast performance, both promised and real, has been growing steadily for over a decade, at a much higher rate than the price has increased. That's not a natural law, that's investment in technology and infrastructure. As that investment looks to be worth less, it'll slow down or cease. Look at Verizon's dramatic reduction in FiOS deployment, for example.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... It's worth "less" (and essentially from their market perception today) which doesn't mean it's worth little or worthless, but of course in a monopoly/oligopoly your profits are bigger and you control the market.
  - twoodfin 12y ago
    Sure it's worth less, that's why Google is deploying Google fiber... If Google really believed in the potential profitability of fiber, they could spend $20 or $30 billion over the next few years to get it in every major metro area. But they won't, because it wouldn't be.
    - wtallis 12y ago
      If you're considering a multi-year nationwide build-out, what's the harm in another year or two delay to allow the regulatory situation to change to make the expansion drastically easier? If it were the actual digging of trenches that were expensive, Google Fiber would have never happened at any scale in the first place. Google's words and actions make it clear that the deciding factor is the costs of the permits and other local regulatory overhead, not the physical installation.
  - SEJeff 12y ago
    Google fiber is plain an simple a serious enough competitor to the major telcos that they'll continue to invest in fast internet tech such as infra upgrades and fiber optics. Google stands to make money from more people using the internet and being able to send more content to users. If they can spend enough money to force the incumbents to improve performance, they still win. Pretty sure the point of google fiber was to break even, but not really to ever be profitable. It is more of an insurance policy. They could light up all of the dark fiber they own and be a real problem with the major ISPs if they so chose.
- zipwitch 12y ago
  I had better (in terms of both cost and quality) internet living in rural southeast Asia five years ago than I do now, living in a million+ metropolitan area in the US. From my perspective, it realistically can't get worse.
- rnovak 12y ago
  You're one person, there are 300,000,000 others that matter as well, and it's an established fact that Comcast, as a whole, is a horrible company. Their customer service is atrocious, and something I myself have had to deal with. John Oliver had it right, it is literally "preventing Cable Co. Fuckery"
- tbyehl 12y ago
  The existence and decline of FiOS is the perfect example of unintended regulatory consequences. FiOS never would have happened if fibre hadn't been excluded from unbundled access requirements. Line-sharing was eliminated around the same time, bringing on the decline of alternative DSL providers. So Verizon spends a few years doing FiOS build outs instead of improving their copper networks, the DSL competition dies off, and now they've stopped investing in their whole wireline business in favor of wireless. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-verizon-fios-ripoff_b_1529287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-veriz... I don't know what Title II means for ISPs. I see nothing wrong with companies paying for a "fast lane", if we define the fast lane as paying for a level of service to my devices in excess of what I'm buying (ie: If I'm paying for 6Mbps of service, Netflix can buy me an extra 10Mbps to guarantee a better streaming experience). I do have a problem with ISPs purposefully allowing their peering connections to become overloaded in order to extract payment from content companies. I'm not paying Comcast for 100Mbps of bandwidth to their speedtest servers; I'm paying for 100Mbps of bandwidth to the content companies' networks!
  - geoelectric 12y ago
    I don't think a fast lane means what you're saying. It means packet prioritization, so that a saturated network delivers the "fast" packets sooner and/or more reliably. Companies that push data to consumers (Netflix, etc.) would pay for this prioritization. Think QoS rules, but with companies that have paid for preferential treatment at the top.
    - tbyehl 12y ago
      Fast lane is a made up political gobbledygook. I think it's fine for an ISP to sell whatever kind of preferential treatment they like to any company which freely chooses to purchase it, with the caveat that they service I'm paying for isn't being degraded. If Microsoft wants to pay so that streaming stuff to my Xbox doesn't affect my data cap, that's goovy. If Netflix wants to pay to guarantee they can stream 10Mbps to my devices while my other devices are using the whole 100Mbps that I'm paying for, that's cool too. If Hulu wants to pay for QoS that prioritizes their traffic to me above my other traffic, that's not cool. Bandwidth management within my home is my domain and I've got my own QoS rules, thank you very much. When Comcast lets their peering links get saturated in order to force Netflix to pay them, that's absolutely bad. I'm paying for access to the Internet and purposefully withholding the necessary peering to the content I'm interested in means that I'm being ripped off. TLDR; I believe that ISPs should peer on a settlement-free basis with anyone who can deliver a commercially reasonable level of traffic to any of their peering points, without regard to ratios. And I believe they should be able to sell any kind of paid prioritization they like that does not degrade my other traffic.
- geoelectric 12y ago
  That's only half the equation, though. The other half is whether Comcast allows you full use of the line in terms of what services can push to you. As far as whether your bandwidth will continue to go up and prices go down (comparatively), it almost certainly will if more competitors are allowed to deliver to your house. What's trickier there is new deployment, but that's what the utility model is all about: protect new deployment of infrastructure for long enough to make rollout worth it, in exchange for a guarantee that it will be usable by the public at large without preference. That gives you, in essence, the telephone model: copper lines protected until (probably subsidized) costs to the provider are recouped, they're a commodity and no further enhancement will occur, then alternate providers let in on them for competition. Tech changes, protect that tech rollout, repeat.

geoelectric 12y ago

Either the ISP aspect of the Internet is open to regulation or it's not. That's true right now. If it isn't, any net neutrality effort is going to get knocked down sooner or later. You have little to worry about. If it is, this is the right kind of regulation to have, because it prevents a potential (and arguably current) oligarchy from effectively regulating the service aspect of the Internet. I'm all for free market economics as the rational default when starting from an even playing field. However, the current market leaders got where they are by being treated as utilities from the start, in terms of subsidy and privilege for placement of infrastructure. It doesn't make sense to give them protectionist advantages, then go hands off from there. There's a great argument for not doing the former in the first place (albeit one that probably would have prevented the Internet at current scale), but once you've committed you have to follow through. I'll worry about the slippery slope of further regulation when it starts happening. Right now, I'm considerably more worried about ICE and ICANN jurisdiction issues and copyright/trade treaties, as far as threats to the Internet by the American government and corporate structure go. What's more interesting about this to me is the "only 25Mbps+ is broadband" news bit from yesterday. Does that create a big loophole for exemption from Title II for the grand majority of US internet service that doesn't meet that bar?