A Note about Net Neutrality and Why We Support It

[ddavison]

We were on the fence about whether or not we'd actively participate in the July 12th fight for Net Neutrality by having our site pop up messages and show a call to action. In the end, we decided not to annoy our users into action by showing them what life would be like without Net Neutrality. This doesn't mean that we don't support it and that we don't want our community members to know why it is so important or worth fighting for. We believe very strongly in Net Neutrality.

As a company, there are things that we support -- net neutrality, equal opportunity in gaming, save the children, climate research, pro-business legislation, etc. Some of our users may support some of these things, none of these things or all of them. You may or may not share the same level of passion as we do or you may have way more passion in any of these areas as we do. It's not our place to tell anyone how to think or act. We don't want our views to ever feel forced or coerced onto our community.

If you would like to read up on Net Neturality and join the protest to save it from powerful corporate control, please follow this link and decide for yourself. While July 12th was a big day for the effort, you can submit comments up through July 17th. In fact, doing so between now and then may show even greater support than a single day.
https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/

[dulux-oz]

Hear hear!

Personally, I support both Smite Works in their stance on the topics listed above and on their stance to not force it down the Community's throat. Net Neutrality is potentially the most import topic for freedom (of information, of the press, of the people, of just about everything) that you or I will see this decade, if not longer.

[LordEntrails]

If you would like to write the FCC, here is an article from Ars Technica with advice of how to do so; How to write a meaningful FCC comment supporting net neutrality (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/saving-net-neutrality-tips-for-writing-persuasive-comments-to-the-fcc/)

Writing such a comment can be done using this information from the FCC (from here (https://www.fcc.gov/general/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-internet-comments))


The Commission is considering proposed rules to protect an Open Internet. The proposed rules ask questions about how best to ensure the Internet remains an open platform for innovation and expression.


Chairman Wheeler is encouraging the public to share their views now. He intends to have rules of the road in place before the end of the year to protect consumers and entrepreneurs. He will be listening, and your comments will help inform the final rules.


Please send your thoughts to [email protected].


Note: You will be filing a document into an official FCC proceeding. All information submitted, including names and addresses, will be publicly available via the web.

[lordjeb]

I applaud you guys for being active and aware, and for not shoving your views down anyone's throat. There is an alternate viewpoint, of course, in that when the government regulates something to make it "free," it almost never actually stays free. I'm sure the posters have looked at both sides and come to a conclusion, but I would encourage everyone to examine both sides of the argument before making your own conclusions.

[Marswipp]

While the impending loss of net neutrality is worrying, I can respect the decision to not push the message to act given reasonably safe assumption that many of us got the message at least once or twice.

[rob2e]

Net Neutrality = YES!

[Zhern]

Echoing rob2e - Net Neutrality = YES!

[Ken L]

Anyone who's worked in software development knows Net Neutrality is the backbone of the internet's current status quo. There has been a big disinformation campaign by ISPs against it as they stand to profit over it by opening a revenue stream.

Remove the carrier neutrality provision and companies can now pay providers to have their service get priority over others. Own a Mom and Pop shop? Then you're not as big a player as Super-X-Mega-Corp, your traffic will be slower than those who can play the big bucks to get priority access. Getting 5th rung speed tier during prime market times will reduce the effectiveness of small business to complete with larger ones. This actually directly impacts FG and GM to player connection speeds.

[Andraax]

The problem is that many local governments have mandated monopolies in their areas (only one cable company, only one DSL company) - remove the government mandated monopolies and market forces would eliminate the need to regulate "net neutrality". If your ISP pisses you off by slowing down something you want, you can just switch to a different ISP. There are many places in the US where the government has said "you must buy your service from company X or company Y" and you're screwed if both of those companies want to slow down the same traffic. That's a government problem, not an ISP problem.

[darrenan]

As Ken says above, the incentive of getting a big payday from a company that wants preferential treatment will typically override the incentive of a few disgruntled customers switching to a competitor. Also, nothing prevents said company from cutting deals with all the ISPs in an area. I suppose if someone had proof of that there might be a case for collusion, but that's pretty tough to prove. I'm not saying there shouldn't be healthy competition in all markets, but assuming that market competition will fix all the issues is a little optimistic.

[Ken L]

If your ISP pisses you off by slowing down something you want, you can just switch to a different ISP. There are many places in the US where the government has said "you must buy your service from company X or company Y" and you're screwed if both of those companies want to slow down the same traffic. That's a government problem, not an ISP problem.

If you live in a rural area, you'd be lucky to have something other than DSL. It's not profitable to wire out to those areas. You have ISP A and ISP A to choose from, if you don't like ISP A, then you have... ISP A or sat com which is hundreds. You seem to take for granted suburban and urban benefits and expect it to translate everywhere. That is not the case.

I suppose you could say that if you don't like your electric company, you can change it... But there's logistics issues and and soon an evolving sense of why utilities companies are treated as they are. Internet isn't an essential resource, but then again the same could be said about electricity or water. Given the growing importance of technology, access to the internet is approaching utility level necessity to get many resources only available there in.

Regarding government mandated monopolies, that is dictated by counties and some states in respect to compensated 'wiring' to certain communities, and often that company now owns the subsidized wire, perhaps with shared carrier provisions (like in NY where they need to rent wire use to other carriers but each owns their own hub/nodes) hence why small providers such as Boost Mobile and what not can exist without laying wire. Note that this has nothing to do with net neutrality but rather sweetheart deals to highlight 'government regulation is the bad!'.

Net neutrality is regulation no doubt, but it isn't mandating one ISP over others, but mandating that the traffic is treated equally so content providers can't pay to gain priority over competitors, or snuff them out entirely. Equally, it prevents the carrier from extorting content providers at price points they want else have their delivery hampered or eliminated on their network. This translates to regional price differences akin to parcel costs to hawaii vs iowa, but rather than geographic distance being a pay gate factor, it's the quality of the regions wiring, and who owns it.

I suggest you separate the 'government regulation is all bad' from the context to understand the problem of removing net neutrality.

[Andraax]

As Ken says above, the incentive of getting a big payday from a company that wants preferential treatment will typically override the incentive of a few disgruntled customers switching to a competitor. Also, nothing prevents said company from cutting deals with all the ISPs in an area.

It doesn't matter - if there is a ISP that provides the service I want, I don't care if *another* ISP makes money on *someone else* who doesn't care about it. In a truly open market, there would no way for them to "cut deals with all the ISPs in an area", because new ISPs would just move in. It would be a constant game of "whack a mole". You can only "cut deals with all ISPs" if the government *limits* the number of ISPs.

As an example, big banks don't care if some small number of customers switch to other banks to get reduced fees. I have not banked with a big bank in decades, I always use local credit unions or small regional banks. That doesn't mean that I require big banks to change their fee structure - I don't care, because I'm not forced to bank with them. And, apparently, their customers don't care either. If someone else doesn't mind those fees, it's no skin off my back, and they *should* have the freedom to charge them on one side and pay them on the other. Back in the days when banks were limited in the areas they could operate in, that competition didn't exist, and people were forced into paying the fees that were offered, because there were so few choices of who to bank with. But if you have an open market, someone else could always move in - even if a whole bunch in one area collude to keep rates high, they can't control who enters the market after they collude. OPEC is an example of collusion - their market power is waning because there are so many people outside their group that are increasing production / entering the market. All of sudden, their attempts to control oil prices is almost non-existent because if they try to raise them, everyone else just increases production, driving the prices back down.

And expecting government regulation to fix all the issues is more than a little optimistic...

[Ken L]

It doesn't matter - if there is a ISP that provides the service I want, I don't care if *another* ISP makes money on *someone else* who doesn't care about it. In a truly open market, there would no way for them to "cut deals with all the ISPs in an area", because new ISPs would just move in. It would be a constant game of "whack a mole". You can only "cut deals with all ISPs" if the government *limits* the number of ISPs

I don't think you get the cusp of the argument. It's cost prohibitive to wire out to certain communities hence why there are some private/public partnerships to subsidize wiring giving the subsidized company a monopoly over that wire. If you're out in the country you have no other ISP. If bad practices or deals by that ISP make in unattractive, how are you going to get another ISP to dig up and lay wire to your community? Get the government to subsidize another wiring effort? What if that company too starts to makes Amazon prime video priority over netflix to the point of unusable?

Net Neutrality gives consumers protection only in the form that they cannot discriminate traffic. That is all...

But by all means, cut off rural communities because it's not worth wiring to them, and the government shouldn't help that company wire to them. And if they do, then let that single ISP milk as much profit as they want as they're the only option as it's too expensive to lay down more wire for a handful of customers so rival competition won't see it as worth competing in that market.

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

Say this sentence out loud with a straight face... "Ever since the government got off Time Warner's back, these internet access speeds are through the roof, it's almost too fast!"

[Andraax]

If you live in a rural area, you'd be lucky to have something other than DSL. It's not profitable to wire out to those areas. You have ISP A and ISP A to choose from, if you don't like ISP A, then you have... ISP A or sat com which is hundreds. You seem to take for granted suburban and urban benefits and expect it to translate everywhere. That is not the case.

I live in a rural area, that until recently did not even have cable TV or DSL. I did have broadband wireless, however, by buying into a group that provided distributed wireless on a purely voluntary basis. This was totally funded by individuals, no government involvement at all. Still have my antenna, radio, and amplifier installed - it's my backup in case my cable service goes out - but I no longer provide money to fund the group. My out of pocket costs were comparable to cable service in many urban areas (I think it was around $60 a month or so). The funny thing is that they *could* provide service into some of the larger cities south of my home, but are barred by law (government regulation) from doing so. Providing these services does *not* require government - that is the "easy" (and frequently wrong) solution.

The antenna on my roof for Internet service. (https://photos.app.goo.gl/UsXECdMBrBMQhAIG3)

[Andraax]

Say this sentence out loud with a straight face... "Ever since the government got off Time Warner's back, these internet access speeds are through the roof, it's almost too fast!"

Who is Time Warner's competition in your area?

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

Who is Time Warner's competition in your area?

The local DSL company. I am in exactly the rural area being talked about above. My problem with your argument that government regulation won't fix anything is naively expecting that the altruistic benevolence of Time Warner will fix everything. They've been somehow just waiting for the government to back off so they can give us all the really good internet? Do you think that if Net Neutrality is "fixed" then all of the sudden Comcast is going to swoop in and suddenly bury cable for miles out here in the sticks?

[Andraax]

Net Neutrality gives consumers protection only in the form that they cannot discriminate traffic. That is all...

The problem with that statement is that it *does* cost more to provide some traffic than others...

[Ken L]

The funny thing is that they *could* provide service into some of the larger cities south of my home, but are barred by law (government regulation) from doing so. Providing these services does *not* require government - that is the "easy" (and frequently wrong) solution.


That is a sweetheart deal, it's separate from what Net Neutrality is targeting. Those prohibitions are there due to the before mentioned public/private partnerships, mostly to lay that wire in the first place. Your county bent over backwards and basically said 'Please wire up our neighborhood, we'll give you an incentive..'

I still don't think you get it. This isn't like brands of bread, there are only a handful of companies who can provide internet access. The reason we have the FCC needing to approve mergers is to prevent monopolies from forming due to the high cost of entry squeezing out competition from even forming.

[Andraax]

The local DSL company. I am in exactly the rural area being talked about above. My problem with your argument that government regulation won't fix anything is naively expecting that the altruistic benevolence of Time Warner will fix everything. They've been somehow just waiting for the government to back off so they can give us all the really good internet? Do you think that if Net Neutrality is "fixed" then all of the sudden Comcast is going to swoop in and suddenly bury cable for miles out here in the sticks?

So, why don't you petition your local government to allow other ISPs?

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

There are currently two different arguments happening. I agree that the "fees" for right of way access is out of control and stifling to investment. That is a different argument from whether or not equal access to the internet as a construct is preferable.

[Andraax]

That is a sweetheart deal, it's separate from what Net Neutrality is targeting. Those prohibitions are there due to the before mentioned public/private partnerships, mostly to lay that wire in the first place. Your county bent over backwards and basically said 'Please wire up our neighborhood, we'll give you an incentive..'

That is a "government mandated monopoly". When the government restricts a market to one or a few companies, then a "free market" cannot operate to reduce prices / increase services. Net Neutrality is required because of those government mandated monopolies - without the monopolies, then Net Neutrality restrictions would not be needed. You're treating a symptom, not the problem...

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

So, why don't you petition your local government to allow other ISPs?

There is no one who would want to come out here. In fact the reality is that without the ARRA investment, I wouldn't have DSL here, so you're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm going to decry the government participation in internet access.

[Ken L]

The problem with that statement is that it *does* cost more to provide some traffic than others...

Yes such as video and peer-to-peer (FG would be grouped with torrent users in terms of traffic), but if you strip off neutrality you welcome a 'derivatives investor' business to open up. What is the price for my content to gain priority over another's? How much can we extort these websites or corporations to gain favorable speeds to our customers?

Some traffic is absolutely more costly than others, but if you strip neutrality off, then you're relying on the benevolence of for-profit enterprises to do the right thing as opposed to maximizing profits with the balance of satisfaction. You might get great video speeds... if you only use Amazon Prime video... you can clearly see from speed test that Netfix is the inferior service for HD Streaming....

Removing the profit aspect, it allows discrimination of all traffic. Perhaps Fox is super slow in some areas and fast in others with CNN not even loading on others. Neutrality is a blanket protection, you're effectively throwing the baby to the wolves.

[ll00ll00ll00ll]

You know what? I'm going to cede the argument. I come on here to get away from stuff like this. It's my fault for engaging in the first place. For the record, I don't think you're wrong about most of your argument, I can see it's merit in some cases and not others. As with most situations, there is very rarely a 100% solution answer. Most things of value rarely are easy to "fix". I see that everyone on here actually wants the same end result, just disagrees on how to achieve them. Again, I'm going to keep my politics off of this forum from now on.

[Ken L]

That is a "government mandated monopoly". When the government restricts a market to one or a few companies, then a "free market" cannot operate to reduce prices / increase services. Net Neutrality is required because of those government mandated monopolies - without the monopolies, then Net Neutrality restrictions would not be needed. You're treating a symptom, not the problem...

Absent of the partnership there would be no wire laid. Would that community rather remain disconnected? The only reason wire was laid was because of the government giving an incentive. It is doubtful a rivial company would want to lay wire for so few customers without a similar incentive.

Now assuming that the community grew and a competitor comes to town, exclusive market deals are done in such a way to foresee this. That progenitor company paid a high price to wire a sparse community and grow with it while a new comer arrives to take advantage when the market is viable. The Progenitor company wants to protect that investment as they were willing to wire when others did not. These agreements exist for a reason; not that I'm saying it's good, but from the progenitor company's perspective, they're recouping cost and ROI.

[Andraax]

There is no one who would want to come out here. In fact the reality is that without the ARRA investment, I wouldn't have DSL here, so you're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm going to decry the government participation in internet access.

Yeah, that's what they said about where I live, too. Didn't even have DSL. Once a bunch of us formed our own group and distributed service wirelessly, a few years later all of a sudden a couple cable companies decided to lay fiber and the phone company decided that they *could* upgrade our equipment to support DSL. And the local governments involved did *not* give them "sweetheart" deals to do so - mostly because the local governments were also getting wireless through the same private group - I believe they still do.

[Ken L]

Yeah, that's what they said about where I live, too. Didn't even have DSL. Once a bunch of us formed our own group and distributed service wirelessly, a few years later all of a sudden a couple cable companies decided to lay fiber...

The private group you mentioned built, and showed market viability. Companies then saw it was profitable and moved in. However, it was likely that your community wasn't connected for quite some time until that viability threshold was met. The community had to 'prove' that there was a market while other communities struck deals to get connected early to boost business or other economic factors.

Not everyone is so fortunate to have a collective act on behalf of the community. Just would like you to note that there is a reason for everything. Net neutrality aids against the single ISP problem, but in addition it provides protections beyond that of profit, If you can't see that then I don't know if we'll ever see eye to eye on this.

[JeffKnight]

That is a "government mandated monopoly". When the government restricts a market to one or a few companies, then a "free market" cannot operate to reduce prices / increase services. Net Neutrality is required because of those government mandated monopolies - without the monopolies, then Net Neutrality restrictions would not be needed. You're treating a symptom, not the problem...

This is exactly the problem, there are these "government mandated monopolies" for cable and telephone companies intended to lure in people that go on for perpetuity and don't require upgrades after the initial install. A lot of the "speed" issues in my neighborhood would be fixed if AT&T would stop using 70+ year old telephone wires. Comcast has the same issue too, they don't upgrade equipment here unless the old stuff fails and they can't get replacements. We're using cable boxes other markets ditched 10 years ago because there is ZERO competition other than Dish or DirecTV, and even then you still have to go to Comcast or AT&T for internet and phone. They know they have you.

[Ken L]

Food for thought. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rural-areas-internet-access-dawsonville-georgia/

$40,000 per mile of fiber optic cable. If there's 20 customers that are 50 miles from the nearest city, that's 2 million dollars of fiber optic cable for 20 customers. Most likely that number is higher unless all 20 residents live next to each other given how sparse rural communities are. Chances are that number is far higher for maintaining all the wire and paying for work crews to dig it up.

Regarding those companies not improving to fiber, you're asking them to dig up and install new wire for a small rural customer base, it's not even economically beneficial. Companies don't do this out of the good of their heart, and I doubt another company will move in to provide that oft toted 'superior' service. Unless that rural community suddenly becomes a profitable market, they will ignore it unless they have investment opportunities. That's essentially a waiting game where the community slowly shows viability while other counties and towns immediately get the economic benefit of fiber for making that 'sweet heart deal'. It's all trade offs. If a city council is getting demand from businesses for faster internet threatening possible relocation, they'll be more willing to make these telecom exclusivity deals.

There's all this 'but i can switch to another company' but what other company would be willing to take that cost trade off without incentive? And if they take that incentive they need county or federal sweetheart dollars to make the investment. Companies aren't going to throw around money like that without a deal to their benefit, often a exclusivity deal. I feel there are people that don't really understand the economics of the situation as to why those monopolies exist; not that they're good, but it's a part of why there is cable in the first place absent of a feasible market. To then take that and use it as a weapon against Net Neutrality because 'regulation is bad' is adolescent.

Net neutrality is akin to Federal banking regulations but for your data. Bank's can't do a lot of fishy activity with the money you entrusted them to safe hold. Likewise, ISPs can't do fishy information that you transfer over their wires given that you 'paid' for it. For the analogy to a highway, without Net Neutrality ISPs can make it so that only red cars can go in the fast lane and that even plates are limited to 30 mph on the weekend. In addition, they can close exits outright to locations they wish to steer traffic away from, forcing the use of side roads.. or even block access to that location entirely. Speed isn't their only gating factor, they can discriminate against locations and even ban all silver cars from accessing exits 20 -> 34.

Do you really want to give ISPs that power? Going back to the rural question, if you only have 1 ISP, do you want them to have it given you have no other alternative? If you have another ISP, great, perhaps competition can make data privacy protections/access marketable, but this isn't like pizza shops, chances are you'll have 3 to choose from if you're lucky and even then all 3 of them will be looking towards profit so hoping that the market will drive a privacy advocate to the surface is akin to hoping that Lucifer is a good person sometimes.

[LordEntrails]

I will say that I currently support Net Neutrality. I believe it is needed because of the reasons outlined by others. And because in short, it is not yet a competitive service and far from a commodity.

Someday, I hope it will become like a commodity and then there will be little need for regulation. Some new technologies/delivery systems that are being developed that may bring significant competition to the cable companies include Facebook's UAV effort and efforts to provide comprehensive service by mounting systems on commercial airlines. Neither are what I would consider break through technologies, but they are a step further towards removing geographic costs and increasing overall competition.

Here's hoping for a world in which government regulation is not necessary, but realizing such will probably never be possible without sacrifices most are unwilling to make.

[JeffKnight]

Food for thought. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rural-areas-internet-access-dawsonville-georgia/

$40,000 per mile of fiber optic cable. If there's 20 customers that are 50 miles from the nearest city, that's 2 million dollars of fiber optic cable for 20 customers. Most likely that number is higher unless all 20 residents live next to each other given how sparse rural communities are. Chances are that number is far higher for maintaining all the wire and paying for work crews to dig it up.

Regarding those companies not improving to fiber, you're asking them to dig up and install new wire for a small rural customer base, it's not even economically beneficial. Companies don't do this out of the good of their heart, and I doubt another company will move in to provide that oft toted 'superior' service. Unless that rural community suddenly becomes a profitable market, they will ignore it unless they have investment opportunities. That's essentially a waiting game where the community slowly shows viability while other counties and towns immediately get the economic benefit of fiber for making that 'sweet heart deal'. It's all trade offs. If a city council is getting demand from businesses for faster internet threatening possible relocation, they'll be more willing to make these telecom exclusivity deals.

There's all this 'but i can switch to another company' but what other company would be willing to take that cost trade off without incentive? And if they take that incentive they need county or federal sweetheart dollars to make the investment. Companies aren't going to throw around money like that without a deal to their benefit, often a exclusivity deal. I feel there are people that don't really understand the economics of the situation as to why those monopolies exist; not that they're good, but it's a part of why there is cable in the first place absent of a feasible market. To then take that and use it as a weapon against Net Neutrality because 'regulation is bad' is adolescent.

Net neutrality is akin to Federal banking regulations but for your data. Bank's can't do a lot of fishy activity with the money you entrusted them to safe hold. Likewise, ISPs can't do fishy information that you transfer over their wires given that you 'paid' for it. For the analogy to a highway, without Net Neutrality ISPs can make it so that only red cars can go in the fast lane and that even plates are limited to 30 mph on the weekend. In addition, they can close exits outright to locations they wish to steer traffic away from, forcing the use of side roads.. or even block access to that location entirely. Speed isn't their only gating factor, they can discriminate against locations and even ban all silver cars from accessing exits 20 -> 34.

Do you really want to give ISPs that power? Going back to the rural question, if you only have 1 ISP, do you want them to have it given you have no other alternative? If you have another ISP, great, perhaps competition can make data privacy protections/access marketable, but this isn't like pizza shops, chances are you'll have 3 to choose from if you're lucky and even then all 3 of them will be looking towards profit so hoping that the market will drive a privacy advocate to the surface is akin to hoping that Lucifer is a good person sometimes.


The biggest issue here is that most areas aren't asking for fiber to the premises. Many would be happy with just plain ol' coax but upgraded nodes. The cable node infrastructure in the area where my dad lives is 30+ years old (in that it hasn't had a complete/major upgrade in my lifetime). There are 1200 people in the village limits, and 1 cable company and 1 telephone company. The phone lines are even older than the cable co's and can't do DSL.

[Ken L]

The biggest issue here is that most areas aren't asking for fiber to the premises. Many would be happy with just plain ol' coax but upgraded nodes. The cable node infrastructure in the area where my dad lives is 30+ years old (in that it hasn't had a complete/major upgrade in my lifetime). There are 1200 people in the village limits, and 1 cable company and 1 telephone company. The phone lines are even older than the cable co's and can't do DSL.

Node upgrades don't provide as much of a speed boost as laying upgraded cable, and still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per node. It's really a market viability problem. Given you mentioned 1,200 population, that's a small customer base assuming around 500 or less house holds with 75% of them purchasing a plan. It would take decades to pay off the initial cable laying, and perhaps a dozen to half a dozen years to break even on node upgrades.

These are businesses after all, and they factor volume of customers per mile of laid cable when they decide to upgrade parts of their network. I don't know if your county has a deal for getting the initial cable laid or even if that exclusivity deal has an expiration date. The best you can hope for is to contact your assemblyman/woman to figure out what the ground game is, and if they can twist some strings to get the ISP to upgrade. Chances are the deck is in the ISP's hand already as ~500 customers is an acceptable loss if the 'big stick' employed is losing access to those customers leaving them with no ISP.

If ISPs become a public utility then more pressure could be had, but rulings on that have varied. in NY the push is strong and the state can strong arm ISPs to provide a minimum of broadband for rural areas in our state. Sometimes regulation is good, intelligent regulation, I'm really tied of the 'get off my lawn' folks who scream free market until the market turns around and f----s them as it sees them as expendable.

[swbuza]

Laying replacement coax cable is more expensive then placing new fiber.

[swbuza]

Also, I'd point out that the take rate is nowhere near 75%. It's less than 50% and often less than 30%. I have done the network design work for several thousand miles of cable. The economics are ugly and neither regulation nor public ownership will ever fix that in rural America. I have places in my footprint with fiber passing by 150,000 homes and can't even get a 40% take rate. That's in an urban area. If people aren't buying it there, you can't cost justify building it in podunkville.

I have been involved in dozens of community ventures where local townspeople decided they weren't going to wait for the telco's to place fiber and they applied for various grants like USDA Rural Development, Telecom Infrastructure program, Community Development Block Grants, and various Universal Service Fund projects through the FCC. It starts out with a great idea and people are motivated, and 95% of them fail for economic reasons. I've seen it over and over and over again over the last 20+ years I've been in this industry.

Telco's and CableCo's tend to operate on very thin margins; most of them haven't seen a profit in a decade, competition is fierce, buyouts are common (I just got laid off during a buyout in fact). It's not a pretty picture; and most of the problem in the industry is related to existing regulations that make it almost impossible to build out networks organically due to things like "provider of last resort" requirements, etc. Until people buy what is already in place, I just don't see a whole lot of future investment on the horizon.

[Andraax]

These are all reason why our group went wireless. Only one end of the wireless network needed to be attached to wire / fiber. The rest were a strung out series of wireless repeaters, going a couple hundred miles into areas where there was no wires. Much cheaper to build out than wire / fiber.

[swbuza]

These are all reason why our group went wireless. Only one end of the wireless network needed to be attached to wire / fiber. The rest were a strung out series of wireless repeaters, going a couple hundred miles into areas where there was no wires. Much cheaper to build out than wire / fiber.

What kind of bandwidth capabilities are you achieving with wireless backhaul? We did some stuff like this along the coast to reach small island communities where undersea cable was on the order of $250K per mile, but it was pretty well limited to single digits in Gbps. It doesn't tend to replace DWDM as far as I know, meaning it's not going to scale for a carrier.

Maybe the wireless technology has come along in the last few years and I've lost touch. Was this a pure residential play, or were there some anchor enterprise institutions involved?

[Andraax]

What kind of bandwidth capabilities are you achieving with wireless backhaul? We did some stuff like this along the coast to reach small island communities where undersea cable was on the order of $250K per mile, but it was pretty well limited to single digits in Gbps. It doesn't tend to replace DWDM as far as I know, meaning it's not going to scale for a carrier.

Maybe the wireless technology has come along in the last few years and I've lost touch. Was this a pure residential play, or were there some anchor enterprise institutions involved?

There has since been fiber laid through my area, so I'm no longer with that group. At the time (starting 2004 to like 2011) it was less than 10Mbps at the endpoint (I'm thinking around 5? 6?), but that was *worlds faster* than -0-. :-) And for the time, 5Mbps was reasonable. I'm sure the tech has improved over time. It was mostly residential, small businesses, and local governments. Everyone involved bought their own equipment (antenna, radio modem, amp, etc.) and paid a monthly fee which supported the repeaters. At the time, without their service, I couldn't even get ADSL from the phone company.

[Ken L]

It looks like net neutrality will be repealed some time after thanksgiving given the current dynamic and FCC chairman. It will be interesting to see what happens. For myself and those with the financial means to purchase 'high priority' access, it'll be more costly. For those out in low populated areas; well.. . .However Some states have vowed to require enforcement of it within their borders while there's a case by the network conglomerates (comcast, time warner, verizon etc..) to prevent states from doing that at the federal level as it would make their interstate commerce 'difficult'.

I'm very curious how supporters of its repeal will react when the effects start to sink in. It won't be immediate but will it be akin to a frog in boiling water?

[Marswipp]

Only if it ever gets that far off base, sadly. From what I've heard, the vote will be in December. All we can do is wait to be disappointed for one reason or another.

[kylania]

The effects will probably be immediate. Companies like Verizon and Comcast have already tried pushing crap live even before the vote. They are just hovering their grimy fingers over the buttons waiting for it to be repealed.

[Ken L]

It won't be immediate. The only noticeable thing will probably be intentional throttling of video streaming services that will be phased in gradually. Hulu, and Netflix like services will have their bandwidth tanked or capped unless each company strikes a deal with each carrier. The difference will be subtle as a cut off would cause a flurry of customer complaints. If they all do it, then there's nothing that can be done... but the carriers will play against each other to advertise speed... if they have a competitor in that location. If there's only one fiber optic carrier, you could switch to perhaps a broadband carrier... which would make those throttled video speeds on fiber be your normal speeds on everything.. but hey, no content throttling!

Note that Net Neutrality was only recently passed in 2015, so from the dawn of the internet age till 2015, we've been fine without it. NN was only passed when carriers began to discriminate traffic based on load, and eventually spread to icing out competing services. If you recall Vonage, the telephone over IP service, it was throttled on carriers that also offered telephone packages to push consumers away from that medium.

There were a ton of fears that carriers were going to use their infrastructure to begin pricing out content akin to TV providers and channels. That never happened, but there was movement in this area as cellular wireless and traffic boomed as younger millennials depended on the technology. NN stopped those plans, and almost immediately it was challenged. Technically if they never intended to pursue this model, then NN would be meaningless, but the fact that they immediately challenged it is a sign they got locked out of a newly discovered cookie jar.

It won't be the end of the world, in fact, piracy has the most to loose as P2P traffic can be isolated and throttled to heck hence why many pirates are the most vocal. That's not to say that NN isn't good, but they stand the most to lose, as well as various black-sites. On the other hand the new derivatives market will give carriers a way to pump more revenue from existing infrastructure, sans investment in anything other than software and a few switches. Not to mention all the other before mentioned reasons of making "reachability" at the last mile a marketable commodity where prior it was simply getting a good server, and ensuring customers could reach you .

[Ken L]

Yep, FCC is moving to make it illegal for states to try to enforce their own net neutrality.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/fcc-will-also-order-states-to-scrap-plans-for-their-own-net-neutrality-laws/

And here I thought it was conservative to be pro-state rights.

[Andraax]

Yep, FCC is moving to make it illegal for states to try to enforce their own net neutrality.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/fcc-will-also-order-states-to-scrap-plans-for-their-own-net-neutrality-laws/

And here I thought it was conservative to be pro-state rights.

Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago. It has been a long-standing view, among courts and the Federal government, that anything the FCC decides to regulate comes with an automatic prohibition against the states and local governments interfering. You don't want a city to restrict TV broadcasts or cell phone signals once that frequency has been sold and licensed by the FCC, do you? You want your cell provider to have to negotiate with *every* city, town, county, and state in their coverage area once the FCC has assigned them a range of frequencies to use?

[knucklehead]

The walled gardens Verizon and others love so much are going to be terrible, indeed. :/

If you want to visualize it early, just imagine if your internet experience was limited to your carrier's horrible home page portal and half-baked "alternatives" to legitimately useful services.

[Andraax]

The walled gardens Verizon and others love so much are going to be terrible, indeed. :/

If you want to visualize it early, just imagine if your internet experience was limited to your carrier's horrible home page portal and half-baked "alternatives" to legitimately useful services.

Yeah, because that's what the Internet looked like until 2015, when the FCC imposed "net neutrality"... Shame it's only been a vibrant, thriving place for two years. Seems like a lot longer...

[knucklehead]

It has been a long-standing view, among courts and the Federal government, that anything the FCC decides to regulate comes with an automatic prohibition against the states and local governments interfering.

It was a long-standing view that the internet was covered by Common Carrier until the FCC decided it wasn't positive about that in 2015. Everyone operated under that presumption until then, though.

We saw what happened when the FCC wasn't sure--carriers moved to extract premiums from service sectors they wanted to move in on, and they hadn't even been given a true green light on it. How silly of the FCC to decide now to upend the last several decades of free market practice.

[knucklehead]

Yeah, because that's what the Internet looked like until 2015, when the FCC imposed "net neutrality"... Shame it's only been a vibrant, thriving place for two years. Seems like a lot longer...

Learn your history.

Internet as common carrier was always assumed prior to the FCC waffling on the issue. Net Neutrality simply enforced maintaining the status quo after the providers started grasping at the *possibility* that they'd get to shape traffic and users' experience.

The "thriving, vibrant place" that's been around for decades now is precisely *because* of the things Net Neutrality simply reinforced in writing.

[Nylanfs]

<Twilight Zone theme>
Imagine if you will, an internet operated by EA

[dulux-oz]

<Twilight Zone theme>
Imagine if you will, an internet operated by EA

Thanks - now I'm going to have nightmares when I go to sleep tonight - and I'll have to pay a bunch of micro-transactions for each eye movement during REM sleep :( :ogre:

[Andraax]

Traffic shaping of Internet traffic was happening in the early '90s, it's just that most people didn't notice until about 2008 when many homes started using huge amounts of streaming bandwidth - just because you didn't notice doesn't mean it wasn't happening. I have always worked with high-volume network data, so I have seen it happening (and have had to deal with it) for decades.

[Ken L]

Traffic shaping of Internet traffic was happening in the early '90s, it's just that most people didn't notice until about 2008 when many homes started using huge amounts of streaming bandwidth - just because you didn't notice doesn't mean it wasn't happening. I have always worked with high-volume network data, so I have seen it happening (and have had to deal with it) for decades.

I know what you're referring to, but Knuckle has a valid point. NN solidified in writing what prior was 'assumed' by common carrier. The moment the FCC was unsure was the moment carriers began their push, and the need for NN to be formally codified.

It's akin to having a 'no pedophile' rule codified after you see Frank fooling with Smith's daughter. You thought good neighborly behaviors covered that. To be fair carriers began to question their common carrier limits in order to shape the higher volume of traffic.

Since you're pro non-regulation, I ask why not simply reshape the service tiers with lower and higher bandwidth limits rather than shaping traffic in those limits? You bought 100MB/75MB, but now you need to pay for your connection to be 'optimized' atop the tier you paid for. Is this what you want?

You want FG to have to pay carriers to optimise your p2p traffic during your game? In other words, not be throttled compared to some paying for premium access during heavy load (evenings). Or maybe FG will pass that cost to their consumers, I'm sure that will go well; and down goes another indie developer.

You also like to assume there is always a competing service that you can switch to. In many areas there is only ONE ISP. What can they switch to? Sure some locations can 'try to build their own' but that's capital needed, and prohibitive. Are you basically saying tough luck to farmers, and rural folk, they should be richer like my 'hood?

What if I told you I wanted to shape electrical distribution to your house. Rather than pay by the kilowatt, they'll install new detectors so that large appliance power costs are doubled during peak day time hours. Thus pushing a cheaper cost of running them at night. Don't stop there, they can also have separate packages if you only use LED lights and reduced AC power costs if you get a special 'season pass' power package.

Is this what you want?

[Ken L]

Yeah, that ship sailed a long time ago. It has been a long-standing view, among courts and the Federal government, that anything the FCC decides to regulate comes with an automatic prohibition against the states and local governments interfering. You don't want a city to restrict TV broadcasts or cell phone signals once that frequency has been sold and licensed by the FCC, do you? You want your cell provider to have to negotiate with *every* city, town, county, and state in their coverage area once the FCC has assigned them a range of frequencies to use?

It's within their area to regulate as interstate commerce, but not all interstate commerce is regulated. In the process of tossing NN and throwing out common carrier, now's the time to prevent state restrictions. Rather than incremental, they're going for a swoop.

[Andraax]

You want FG to have to pay carriers to optimise your p2p traffic during your game? In other words, not be throttled compared to some paying for premium access during heavy load (evenings). Or maybe FG will pass that cost to their consumers, I'm sure that will go well; and down goes another indie developer.

FG's model means that traffic does *not* go through their servers, it's direct between me and my players, and therefore not likely to be impacted.


You also like to assume there is always a competing service that you can switch to. In many areas there is only ONE ISP. What can they switch to? Sure some locations can 'try to build their own' but that's capital needed, and prohibitive. Are you basically saying tough luck to farmers, and rural folk, they should be richer like my 'hood?

That is, again, a "government" problem. These monopolies are created by the same governments that you now want to "regulate" them.


What if I told you I wanted to shape electrical distribution to your house. Rather than pay by the kilowatt, they'll install new detectors so that large appliance power costs are doubled during peak day time hours. Thus pushing a cheaper cost of running them at night. Don't stop there, they can also have separate packages if you only use LED lights and reduced AC power costs if you get a special 'season pass' power package.

I already get a discount from my electrical provider to allow them to do this (turn off large energy use devices during peak loads). I also get a discount because I switched all my bulbs to LED a while back.


Is this what you want?

Pay more for higher demand, and less for lower demand? Sure. This way I can choose to use the lower demand periods for most of my traffic, or pay more for when it's use is on peak. Freedom of choice is a great thing.

BTW - the cost doesn't change - you're just forcing that cost onto others, you know.

[Mellock]

To me it just feels like they're taking away something that used to be free and unregulated, and now they're selling it to you for a premium, while "regulating" it themselves. Like they take away tap water, and sell you only bottled telcodrops at a nice 5000% premium, and on top of that, you only get rations of 10 liters a day, and if you want more, you can just upgrade your subdscription. Ofcourse, the market will regulate itself, and everything will be better somehow. For a few, anyway. Mostly the few CEOs of providers. And while they're at it, isn't it time to stop this horrible municipal broadband thing? After all, we already established that 1 ISP to choose from is actually enough competition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B1IQYD4Uew

[LordEntrails]

To me it just feels like they're taking away something that used to be free and unregulated, and now they're selling it to you for a premium, while "regulating" it themselves...
It may feel like it was free and unregulated, but no resource ever is or was. Their have always been costs and rationing for every resource, including internet. It's just a matter of how transparent you want the cost to be and how you want to ration the resource.

[Andraax]

First you get the government to setup monopolies. Then you get the government to regulate those monopolies, and the regulators the government hires are people who (used to / will in the future) work for those monopolies.

Then, when someone tries to get the government out of the business of creating and maintaining monopolies, say it's all the fault of "free markets" to start with, and they're just doing it to screw the poor.

Ho hum.

[Ken L]

FG's model means that traffic does *not* go through their servers, it's direct between me and my players, and therefore not likely to be impacted.



That is, again, a "government" problem. These monopolies are created by the same governments that you now want to "regulate" them.



I already get a discount from my electrical provider to allow them to do this (turn off large energy use devices during peak loads). I also get a discount because I switched all my bulbs to LED a while back.



Pay more for higher demand, and less for lower demand? Sure. This way I can choose to use the lower demand periods for most of my traffic, or pay more for when it's use is on peak. Freedom of choice is a great thing.

BTW - the cost doesn't change - you're just forcing that cost onto others, you know.

Alright, I'm off break but let me cut this down cleanly.

1. FG uses a P2P model. that means pool-Verizon-124235@blahblah is connecting to pool-Comcast-23346@somethingsomething are transferring data; easily detectable. One of the many types of traffic shaping is cutting off high bandwidth P2P connections. There's no way to discriminate P2P traffic outside of some meta packet information which a traffic shaper can use. If FG doesn't wish to fall into the same category as Joe Smuck downloading HD-non-PG13 material by torrent, it needs to discriminate their P2P traffic from others, which could incur a fee for such 'discrimination'.

Nothing is routed through their servers, true, but connecting client traffic will suffer if it's above a certain limit. Carriers don't want to eliminate this traffic as some is legitimate, but they don't want Torrent users chewing it up. So some FG packets such as textual updates will be unaffected, but that nice 6Mb or 10Mb map may take 10 minutes to load for your game as a consequence. Now to prevent that, requires distinguishing FG P2P from others, and that costs money.

2. You assume all single monopoly ISP situations are all government mandated or protected. I addressed this, especially the 'government' protected ones in earlier postings unless you've skimmed them, in that case reference back to them unless you don't care about information.

There is the category of rural areas that are only connected because they had to be connected to get a deal in a more profitable area. They only have one ISP. Without the deal there would be 0 ISPs. They don't have much of a choice, and now they have this to deal with.

3/4. I gave that as a believable example. Power doesn't transmit content. You assume that ISPs will only load balance as if data were kilowatts which is not the case. Data carries more information and thus can be discriminated more precisely. You can get 'Social Media' packages that prioritize twitter, facebook.. etc... or the 'News package' just as if you were paying for cable but for the internet. In essence you're paying for priority access to parts of the internet, you're building gardens gated by speed and reliability. If you're a small company, you can't possibly pay to become one of these pocket groups without great expense. Google or Bing might lead customers to your site, but now they can't place orders, or get menu information, or use your services unless you upgrade to a cultivated content package. It gets worse as you need to get in similar packages for Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner and then again hope to god that your customers own those packages.

If you're a big company, you can afford this, and now you can guarantee speed to your consumers where as before you had to hope the network congestion wasn't bottle-necking them out. If you're a small company, you can't compete, unless you have a ton of market capital. Mom and Pop shops may as well bow out of their internet presence, and given how main street locations are found traditionally these days; newer generations will over look them. Great trade off here, but who cares about competition anyway. Right? We may as well prioritize roads away from them too so they can set up in the middle of nowhere which is insane. On the internet however roads are cheap and near equidistant (proxy data centers etc..), volume is the issue, and now you want them to exact a price on where on the road companies can set up.

[Mellock]

It may feel like it was free and unregulated, but no resource ever is or was. Their have always been costs and rationing for every resource, including internet. It's just a matter of how transparent you want the cost to be and how you want to ration the resource.

I know it's not a perfect comparison, but over here, tap water was good enough for me. The thing is, when it rains in the USA, it usually drizzles over here. I hope they're not all taking notes here about how the big boys do things.

[LordEntrails]

All of this discrimination and throttling is possible without NN. But is it likely? It seems to me that much of the concern over the removal of NN are fears based on unknowns. IMO, as long as their is enough transparency, then market forces will determine what actually happens.

I like NN, but I'm not concerned if it's not enshrined in law.

[Mellock]

I guess we're about to find out.

[Ken L]

It's already being done in Indonesia as we speak.
https://i.imgur.com/nKZ2yeq.jpg

[Iceman]

Actually my Internet bill doubled during the two years that NN was in place. I experienced good value in the years prior to NN going into place. The free market usually works best because when it gets out of control the consumers revolt. Unfortunately the price increases and bs fees that went into place over the last two years will be slow to go away.

[Andraax]

As I said, someone has to pay the cost increases for increased bandwidth usage. Without NN, ISPs can charge only those people using more bandwidth. *With* NN, they have to increase *everyone's* cost (because they have to treat everyone as though they're all using the increased bandwidth, even if they aren't).

[Ken L]

You're still equating kilowatts with data in the power analogy... reminds me of an old timer we outsourced, and we onboarded the new guy with a higher salary to boot.

good day to you.

[Andraax]

Increased bandwidth usage has increased cost. If you don't realize that, then I understand why you support NN.

Oh, and *you* brought up the analogy, not me.

[Ken L]

Increased bandwidth usage has increased cost. If you don't realize that, then I understand why you support NN.

Oh, and *you* brought up the analogy, not me.

I pay around 80/month for my plan of 100/40. I can upgrade to the new gigabit plans for 140/160-ish but I don't really use that much data. Cost isn't much of an issue as a user. It's more on the business side that I'm speaking from. Something you probably don't have to deal with but Smite works may have to do.

I brought up the power analogy, then afterwards elaborated on how power/data are not equal, but I guess you didn't want to read that because I also brought up the business side so I'll keep this short; the only faster method would be to make pictures since that's for simple people.

1. Prior to NN there was the assumption of common carrier so 'the good old days' before NN pricing was before high bandwidth streaming video in conjunction with no data discrimination. Around 2013 there was a move by the cable companies to throttle services and extract deals from content providers which brought a surge to codify NN.

2. Prices were raised in response to bandwidth demands, in a business need to expand coverage and 'speed' without rolling out new infrastructure, carriers pushed for the ability to shape traffic. This involved:

- Packet discrimination to filter/throttle high bandwidth connections
- Charge content providers to deliver data to their customers (usually high throughput ie: video)
- Separate high/low bandwidth users within the same tier of service

All of these were brought up in court and shot down due to NN. Now these sound all free-market-ish and support your 'argument'. The cause here is the desire for cable companies to give the illusion of greater speed using existing infrastructure by controlling traffic. Rather than build more highway lanes, they install roadblocks and turn several lanes into a turnpike. Now since you like running away with 'easy to understand analogies' the highway itself is a turnpike, and now there's a turnpike within a turnpike.

If you wanted bandwidth to be free market, then return to the plan pricing. You can buy 30/15, 75/30, 150/40, 1GB/600 etc...

Now what if I told you that you could buy 150/40 expecting to get those speeds you paid for, but if you wanted to get the best Netflix connection (which is within those bandwidth limits), you had to pay extra?

Now what if that ISP then turned around and told Netflix that in addition to the business tier super high bandwidth plan of X/Z paid at each of its data centers, they had to pay extra to reach their customers, even though they already pay a high connection cost?

That's called 'double dipping' in layman speak for simpletons. In other-words the ISP sold a plan not expecting the user of the plan to utilize the full amount. Now that the business is utilizing a high amount of what they paid for, the ISP wants that business to pay even more without creating a higher tier of service for that class of business. As a side benefit, make their customers pay to reach the business in question too.

The ISP here is over selling a service beyond what they can provide in the hope that by statistics, not all customers utilize their entire allotment at a given time. What they get is the marketing ability to advertise 'more' for 'less' rather than deal with the hard truth of their network throughput. Now this is common for some services, but there is a threshold that needs to be maintained, and they usually involve edge case conditions such as 'peak'. I can safely sell 120 people access to a 100 space lot for their cars, but it would be negligence to sell 1000 people access to the same lot; even if 59% of my customers only come by 'one in awhile'.

'Unlimited' plans are stupid and need to go, and plans can surprisingly offer peak hour rates compared to non-peak hour rates. It's not even against NN, but it's woefully unpopular. Rather than hitting the problem where it exists, they would rather over sell their bandwidth and charge both businesses and consumers more for highly used services (even though within their purchased plans).

If pay-for-bandwidth is your shtick, this should be what you want. Pay more, get more. Not Pay more, get some of what you paid for, and if you go here a bunch expect to pay extra.

I want a single 'pay for what bandwidth you use'. Not pay for access, now let me introduce a bunch of content packages to different areas of the internet you can pay extra for.

If you want to be nickle and dimmed with a parceled internet, that's you. I want to pay a single price to access anything I want within my paid for bandwidth without having to think about what content packages I want given that new platforms can and will arise in the web.

As a business operator, I want to be able to pay an agreed upon rate for customers to access my server without suddenly being asked to shell out more for the privilege to have my customers access 'accelerated'; despite bandwidth being fine. Nor do I want to pay an ISP or ISPs (if global) to prioritize connections to my business in addition to paying for a high bandwidth connection plan and servers.

You want derivative investors or subprime lenders. Go buy your adjustable rate mortgage, but leave my s**t alone, i like fixed rate.

[damned]

Ken L in Australia data does cost and historically has cost a lot.
All (residential and many business) connections here are pretty well contended/oversold and many are closer to your 1,000 car analogy.

Whilst many people (back to the US) do have limited (or no) choice in providers the whole ISP business is totally built on volume.
So while people in the xyz estate and the abc rural community have no bargaining power those in the larger areas do.
And if they vote with their wallets and feet and switch to ISPs with more friendly/reasonable/affordable plans they are the ISPs profitable (or were) customers and they will influence the market and the services being offered.

I totally understand your concern but at the same time most of what you are fearing has not eventuated and (hopefully) will not.
If it does you will have a period of adjustment and you will see businesses do both - try to increase their margins and others try and increase their market share (by not increasing margins).

Ultimately if the ISP has built the infrastructure they have a business right and imperative to make money from it.

[Ken L]

Australia already has plans by volume if I recall correctly. Rather than a bandwidth limit, you have data caps and throttling after the cap. That's fair.

You pay for 100Gb, you get 100Gb. This is the kind of model I'm for to control volume.

I do not want a pay for access, then pay again for high speed access to certain sites. What about X,Y, or Z site? Why can't I have accelerated access then them? What they're not in the content package because they're too small?

ISPs need to rework their entry price model rather than keep marketing larger plans than they can provide. Make consumers pay for the bandwidth they want to use. I will likely never use more than 100 Mb down unless I'm downloading something massive at which rate I'm not waiting at the edge of my mouse for it.

[damned]

Our plans are often speed and volume based.
Increasing the speed often comes with increased volumes.
We do have more and more unlimited traffic plans now so reverting more to paying for (max) speeds.

We do see however - on heavily contended/oversold residential plans that people are often achieving significantly lower maximum speeds during peak times.
Our uncontended plans are often 10x or more expensive than the contended ones which gives a fair indication of the contention ratios.

I would hate to see what you are suggestion happen mostly because it would be a right PITA to manage and deal with.
I think if it does go that way you will see more and more content providers buying into (or building) their own networks and giving the middle finger to the ISPs.

That will probably only solve the issue for the big players though and the smaller content providers will have to put up with the situation.
We will probably see bigger investments in WiFi and Satellite and 4g/5g either filling in gaps or cherry picking high value opportunities.

It will be interesting times...

[Ken L]

Because Comcast and AT&T have your best interests in mind

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-and-comcast-win-lawsuit-they-filed-to-stall-google-fiber-in-nashville/

Government mandated monopoly? How about government mandated competition scuttled? More than 96% of Americans have 2 or less ISPs to choose from. Free market only works if there's competition, we don't have free market power because it's cost prohibitive to lay wire, giving the wire layer a natural monopoly. That's why they're a regulated utility business.

[Marswipp]

Of those of us wanting to keep the Net Neutrality rules, our biggest concern is "anit-consumer" practices. I'm sure it would be real fun for the megacorporations and the rich if they lost the common population through every fault of their own.

[ArteF]

So at its core when you subtract the informative misdirection net neutrality is a power grab in so far as deciding via policy who has the keys to the internet.

How it does this is by shifting regulatory power to the government over the speed by which data travels across networks. The sales pitch is that it levels the load time for websites.

There are a few positions on it but basically it boils down to those who:

Believe that "big corporations" will destroy the internet by favoring some sites over others. So high volume sites would be able to pay more for extra bandwidth.

And the opposing view to this is to say that it is ultimately internet communism and wont work for similar reasons.

So if you have an area that has a heavy amount of wifi usage for an event or some other kind of reason. A carrier might decide to pump up the bandwidth in that area so its customers don't have to wait 10 minutes for a web page to load, that's actually how the system worked before net neutrality.

After net neutrality in that same scenario the government makes it illegal to do that.

As Margaret Thatcher once said; "It isn't that you simply want to rich to be poorer, you want the poor to be poorer as well."

I think both views are valid, one more than the other and in the end I cannot support Net Neutrality. Reason being that more government means more bureaucracy which means more ways and reasons for things to go wrong as well more time taken to correct them.

I'll also add that anyone who pays attention to legislation, especially federal legislation will know that once a law is passed you could shake heaven and earth before it is undone. Typically the governments answer to something that is borked in the law is to add more law.

[Ken L]

Believe that "big corporations" will destroy the internet by favoring some sites over others. So high volume sites would be able to pay more for extra bandwidth.

Do you understand the underlying technology? There is no 'extra' bandwidth, those sites get a 'speed up' by throttling others who can't win the bid war.



And the opposing view to this which is to say that it is ultimately internet communism and wont work for similar reasons.

Internet communism? This reminds me of someone reading Web MD and thinking they're an expert... It essentially prevents rate limiting based on the content of the traffic. ISPs can freely instead offer plans based on consumption of bandwidth rather than pricing of content types, and using a 'big-sticker' lure in prices. This method however lets them over sell their capacity as I've mentioned earlier, leading to brainstorming of ways to increase profit without increasing the bandwidth physical infrastructure. Now you're probably going to note that there is a theoretical cap to transmission assuming an optimal network. That's what South Korea has nearly achieved with Gigabit connections for their citizens for bargain bin prices in USD.



So if you have an area that has a heavy amount of wifi usage for an event or some other kind of reason. A carrier might decide to pump up the bandwidth in that area so its customers don't have to wait 10 minutes for a web page to load, that's actually how the system worked before net neutrality.

Again, you demonstrate a lack of understanding about the technology. Googling information is not an excuse to generalize 'bandwidth' with 'economics'; this is why you don't let economists or 'technology investors' in the engineering bay to talk shop. Wifi works by multiplexing with multiple end points to transmit down a single wire; it can only talk to one user at a time, but switches quickly. You plug a single cable into your router, and you broadcast N connections. You can utilize multiple wires and routers but it all connects centrally at some point as is the nature of the system and it's only a matter of where these connections occur, locally, or deep in the fiber backbone (best case). For the arena situation, Wifi is limited by frequency range; there has been discussion about opening this band, but that's besides the point as most devices only transmit and listen to a certain band.

To the heart of the issue after informing you of some of the 'tech', is that the more you connect over wi-fi, the slower it gets by nature of the medium of transmission. You can't just jack it up, and it never has been prior to NN. Don't make s**t up, or quote from technologically incorrect articles (I've developed wifi electronics). Prior to NN, I assume 2005-2010, the Wifi-tech was slower over all, so the only way to 'speed it up' was to increase availability of nodes, and make each router handle fewer users. They did not throttle other traffic or prioritize it as that would mean throttling the surrounding local area: Ie: the town or city it is in to clear 'congestion' on that point in the network skeleton.

This means the speed was gained by adding more reception, more towers, more accessibility. Though admittedly at high congestion, the bottleneck is higher up the chain at the municipality level so it "feels like" from someone at a cafe that their connection is being de-prioritized when in actuality there's 1 million or so new connections at the football game.



I'll also add that anyone who pays attention to legislation, especially federal legislation will know that once a law is passed you could shake heaven and earth before it is undone. Typically the governments answer to something that is borked in the law is to add more law.

Net Neutrality isn't even a law by the way... It's a position held by and enforced by the FCC by title 2 provisions; in other words, regulation. It can change by the administration, no legislation has reached either legislative chamber (and survived).

[Moon Wizard]

Please let’s keep conversations civil. There are always better ways to phrase responses, when you believe someone has misinformation.

Otherwise, while this discussion has been good; I think everything useful has been discussed. I’m going to go ahead and close this thread.

Thanks,
JPG