Net Neutrality

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Fish Tacos
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Net Neutrality

Post by Fish Tacos »

Background info: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/techn ... .html?_r=0

I was trying to remember how this reared its ugly head a year or two ago under a different name but I couldn't find it. Wired does a good job with this older article showing the history of the communication companies' endeavors and how far it stretches back:
http://www.wired.com/2013/11/so-the-int ... eutrality/

If my memory serves me right, the version that was shot down a year or two ago focused less on the angle of fast lanes and more on the efforts of an ISP deciding what they would and wouldn't offer to their customers through the service they were providing similar to this:
Wired wrote: It turns out that around the same time (Circa 2006), Comcast had begun secretly trialing services to block some of the web’s most popular applications that could pose a competitive threat to Comcast, such as BitTorrent.
Replace BitTorrent with something else today that would provide a competitive threat, like say Netflix, and you can get a glimpse of their efforts.

Anywho, the FCC vote begins in about 9.5 hours. I have to say, things like this make me nervous when so many folks are on the same bandwagon. To clarify, I'm a big fan of net neutrality, but by making X out to be the bad guy so everybody supports Y can be a very effective misdirection to get people to savagely embrace something that might negatively impact them later. What if the next item in the pipeline creates tiered data plans for your home internet service rather than tiered bandwidth allocations because we've now defined it as a utility.

I wonder what will happen.

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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by abw1987 »

This is a frustrating issue. It's become so politicized that the populace is polarized beyond understanding the underlying complexities.

It's also frustrating because the status quo is imperfect, but so is the proposed solution.

Net neutrality sounds good on paper. No one likes the idea of Comcast limiting access to content from ABC and CBS, to protect their investment in NBC. Obviously, that's an extreme example; Comcast would never do that because it would cause outrage and a mass exodus of customers, but you get the idea.

The reality is a but more nuanced. Take T-mobile, for example. I'm not a T-mobile customer, but they've done some really innovative things in the last couple years. One example is their recent offering whereby streaming music services do not count against customers' data usage. So theoretically, a customer could stream Spotify 24/7, and never hit their data cap. Under net neutrality, such arrangements would be outlawed because they favor the streaming music services' traffic over everyone else's.

Furthermore, I don't believe the government should be in the business of mandating what a private company can or cannot do with its own infrastructure. Cable companies have invested untold billions of dollars to build out their networks. Building and maintaining physical cable lines is expensive. Who is the government to tell them how traffic should be carried through their own pipes? This limits their ability to recoup their investments, so the long-term impact could be reduced innovation and investment.

I also realize that the current situation is less than ideal. In many markets, customers only have one cable company from which to choose. That's not to say there's no competition. Cable providers are telecommunications companies, and customers have other options; for example, Dish Network for TV, Verizon Wireless for voice, and DSL or cellular providers for data. But there's often only a single broadband ISP available.

I think the real problem is that many municipalities have exclusivity agreements with cable companies. This makes it impossible for competitors to enter the market and lay down their own cable. I think these monopolistic agreements are the real culprit. The solution to would be to challenge these agreements in court. Reclassifying cable as a utility is a step too far, in my opinion.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by axlar »

USA is against net neutrality. Netherlands is for it. Europe is biased, some countries are for it, some against.

Net neutrality is very important. Otherwise the web could end up favoring big companies that can pay millions to the data operators to favour their content/stream/whatver over other content, and push small players out of the market. For instance, netflix or youtube or whatsapp buy 20%, 50% or even 80% of bandwidth.. all other services would become too slow because of the shared bandwidth percentage...

lets say a certain provider has a deal with spotify as they are large and have the money to do so, and therefor gives spotify more bandwidth, other streaming (smaller) services might be tied down in bandwidth and therefor loose a fair chance of conpeting with the bigger firms...
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by abw1987 »

I wouldn't necessarily say the US is against net neutrality. Judging by the number of pro-neutrality responses that the FCC got during the comment phase, there's significant support for it. And frankly, I think a large portion of the opposition comes from misinformed citizens who have been scared by the idea of a "government takeover of the internet."

You make valid points about the potential for bandwidth prioritization agreements to inhibit new entrants from competing against established players with larger wallets. In a way, Netflix already does that -- not in attempt to prioritize their traffic, but rather because the major ISPs felt that Netflix should bear some of the financial burden of consuming 35% (!) of all bandwidth in the US. But again, I don't think it is within the government's purview to tell a private company that has made a significant investment in its infrasturcture what it can or cannot do with its traffic.

There is no perfect solution. Under the status quo, startups could eventually struggle to compete if they can't afford to pay for bandwidth. Under net neutrality, ISPs will be less inclined to update their infrastructure when the ability to recoup their investment is less certain, and their ability to innovate is limited.

In my option, we should keep the market as free as possible. The best way to do this is to challenge the exclusivity agreements that ISPs have with local governments.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by Andy92 »

I'm tired of only having one high speed cable provider to choose from. Just got slapped with a 250 GB data cap per month, so it'd be nice to have other options to shop for.
anguyen92 wrote:Oh well. Deal with it.

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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by abw1987 »

Annnnd it looks like the FCC has officially reclassified broadband internet as a Title II public utility, as expected. What I didn't expect was that this also covers wireless broadband.

We'll see what happens.
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Re: Net Neutrality

Post by SHEAKENBAKEN »

Can someone please explain to me in layman's terms what this whole thing is about?

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Re: Government needs to learn "tl;dr"

Post by zazthespaz »

Nope! It's a 1400 page document isn't it? The main gist is that it's supposed to prevent providers from hindering bandwidth of certain webpages/companies/apps to the consumer. (See Alex's comment on Comcast & NBC) beyond that, I don't know.
anguyen92 wrote:
Oh well. Deal with it.
gbruin wrote:
Go reread what zaz says

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or people that read articles labeled BACKGROUND

Post by Fish Tacos »

SHEAKENBAKEN wrote:Can someone please explain to me in layman's terms what this whole thing is about?
No, grown-ups only.
zazthespaz wrote:It's a 1400 page document isn't it?
I heard something to the effect of the folks voting on some ridiculously lengthy legislation weren't allotted any time to read it. I haven't kept up on it today, but if true, that'll totes never come back to bite anyone in the ass.

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Re: or people that read articles labeled BACKGROUND

Post by SHEAKENBAKEN »

Fish Tacos wrote:
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote:Can someone please explain to me in layman's terms what this whole thing is about?
No, grown-ups only.
:pout

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