And this is why the US won't be a super power for much longer however they will resort to insanely crazy laws in a desperate attempt to exploit and suppress their own population before they die.
There is a reasonable argument for not wanting the FCC involved in setting technical policy for how a carrier runs its own network. It is at best disingenuous to claim "net neutrality regulation" is the only way to save the Internet.
Yes, I want the initial effects of net neutrality (mainly cheap access to comcast by CDNs and major hosting providers)
If someone builds a non-monopoly network, perhaps via multi-dwelling metro ethernet or fixed wireless, I want that network to be able to implement whatever QoS they want. If that means 155M links to buildings with 500 subscribers and some kind of local CDN node for video content which is "free" and QoS on other traffic, that's a win for consumers.
The correct place for requiring neutrality is when local governments negotiate with carriers for any monopoly rights. In exchange for a geographic monopoly on laying infrastructure, it would be reasonable to demand reasonable-and-non-discriminatory access to the network.
From a practical perspective, local governments are probably too technically and generally incapable of negotiating with big companies like Comcast, but that's a problem we're already facing. Model contracts would probably help with that, or state regulators.
You've got my up vote for your argument on giving a new network the right to choose to do QoS. But, I disagree on your conclusions.
The FCC's previous decisions to keep the existing carriers from becoming common carriers was supposed to incentive new broadband service. New broadband service did not happen, your theorized metro ethernet never came about. So, since we are stuck with regional monopolies granting them further privileges is blindingly stupid.
You are correct as well to say that it is "disingenuous to claim net neutrality is the only way to save the 'net". Another option was to open up the infrastructure & allow competition on it, like other countries have successfully done. But, the FCC has already chosen not to do that leading us to where we are today.
There's metro ethernet for businesses in a lot of markets. And weird stuff like Sonic's flexlink, and of course things like Cogent.
The residential market is horrible, but I think the economics of providing good networking to suburban homes are difficult. In cities like SF, the city itself is a major impediment. In a place like Austin, there should be a lot more options than there are (thank you, Google!). Business service and multi-dwelling building service is where I think there's a lot of untapped potential.
There may be some misconceptions here, so I'll clarify a few things just in case:
1) Net neutrality doesn't mean everyone gets the exact same speed. ISPs are free to offer a plethora of offerings each with their own price, speed and extras (if any). There are also no new guarantees to subscribers, i.e. if the wiring is crap deal with it.
2) CDNs have nothing to do with net neutrality. A typical large ISP will offer co-location services and content providers may use the service the same as any other customer. There can even be other arrangements as they see fit, but the important thing is that no one messes with the tubes.
3) Again, just in case because this is brought up a lot, ISPs can still offer filtered subscriptions. There's a market demand for filtered subscriptions and catering to that demand is fair game.
4) ISPs are still free to apply filters on traffic in the interests of maintaining their network. This is important for example when dealing with (D)DoS attacks or worm outbreaks.
Net neutrality levels the playing field for content providers, so if you get VoIP from your ISP the service may still be better than that of a given competitor by virtue of having less latency. But what the ISP cannot do is artificially inflate their advantage, as doing so would be in violation of a free market on the Internet.
But what the ISP cannot do is artificially inflate their advantage, as doing so would be in violation of a free market on the Internet.
Can we please stop using this term, please? It's pretty clear that we can't agree on a definition of "free market"(¹), so we might as well stop using it.
(¹) For many people, the idea that one must restrict the ISP and subscriber's freedom of contract to preserve the free market is a logical contradiction.
Yes, there's no one true definition of a free market but to say there's a logical contradiction rather strikes me as a jump to conclusions. What I meant was, impeding the flow of packets to or from competing networks prevents free trade on the Internet. It's easy to get the two mixed up, but the parallels between net neutrality and the rise of free trade in the 18th and 19th century seem realistic imho. I'm no historian though, merely biased by being on the content provider side of the fence.
If my network has huge connectivity between end users and individual cable head-ends, but contended bandwidth between the head-end and major internet interconnection points, I absolutely want to give customers an incentive to use the cable head end to customer bandwidth, rather than Internet to customer bandwidth.
(As far as I can tell, net neutrality only matters in the context of video (or possibly bulk file sharing of video); virtually no other traffic on wired networks is meaningful
enough in scope, scale of bandwidth used by users, or performance/latency sensitive enough to be an issue. This is essentially a Comcast vs. YouTube/Netflix argument.)
Colocating equipment at head ends isn't a solution, because 1) not every provider will colocate, so if you can't preference colocated streams over non-colocated streams from other similar services, there's much more impact on other users
2) it might not be feasible to offer third-party colocation in every part of your network where there is bandwidth oversubscription.
> Colocating equipment at head ends isn't a solution, because 1) not every provider will colocate, so if you can't preference colocated streams over non-colocated streams from other similar services, there's much more impact on other users
I've read this 10 times but I can't follow. In particular, who is this "you" exactly? And what kind of impact?
2) it might not be feasible to offer third-party colocation in every part of your network where there is bandwidth oversubscription.
This is not a concern for net neutrality but rather the individual ISPs. No ISP is obliged to offer any kind of hosting whatsoever.
"You" being a hypothetical local network provider (potentially comcast, but more relevantly a small startup)
The impact being video streams from netflix/youtube killing your network. A better example is probably a rural WISP; huge bandwidth from tower to the 300-500 max users, but limited backhaul from the tower to your hundreds of miles away central location.
On 2), if you don't offer colocation to third parties, but only to your content partners, that works well IFF you can incent your end users to hit those servers preferentially. If that means offering iptv from them for $20/mo which doesn't come out of your bandwidth cap, and having a 200 GB/mo cap for other traffic, that is a win for everyone except netflix. If you aren't allowed to say "iptv from our servers is cap-free, everything else is capped", users hitting Netflix will continue to saturate the backhaul and no one will use the local media server iptv.
(I'm not necessarily saying net neutrality is a bad idea (or a good idea), but that there are specific user-beneficial cases which net neutrality hurts. I'm concerned that Comcast basically can rape everyone today with the laws that are in place, and is entirely likely to use net neutrality laws to do so as well -- they're a perfect example of an incumbent being so big that regulations just serve to entrench them. Competition is the answer, and net neutrality in some ways helps competition among pure-IP cloud-delivered services, but hurts competition among access providers.)
Terms like "net neutrality" and "reform" are often used to trick an audience into agreeing with the speaker by having the listeners fill-in-the-blank with their own favourable definitions.
So, when it comes to state action, "net neutrality" will mean whatever the government says it means. Your definitions won't matter once the bill is passed and/or the regulatory interpretation is promulgated.
> Terms like "net neutrality" and "reform" are often used to trick an audience into agreeing with the speaker by having the listeners fill-in-the-blank with their own favourable definitions.
That would be a sad state of affairs.
> So, when it comes to state action, "net neutrality" will mean whatever the government says it means
I'm no expert, but I don't think this accurately depicts how the legislative branch works.
> Your definitions won't matter once the bill is passed and/or the regulatory interpretation is promulgated.
Chillax, you appear to have a very grim view of your nations governance. That's fine and all, but it doesn't change what net neutrality is about so I'm not really sure how this is relevant. TFA opposes the FCC in the interests of net neutrality and more often than not, people have wildly varying ideas about what that means for service providers, content providers, and subscribers.
Leaving it to localities also enables more experimentation and inter-locality competition (as with Google Fiber rollouts)... while national rules create a premature uniformity.
One of the experiments I'd like to see is someone getting either a highly-regulated utility (possibly even municipality-owned) or some level of highly competitive market correct.
I don't think a local government should be in the business of delivering IP to residential/business customers, but having an exceptionally easy process for trenching might work, or conduit, or dark fiber (or even lit fiber to areas).
After a century, we're still innovating on the power networks (net metering, etc.). We might even be in the Edison vs. Tesla days for IP.
Or even just wifi access-points on telephone poles.
Municipalities can be dumb and captured, but when a few innovate, and then the laggards are embarrassed, deeper and more interesting change will happen, compared to anything that can happen through a DC/FCC/DNC/RNC lobbying process.
> In exchange for a geographic monopoly on laying infrastructure, it would be reasonable to demand reasonable-and-non-discriminatory access to the network.
Unfortunately state and local regulatory capture is often far more egregious than Federal due to lack of attention and oversight. Having the FCC whack the whole thing with one big mallet may be the only option we have.
The Internet is not a delicate flower that must be either rescued by, or rescued from, the 5 national-political-party functionary lawyer/lobbyists on the FCC.
It's a fluid force of nature unleashed by digital technology. Companies that add tolls that don't come with commensurate value will be washed away by alternate-path competition.
Government should punish deception and break up monopolies (especially those its own rules and franchising have created). It should open more wireless spectrum. It shouldn't be designing service packages or determining what's "commercially reasonable".
20 years ago, no one had any broadband options. Now, most places have at least 2 wired options, plus 2 or more increasingly-competitive wireless options.
Policy on spectrum and wires should aim to increase those options, not dictate the technical workings of ISPs, or limit the contractual design-space of private companies.
If abuse materializes, so will opportunity. There's a glut of capital to build more paths - towers, blimps, drones, fiber loops - if there's profit to be made and no local or federal barriers to new models.
This title sounds like those who write "keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
Net Neutrality regulations may be good, and they may even "save" the Internet, but it's not their inaction that will break it. If anything, it's the ISPs' actions.
Perhaps the us should consider unlimited terms for presidents. That way you don't have situations where incumbents have nothing to lose in their second term and no incentive to fulfill their promises. Or maybe not, I'm just throwing that out there.
Or, one of the two houses of Congress could have strict term limits (e.g. 3 x 2 year terms of the House), so Representatives are more willing to act in the interests of constituents or the greater public rather than re-election at least periodically.
(Or a single, possibly six year term for the President). I think political scientists have proposed and analyzed all of these variations.
Government control of the internet. It's like government control, but on the internet.
I am bewildered when I see freedom types suggesting that a federal agency (!) is going to grant them more freedom by controlling the services they use.
I don't see why that's so hard to believe at all. The federal government, at least in theory, is accountable to its citizens since the citizens vote for their government. The Board of Directors of Comcast, however, is something that no citizen anywhere has any power over whatsoever. Why would you choose the latter scenario, in which you have zero power in principle and in practice, versus the former scenario where you have some power both in theory and in practice?
This Planet Money podcast does an excellent job explaining the current situation, why there is not more competition, and what other countries did that worked out well.
Sure we need it. It's hard to provide it though, because the cost of entry into ISP business is immense (for example Calyx failed to create a privacy oriented ISP: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-calyx-institute see also https://calyxinstitute.org). Add on top of that various crooked laws bought by big ISPs which make it even worse (i.e. practically forbidding competition). So regulation wise there are things which can be fixed and improved.
Removing bad laws and adding good ones aims at the same goal. Surely bad regulation should be removed. It's required, but it's not necessarily sufficient.
Unregulated market usually doesn't work (i.e. it degrades into monopoly which is the opposite of the free market) when competition is way below a healthy level. For example as others pointed above, classifying ISPs as common carriers is an example of good law which should be added.
Unregulated market usually doesn't work (i.e. it degrades into monopoly which is the opposite of the free market) when competition is way below a healthy level.
Can you give me an example of a market which has no specific regulations, where the State only enforces basic stuff (personal safety, property and contracts)?
I think you'll be hard pressed to find one. Regulation is pervasive. When people claim that a certain market is unregulated, it usually means it lacks the regulations they find important, not that it's actually unregulated.
How is is related to the main point above? You seemed to imply, that only reducing regulation can solve problems, while adding it does not. That was the focus of the discussion. Adding regulations can be a necessity. Why for example such concept as "common carriers" even exist?
You stood your point about regulations being necessary on the fact that unregulated markets tend to degrade into monopolies.
My point is that we don't know that, because we don't actually know what unregulated markets look like, so your argument is unsupported.
Adding regulations can be a necessity. Why for example such concept as "common carriers" even exist?
Because some people think that regulations are necessary. That doesn't mean they're right. To make a poor analogy, there's also a concept of aliens, but the existence of the concept doesn't prove the existence of the aliens, right?
> unregulated markets tend to degrade into monopolies.
That's right. They can degrade into monopolies when competition is low. It's the whole basis of the antitrust laws for example. Or you think such regulation is not needed?
> Because some people think that regulations are necessary.
They are necessary, especially when greed and lack of competition turns into anti-consumer attitude. No regulations means "let's trust these companies, they won't turn into thugs" and "invisible hand of the market will correct things". It doesn't work that way in practice.
They can degrade into monopolies when competition is low. It's the whole basis of the antitrust laws for example. Or you think such regulation is not needed?
I don't know. Is it? I can believe that some markets degrade into monopolies when competition is low. But all of those have been regulated markets, because as I've wrote, regulation is pervasive. I'm not convinced that we know what actually happens in unregulated markets.
No regulations means "let's trust these companies, they won't turn into thugs" and "invisible hand of the market will correct things". It doesn't work that way in practice.
How do you know? That's why I asked: can you give me one example of an unregulated market?
How do I know what? That it's the position of those who want to reduce regulation (that market can fix itself on its own)? Or how do I know that it doesn't work when some entity gets too much control and power and prevents such fixing?
One of the examples of what a complete monopoly is about, was USSR (it's kind of an anti-example, but that's exactly the point - a monopoly is the opposite of the free market). I.e. in that case the state had a complete monopoly over the market. Imagine a corporation like MS being the size of the country and controlling all markets altogether. That's what needs to be avoided. The logic is, that if the monopoly does happen, expecting it to fix itself with the "invisible hand of the market" is absurd. It's like expecting a dictator to depose oneself. So the antitrust law is built as a safety measure to prevent such thing from happening.
The US's existing FTC regulations are plentiful and relevant.
New "Net Neutrality" legislation that does not address existing regulations but seeks simply to impose government between Carriers and Customers doesn't help much.
How so? The capital investments are too high. Regulation is the only thing that has successfully created competition to monopolies in our economic history.
Not only that, but also the telcos tried to smooth it out, saying they could still charge differently, and the president herself said "no, you can't".
[1] Really, no sarcasm here.