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Comment by fokinsean | Hacker News Reader

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>On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom.

I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom". Just like the "Patriot Act", it is reasonable to assume anything with these sort of labels will likely be an encroachment on your freedoms.

Also

>"The job of the FCC is to represent the consumer," he said in an interview. "If you like your cable company, you'll love what this does for the Internet, because it gives Internet service providers the same kind of control over content and price as cable operators have today."

I am confident there is not a single person who "likes their cable company". Who in their right mind would want their internet controlled like their cable is controlled? This image[0] is exactly what we get to look forward to.

I have called my reps, sent emails, faxes, and just feel so helpless about all of this.

[0]: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/wh...

edit: It appears the article altered the above quote, and the second half is no longer the same.

View on HN

> "If you like your cable company"

I've never once, in my entire life, heard anyone say they like Comcast.

As a petty exercise in malicious revenge, I would call Comcast support on my morning commute, every day, for about a month. It started out because I had a legitimate issue with speed and I decided to just call until my speeds were what I was paying for (not that I ever expected to get them). It turns out my region was always routed to the same office somewhere in India. So I guess I became kind of a known entity there (I'm always polite on the phone) and towards the end they would just route me to this same guy who was a newbie and I guess they wanted to help him get his call count up / get practice on the phone?

Long story short there's one person I like at Comcast, his name is Dev, hope you're doing well Dev, you made my commutes fun.

I think that's the point. That quote is not from Chairman Pai, it's from former FCC chairman Wheeler.

I hate Comcast. Not reliable and no accountability for down time in the Bay Area. If their internet service goes down, good luck on getting an ETA on when it comes back or any actual credit to your account for lost service.

I don't know about that, I was getting pretty bad packet loss recently and the instant I described the issue the guy (after mentioning it was part of a larger outage) instantly offered me a credit.

They can do good, they're just misguided.

They can do good, but since they're a monopoly it doesn't actually make them any money to do so. They're much less likely to do good things for customers than any firm in a competitive industry would be.

There's many things I don't like about comcast (like customer service and that you have to call them back every year to avoid huge price hikes), but the internet service itself is very reliable (at least for me).

Yeah, I have to admit it quite reluctantly. They are competing well in my area. They can't match the fiber 1G networks being laid now but their 100Mbps connection has been quite reliable and 4k UHD streams flawlessly. May be 1 outage in a year which was also fixed within a couple of hours.

For a few years I paid extra for a DSL connection simply to not use Comcast. I truly hate them.

I read Wheeler's statement as sarcasm. He said the decision was "tragic" right before that line. It seems like he is implying that nobody likes cable companies, and now they're going to hate the similarities in internet service providers if this bill passes.

Wheeler, despite being a former industry man, definitely pushed for the consumer agenda despite industry pressure.

Wheeler did end up helping consumers, but not from the start. His first year or two in office he was against net neutrality and very supportive of telecom/cable companies - although nowhere near as bad as Pai. It wasn't until Obama's Administration whipped him in line that he actually started championing pro-consumer policies.

Upvote -- the sarcasm comes through when this is put into context.

It's not sarcasm, it's an honest conditional statement.

People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

How about if Comcast charges Netflix more to be able to access you?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/12/comcastlevel3/

The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd.

Why are people buying high-bandwidth plans from ISPs? Because they want to use services like Netflix. Netflix is not costing ISPs money, it's giving them something to sell.

Imagine that taxi drivers want to charge the airport for overwhelming them with passengers and you'll see the absurdity.

> The argument that Netflix needs to pay Comcast is absurd.

Absurd for you, not for the carriers. And, unfortunately, they are the ones dealing the cards now.

Outrageous, for sure, but according to Chairman Pai's plan, carriers will be able to charge both consumers and content providers.

> Absurd for you, not for the carriers.

Yup, and only because those same carriers are making competition impossible, if not illegal.

That's fine. If the charges are onerous enough, then the content providers may choose to build new carriers of their own.

> the content providers may choose to build new carriers of their own

Oh sure. Suppose I'm about to found yaymoviesyay.com to compete with Netflix. I learn that if I don't pay Comcast, its subscribers can't use my site. Same deal for AT&T and Charter.

Before this rule change, my cost to do business was "hosting costs."

Now it's either:

    A) hosting costs + payola to ISPs
    B) hosting costs + cost of building my own last-mile network

Guess how likely I am to start that new business?

    A) Super incredibly unlikely
    B) Ridiculously unlikely
    C) Extremely, ludicrously unlikely

That's fine?! Consider the fixed costs of building a new carrier! Today's carriers will price it below where it makes sense to "build your own carrier", these costs will be distributed among consumers and we'll all be paying more for the same access we have today. The only difference is today's carriers have higher profits and a stranglehold on our access to the internet.

I'd rather not hope and pray that they're able to do this. Plus, I know that in many parts of the country, they won't be interested.

It's completely absurd. Yet, it is the one high impact case that actually happened in real life and led to the FCC imposing neutrality onto the ISPs.

Comcast is like the road, not taxis; the last mile is where all the expense is in consumer internet. And congestion charging is a legitimate thing.

Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction? Because equal pay for equal access is that: a subsidy from light users to heavy users.

I don't get what you're saying. How am I making Granny pay more? There are bandwidth caps and data usage caps, I pay for what I use. If I'm paying less than the cost of the resources I'm using, charge me more. Why does Granny or Netflix have to pay comcast for what I do on the internet?

My electricity provider does not charge differently for setting up and maintaining the connection based on what I do with the electricity, they just charge me for what I use. Why should an ISP be treated differently?

> There are bandwidth caps and data usage caps, Actually, commercial ISPs don't really do bandwidth caps and datacaps are simply laughable as a means of controlling congestion. (Honestly, they're literally not a means of controlling congestion.)

I really just want my ISP to be like my datacenter: 95%ile bandwidth billing. Nothing else. No services. No filtering. No "speed boosts." Just a connection to other networks.

> I pay for what I use.

Unless you have a metered services, you are not paying for what you use in that sense. You pay for access, sure, but not for what you use.

> My electricity provider does not charge differently for setting up and maintaining the connection based on what I do with the electricity, they just charge me for what I use. Why should an ISP be treated differently?

The issue is not metered billing. I think most people would be OK with it; it'll suck for some but an honest effort to keep the 95% of usage at normal would go a long way, I thinks.

The issue is when you're being billed differently for what you consume, not how much. Would you be OK with electricity used by an LED bulb from company X was metered at 2 times that of company Y which is 2 times that of an incandescent? _That's_ the issue, not metered billing.

I get what you're saying and that is my point.

> Why should Granny have to pay more on her internet connection to subsidize your Netflix addiction?

You've got it backwards. Granny and can I both pay per byte. We can even pay surge pricing based on congestion.

The question is this: why should I have to pay more for bytes from Netflix than Granny pays for bytes from Ravelry?

That's like saying UPS should be able to charge Amazon more per-package because they ship a lot of packages rather than, say, changing their per-package or bulk discount rates.

Nobody is saying that ISPs cannot charge for usage, only that they shouldn't be allowed to do so in a discriminatory manner: if, say, they wanted to set a cap or QoS shares they should be able to do that as long as it's applied to everyone rather than just the companies which don't / can't pay the danegeld.

Assume that this is the case… then just do the same as they already do in Australia, and put caps on how much you can download. I assume that you are totally cool with that, and indeed they already do this with a lot of mobile plans. Then Granny, who obviously doesn't watch Netflix, can get a cheap very limited plan.

The issue here is that what comcast really want, is to sell Granny a cheap plan, and sell Netflix a plan, and google, and Apple (that app store and updates you know). Oh but wait, Netflix you are already paying a bunch to throw data on the net by the bucket? That doesn't matter… you have your last mile, and you also need to pay for everyone else's last mile as well. Oh, and Google, you also need to pay for everyone's last mile as well. It's just like a Winfrey episode: You can pay! you can pay! You can all pay!!

so you're arguing that the ISPs are unable to price their packages at a reasonable value, essentially selling it at cost to consumers, and netflix has to pick up the tab?

thats just silly, come on!

if that were the truth, and it isn't, then they'd need to increase the price for the monthly package or decrease bandwidth for consumer packages.

/Edit: going with your example: amazon doesn't have to pay to keep the streets in service, despite causing lots of (heavy) traffic through their deliveries. they pay their delivery provider. just like netflix pays for its bandwidth to their ISP

Connection fee + metered internet is fairest of all, and aligns incentives nicely. Of course, users don't like "pay for what you use" and want "all you can eat" plans which leads to... this stuff.

I allready pay for bandwidth.

It's pretty much the opposite you have to be afraid of. Netflix is a big player and can force anyone to play ball with them. The problem is that anyone not named Netflix will have a much bigger hurdle to reach you.

Imagine you're a startup trying to compete with Netflix, and on top of having to create your business and media content, your customers have to pay their ISP a fee to access your website (or have better bandwidth, or have it not counted in your allocated data plan). No one would be able to compete with them. Now replace Netflix with any <Google, Facebook, Uber, any incumbent really>... and yeah you get the idea.

This dispute is way more nuanced than you're presenting. The article you posted picks a winner pretty early on bit actually presents the situation pretty well.

Any company Netflix buys transit from ends up using up all the goodwill of settlement-free peering agreements, doesn't want to actually pay for the traffic, tries to route around problem, and then gets frustrated when Comcast doesn't let them.

We have already seen this:

VZ was refusing to increase capacity to allow uncongested access to NetFlix (Netflix was willing to pay for the PNIs and the cost of the line cards to terminate those PNIs at VZ in addition to paying for their own gear). NetFlix started putting pre-roll into content sent to VZ customers to explain to them that it was VZ that was unwilling to do it. VZ threatened to sue. Netflix backed off and started paying for a better access to VZ subscribers by buying transit from VZ to use it strictly to access VZ. From that point on NetFlix' position on NN kind of "evolved" - it only kind of supports it.

All of this was with so call Net Neutrality on the books.

I said it before and I say it again:

Consumers do not give a flying f!ck about this fight - it is a fight between Comcasts/ATT/Verizons and Google/Facebook/NetFlix of the world about who gets to fleece consumers more wrapped in the talk about "fairness" and "freedom of to access information".

Just a few days ago we had someone working for small mom and pop NSP/ISP breathlessly tell us that it is NN that is preventing his ISP from offering grannies in a nursing home cheaper email only plans!

> Consumers do not give a flying f!ck about this fight

I couldn't disagree more. Sure, I don't care whether Netflix or Verizon wins, but I care deeply that there isn't a situation that raises the cost of competing against Netflix/Prime/Hulu to the point where it's impossible to enter the market. Netflix should be hard to compete against because they have better content, not because they have better access to internet subscribers.

Your disagreement is worth the price of NetFlix subscription that you canceled when NetFlix caved. Oh wait, you have not canceled it. So your disagreement is worth zero, which means that you do not, actually, care.

As a consumer Im paying Comcast for quality access to all of the internet. Its their job to deliver on that. If they allow their peering points with T1 providers to clog up, they are not delivering on the service I purchased.

Also, Comcast isn't a transit provider. They're an eyeball network and should expect heavy inbound traffic levels. Also look here: https://www.peeringdb.com/net/822 Their locations are all in the states. Most settlement free agreements require diverse meeting points around the world. Right now the big providers are hauling Comcast traffic across the oceans. So their large market share in the US is already getting them preferential treatment from the other providers.

> If they allow their peering points with T1 providers to clog up, they are not delivering on the service I purchased.

IIRC, the proposed net neutrality regulations would not change this scenario at all. The issue is the absolute leverage that would need to be granted in these agreements for this to be true.

In this hypothetically net neutral universe, what should happen when those peering points clog up? Comcast absolutely has to upgrade those links, regardless of price? Would not upgrading these links be throttling? Would they be obligated to renegotiate their peering agreements or risk fines?

If so, I've got a killer startup idea. I'll get a modest peering agreement with comcast, then turn around and sell bandwidth to Netflix and Google for pennies on the dollar, and then turn around again and tell comcast that they have to renegotiate with me, at whatever price I want, or I'll get the FCC to bring them down. Then what? They're the ones in violation of the law, not me.

In practice, the proposed net neutrality regulations loosely say that the FCC can come in and act as a mediator in pricing agreements, when one party is (paraphrasing) "acting unfairly", which is a whole 'nother can of worms. For starters, it's completely out of whack with the intended scope of the FCC.

edit:

> As a consumer Im paying Comcast for quality access to all of the internet. Its their job to deliver on that.

No, you're not, and you never were, and it's bordering on dishonesty to make this claim. At best, you're paying comcast for the same quality access to anything that can reach their network at that same quality. Even that is arguable.

The problem with a hands off approach is the lack of competition. I cant jump to another provider when the quality of my internet service does not live up to my expectations.

Since most ISPs have an effective monopoly there are no economic pressures for them to deliver quality service. So we need government to step in and treat them like the utilities they are.

Also, pretty sure Google doesnt pay for transit. They have a giant network footprint and push a ton of the internet's traffic. They are likely to be settlement free with everyone.

> Also, pretty sure Google doesnt pay for transit. They have a giant network footprint and push a ton of the internet's traffic. They are likely to be settlement free with everyone.

Almost certainly. Bad example, but the point still stands.

> The problem with a hands off approach is the lack of competition. I cant jump to another provider when the quality of my internet service does not live up to my expectations.

> Since most ISPs have an effective monopoly there are no economic pressures for them to deliver quality service. So we need government to step in and treat them like the utilities they are.

I don't know if I agree with that. Even in the most rural parts of the US you probably have a handful of ISPs available, just maybe not the type of ISP that caters to power users on reddit and HN. Between LTE wireless providers, satellite, DSL, cable, I think most people have a greater degree of choice than we realize. A lot of these options are not going to cut it if you like Netflix and/or torrenting, but for casual facebook, wikipedia, and emailing-- arguably the usage patterns of the majority of US internet users, any of these providers will work out just fine.

If what you're saying is true, why do we see such a dramatic difference in the quality of service across the board in the past decade? We went from terrible GSM to incredibly fast LTE. You can now buy 25 Mbit satellite internet without a data cap. You used to be lucky to get 16m/2m cable internet, now I see the lowest tier of plans with speeds of anywhere from 60Mbit to 100Mbit. If there's no competition, why do we see this progress? Why would they put money into increasing their speeds if the market didn't force their hand?

I think an important distinction would be the rate of investment in customer facing bandwidth vs the rate of investment into Tier 1 facing bandwidth. If they are spending more at the customer edge so they can sellmore ~100mbps plans to consumers, without the same rate of spending on the connections to T1 providers something is amiss. However if they are matching investment and continually adding bandwitdth to providers then I have no basis. I just dont think they are. I think they are allowing the oversubscription rate to bloom while the avg per user usage continues to grow. And have heard it first hand from one of the biggest Tier 1 telcos about the pain they go through when trying to upgrade bandwidth to Comcast.

As a provider on the net I dont have many options to ensure you quality access to my content. I can't route around Comcast if theyre your last hop. I can pay Comcast for the privilege to send you content but I only get around 50 million subscribers and at 10x the price of a Tier 1. The Tier 1 will get me access to the entire internet.

Also with all transit pricing, the more you buy the cheaper it is. So the bigger players have an unfair advantage in economy of scale when dealing with the likes of Comcast.

>No, you're not, and you never were, and it's bordering on dishonesty to make this claim. At best, you're paying comcast for the same quality access to anything that can reach their network at that same quality. Even that is arguable

I'd like to see where in the marketing literature it says this. Right on the pricing page it says Internet Access plans.

It doesnt say Comcast network access plan.

Also, I dont make Comcast oversubscribe their network. Thats a business decision on their side.

The issue typically is not that Comcast is oversubscribing their network, its that there is more traffic trying to enter their network from a specific peer than is provisioned. This is what was at the core of Cogent/Comcast dispute. If your position is that an ISP should be required to provide as much capacity to any peer who wants it than that is at least an intellectually honest argument to make. You could further extend that argument that it should be required to peer with anyone who demands it. If you and I started a transit provider tomorrow should, won a deal with a video provider should Comcast be required to peer with us?

This is really what should be at the heart of these discussions, not abstract claims about who is throttling who.

Its not like the traffic is coming from no where. The traffic is being requested by Comcast's customers. So yes, they should be able to support the traffic their customers are requesting. If its not legitimate traffic, feel free to drop the peer.

My arguement is that ISPs should deliver the product they sell to consumers. If the consumers demand for Netflix goes up, the ISP should adapt to ensure proper bandwidth at peak. The internet on the whole and interconnection between companies is hardly static. Its constantly growing bandwidth wise and its really very simple to increase bandwidth to other providers. Technically its fairly easy without all the legal bits that get added in to peering agreements.

Comcast wasn't negotiating the Netflix, it was negotiating with Cogent for how much bandwidth Cogent wanted. Netflix just happens to be a large driver of Cogent's interconnect needs but not the only one. Looking from the other direction Netflix could have used additional transit providers but elected not to for whatever reasons. I would humbly suggest that very few people understand the complexity of the product that an ISP delivers.

Isn't it the same though? Netflix (and other sites) will be more or less forced to pass those charges on to the consumers.

Yes, which is immediately a problem when Netflix is competing with the cable company or one of its subsidiaries (which is the case) that don't have to pay those costs (or as much).

It allows the cable company to effectively tax the competition.

This is one of the biggest issues I have with it.

>Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

It's profitable and with their lobbying, they can protect themselves from competition. If cable companies had the opportunity to cut streaming services at the knees 10 years ago (and the foresight to understand how it would affect their market) you bet they would have.

This is as anti-consumer as you can get.

My apartment complex has a contract with AT&T. I either have ATT or I don't have anyone. I can't be "gone". I just have to suck it up and pay unless I want to go to the library for basic internet then.

Talk to your neighbors and offer to split the internet bill. This doesn't solve the long-term problem, but at least it hurts the local internet monopoly.

From what I gather in the brief comment, the apartment complex only allowed AT&T to install cabling to the building, so those apartment buildings are only serviced by AT&T. The apartment complex will not allow another ISP to dig up their property to install internet service for tenants, leading to an exclusive AT&T monopoly. I've had friends in similar apartment buildings. Calling other ISPs operating across the street led nowhere, as those ISPs would just say "we do not service that address."

FCC instituted rules in 2008 abolishing the payola-style deals that stifle ISP competition in apartment buildings [0], but in the biggest surprise ever, the apartment owners and would-be-monopolist ISPs have been avoiding compliance by hiding the exclusivity part of their contracts. The apartment owner simply leaves open the prospect that another ISP could install access, but never actually allows them to do so. Or they make the now-legally-unenforceable exclusivity clauses of their contracts severable, but those enforcing the entire contract never actually know which of the clauses in it are invalid. So the clauses continue to be enforced in practice, by people who do not know they should be ignored.

If you can't get competing services in your apartment complex, get a lawyer and sue the owner.

[0] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280908A1.p...

Getting a lawyer and suing the owner is not a reasonable thing to ask of people living in apartments.

No, it isn't, but nor is it reasonable for an apartment owner to establish service monopolies on their property at the expense of their renters.

What alternative would you suggest?

Violent armed revolution?

Finally!

I think what he was suggesting was sharing one AT&T contract with his neighbors

But what if someone in your neighbor's house likes to download torrent or visit sites that gets you into trouble. Wouldn't that be a huge responsibility?

"Sorry, someone cracked my password." Then kick the idiot off your wifi, just like you would deal with a bad house guest.

I really like your idea, but it has legal implications (accountability) because your neighbours would end up doing things on the internet on your account or vice versa.

I would suggest to do this in combination with a VPN but 1) even with OpenVPN those are often insecure 2) they cost additional money 3) with these new FCC rules their bandwidth might get limited.

If your ISP cracks down, you can always go to the local Starbucks or library to torrent movies. And since the few people who share the WAP all know each other, they can talk things out.

WAP, Now that's a term I've not heard in a long time, a long time [1].

I don't know about Starbucks or the USA but many places here with open WiFi have, well, open WiFi (no encryption on connection) and they have abysmal speed. I mean we are talking about multiple customers, on 2,4 GHz WiFi, in the neighborhood (city) with dense 2,4 GHz coverage. What could possibly go wrong?

Plus, indeed here that type of business is just on cable or DSL themselves. Who'd be under the scrutiny of the same QoS shenanigans. Then again, we got net neutrality. For the time being. I really hope the USA keeps net neutrality. The feeling that such a civilized, rich, advanced country would lose such an important right fills my eyes with tears.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol

WAP = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_access_point

If you visit the US, you will find that most internet access sucks, but that public libraries are surprisingly decent. You won't be playing "Call of Duty: Kill Nazis 2017" on it, but it's perfectly decent for most uses.

Oh, that. I always just call that AP. I'm glad you guys & gals got quality libraries on the other side of the pond. I can't speak for EU but here in NL they're dwindling both in quality as well as in size and amount. I find that problematic, as there are two big interest groups who benefit from public libraries: the poor, and the elder.

The US has a long history of supporting public libraries, e.g. the Carnegie libraries, which are often wonderful historic (by US standards) buildings[1]. Rather than holding stacks of physical books, modern libraries are a key source of information via the internet for many people today. In tiny rural towns, they are key parts of the community, and often surprisingly well-cared-for.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Not if the library or Starbucks have an ISP with similarly restrictive policies.

They generally don't. Try it.

People also have the option of the cellular network via their phones, though that's not a true substitute for a wired ISP.

DSL (with VDSL pretty much FTTC), cable (also pretty much FTTC), LTE (if 50 ms latency and relatively low bandwidth cap is OK), and FTTH (if you're lucky and live in such an area) are the 4 options. It is going to be different everywhere in the USA (and world) but FTTH isn't available everywhere, and its not uncommon that either DSL or cable is unreliable.

> People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

Because it's a monopolistic monoculture, and they can do whatever they want and get away with it. In this age, having corporate controlled information choke points is a feature that those who want to control what the citizenry think and say are no doubt in love with.

> People are dropping cable due to the heavy-handed control and lack of choice. Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

Because the cable companies are the ISPs, and without ISPs acting differently, there's less impetus for people to ditch their cable companies as cable companies.

Especially when the phone/cable/ISP firms can block or tax into submission services that compete with their phone and video offerings by virtue of their control of internet access.

I don't know anyone who has a land-line phone anymore. I know many people who have dropped cable. It won't be that easy to force people back to those things now that they have experienced the alternative.

But it sure will be a heck of a lot easier if the FCC's got your back with regulation that supports anticompetitive behavior.

> Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

When you control what people see, you control what people think. Dismiss that as tinfoil malarky if you will.

I don’t think it as as ‘tinfoil’ as people may suggest. Moves like this combined with the lift on local news station ownership restrictions make plans to ‘control what people see’ more and more plausible.

As long as my guys (Republicans) are winning and our ideas (conservatism) are pushed through, I'm happy and I don't give a hoot about what twisted ways they use to win politically. I'll also criticize Democrats for doing the exact thing, or deflect any bad-doing by my guys to point to Democrats as my go-to defense.

Poe's Law applies here (at least for me).

It is so sad we live at a time when one doesn't know if this is sarcasm or a genuine sentiment.

> If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

This is what I don't understand. All of these businesses seem to be missing that point. Or, I am over-valuing it. Or something else that I don't understand or see. But, I have the exact same perspective and stance as you.

If I have to pay more to watch streaming video or play video games with my friends or download my Steam library or my Kindle titles, well, I'm very likely to just opt out of all of that. I am 36 years old and I have never once paid for a cable television subscription in the last 18 years that I've been on my own for _exactly_ this same reason. I am not going to pay for 3 separate and/or premium packages just to get access to the one piece of content that I actually want (sports programming).

You have choice. I live in this little place that the Internet hardly knows called Berkeley, CA, home of one of the original 4 IMPs of the very first networked connection -- and my only choice above 20mbps is Comcast.

you won't see it. they will force netflix to pay them more. And the charge will be passed on to all subscribers.

Why on Earth would Netflix have to pay for content served from inside their network. Netflix literally has red cache boxes inside all the ISP networks. If people stop streaming they won't go back to cable. The ISPs will all just move to metered internet.

That's fine. Then I can decide if I want to pay that price for Netflix or not. I also have Amazon Prime video, and Youtube, and etc. so I have several competing choices.

Then you don't get Netflix, Prime, etc, because AT&T marked up the price, or you do get it, but you get less of something else because AT&T is extorting you.

Would you be "fine" if someone stood in front of your house and intercepted all your Amazon packages and added a $5 delivery fee to each?

But your ISP owns you. They will charge YouTube and Amazon as well. You'll end up paying $120/Mo for your connection again.

And new competition will become less possible as ISPs barrier to entry becomes enournous.

I won't, because it's not worth that to me. I pay nearly $100/mo now and the value is already borderline at that price. I guess others might feel it's worth more or that they have no choice.

So the policy change is a good idea because it won't affect you personally. In which case, why are you wasting our time since it doesn't affect you personally?

Right, but you're not seeing that everything else will most likely get higher charges. So you'll stop paying for Netflix and whatever else and they may or may not survive with others making that decision. Amazon will because it has all of these other revenue streams, but its AWS offerings will probably rise in price.

Free alternatives, like being able to stream Youtube, could be in danger of fees too. Google might have some sort of bargain with the government to keep it charge-free (like selling more data on its users). But any other video provider without Google's deep pockets will be in trouble, like Vimeo, Twitch, VHX, or some other company that hasn't even started up yet but might not be able to afford the double-dip.

It would be more interesting if Netflix passed it on to subscribers specifically from the ISP that charges them. Then you can as a consumer make a better decision factoring in the increased price of goods with one ISP over another.

The crux here is that consumers typically have choice between Comcast and Comcast or Spectrum and Spectrum.

That's why we need NN.

I actually think (and this should be done in addition to NN, not instead) is to encourage local city government to provide Internet access and even allowing smaller companies to lease the infrastructure to them. This would bring back competition again, and the money from leasing would cover cost of maintaining the network and maybe even bring income to the city.

As someone who lives in an apartment that has been monopolized by AT&T and forced to used 60$/month 60mbit internet, I totally agree.

I made a mistake by assuming an apartment complex built within the last 3 years would have fiber, boy was I wrong. I'll never make that mistake again.

Because people would have to move to change ISPs, there isn't any incentive for them to compete with each other. Network infrastructure is a natural monopoly, afterall. The best you ever get is a duopoly between fiber and cable, if you're lucky.

Don't kid yourself the cable companies will act like a cartel.

Not if all of those services are lumped into a bundle that you pay a blanket price for each month, separate from the rest of your online services.

Yes but I'm saying I would not accept that as a customer.

People are not going to happily accept the old "bundling" cable TV model that they hate, having experienced the much more open internet model where you really only decide how much bandwidth you want to pay for.

There's a difference this time around: once online streaming became a viable option, people started more actively restricting or resigning their cable tv service. Until that point, there were few viable alternatives. There won't be anywhere to retreat this time. And it's not just your tv shows and movies, it's your online banking, a large part of your social life, your homework research tool, your livelihood in some cases, and so on.

I'm using a general "you" here. It's far more a pervasive presence in peoples' lives than cable tv was.

And I've commented as such already, it likely won't be restrictive and demanding all at once. It will be a progression likely starting with something like:

"Now that we are no longer bound by restrictive government regulations we can offer you new value-added-services that benefit you!

With [company]'s new Speed Boost(TM) packages, you can access your favourite web sites at a higher speed than your current base package allows starting at the low monthly fee of $5! (on a 2 year contract, $10/mo month over month)"

Once the customer base is accustomed, the language changes and becomes:

"Now with [company]'s new Choose What You Use(TM) bundles, we've retired our base packages and now it's up to you what you want to pay for of the internet! Another way we're saving you money!"

And so on. Marketing teams wouldn't let it look like: "Well, you're ours now, bitch." At least not that straight-forward.

Then what the hell are you going to do? The vast majority of Americans have one option for an ISP. So they're not going to have an alternative.

They will all go up in price until your cable companies monopoly price strategy is maximized.

Which all are going to have the same fees on them.

To where?

Why would ISPs want emulate that failing model?

Because there is a lot of money in that model if you can make it so there is no where else to go. (But you knew that- you were speaking rhetorically. I am the voice in your head.)

>>>If Comcast is going to try to charge me more to be able to access Netflix, I'm gone.

If you have competitors to choose from, sure. If you don't? Or if all the competitors do the same thing?

To where? Or are you one of those lucky few who have a choice of ISP?

It's not there yet, but mobile broadband is becoming increasingly viable.

It's far from ideal, but 4 (soon 3) competitors are better than the 1 choice I have for wired broadband.

Mobile broadband also has an oligopoly (with some of the same players, hi AT&T), and all the provider power issues that apply to fixed broadband;the neutrality rules being repealed applied to them, too (but even they allowed mobile operators more non-neutral action.)

I don't know why you think mobile broadband is in any way going to be better in the non-neutral net.

Sure, with tiny data caps and even more artificial restrictions on speeds and content.

It is unusable for gaming.

The vast majority have some choice. The average household can choose between their telecom or their cable company. In some areas one or both of those companies don't provide broadband, but in the bulk of locations they do.

And while 4g service isn't a true replacement, it provides enough competition to prevent the AOL-ization of the internet. At a certain point, people would choose more expensive wireless over absurdly locked down wireline.

So while Comcast does have a monopoly in some areas, people would switch to Fios or Uverse or local DSL in the areas without monopoly if they tried anything too bad. Hypothetically comcast could try to monetize only in monopoly areas, but that would be a hard sell and it would be very transparent.

Only a little over 50% of households have at least 2 high-speed internet choices[0]. I wouldn't call that the "vast majority".

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...

25mbps is an arbitrary limit that leaves out ATT and Century links ADSL2+ service, which is fine for most uses.

You will have a hard time streaming Netflix/Hulu/VOD on anything < 25mbps.

Should get you to 720p.

I tried that. It really doesn't, especially when there's congestion. I've had to go down to 240p on Youtube before, especially if I was trying to do something else in the background, e.g. watch Youtube while doing homework, watch Youtube while browsing Reddit/news/any other website with giant JS/CSS/media files/ads.

I was primarily a student then, and trying to skip around in Youtube/online video lectures was an insanely frustrating experience.

In a day and age where most of the TVs and monitors sold right now are 1080p and up, 720p is not an acceptable maximum resolution for streaming anymore.

Well, now add a family to the equation and those 25 mbps are anything but enough.

"The vast majority have some choice"

I challenge this assertion -> please document it.

60% of the country has three providers of 10mpbs+

90% has two providers of 10mpbs+. One of those is satellite, which sort of sucks, I'll grant you that.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...

Thanks. I've lived in the north east since before there was IPSs and have never had a choice having lived in several town. Only people in one or two cities near me do. I'd agree satellite isn't a great choice and I am not really counting that (or dialup if it still exists). But is choosing between a telco like Verizon and Comcast/Charter really much of a choice either? So I think those numbers are miss leading. There doesn't feel like any choice to me.

10mbps isn't really useful nowadays. That's 10000kbps not including overhead. That's an absolute max of 1.25MiB per second, realistically if you get 1MiB you're doing well. Back that down a little bit to account for the inability to always reach peak bandwidth, say to 896kiB, and you start to see how you're very limited for common usage. Even web browsing is quite heavy nowadays.

60% of the country's CENSUS DISTRICTS. Not 60% of the US. If one person in that district has access to the provider, it counts as the whole district, even though that's likely not true.

I live in a fairly tech heavy area in the PNW and still only have the choice between fiber or super slow dsl. Not really much of a choice if you ask me.

If your ISP decides to do the same thing, where are you gonna go? The vast majority of Americans do not have significant choice when it comes to service providers.

Because ISPs are cable companies, and are the ones who are practicing that failing model, and are working very hard to prop it up and extend it.

The way you've written this is implying that Pai said that line but it was actually a sarcastic Former Chairman Wheeler and the quote has since been edited out. The Chicago Tribune still has it though.

I hope the Democrats are keeping a running list of everything this administration is doing. They should undo everything as soon as they get majority. I'll die a happy man if they name at least one law/regulation after Obama.

I live in NYC. I have one cable company with no other options. I have one broadband internet provider (my cable company) with no other options. No one I know likes their cable company.

">On December 14, the FCC will vote on Chairman Pai's plan to repeal President Obama's heavy-handed Internet regulations and restore Internet freedom."

Freedom for whom?

Freedom for whoever has the cable/phone monopoly right-of-way.

I wonder how they'll vote.

1984 rhetoric.

>I love how these laws are veiled with patriotic sentiments, e.g. "Internet Freedom".

It's an accurate characterization, it gives ISPs lots of freedom!

Who likes their cable company? Come on now.

>"If you like your cable company, you'll love what this does for the Internet, because it gives Internet service providers the same kind of control over content and price as cable operators have today."

Except it's not, even. In the world of cable TV, the base cost is set by the content providers - the Disneys and such. With this, I guarantee you are going to see ISPs taking action on their own to tier websites and apps, pocketing the extra money, without input from nor payment to the sites which they intend to profit directly from.

As programmer in his mid 20s, NN was the first political issue I developed a position on when I was a child. The fight for the open Internet has been going on for a long time and I really reciprocate that feeling of helplessness in the face of these patently corrupt regulators. Im calling reps and filling comments with the FCC and telling everyone I know about this, but I still feel like these people are gonna shove it down our throats. This whole process is so anti-democratic it's depressing.

> "If you like your cable company, you'll love what this does for the Internet"

HAHAHHAHAA, wow they're not even trying

That quote was from Tom Wheeler, ex-chairman of the FCC who opposes ending net neutrality. He was being sarcastic.

I'd like to have a quick shout out to Tom Wheeler. I was very worried when he was first appointed, but it was great to see someone who used their experience lobbying to stand up for consumers instead of continuing to act in corporate interests.

To hear him tell it, when he first started as a lobbyist he was advocating for organizations that weren't getting their interests adequately represented in government (at the time cable and wireless companies). As FCC chairman he continued lobbying for those whose interests were not adequately defended - the consumers.

It'd be nice if Pai came around all of a sudden too..

Pai is just a hatchet-man. He was never meant to seriously lead the FCC.

Pai is fulfilling exactly what he was appointed to do, which is make the wealthy even wealthier.

Trump's administration is built to enrich 3 groups. 1. Himself 2. His family 3. Other Very Wealthy People

Woah they actually altered the quote in the article. The version I posted above is no longer the same.

Oh good.

Reminds me of the “Department of Love”

Also reminds me of "scroll direction: natural".

I'm curious for your take on the wsj article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-fcc-can-save-the-open-i...

I don't think it's paywalled.

The one written by Ajit Pai? It's paywalled, just like the every page on the internet once this guy is done screwing it up.

I was able to read it and I don't subscribe to any newspaper. Maybe it was an A/B type thing... dunno.

Hyperbole anyone?

Where I live, I like spectrum-formerly-timewarner-formerly-roadrunner cable Internet just fine. There are a lot of alternatives to using it for home Internet around here, and I'm pretty sure the two are related.

If you want better internet access, instead of begging the FCC for scraps get on repealing legislated monopoly rights for kinds of wires and/or unbundling last mile from ISP.

Then ask yourself why internet reform is focused on NN instead of provider competition.

Because high fixed costs make it very expensive for competitors to enter the market. It's like asking why someone doesn't just open up a competing water company in a place like Flint.

More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the country in order to insure healthy competition?

On a side note, what do you think the odds are that this plan will remove uncompetitive restrictions on ISP (especially municipal ISP) development at the same time? I mean it's all about competition right? If I didn't know better I'd say that the talk of "competition" was just a smoke screen to hide the fact that this is the "allow ISPs to hold your service hostage with no repercussions" bill.

High fixed costs aren't what's keeping competitors out of the market; legally mandated monopolies are. City/Neighborhood/small scale ISPs work just fine where they're allowed to exist. There's no natural reason people should be married to one ISP based on their address without any alternatives, the overwhelming majority of services do not work this way for good reason. It'd be like banning FedEx anywhere UPS owns one truck.

If you're really worried about the coax network then push for what I suggested: unbundling the last mile. It worked great for the phone network.

I'm not arguing that the proposed plan actually helps anything (although the smaller scale and unconventional ISPs that should be encouraged are harder hit by neutrality requirements and compliance obligations in general)

I'm arguing that tilting at the network neutrality windmill doesn't actually deliver much to end users. There's about a million ways an ISP can suck and network neutrality, if you can even get it to happen, kinda-sorta fixes one of them.

There's a real problem (shitty monopoly internet providers) that has a real solution (the entirely proven strategy of eliminating monopolies).

PS: People in areas where the indoor plumbing water isn't safe to drink use competing water companies, mostly those bring-your-own-container 25c water vending machines you see in front of stores in low-income areas. If they waited for regulation to solve their problems they'd all be dead.

> More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the country in order to insure healthy competition?

I think people would be more confused than anything, since this FCC just voted to drastically restrict choice under the existing universal service find.

> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/one-b... Because a market solution with ISP is a pipe dream spouted by "conservatives" trying to win over people to vote against their own interests. If you start an ISP, there's a good chance the incumbent is going to fight you tooth and nail.

Why not both?

Not to mention, there are areas of the country which absolutely could not support more than one provider. Why should they have to suffer non-neutral net?

Why not both: because debundling and/or demonopolizing cable involves moving against entrenched interests, and the pro-NN forces have just demonstrated they don't have the political strength to get neutrality alone, let alone "neutrality and".

Competitive, non-neutral networks is something that much of the country already has, so it's a smaller, more regional fight you might actually win. You can try for neutrality after that if it means that much to you (but at that point nobody will care because NN is a non-issue in areas with a competitive provider landscape)

Network neutrality is irrelevant to areas that can't support more than one provider, weird rural providers and satellite internet are already exempt from neutrality rules (iirc because they aren't "broadband" in the FCC sense). Those places will continue to have sucky internet until someone wires them out of charity.

I agree with most what you're saying, but I don't think NN necessarily goes against it.

While competition is by all means good, I also DON'T WANT ISP controlling what I can access and how. I want ISP simply just provide the service, and Title II does just that.

I don't understand how you claim that these actions are exclusive. More alternatives for the consumer are good. Regulations preventing unnecessary charges for the consumer, directly or indirectly are also good. If you are happy with your Internet service under the current system, then why do you want to change anything?

More to the point, the people writing the regulations need to consider everyone in the U.S. not just the happiest Internet users. There already is a fairly large divide between people who can and can not access decent Internet service and this policy will only make that worse.

Why can't we have both?

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