Hacker News Reader

Comment by jshen | Hacker News Reader

"that really such an illogical position to adopt?"

yes, because once giant corporations make a tiered wireless internet take hold there is absolutely no chance of untiering it.

View on HN

You might disagree with it, but it's not illogical. There's a big, big difference between saying "I don't agree with Google" and "there's no possible logical reason for their position, therefore it must be evil." What you're expressing above is one possible interpretation of how the future could unfold, but different, intelligent people can easily disagree about that.

I don't think an intelligent person would believe that once a tiered internet were in place that there is a high probability of it changing.

When google says "don't be evil", I take that to mean they wouldn't promote an internet where the traffic from my site may be forced to take a backseat to the traffic from Giant Corporation because I can't give a big enough kickback to verizon.

Given google's "don't be evil" mantra it's illogical for them to promote a tiered internet since such a promotion is contrary to their mantra.

They weren't promoting a tiered internet by advocating it as a good thing; they were against regulating things just yet. Those are two very, very different things.

forgive the hyperbole, I know these two things aren't the same degree of bad, but it's the same logic.

this is like saying that someone isn't promoting racism just yet, they are just against the government regulating businesses so that they can't deny service to someone based on race.

They may be two different means, but they come to the same end.

I don't think an intelligent person would believe that once a tiered internet were in place that there is a high probability of it changing.

There are a number of historical precedence that provide some evidence that it could change.

In the early days of internet access companies like AOL charged different rates for access to their (non-internet) network and the real internet. That went away.

In non-US markets tiered access is quite common, but hasn't proved to be a massive problem. In Australia (where bandwidth caps are common), most ISPs provide "non-metered" access to some sites (gaming servers, download mirrors, the national broadcaster), and many mobile access providers run promotions for "free facebook" etc.

Generally, consumers find these things annoying to keep track of and switch over to a higher-cost plan where they don't need to worry about them. Some very price-conscious consumers (eg, students) benefit a lot from them at the cost of some convenience.

Gradually companies seem to be dropping the more complex of these plans because of the customer confusion it causes.

(I guess I should insert some witty reply about how my belief in this possibility precludes the possibility of me being intelligent. Unfortunately I'm going to have to rely on there being a question as to if my lack of intelligence is causal WRT my lack of witty response, or vice-versa. Sorry).

Net neutrality isn't about charging consumers a different price depending on what services they use. Providers like Verizon want to exploit their control of the infrastructure to extort kickbacks from web-based businesses.

Take VOIP, for example. It won't be VOIP as a whole that receives priority access, but Skype VOIP - and in exchange, Skype will kick a portion of their revenue back to Verizon. Verizon gets a bit of juice and Skype doesn't have to worry about competing with other VOIP providers. It will be invisible to users.

A similar process happened in the video rental business when Blockbuster signed a deal with the movie studios to pay less upfront for videos, while kicking back some of their rental revenue to the studios. Whereas an independent rental store might pay $100 for a tape, Blockbuster paid almost nothing - the independents went out of business, and video rental became a Blockbuster-dominated monoculture.

Extortion is illegal with or without Net Neutrality.

Skype and Verizon are both only in business because users find the services worth their money. That can change. If users are getting ripped off by shitty service, then it has ceased to be invisible to the users.

Blockbuster is a horrible example. A lot of good that deal did them! This monopolized monoculture you describe has been crushed and blown to bits long ago by Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the rest of the internet.

These are conspiracy theories, not rational arguments.

> Blockbuster is a horrible example. A lot of good that deal did them! This monopolized monoculture you describe has been crushed and blown to bits long ago by Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the rest of the internet.

Too bad Verizon hadn't thought about shaking down online video rental companies a few years ago. Blockbuster could have given them a sweet deal.

It took far, far too long for Blockbuster to feel the effects of that. I really don't want things to be terrible for 15 years while a practice like this catches up to them. Besides, it sets a terrible precedent.

And there are many services that are ripoffs that are largely below the consciousness of consumers.

So lets say Blockbuster, as a benefactor if said agreement, became a monopoly for... 5 years? maybe 10? In this example, how were things that terrible? Independent movie rental shops couldn't compete? What else?

Of course I don't want things to be terrible for 15 years, but I haven't heard anything that would lead me to reasonably believe it would be. If wireless internet remains less-regulated than wired for 5-10 years, what do you expect will happen? Verizon and Google will team up, hike wireless prices, block torrents and censor content?

Maybe we should let events play out a little more before crying out that our internet freedoms are being trampled by faceless mega-corporations. Maybe Google, Verizon, FCC, and other agencies aren't sure yet how best to compromise on this complicated issue. Maybe demanding a non-negotiable "everything is free (as in freedom)" policy isn't the best response 1 day after a vague press release.

I don't think an intelligent person would believe that once a regulated Internet were in place that there is a high probability of it changing either. Now, if it is regulated properly, that's a feature, not a bug, but that's a big if.

I'm certainly not one of those individuals who believe that any regulation is bad regulation, but there is a not-insignificant chance that regulating the nascent wireless space before it has truly matured will result in bad regulation. And once bad regulation is in place, it can be very difficult to change in a meaningful way.

It seems to me that there is danger in both approaches: an entrenched base of huge corporations pushing an unregulated tiered wireless internet is a bad future. Likewise, an improperly regulated wireless internet is an equally bad scenario.

As I understand it, this deal does not sacrifice a neutral wireless internet for a neutral wired one, it merely eschews applying neutrality rules to the wireless internet while proposing neutrality rules for the wired one. Which is very different from the assertion that this deal puts a tiered wireless internet in place.

Which, given its nascent status, seems like the most prudent approach.

In American history it's been far easier to deregulate than it has been to regulate. The telecoms themselves have seen massive deregulation in the past few decades.

I also fail to see how packet parity can be bad.

Regulation is a form of power for the government. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but government and corporations certainly share a desire to be as powerful as possible. Giving either power should thus be a carefully considered move. In some instances, it makes sense. In some it doesn't. But one can be sure that, either way, the entrenched institutions will not willingly give up any power granted to them.

I think the most salient factor here is that regulation requires good information on how that industry/space works. I don't think its questionable that we are not sure what future the wireless/mobile internet holds, only that it big. Regulating it properly right now seems like a dubious proposition-- either through the traditional kind of government regulation or through the "self-regulation" of large corporations, who will naturally shape such self-regulation to their own advantage.

It's possible that in the wireless space tiered access might make sense. I'm not a wireless engineer but my understanding is that wireless access suffers from overcrowding a lot more than wired access simply because the overall bandwith within a given frequency band is a lot lower than a bundle of optical fibers.

Given this limitation I think we should be very careful in saying that a given solution should not be allowed. I can imagine scenarios where tiered pricing models would be very beneficial to most people.

For example, imagine a business setting up wireless security video cams. Thoughtlessly, they set them up to record and send video in HD. A few of those pointed at a rapidly changing scene (eg, a road) can chew though a lot of bandwidth. The owner of those cams doesn't care - why should they? They just pay a flat rate and the fact that everyone else's access is bad isn't their problem.

If an access provider could charge extra for that traffic then it would give the cam owner motivation to fix the problem.

(Yes, there are other solutions - a price per Gb of traffic is an obvious one. But my point is that I'm not convinced other options should be outlawed yet)

But I think you are confusing things. There is no question anywhere as to whether people who use more data can be charged more for that use. The fact that most home plans are all you can eat has nothing to do with net neutrality. So in your example, hopefully the security camera company would be charged a higher fee than a competing company who streamed non HD video. Youtube pays a hell of a lot more to hook up to the internet than I do.

The question is whether Verizon can charge a separate fee to prioritize one company's traffic over another. My understanding is that this recommendation partially closes that door for wired traffic but leaves it wide open for wireless traffic. Now fledgling startup security video hooks up their cameras to the web and find their bandwidth artificially restricted compared to the entrenched competition because they aren't paying for the super deluxe plan, or because Verizon has an exclusivity agreement with the entrenched player, or whatever. That is what seems to be left possible in wireless land with this recommendation, and that is frightening.

I understand your argument. Did you see my line Yes, there are other solutions - a price per Gb of traffic is an obvious one. But my point is that I'm not convinced other options should be outlawed yet?

My point is that it may make sense - and be good for consumers - to deprioritize and/or discourage some kinds of usage over wireless. http://danweinreb.org/blog/google-and-verizon-a-new-hope references the story http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/The-Truth-About-Googl.... I hadn't read this when I made my original post, but it makes a much more compelling argument based on the same ideas.

It makes the point that for VOIP to work properly over wireless you can't have jittery delivery. One way to solve that it to use QOS to increase the priority of that in comparison to video. That isn't "neutral" access, but it is good consumers.

Except that it won't be VOIP that's prioritized, it will be Skype, or Magic Jack, or whatever company offers Verizon the biggest kickback. It will be terrible for consumers, since those companies with a monopoly will have no incentive to excel when their success is determined in a backroom deal at Verizon HQ.

As long as my neighbor and I are both paying the same ISP the same amount of money for an internet connection, then we should have the same probability of one of our packets making it through their network. If I'm making an FTP transfer and my neighbor is teleconferencing, it's fine for some of his packets to be delivered more quickly than some of mine, provided that over any given second, we get to transfer roughly the same amount of data. Until our ISP redefines itself as a telecom provider with ancillary FTP capabilities, their QoS strategies shouldn't benefit my neighbor at my expense.

If ISPs are allowed to discriminate significantly based on the protocol, then what's to stop them from inventing a new proprietary video transmission protocol and prioritizing that over any protocol used by YouTube, effectively reimplementing discrimination on the source or destination of traffic (which is the most obvious justification for net neutrality)?

As the government makes more spectrum available wireless bandwidth will become abundant. Google and Verizon are setting policy based on a snapshot of current infrastructure which will have very long lasting impacts. If we want to be cynical it appears they picked the absolute best time (pre-4G) to use bandwidth scarcity as an excuse to make wireless a second class citizen of the open/fair Internet. In 2 or 3 years when we're getting 10-15Mbit/sec off our SmartPhones we're going to feel pretty god damn cheated when a competing non-Verizon, non-Google, video service is getting gimped down to 50k/sec. That's exactly what this deal allows.

I can't back this up with numbers but I think there is confusion about the point to point link speed of wireless technologies and their total capacity.

Eg: just because one person can potentially get 20Mbps out of a 4G connection does not mean that there is enough spectrum that 1 million people can all do it at once in down town San Francisco.

Wired connections scale linearly with the number of wires you lay (almost unlimited, although it is expensive). Wireless quickly hits the limits of physics (for any given amount of spectrum there is a theoretical hard limit to the amount of data you can send over it for a given power budget no matter what technology you employ - and spectrum itself is intrinsically limited).

I get a lot more than 20 Mbps through my wifi router, even though every other house in the city has identical hardware. It isn't just about bandwidth - geographic separation matters as well. You can always build more towers and crank down the transmission radius for each one.

That's true however wired broadband is also oversubscribed in a similar way. A single DOCSIS channel can provide 38Mbit of bandwidth and it will typically serve ~250 customers. 250 customers @ 10Mbit each would require a 2.5Gbit/sec pipe at the access layer. For DOCSIS 3, 4 channel bonding, the real amount of wire bandwidth increases to 152Mbit/sec so to offer a 50Mbit connection to 250 customers your real maximum bandwidth needs balloon to over 10Gbit/sec. Cable is a bit unique since it's also a shared medium. Throwing more wire at the problem won't really help. It's a similar proposition to building many more cell towers with more antennas and transmitters to use spectrum more efficiently. It can be done it's just insanely expensive. Based on the VZ/Google deal I think the cable industry now has an excellent argument that they should be excluded from most rules of net neutrality.

Somehow we started with a tiered wired internet (see, for instance, how AOL worked back in the mid-90s) and now for all intents and purposes have an untiered wired internet.

I suspect Google has faith in the ability of previously unknown players to create compelling new content in the common. And once you have compelling new content in the common, no ISP can long succeed that fails to provide decent access to said common.

The worst outcome from the wireless question mark is a revisiting of the net neutrality debate, with the successful example of the wired variant to spur the debate.

     there is absolutely no chance of untiering it

That's a pretty strong statement. Why is there absolutely no chance?

So, because Google and Verizon didn't come to an agreement on wireless internet, that's equivalent to Google supporting a tiered wireless internet? That seems like a pretty big jump to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com