Hacker News Reader

Comment by metiscus | Hacker News Reader

I am coming to support the notion that ISPs and Internet Backbone providers should be treated as first class utilities like electrical companies and not be able to deny access except for things like non-payment. Otherwise we do run the risk of a physically balkanized internet.

View on HN

Stupid question, is this the issue that was at the core of net neutrality? I may have misunderstood the entire thing if so.

it's related. ISPs and telecom in the US do not invest adequately in infrastructure, and the existing infrastructure is overloaded. net neutrality was all about how that infrastructure can be utilized; ISPs want to profit off the scarcity by allowing big companies to pay for priority so that their website would load faster at the expense of everyone else (big companies want this too, and they want it to be expensive, because that increases barrier for entry in a competitive space where they already have an upper hand), but the net neutrality laws used to prevent this sort of bidding for priority.

some ISPs also wanted to sell "internet lite" packages that are cheaper and only allow you to connect to a fixed set of websites. presumably they would also take money off the back end from those websites that want to be in the list.

> some ISPs also wanted to sell "internet lite" packages that are cheaper and only allow you to connect to a fixed set of websites. presumably they would also take money off the back end from those websites that want to be in the list.

In the U.S.? I thought this was only in India with Facebook's non-internet Internet.

i'm not aware of any ISPs that have taken that step in the US, but since the 2017 repeal it is now a legal business strategy. it has happened in portugal (although that's irrelevant to US law) -- customers get a base package and need to pay extra for the "social media package" (which unlocks twitter and facebook) or the "streaming package" (which unlocks netflix, youtube, etc.) (this is on top of the subscription fees you pay for netflix, etc.).

>customers get a base package and need to pay extra for the "social media package" (which unlocks twitter and facebook) or the "streaming package" (which unlocks netflix, youtube, etc.) According to snopes this doesn't seem to be fully accurate. There was a mobile plan with which you could buy extra data for different services (which I admit is not ideal), but no extra package to "unlock" services.

ok, i did a bit more research on the portugal case. i was going off a tweet with a website screenshot, but found this verge article[1] after reading your comment; and you're right. these sites aren't "blocked" by default, the package addons just give extra data to your plan and that data is specifically for those websites. still not "neutral" (looks like buying facebook data is cheaper than general-use data) but not nearly as dystopian as it seemed.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691506/portugal-meo-in...

This proves the point. It is legal, but no one even offered such a package.

if you say so. i think they're waiting to see whether the new administration will overturn. in any case, the main point is about ISPs creating profitable incentive for themselves to keep infrastructure under-developed by making the internet a pay-to-play arena.

follow up: t-mobile has a plan in the US that doesn't charge you for spotify/pandora internet traffic, but does charge you for all other data. that's an "internet lite" plan right there.

https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/free-music-streaming

Point taken. I've seen them do that for Youtube as well -- basically, they don't include Youtube vids in your data plan if you are ok with them degrading the video experience (and you can disable that sort of "feature"). However, this doesn't seem very compelling -- some of the things cable modem providers have done (DPI, injecting SYN or RST's into traffic) can end up far worse, but customers only put up with nonsense like that for so long (unless it's a de facto monopoly in that area).

You think they don't want to implement it in the US?

If they wanted, they could have done so.

It's not a stupid question. In short, this is not the issue that was at the core of net neutrality. Sci-hub's repeated evictions from their rented, DNS-resolved internet names were done by the centralized parties that have technical control over the names, not ISPs or mobile data providers.

not even non-payment. poor people are disproportionately affected by non-payment cancellations. might be ok if it were means-tested, like only allowing non-payment shut-offs if the customer is above the mean income (even for small businesses).

“Poor people are disproportionately affected by not having enough money to purchase things”

In a number of countries there are legal provisions to prevent cutting access to vital resources for non payment.

E.g. in winter times booting out renters or cutting heating/electricity is forbidden. Applying the same for internet isn’t far fetched anymore IMO.

that’s a reductio ad absurdum via tautology, but the effects are wide-ranging and can include freezing/overheating to death (for instance) from not having adequate heating/cooling. that’s inhumane and abhorrent, especially in the richest nations of the world.

While I agree with you, that's something the US elites decided long ago they don't care about. Chilling, really.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com