Ask HN: What impact would the repeal of net neutrality have?

[aliakhtar]

Especially on developers, startups, and the tech ecosystem.

E.g, will the repeal of NN only affect large media companies like Netflix / Youtube, or will it impact the web at large, and limit the distribution of smaller, non-media related startups?

[otalp]

The argument is that it would allow an ISP to provide you packages with only your favourite sites at top speeds(a Facebook/Netflix/YouTube package with ISP services bundled in) at a lower cost than the "full internet" at high speeds. This would mean that it would be virtually impossible for a startup to disrupt google/facebook/youtube if most of the population don't have access to the full internet at equal speeds.

It would be the death knell for internet innovation if ISPs stop providing customers with equal access to the entire internet. How can you create a startup competing with YouTube, if most people have a package that gives YouTube faster internet speeds?

You might also have deals where say, Disney has an agreement with Comcast to give it's streaming service(or Comcasts own streaming service) the highest speeds at low costs while not giving Netflix(or other streamings sites) the same priority. That would mean over time the largest corporation wins, competition is dead and progress is severely hampered.

[sleavey]

Death knell for US internet innovation. Other countries with net neutrality might take up the vacuum left by decimated Valley startups. Obviously without the US market accessing your services at full speed you'll not grow as quickly, but the opportunity is there.

(I'm still not in support of repealing net neutrality, obviously)

[dalbasal]

For fairness, I think I should state the opposing position.

By creating packaged services, internet access (though not "neutral" access to all parts of the internet equally) could become cheaper for a lot of people. FB could choose (they do this, notably in low income countries) to pay the ISP costs so their users can use the service for free. Google could do the same.

Access to the internet could use the same economic levers that exist widely on the internet, which have a tendency to free, and to expansive participation.

The likes of Google & FB stand to benefit most from (for example) connecting the last 50% in low income countries. They have the resources to pay for it. Letting them will (at the margin) mean more access for more people. It's hard to argue that for those people, theoretical net neutrality is worth more than net access.

^I'm on the other side of this position. But, I think it's hard to justify it on "normal" grounds, by analogy to other industries or abstract legal/legislative principles. Effectively, net neutrality means limiting the competitive scope of one part of the internet to enrich the comptetitive dynamics of another part. In practice, I think this is a really good thing. But it's hard to put that into legislatively acceptable terms, which are supposed to be based on general principles.

You need to accept a judgemnt call. The ISPs' job is less important, on the margin. The innovative potential of (for example) the web is enourmous in comparison. ISPs are infrastructure businesses, naturally oligopolistic and with a tendency towards corporate or state cronyism. The web is a platform where you can actually compete for a patch without a global-scale war chest. We have lots of examples of winners that won because they were good, even though they had few resources.

All that said, the internet itself is becoming so centralized that the argument is getting muddied.

[spondyl]

Regarding the idea of "packages", here is an example of this in action: https://qz.com/1114690/why-is-net-neutrality-important-look-...

[jfoutz]

The thing that bugs me is common carrier. Once you start discriminating traffic, you’re not common carrier. You should lose those protections.

[digitalengineer]

If the ISP's decide to throttle, my guess is GOOGL/FB/APPLE would set up their own wireless ISP's. Largest cities first. Of course they might decide to counter-throttle services the original ISP made shady deals with?

[aliakhtar]

> How can you create a startup competing with YouTube, if most people have a package that gives YouTube faster internet speeds?

In this scenario, is it only competitors of Facebook/Youtube/Netflix that would be slowed down, or would all websites / blogs / other startup sites also slow down?

[featherverse]

They wouldn't do it at a lower cost. They'd charge you $50 for E-mail, $100 for streaming video, or $120 for the whole bundle. It would match their existing model for bundled services.

[michaelbrave]

Short answer: look at Portugal but worse.

In most countries, it wouldn't matter too much as the market forces could in effect nearly cause them to self-regulate.

That said the current state of the internet in the USA is a different story. Regions are locked in with legislation making micro monopolies, This is especially true with apartment complexes. There are laws that prevent competition. local governments have won and lost elections based around the issue of allowing for more competition with the current ISP's. Meanwhile, some of the smallest towns feel almost forced into needing to create their own, as they aren't receiving proper coverage from the larger companies, not in cell towers or landlines.

There have already been examples of sites being throttled to be nearly useless, and some sites blocked, other sites are intentionally sped up to be misleading(speedtest.net vs fast.com - they don't match up because speedtest is usually boosted to mislead how fast your internet is).

Cell providers have done things like block payment apps, instead only supporting a proprietary payment app which I believe is a great example of how competition can and would be stifled.

I believe I heard that for a time the ISP's slowed down Netflix until Netflix paid them off.

So to conclude, it would be the slow erosion of freedom of speech, a swift decline in innovation, prices for services like Netflix would rise, and if we are lucky they would only nickel and dime us more (think microtransactions) instead of blocking out entire chunks of the internet. The USA would lose its dominance technologically, investment in internet companies would slow, the best minds would hesitate to move here, ones we already have would think about leaving, Europe and Canada would have a chance to shine.

The only good that would come from it is large ISP's make more money, and Republicans would feel like they have a win.

[twblalock]

> So to conclude, it would be the slow erosion of freedom of speech, a swift decline in innovation, prices for services like Netflix would rise, and if we are lucky they would only nickel and dime us more (think microtransactions) instead of blocking out entire chunks of the internet. The USA would lose its dominance technologically, investment in internet companies would slow, the best minds would hesitate to move here, ones we already have would think about leaving, Europe and Canada would have a chance to shine.

Given that the US has never really had net neutrality, why hasn't this scenario already come to pass?

[Pilfer]

>repeal of net neutrality

It irks me whenever people say this, because technically net neutrality (As defined here [1]) has never fully existed in the US. In the US there is no law, and there never has been a law, mandating net neutrality. The government can't repeal net neutrality because there's no law to repeal in the first place. Using 'repeal' is the wrong word here, and really muddles the issue.

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

[colejohnson66]

If it’s not being repealed, then what is it Ajit Pai is trying to do? What’s the correct term?

[Loic]

We nearly have that in Germany at the mobile data level. Just this WE, I was walking in the street and a big offer from Vodafone targeting youths was special contracts with "Pass", one was unlimited WhatsApp data[0]. They are not limiting to WhatsApp (Telegram is in it), but I suppose in the future they can easily make a deal with WhatsApp and offer only unlimited for WhatsApp and then the new comers are automatically out of the game.

[0]: https://www.vodafone.de/privat/service/vodafone-pass.html

[lauritz]

This kind of thing has been done for a couple of years now, if I understand the Vodafone offer correctly. Binge On in the U.S. (or StreamOn in Germany) by T-Mobile is the same thing, and the Deutsche Telekom used to offer a plan where you get free Spotify streaming, no matter the state of your data plan.

But then again: Does this kind of marketing touch the _core_ problem of net neutrality? You could argue that--as long as the user's high-speed data is intact--all of these services operate at the same speed.

Of course, this is an incentive to users to choose Spotify or WhatsApp over some competitor, but you could argue that _because_ they're giving you the same speed for everything as long as you still have data, it's not as bad as other approaches (not that I think it's a good thing).

Then again, it probably is a really slippery slope.

[binarnosp]

New European regulations explicitly forbid this: I had a Deezer bundle in my mobile contract which allowed unlimited data when streaming deezer music. Then 2 years ago I received a letter from my mobile provider stating that because of the new law my Deezer bundle was no longer valid (same monthly fee, of course).

[HatchedLake721]

WE?

[PaulRobinson]

I've stated in the past that I think the market will make the choice to go with ISPs that don't "bundle" sites and NN will win. It was pointed out to me that in many parts of the World there is no competition, and therefore the cheaper "bundle" packages will eventually win out.

It will kill the startup, because you'll need the cash to take on the established players.

It will kill off blogging and independent publishing on the web because most sites will be inaccessible to most consumers.

In short, it will turn the Internet into a closed wall system controlled by those with the money, much like network television is.

[alfredallan]

So, in order to preserve NN, it is the USA, and not sub Saharan Africa that really needs a project Loon (not run by google, ideally).

[Simulacra]

At first, likely nothing. Then over time, the corporations that control the Internet pipelines, like baggage fees, will slowly start to creep in, become established, and increase. The Overton window will be shifted over time, so that it all feels natural.

[chx]

A lot of things people talk about would involve the ISP having infrastructure changes to facilitate more charges which might or might not make fiscal sense (it is not that easy to prioritize Facebook) . But one thing they can practically immediately do is hose you on gaming (or VoIP, same). Whether you pay or not pay for the gaming package your routing can be changed to have more or less latency to everyone outside of the ISP network simply by putting you on more outdated sections of backhaul, worse peering links etc. I am truly afraid they can make this very bad with extremely little effort.

[CodeWriter23]

Let’s say Charter decides to blacklist all Shopify ip addresses from routing into their network, then tells online merchants if they want to sell to customers who chose Charter, they have to buy “enhanced” ecommerce hosting from Charter. And then AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Sprint all do the same.

And of course, Charter only takes product feeds in JSON, AT&T only tab-delimited, Comcast only XML, Verizon only CSV. It’ll be great for ChannelAdvisor and curtains for anyone who can’t afford their costly services.

You’ll still need that Shopify account to reach customers on smaller ISPs.

[maxsavin]

This is already happening in the rest of the world. Here's how it works:

In many places, having a data plan is not affordable. It might cost $10 per month, but it's a lot since most people in the developing world make like $200 per month.

So, companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc, offer SIM cards that have free data for their services. Customers get a free service, and they get the customer.

The biggest issue I see there is, it helps big companies get bigger, and there's no real way to for small companies to get in on these kinds of deals.

[CodeWriter23]

Let’s say you pay $0.09/GB for transit for your servers hosted on AWS. How would you like to pay $0.50/GB on top of that to Comcast for the last 10 Miles of Transit?

[blackbagboys]

My hope is that the inevitable price-gouging and strangulation of service quality spurs efforts to turn telecom infrastructure into a public utility

[alfredallan]

Why do you think this is a likely outcome? Considering that nothing of the sort has happened with airlines or network tv.

[_nalply]

In Switzerland Sunrise offers a plan with free traffic for WhatsApp. This means Deaf people can send each other Signed Language videos without limits by WhatsApp.

I work for a non profit developing video communication solutions tailored to the specific needs of the Signed Language communities. For example, audio is not necessary, perhaps even detrimental because Deaf people don't realise problems with audio like feedback or embarassing noises during a call. Or degradation on bad connectivity. This is subtle. Signed Language communication needs a constant framerate to prevent jerkiness of the expressions. Just reduce image quality instead! Ugly block artifacts don't impede understandability.

In other words: ISPs zero rating WhatsApp is blatant discrimination of Signed Language communities. This also concerns phone relays and other services.

[RyanZAG]

Surely it's better for the deaf people to have unlimited free video communication even if it is worse quality? I understand how it would be really bad for you trying to sell the superior service, but it should be about the desires of the deaf people at the end of the day. If they want superior quality that you can sell them, then they can just pay extra for it. Maybe free whatsapp is perfectly fine?

[noahster11]

What I don't understand about NN is how it would be enforced. Would whitelisting services equate to whitelisting ip's? That seems problematic considering how many companies use AWS or another cloud platform as a cdn or server. Wouldn't Amazon, Google, Microsoft be for NN as it would directly affect their cloud services?

[PaulRobinson]

DNS is a thing. Keep a list of accepted domains. As DNS resolution occurs populate a cache of IP addresses that you can then whitelist. Not hard, a competent developer could build something solid in a week or so using existing tools.

[croon]

Think of it this way:

America without net neutrality is like AOL, and the rest of the world will be what the internet outside of AOL was.

[swarnie_]

Hopefully if America insist on shooting itself in the foot Europe and Asia can pick up some easy startup slack.

[basicplus2]

Everyone will pay more