I live in a small-ish market in the Northeast that has been under Time Warner's thumb (now Spectrum) for some time. Since moving here ~2012 there has been the promise of fiber to the home by a small local ISP. To everyone's surprise, and even TWC, expansion started really happening in 2016 and has exploded since for this same small ISP. They're relying on actual order fulfillment with payment once property easements are settled and engineering completes in what they designate as individual districts. With packages promising 100mbit/10mbit as base for $50/month and up to 1gbps/100mbps for $100 ($110 for static IP) TWC couldn't come close (30mbit/5mbit for $70+ at the time I was able to switch in spring 2016). This expansion prompted TWC to expand their packages after the Charter merger but they still cannot deliver what this now growing ISP can promise at similar cost.
This is what Net Neutrality means to these large ISP's. Giving equal footing to consumers and small businesses they have been fleecing for so long though nowhere near actually being equal. It's clear people are fed up and can express that. Pai & his FCC removing any semblance of voice to that public is shameful and unethical and clearly, as has been stated over the previous months, not based in fact.
Hi neighbor. After the Charter merger Spectrum dropped my grandfathered $35 plan, so now I'm switching to <small local ISP> since I'm lucky enough to have enough interest in my neighborhood to have service from them. Glad to FINALLY have some competition around here.
Supposedly "anti-regulation" forces energetically oppose Net Neutrality -- but don't expect them to follow through and remove the regulations that protect the telco monopolies.
"Anti-regulation" rhetoric against Net Neutrality is either sock puppetry or useful idiocy.
Actually, I and a number of other engineers submitted comments on this proceeding to that effect. Pai's argument is, in part, that ISPs provide access to information services (social networking sites, email, video streaming, etc.) and should therefore be considered information services. Of course, any form of communication, even carrier pigeons, can be used to communicate over the Internet, so in theory what he is saying is that nothing can be regulated under Title II.
The FCC's draft rules respond to this objection by simply dismissing it. The draft rules basically dismiss all commentary that did not come from ISPs as "not persuasive." The only reason any of those comments were cited at all is to prove that all submitted commentary was considered, something that is legally required of them.
"Anti-regulation" rhetoric against Net Neutrality is either sock puppetry or useful idiocy.
A lot of it is just a misunderstanding of how the Internet works and what net neutrality is. Many conservatives will give arguments like "you should be able to charge people more if they're watching Netflix all the time and using lots of bandwidth". Which is true, but to show why that's irrelevant to net neutrality you have to go into the details of routing and peering and you'll lose most people three sentences in. See the comments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0iv4nmPz8A&lc=UgwIM85WNrVRv..., where a few conservatives who work in tech try to explain what's going on, without much success.
I keep seeing everywhere comments against Net Neutrality using this argument. And saying that it cripples free market, because new ISPs wouldn't be able to compete having the expense of regulatory compliance. But _nobody_, absolutely no one explained to me _why_ would it cost even a cent to ensure Net Neutrality (that is not part of ensuring a quality service in general). We should ask this more when discussing that argument, because it seems there's a lot of people truly believing this having that notion unchallenged.
Unregulated Capitalism in the very reason monopolies are created. Founder of Capitalism favoured an economy where a lot of small companies competed together to the benefit of consumers. He also recommended regulations where natural monopolies arise due to limited supply. As an example, he recommended heavy taxes on rent seeking[1].
This is a case of American Capitalism taken to its logically conclusion where any regulation makes it anti competitive. American psyche is so attuned to "Free Market" that anything lazy argument will be invoked.
On the contrary we have Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in India which has done wonders for us. Our market is highly regulated, yet we enjoy cheapest ISP services. We have also favoured Net Neutrality by opposing Facebook[2] when they came knocking on our door and now its part of our regulations after a year long deliberation [3].
The net neutrality order from 2015 did more than just mandate network neutrality. It also requires ISPs to keep certain records, possibly beyond their business needs (and other legal mandates). It also requires ISPs to make information available to the public via their own websites, which costs at least a cent ;).
Yes, it's all weak and such costs would be covered by just one month of customer bill payment, but ISPs like to complain and Ajit Pai has made a big show of addressing these costs. For example, the FCC will host information about ISP practices for any ISP that finds it too burdensome to have a website of their own.
One bit of irony here is that the ISPs have argued that there is too much uncertainty surrounding the Title II regulations. Today the FCC does not impose rate regulation, for example, but maybe tomorrow's FCC will. Of course, now it is becoming clear that the rules will change whenever the presidency changes parties, so if anything it would seem that there is far more regulatory uncertainty with Pai's approach.
Comcast sells digital video services for hefty subscription fees to tens of millions of its customers. Those video services presumably use bandwidth that could be used by Google, Netflix or any of a dozen other competitors if the customer preferred. Under Title II, what stops the FCC from mandating that Comcast “open the box” and allow all competitors access to that bandwidth in a neutral fashion?
That’s the argument. Title II is just a framework for regulations that could potentially turn ISPs into true “dumb pipes”. While many have convinced themselves that would be great for everyone, there’s not a lot of money in the dumb pipe business.
To put it another way: 10 cent SMS messages built a lot of cell towers!
Net neutrality cripples rent extraction by semi-institutionalized quasi monopolies and tapestry of highly bureaucratic resistant to instant competition environment.
While I agree it doesn’t cripple some investment. I can see how it can cripple other investments. It’s essentially choosing a winner and declaring the other folks to be utilities without actually calling them utilities.
I've seen some similar language from some politicians, but they have been confused over the difference between an ISP and a web site. To use a meat space analogy, they can't tell the difference between a taxi company and Walmart, and think that they both should fall under the same regulatory framework and have the same rules.
It used to, but the current administration is intentionally handing the control of various regulatory agencies over to the industries that they regulate.
There is little reason in trying to argue with those in charge of the FCC, EPA, etc., because they very obviously don't care about arguments based on public benefit or their agencies' traditional mission. They are interested in creating a regulatory environment that is more profitable for the entrenched players, that is all. And they are going to do that, as long as they have the power to do so, and damn what anyone has to say about it.
Ajit motherfucking Pai doesn't care what anyone in the public sphere thinks about him; he's almost certainly doing what he's doing, in full knowledge of how hated it's going to make him, in exchange for some sort of payback on the back end that he believes is worthwhile. Presumably "fuck you" money; enough that he thinks he can live comfortably and ignore the people he pissed off to get there.
I do not think that there is much that can be done, presently, to stop these people. However, I do think there is, or rather will be, an opportunity once they leave office to discourage anyone from doing it again, by doing all that is possible to prevent them from simply retiring comfortably from the public eye and enjoying their ill-gotten wealth. Anything that can be done to disrupt their lives on a personal level, keep the public aware of their doings and whereabouts, and prevent them from knowing peace, will be a good warning to others who might consider doing the same. I have no faith in the legal system to do this, so it will need to be done extralegally through the press and social pressure.
I’m pretty sure I can explain the decline in investment in 2015. The tl;dr version: Time Warner cooked the books by cutting spending on essential maintenance during the proposed acquisition by Comcast.
Here’s why I come to that conclusion. In early 2015, I had TWC Business Class installed at our Downtown LA warehouse. One day, the time between scanning a shipment to print the shipping documents and the acknowledgment beep from the system grew from sub-second to 15-30 seconds. The scanning would trigger access to an internet-hosted database to update the order, and would initiate a label request to our postage provider. The label requests would time out. It was huge headache for us.
I begin my investigation by pinging my local router. Nice 1-2ms responses. Pinged the modem, again 1-2ms responses. Tried pinging 8.8.8.8 and WOW! 1200-15000ms response times. FIFTEEN SECONDS for an ICMP request/reply! And a lot of packet loss to boot. I worked around the problem by using my phone as a hot spot for the computers in the warehouse.
I called TWC and since it was Business Class, they rolled a truck within 4 hours. The tech was from a third-party contractor and was very competent by all appearances. He was astonished by my observations. He put his scope on the line in my unit and saw a minor deviation in signal loss. He replaced the drop from the pole to my unit, and said the female receptacle on the pole looked a little worn so he moved the new drop to a new location on the terminal. And the ping times went back.
But the story doesn't end there; in fact this went on for nearly 2 months. During periods of the day, the lag and timeouts would occur. I improved the software to add some retries to the postage provider if the label request failed. I started pinging 8.8.8.8 on a constant basis so I could show the patterns of packet loss and high latency. About the third visit from the same tech, he told me that card in my local node was oversubscribed. He said a single card was intended to serve about 250 customers and that my card had about 600 customers on it.
I hammered on TWC for weeks. I coordinated with my neighbors who understood what "oversubscribed" meant and spoke decent English to do the same. After about 8 weeks, the same tech came knocking and told me the node had been upgraded and wanted to check in. Ping times were great. We had no problems after that.
Sounds like a one-off just bad luck, right? Not so fast. Fast forward about a year. The TWC/Comcast merger is off. I'm sitting at home one day, using my TWC consumer service. Something took to long to load, so I looked a little further, and what do you know? Long ass ping times to 8.8.8.8 and packet loss. I call. I have to wait days for the truck to arrive because I'm not Business Class at home. One tech comes out and observes a few db of signal loss and decides to replace the drop from the pole. I point out the drop was only about 2 years old and was replaced due to a different problem. It's now a two man job, and we wait for the second tech. Once he arrives, they cheerfully install a new drop, and then the problem didn't go away. I told them based on my experience I thought the local node was oversubscribed. They punted and said someone else would come the following day. They arrive with two techs and a lead or engineer. The lead calls various plays to rule out numerous things. After about an hour, they have ruled everything out. He confirms my local node has an excess of subscribers on it but they had not seen it causing this kind of problem before. He pulls up a network schematic on his ToughBook, and isolates the identifier of my local node. Then he switches to - THE SMOKING GUN - a list of about 25 or 30 node identifiers, each with a date in the second column. It's a maintenance schedule to upgrade the nodes that they let languish during the TWC/Comcast acquisition phase. He tells me my node will be upgraded in about 3 months and they leave. About 3 months later, I got a follow up call. Things worked fine, case closed.
I filed a story tip with Ars Technica about this. They never got back to me.
[+] [-] philamonster|8 years ago|reply
This is what Net Neutrality means to these large ISP's. Giving equal footing to consumers and small businesses they have been fleecing for so long though nowhere near actually being equal. It's clear people are fed up and can express that. Pai & his FCC removing any semblance of voice to that public is shameful and unethical and clearly, as has been stated over the previous months, not based in fact.
[+] [-] treis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmageggy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simon_says|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rectang|8 years ago|reply
"Anti-regulation" rhetoric against Net Neutrality is either sock puppetry or useful idiocy.
[+] [-] betterunix2|8 years ago|reply
The FCC's draft rules respond to this objection by simply dismissing it. The draft rules basically dismiss all commentary that did not come from ISPs as "not persuasive." The only reason any of those comments were cited at all is to prove that all submitted commentary was considered, something that is legally required of them.
[+] [-] orangecat|8 years ago|reply
A lot of it is just a misunderstanding of how the Internet works and what net neutrality is. Many conservatives will give arguments like "you should be able to charge people more if they're watching Netflix all the time and using lots of bandwidth". Which is true, but to show why that's irrelevant to net neutrality you have to go into the details of routing and peering and you'll lose most people three sentences in. See the comments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0iv4nmPz8A&lc=UgwIM85WNrVRv..., where a few conservatives who work in tech try to explain what's going on, without much success.
[+] [-] jswizzy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiThi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drieddust|8 years ago|reply
This is a case of American Capitalism taken to its logically conclusion where any regulation makes it anti competitive. American psyche is so attuned to "Free Market" that anything lazy argument will be invoked.
On the contrary we have Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in India which has done wonders for us. Our market is highly regulated, yet we enjoy cheapest ISP services. We have also favoured Net Neutrality by opposing Facebook[2] when they came knocking on our door and now its part of our regulations after a year long deliberation [3].
[1] https://www.prosper.org.au/about/geoists-in-history/adam-smi...
[2] http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/TRAI-ru...
[3] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/trai-differential-data-pr...
[+] [-] betterunix2|8 years ago|reply
Yes, it's all weak and such costs would be covered by just one month of customer bill payment, but ISPs like to complain and Ajit Pai has made a big show of addressing these costs. For example, the FCC will host information about ISP practices for any ISP that finds it too burdensome to have a website of their own.
One bit of irony here is that the ISPs have argued that there is too much uncertainty surrounding the Title II regulations. Today the FCC does not impose rate regulation, for example, but maybe tomorrow's FCC will. Of course, now it is becoming clear that the rules will change whenever the presidency changes parties, so if anything it would seem that there is far more regulatory uncertainty with Pai's approach.
[+] [-] twoodfin|8 years ago|reply
That’s the argument. Title II is just a framework for regulations that could potentially turn ISPs into true “dumb pipes”. While many have convinced themselves that would be great for everyone, there’s not a lot of money in the dumb pipe business.
To put it another way: 10 cent SMS messages built a lot of cell towers!
[+] [-] perlpimp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Crontab|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjrose|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|8 years ago|reply
I've seen some similar language from some politicians, but they have been confused over the difference between an ISP and a web site. To use a meat space analogy, they can't tell the difference between a taxi company and Walmart, and think that they both should fall under the same regulatory framework and have the same rules.
[+] [-] nkkollaw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kadin|8 years ago|reply
There is little reason in trying to argue with those in charge of the FCC, EPA, etc., because they very obviously don't care about arguments based on public benefit or their agencies' traditional mission. They are interested in creating a regulatory environment that is more profitable for the entrenched players, that is all. And they are going to do that, as long as they have the power to do so, and damn what anyone has to say about it.
Ajit motherfucking Pai doesn't care what anyone in the public sphere thinks about him; he's almost certainly doing what he's doing, in full knowledge of how hated it's going to make him, in exchange for some sort of payback on the back end that he believes is worthwhile. Presumably "fuck you" money; enough that he thinks he can live comfortably and ignore the people he pissed off to get there.
I do not think that there is much that can be done, presently, to stop these people. However, I do think there is, or rather will be, an opportunity once they leave office to discourage anyone from doing it again, by doing all that is possible to prevent them from simply retiring comfortably from the public eye and enjoying their ill-gotten wealth. Anything that can be done to disrupt their lives on a personal level, keep the public aware of their doings and whereabouts, and prevent them from knowing peace, will be a good warning to others who might consider doing the same. I have no faith in the legal system to do this, so it will need to be done extralegally through the press and social pressure.
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|8 years ago|reply
Here’s why I come to that conclusion. In early 2015, I had TWC Business Class installed at our Downtown LA warehouse. One day, the time between scanning a shipment to print the shipping documents and the acknowledgment beep from the system grew from sub-second to 15-30 seconds. The scanning would trigger access to an internet-hosted database to update the order, and would initiate a label request to our postage provider. The label requests would time out. It was huge headache for us.
I begin my investigation by pinging my local router. Nice 1-2ms responses. Pinged the modem, again 1-2ms responses. Tried pinging 8.8.8.8 and WOW! 1200-15000ms response times. FIFTEEN SECONDS for an ICMP request/reply! And a lot of packet loss to boot. I worked around the problem by using my phone as a hot spot for the computers in the warehouse.
I called TWC and since it was Business Class, they rolled a truck within 4 hours. The tech was from a third-party contractor and was very competent by all appearances. He was astonished by my observations. He put his scope on the line in my unit and saw a minor deviation in signal loss. He replaced the drop from the pole to my unit, and said the female receptacle on the pole looked a little worn so he moved the new drop to a new location on the terminal. And the ping times went back.
But the story doesn't end there; in fact this went on for nearly 2 months. During periods of the day, the lag and timeouts would occur. I improved the software to add some retries to the postage provider if the label request failed. I started pinging 8.8.8.8 on a constant basis so I could show the patterns of packet loss and high latency. About the third visit from the same tech, he told me that card in my local node was oversubscribed. He said a single card was intended to serve about 250 customers and that my card had about 600 customers on it.
I hammered on TWC for weeks. I coordinated with my neighbors who understood what "oversubscribed" meant and spoke decent English to do the same. After about 8 weeks, the same tech came knocking and told me the node had been upgraded and wanted to check in. Ping times were great. We had no problems after that.
Sounds like a one-off just bad luck, right? Not so fast. Fast forward about a year. The TWC/Comcast merger is off. I'm sitting at home one day, using my TWC consumer service. Something took to long to load, so I looked a little further, and what do you know? Long ass ping times to 8.8.8.8 and packet loss. I call. I have to wait days for the truck to arrive because I'm not Business Class at home. One tech comes out and observes a few db of signal loss and decides to replace the drop from the pole. I point out the drop was only about 2 years old and was replaced due to a different problem. It's now a two man job, and we wait for the second tech. Once he arrives, they cheerfully install a new drop, and then the problem didn't go away. I told them based on my experience I thought the local node was oversubscribed. They punted and said someone else would come the following day. They arrive with two techs and a lead or engineer. The lead calls various plays to rule out numerous things. After about an hour, they have ruled everything out. He confirms my local node has an excess of subscribers on it but they had not seen it causing this kind of problem before. He pulls up a network schematic on his ToughBook, and isolates the identifier of my local node. Then he switches to - THE SMOKING GUN - a list of about 25 or 30 node identifiers, each with a date in the second column. It's a maintenance schedule to upgrade the nodes that they let languish during the TWC/Comcast acquisition phase. He tells me my node will be upgraded in about 3 months and they leave. About 3 months later, I got a follow up call. Things worked fine, case closed.
I filed a story tip with Ars Technica about this. They never got back to me.
[+] [-] CASHforGOLD|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] guest|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]