One of the biggest arguments I remember being made back when net neutrality was a hot topic was that ISPs would bundle and sell specific websites as tiered plans. Infographics like this one [1] were shared widely. Has this happened in the US? I’ve definitely seen ISPs start to apply data caps and throttling, but haven’t seen the aforementioned packaging (at least with the major ISPs). I ask because this is one of the easy arguments that got many of my less technical friends and family to understand the risks. But if it never happened, they might start to think it’s just a scare tactic and be less interested in vocally supporting it this time around.
We have gotten it, but with services not websites. Mobile providers will sell you an "Unlimited" data plan that throttles everything after 25GB a month. Streaming Spotify and Apple Music won't count against that soft data cap. Streaming other music services will count against it. Video streaming over YouTube, Netflix, etc is capped at 480p levels. If you pay an additional monthly fee, you get upgraded to "Unlimited Plus" which will increase your soft cap to 40GB a month and your video streaming quality to 1080p. It'll also bundle in Netflix's basic level and give you 6 months of Apple+ for "free".
The sky was supposed to fall if net neutrality were abrogated, and IME, that hasn't happened. The only change I (and people I know) witnessed was throttling once broad data limits were exceeded, which IIRC wasn't what was at stake, and which I for one didn't object to, i.e., that people would have to pay for what they use. In short, I have not seen bandwidth or pricing weaponized at all to target specific businesses other than for morally objectionable content. Maybe my awareness is limited - I can't confirm that!
I seem to recall seeing it more a few years ago but there were definitely "Unlimited whatsapp" etc. style deals around. Maybe it's less relevant as data has gotten cheap enough so as to be a non-issue for most people.
ISPs are offering 'Netflix-included' or discounted Disney+ plans. I don't know how they account for downloads from these services but the bundling is definitely happening.
It happens on airplanes and paid WiFi. Some allow free browsing of certain sites and charge for full access. Some airlines charge more for streaming access. Some provide basic messaging on a low priced tier.
It's more insidious than simply bundling together access to certain websites. The main way that ISPs extract $$ out of content providers is by charging the content providers to peer to their network. If there isn't a recurring peering agreement in place, the ISP will let the content provider's peering interface overload which drives service quality down. Of course, the ISP ensures /their/ content provider is always on an interface with plenty of bandwidth to spare.
People were screwed, but not like this. ISP's mostly put the screws to streaming services. Just point them to Netflix's price hikes shortly after they felt the effects of NN getting repealed in ~2019, or the constant back and forth between Verizon and Netflix.
Mobile customers didn't get away scot free though. This did enable mobile service providers to offer more tiered plans, which on average raised prices on worse service via caps and throttled speeds. Some people may still be "grandfathered" in to old unlimited plans, but a lot of people either paid more, got worse service, or both.
No, nothing of that sort has happened in the US because the rules for NN haven't changed. It was a created internet hype machine to push more new restrictive rules by acting like chicken little and shouting that the sky was falling.
They don’t upgrade their interconnects with other residential ISPs which is making it hard for decentralized alternatives to displace the big cloud based vendors.
I’m with you, but “bundling” sites like cable companies bundle channels is not even a correct analogy. Doing so would fundamentally break the internet as we know it and I am pretty certain the site owners wouldn’t like it either, since it could break ad-delivery. It would be a complicated mess that the ISPs would have to backpedal on. The simpler solution is just to change more money for everything and throttle, though I suppose they could create app-only access like what you’re describing (basically no direct access to port 80 via normal browsers). Or, recreate the glory days of something like AOL.
Instead, we’re going to do is further entrench local monopolies, since only the large guys will be able to afford to comply with regulation.
You literally can’t force corporate Americas to act beneficial to their consumers of incentives are misaligned. It takes literal FDA-levels of regulation to accomplish that, and even that has failures while generally making the entire process expensive while consolidating things down to just a few market players.
A lot of people in these comments are making the case that removing net neutrality didn’t do much harm, so why bother bringing it back. Let me make the counterclaim.
The argument against net neutrality is that it might stifle innovation. Well, we had net neutrality for many years and innovation didn’t seem all that stifled. Hence, what’s the harm in bringing it back?
If you believed the scare tactics at the time, losing net neutrality literally threatened the end of the internet as we know it. But my internet has worked the same before, during, and after net neutrality. I really don't get what all the fuss is about.
However, if you really do believe this is a civilization defining piece of regulation, Why leave it to the FCC? It seems like people on both sides are happy to leave this super duper important decision to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. Everyone loves executive overreach when its their side that does it I guess.
A lot of these comments reflect never having lived in a rural or underserved area.
Like most services in life, if you live a relatively upper class life in a competitive market, things like net neutrality are probably not gonna be very loud on your radar.
I work closely with an ISP in my field. It seems to me that the biggest threat to customer choice is independent ISP's being able to provide service through the building out of the cable infrastructure, at least in northern California. Most municipalities have a grandfathered in cable network from ATT and Comcast, because of this they have been recently dictating how and when ISP can deploy their service.
Because of the democrat to republican administration change in the past, the rules have changed regarding line sharing and infrastructure build out. In many cases, the big players, who were previously prevented from interfering with other ISP's build-out, are now able to actively make it more difficult (costly) for independent ISP's from expanding their network.
If this continues, its going to put smaller ISP's out of business. So IMHO, this is more important that forcing the big players to play by the net neutrality rules in regards to throttling services, Id go so far as to say they are using that as red herring to distract people from the real problem. If there is no competition, you don't have anywhere to go when an ISP suddenly decides to do something that is anti-competitive.
BUT We owe it to ourselves to go and look at all the fearmongering they were putting out about ending net neutrality and figuring out why it didn’t come to pass.
And hopefully learning from that for future policy debates.
I don't know why I have to keep explaining the history of this. What people call "Net Neutrality" is just how the internet (and ARPANET before it) had always worked. No one had contemplated it working in any other way.
Then Verizon came along and started blocking well-known VPN ports unless you paid for a "business" account. The FCC responded with "Net Neutrality" saying no, you can't just decide to block certain protocols, websites, or services for monetary reasons. QoS should be enforced when requested by clients or for technical reasons (eg VoIP), not to create class tiers to squeeze both customers and the services they use for money on both ends. If you want more money raise your price of service.
If you think the bean counters at the big telco and cable companies aren't excited by the idea of charging you extra to use a VPN, a VoIP phone, and hitting the top 100 websites on the back end then I don't know what to tell you. Absent any legal barriers they can and they eventually will. Most people don't have meaningful competition so you'll take what daddy Comcast deigns to offer you or you can go back to 2Mbps ADSL.
Semi-unrelated, on bundling: about 20-25 years ago, there were a bunch of these tiny hyper-local ISPs in Russia that would wire up several adjacent flat blocks with a LAN, get an internet uplink and start signing customers within those flat blocks (your only other option at that time was dial-up). The uplink was probably expensive and so they charged per Gb (or had a very low cap) but... "a free local share with terabytes of warez, mp3s, movies and porn is included in your base fee!". I think it might have even been in the official ads, in a slightly less blatant form.
I fully support net neutrality. Those who oppose it, like former FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, are really just bowing to ISPs who want to charge companies like Netflix and Google for "pushing" data onto their networks.
But net neutrality isn't actually what we need. What we need is municipal broadband. The major ISPs in the US are objectively awful. The best Internet access in the US are in places with municipal broadband eg Chattanooga.
A good start would be regulating ISPs as a utility.
Good luck to them. I'm tired of all this prioritization, bundled services not counting against data caps, and using angry e-mails to make Tier-1 providers null-route websites.
I'd rather they focus on universal broadband access:
1) Set a minimum 1th percentile download and upload speeds and 99th percentile RTTs, bucketed in 1 minute intervals over a 30 day period. If an ISP falls below that for more than 1% of customers, then they automatically lose any right of way exclusivity that they hold, and also are broken into a common carrier and retail group.
2) If a telco is not meeting the universal access requirements in an area, then their networks are automatically transferred to a telco that is meeting the requirements. The receiving telco must hold the infrastructure until it meets SLAs for 10 years. If all the local telcos fail, then ownership reverts to a locally-owned (no more than 100K subscribers) co-ops.
At my previous job I worked on a digital campaign protesting the repeal of Net Neutrality[0].
It was a nice technical challenge to save (and render) those millions of leaflets. More about the project here[1]
This is good, but it's so obvious this was a super low priority thing for the Democrats. It's been almost three years since they took power, and they let the FCC sit in an Ajit Pai-inspired limbo for most of that time. They hit a roadblock and just stopped for years instead of adapting.
Net neutrality is gone, so why is the internet mostly the same (to people with money to spare for higher bandwidth tiers which are just as overpriced as the lower tiers)? Because STATES (Washington, Oregon, and California) passed net neutrality laws to partially compensate for the lack of regulation from the top [1].
But in the first place, net neutrality does nothing about affordability [2], subsidy fraud + corruption [3], deceptive pricing [4], and regulatory capture [5]. Net neutrality would be a relatively minor consequence of a competitive internet service market. In other words, net neutrality is a necessary outcome and nothing close to a sufficient condition.
Seems like the headline is misleading. The FCC is a tool of political will. Some politicians who will determine future FCC rule-making wish to reinstate net neutrality.
Seems like this back and forth could go on for some time. It would probably be better to come up with a solution that can supported across changes in control.
Given the discussion here it isn’t clear to me what the middle ground might be other than some scorched earth. Maybe net neutrality for consumer benefit only on a non discriminatory basis?
For example, a MVNO could not penalize any Internet traffic but they could offer a no capacity cap service as long as any other comparable service had the same access. Such a setup would probably be cause for a large number of lawyer billable hours which will make lawyers in both sides happy.
Provided network neutrality is limited to banning 'bundling' - meaning some services do not count against a data cap but others do - I think it's an unqualified good. If it goes beyond that, it gets stickier for wireless operators - because of the shared access medium inherent to wireless, you must do much more in the way of network optimization than you would on a wireline operator.
I'd be much more comfortable with treating information services as common carriers, which has an existing regulatory and interpretive framework to decide what that means - most of which can be directly applied to information services (internet access).
I get this is a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I don't trust the courts to decide cases which are highly technical in nature.
all good news but at this point I'd prefer if they can turn cable providers like my own Altice / Optimum into public utilities so I don't have to pay $110/month for 100 mpbs with zero alternatives, when my uncle in Wisconsin has 300 mpbs for less money.
[+] [-] cddotdotslash|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/%2B_Smar...
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|2 years ago|reply
https://www.androidauthority.com/freedompop-sim-card-unlimit... for instance (but that's old)
[+] [-] ejstronge|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aqme28|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] op00to|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmay|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dfxm12|2 years ago|reply
Mobile customers didn't get away scot free though. This did enable mobile service providers to offer more tiered plans, which on average raised prices on worse service via caps and throttled speeds. Some people may still be "grandfathered" in to old unlimited plans, but a lot of people either paid more, got worse service, or both.
[+] [-] mlindner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birdyrooster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temporallobe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|2 years ago|reply
Instead, we’re going to do is further entrench local monopolies, since only the large guys will be able to afford to comply with regulation.
You literally can’t force corporate Americas to act beneficial to their consumers of incentives are misaligned. It takes literal FDA-levels of regulation to accomplish that, and even that has failures while generally making the entire process expensive while consolidating things down to just a few market players.
[+] [-] KingLancelot|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cainxinth|2 years ago|reply
The argument against net neutrality is that it might stifle innovation. Well, we had net neutrality for many years and innovation didn’t seem all that stifled. Hence, what’s the harm in bringing it back?
[+] [-] dahfizz|2 years ago|reply
However, if you really do believe this is a civilization defining piece of regulation, Why leave it to the FCC? It seems like people on both sides are happy to leave this super duper important decision to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. Everyone loves executive overreach when its their side that does it I guess.
[+] [-] gdubs|2 years ago|reply
Like most services in life, if you live a relatively upper class life in a competitive market, things like net neutrality are probably not gonna be very loud on your radar.
[+] [-] trinsic2|2 years ago|reply
Because of the democrat to republican administration change in the past, the rules have changed regarding line sharing and infrastructure build out. In many cases, the big players, who were previously prevented from interfering with other ISP's build-out, are now able to actively make it more difficult (costly) for independent ISP's from expanding their network.
If this continues, its going to put smaller ISP's out of business. So IMHO, this is more important that forcing the big players to play by the net neutrality rules in regards to throttling services, Id go so far as to say they are using that as red herring to distract people from the real problem. If there is no competition, you don't have anywhere to go when an ISP suddenly decides to do something that is anti-competitive.
[+] [-] bilsbie|2 years ago|reply
BUT We owe it to ourselves to go and look at all the fearmongering they were putting out about ending net neutrality and figuring out why it didn’t come to pass.
And hopefully learning from that for future policy debates.
[+] [-] xenadu02|2 years ago|reply
Then Verizon came along and started blocking well-known VPN ports unless you paid for a "business" account. The FCC responded with "Net Neutrality" saying no, you can't just decide to block certain protocols, websites, or services for monetary reasons. QoS should be enforced when requested by clients or for technical reasons (eg VoIP), not to create class tiers to squeeze both customers and the services they use for money on both ends. If you want more money raise your price of service.
If you think the bean counters at the big telco and cable companies aren't excited by the idea of charging you extra to use a VPN, a VoIP phone, and hitting the top 100 websites on the back end then I don't know what to tell you. Absent any legal barriers they can and they eventually will. Most people don't have meaningful competition so you'll take what daddy Comcast deigns to offer you or you can go back to 2Mbps ADSL.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|2 years ago|reply
2015-2017 there was Net Neutrality. 2018-2023 there was not.
Empirically, the disaster that Net Neutrality claims to avoid, is hard to observe.
[+] [-] sershe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerkstate|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|2 years ago|reply
But net neutrality isn't actually what we need. What we need is municipal broadband. The major ISPs in the US are objectively awful. The best Internet access in the US are in places with municipal broadband eg Chattanooga.
A good start would be regulating ISPs as a utility.
[+] [-] causi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|2 years ago|reply
1) Set a minimum 1th percentile download and upload speeds and 99th percentile RTTs, bucketed in 1 minute intervals over a 30 day period. If an ISP falls below that for more than 1% of customers, then they automatically lose any right of way exclusivity that they hold, and also are broken into a common carrier and retail group.
1a) Throttled / non-prioritized / blocked services count toward the SLA.
2) If a telco is not meeting the universal access requirements in an area, then their networks are automatically transferred to a telco that is meeting the requirements. The receiving telco must hold the infrastructure until it meets SLAs for 10 years. If all the local telcos fail, then ownership reverts to a locally-owned (no more than 100K subscribers) co-ops.
[+] [-] woudsma|2 years ago|reply
[0]: https://paperstorm.it/
[1]: https://studiomoniker.com/projects/paperstorm
[+] [-] shockeychap|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tivert|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djoldman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_acker|2 years ago|reply
But in the first place, net neutrality does nothing about affordability [2], subsidy fraud + corruption [3], deceptive pricing [4], and regulatory capture [5]. Net neutrality would be a relatively minor consequence of a competitive internet service market. In other words, net neutrality is a necessary outcome and nothing close to a sufficient condition.
[1] https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-activities/net-neutrality-tr...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/what-low-income-people...
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/19/senator-ted-cruz-pretend...
[4] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/fcc-says-too-bad...
[5] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/07/after-years-of-stupid-ga...
[+] [-] adolph|2 years ago|reply
Seems like this back and forth could go on for some time. It would probably be better to come up with a solution that can supported across changes in control.
Given the discussion here it isn’t clear to me what the middle ground might be other than some scorched earth. Maybe net neutrality for consumer benefit only on a non discriminatory basis?
For example, a MVNO could not penalize any Internet traffic but they could offer a no capacity cap service as long as any other comparable service had the same access. Such a setup would probably be cause for a large number of lawyer billable hours which will make lawyers in both sides happy.
[+] [-] Aloha|2 years ago|reply
I'd be much more comfortable with treating information services as common carriers, which has an existing regulatory and interpretive framework to decide what that means - most of which can be directly applied to information services (internet access).
I get this is a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I don't trust the courts to decide cases which are highly technical in nature.
[+] [-] zzzeek|2 years ago|reply