Obama Urges F.C.C. to Adopt Strict Rules on Net Neutrality

Mr. Invisible said:

You do understand that the government isn't really engaging in restrictive regulation, rather they are protecting consumers from companies that want to slow down your online services in order to get more money from you?

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DVSentinel said:

Greater Freedom through Greater restrictive regulation. Typical Leftist BS.

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DVSentinel said:

You do understand that any regulation is by nature restrictive?

This type of regulation is not restrictive?

It doesn't place limits on how companies recoup costs and earn profits?

How is the current system really any different from what cable/satellite companies do with the "packages" they offer?

Does none of that money go towards building and up keep on the networks necessary to bring content to individual subscribers?

Should the individual consumer have to pay for all of the infrastructure alone?

Should low density population areas pay exorbitant cost compared to Urban areas or do without because providers cannot recoup the cost necessary to pay for the infrastructure?

And no, it doesn't cost me anything more. Since I live in a very Rural area, it would actually costs me less than if the few available providers only had such limited means to pay for the very infrastructure necessary to bring any content at all. I say would, because my current provider (only broadband available without going to a satellite company) doesn't restrict or charge companies more so their content can be provided faster. (It wouldn't be effective for them as the market they serve is simply too small for Companies like Netflix, etc to be willing to pay.)

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Mr. Invisible said:

You do understand that the government isn't really engaging in restrictive regulation, rather they are protecting consumers from companies that want to slow down your online services in order to get more money from you?

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DVSentinel said:

This type of regulation is not restrictive?

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It doesn't place limits on how companies recoup costs and earn profits?

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How is the current system really any different from what cable/satellite companies do with the "packages" they offer?

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Does none of that money go towards building and up keep on the networks necessary to bring content to individual subscribers?

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Should low density population areas pay exorbitant cost compared to Urban areas or do without because providers cannot recoup the cost necessary to pay for the infrastructure?

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PeteEU said:

LOL not afford to increase their network capacity? HAHAH. Listen we are talking about some of the biggest ISPs on the planet with some of the biggest pots of cash of all companies out there. You would be correct if it was a small ISP, but Verizone, Cox, Comcast, AT&T and so on.. hell no.

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PeteEU said:

I have seen this crap so many times before in Europe and because we have real competition here in the telecommunications market, then those who used such tactics would loose customers faster than you can read this sentence. And those doing it were often the biggest former state monopoly companies... which is a double irony because they are usually the ones with the 100 year maintenance and expansion contracts of the networks.

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PeteEU said:

No it depends on how you define bandwidth abusers and ISPs can define that any way they wish. I read a story about a woman on Comcast that was kicked off Comcast for watching too much Youtube.. I mean come on, even if you were running Youtube 24/7 then that would hardly set a blip on the radar ... this was before Youtube had HD btw.

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PeteEU said:

Then why are they proposing it, in the material they have sent to congress to get approval.. they are after all writing the so called "net neutrality" proposals...

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PeteEU said:

So you are saying that you can switch from Comcast to say Cox in the same area? (let me give you a hint.. no you cant).

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PeteEU said:

Alternatives are DSL, who have to rely on outdated telephone systems, satellite which aint an alternative at all and not much else. There is no real competition in most US markets, especially when it comes to cable provided internet.

Here in Spain, which is in the dark ages internet wise (relative speaking), I have the choice of at least 5 main ISPs, 3 cable operators, 4+ wireless (WiMax and 4G) providers, 3+ satellite providers and of course 3G mobile operators. Soon I will also have fiber optic connections (they digging up the road at the moment), which will add another 3+ providers easily.



Yes it is.. and those "communities" are a huge majority of the US.



Cant compete if there is only one option..



There is no competition in most of the US.. the main cities might have it, but out side those places.. hell no.

ISP lobby has already won limits on public broadband in 20 states | Ars Technica

There are so many limits on competition in the various states and they are being pushed by the telecommunications cartel.



Well considering the US has some of the highest prices in the industrialized world and no where near the fastest average speeds, then something is seriously wrong....and dont use the "we are a big country" bull**** excuse, because it is irrelevant.

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Visbek said:

It's not very restrictive. In fact, it's quite limited in scope. All it says is that ISPs should treat all packets equally.



Very few limits. What it really does is prevent companies from abusing a potential monopoly condition.



1) It's completely different. Bundling restricts consumer choice, and doesn't affect backend resources.

2) The package model completely sucks ass. Cable providers really ought to do a la carte, and refuse to do so because it's not to their benefit. They don't seem to care much about consumers or even channel operators.



Which money? The money they would extort from a company like Netflix, or the profits they'd reap by pushing competitive services onto subscribers when they hobble the competition?



You do realize your argument here is actually in favor of regulation, right?

ISP's lose money on providing broadband to rural areas. If it was an unregulated enterprise, they wouldn't do it. They offer it -- where they do offer it -- because of government intervention, FCC regulations and subsidies, or extracting promises from large ISPs during mergers. E.g. when AT&T and BellSouth merged, the FCC required that AT&T provide broadband to all the merged coverage areas, including rural regions. (A promise they apparently haven't kept, btw)

I.e. if it wasn't for government intervention, you probably wouldn't have broadband at all.

They won't use the excess revenues to invest in rural infrastructure. It will go where it's gone for several years -- to profit margins, and to build out infrastructure for medium- and high-density regions. Net neutrality has zero impact on the question of rural access.

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eohrnberger said:

Business hostile as always it seems. (*sigh*)

How many large networks have you upgraded lately? Or is this assessment just because that's what you believe to be true? And not founded in any for experienced reality. I'm not claiming this for myself either, by the way, but I am pointing out that upgrading large networks have a lot more expense involved that what you might think.



And here I was thinking that we were talking about US ISPs and US ISP regulations.



It depends on if the network is over subscribed and by how much it is, as well as how well the network is functioning. On any one day there might be a bunch of issues that are being silently addressed and resolved, and never heard about.



Why are some writing the "net neutrality" proposals? I dunno. Because it's a media venue the that government can't control right now? This giving them the legal precedence for something more further down the line?



Well, that's flat out wrong. Yes there is choice in ISPs. Right now I can chose between Comcast, AT&T U-Verse and WideOpenWest, and if I wanted to
do satellite, I believe there's someone who'll off that as a service as well. THe industry term is call chrun, and it's been part of the ISP industry for a long time now.

Accenture Study Finds Wireless, Fixed Line, ISP Churn Growing

ISPs face high churn rates - CNET News

And it is showing no slow down.



Umm. No. It's not. The physical infrastructure to span distances with telecommunications lines is not irrelevant. Someone has to pay for all that. Most often than not, the large TelCos are burying fiber bundles along side the road on the easement, and that's not cheap.

I would suggest that you don't try to dictate what you believe is reality over here from over there to a native living it over here. It really doesn't work out so well for you.

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DVSentinel said:

So, you admit that Mithras post that it was non-restrictive was false. You might also keep in mind, than in the human body, a single platelet that is part of a clog is not, by itself very restrictive. But a lot of those "not very restrictive" platelets form into a clog and will cause a stroke or a heart attack. How many of these "not very restrictive" regulations will it take to clog the arteries of enterprise and kill the entire nation.

In other words, you are back to same lame "profit is evil" BS of the left. Have you even looked at those profit margins?

Yes, there are evils done by corporations, but far less than done by the "someone should pay my share" crowd.

"Net neutrality" is all about welfare for masses. They should be allowed to use up massive bandwidth but it should be paid for by someone else. So, providers found that someone else in the form of those companies that offer services that chew up large amounts of bandwidth.

Really, if people want "net neutrality", it would be best if companies charged by bandwidth use instead of flat fees.

In the end, it comes down to a persons philosophy on business.

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eohrnberger said:

How much innovation is going on in the public utilities? Doesn't seem like much.
Lots of innovation continues on the Internet. Turning the Internet into a public utility is going to stifle the innovation?

The Internet, and innovations built on the Internet, run at the speed of the Internet, quickly and fleet a foot. Public utilities can't, don't and will never. You want to turn the Internet into a public utility with feet of clay?

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Simon W. Moon said:

They won't be the same.

They won't "control" it in the way that you seem to be implying.
lol. That one is is just way out there.

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Visbek said:

That's not even remotely correct.

Government regulation of the spectrum is quite extensive. It determines who can use what portions of the spectrum in what geographic areas. It ensures that signals overlap. It required TV broadcasters to ditch analog signals and switch to digital. It censors a great deal of the airwaves.

All that net neutrality requires is that ISP's treat all traffic equally. It doesn't involve government divvying up bandwidth, or censoring language, or determining which ISP's can operate in which regions.



It will help prevent a specific anti-competitive abuse by certain monopolistic ISP's / content providers. That's pretty much it.

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Mithros said:

You're confusing quantity with content. No one is arguing that ISPs should have the ability to make you pay for bandwidth. Net Neutrality simply means that ISPs aren't allowed to tell you how to use that bandwidth. It's like a power company charging you more because you use a refrigerator they don't like.

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Blue_State said:

Not sure where you got any of that from. I don't want regulation of the internet. I don't want ISPs controlling it either. I want it free.

Was it a false statement when I said the country needs infrastructure upgrades in rural areas?

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Blue_State said:

I don't think we can guarantee that. Government is known to take more power than it was given. Why wouldn't the government overreach with the internet?

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Blue_State said:

I don't think we can guarantee that. Government is known to take more power than it was given. Why wouldn't the government overreach with the internet?

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eohrnberger said:

If the IPS's users don't like how they manage their network, the users are free to churn off to another IPS that does different or better network management. Just have to look at the history of Comcast, where they over promised and under delivered, their users fled, until they adopted a different / better way of doing things.

.

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eohrnberger said:

From what I've gathered from Obama's statement is that the regulations wouldn't speak to the rates that ISPs would charge for their service, but would cripple the ISPs ability to manage their network.

Suppose for a moment that a new web based service or application is created and made available to the public. As is often the case with new software products or services the first instance is less than optimized, and let's suppose that it demands a high amount of network bandwidth. This would be to the detriment of all other users on this shared network. In this situation, the ISP should be fully justified in maintaining an acceptable performance level for all their other users by throttling that one application / service / product. As this throttling would impact the users of this application, it would force the creators of this application / service / product to go back and figure out how to make it less bandwidth demanding, and yet still deliver the user experience expected.

My understanding is that the Net Neutrality regulation would prevent the ISP from managing their network by throttling that application / service / product, so all users on that shared network would receive an equally degraded performance, rather than just the abuser application / service / product.

If a particular content provider wanted to take on the expense of running high speed network connections to the ISP's head end network, so that all the users that are drawing on that content have a better experience, what's the problem with that? A business invests, spends money, to improve their service to their customers.

If there is a consistent pattern of exploitation from a particular source, say China, knocking on all the computers that are connected to an ISPs network, the ISP should have the ability to block all the traffic from that source in order to protect their customers, and themselves, from this exploit. Say, the exploit is turn the ISPs users PCs into zombies, spewing forth spam, and overloading the ISPs email servers delivering unwanted spam emails. Shouldn't the ISP be able to cut that off to protect themselves, and possibly their customers.

It's called network management, guys. And I think the ISP should be allowed to do it. After all, IT IS THEIR network.

If the IPS's users don't like how they manage their network, the users are free to churn off to another IPS that does different or better network management. Just have to look at the history of Comcast, where they over promised and under delivered, their users fled, until they adopted a different / better way of doing things.

Since ISPs have to have a municipalities permission to enter that market, that is also recourse that disgruntled user's can avail themselves to in order to redress issues that can't be solved in any other way. This too has historical standing, as having been done before.

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Mithros said:

No one is giving away bandwidth. Net Neutrality means that ISPs are not allowed to place additional regulations on the bandwidth you pay for. If they sell you 54Mbs, then you get 54Mbs. You don't only get 54Mbs if you use their search engine or their movie service. If you request a packet of information from the internet, should your ISP be able to treat it differently because of what's inside of it? Do you want your ISP to be able to block a website because it says something critical about the ISP.

Net Neutrality is not partisan in any way shape or form.

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eohrnberger said:

From what I've gathered from Obama's statement is that the regulations wouldn't speak to the rates that ISPs would charge for their service, but would cripple the ISPs ability to manage their network.

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Suppose for a moment that a new web based service or application is created and made available to the public. As is often the case with new software products or services the first instance is less than optimized, and let's suppose that it demands a high amount of network bandwidth. This would be to the detriment of all other users on this shared network....

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My understanding is that the Net Neutrality regulation would prevent the ISP from managing their network by throttling that application / service / product, so all users on that shared network would receive an equally degraded performance, rather than just the abuser application / service / product.

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If there is a consistent pattern of exploitation from a particular source, say China, knocking on all the computers that are connected to an ISPs network, the ISP should have the ability to block all the traffic from that source in order to protect their customers, and themselves, from this exploit.

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If the IPS's users don't like how they manage their network, the users are free to churn off to another IPS....

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Since ISPs have to have a municipalities permission to enter that market, that is also recourse that disgruntled user's can avail themselves to in order to redress issues that can't be solved in any other way.

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DVSentinel said:

Bull****. No ISP can give every user full bandwidth that they sell simultaneously. If the sell you 54 Mbs, then you get a share of their total. NFW every single user gets all 54 Mbs all at the same time.

Further, relying upon the government or even wishing the government to do something is a weakness shows someone to be a selfish moron. If you and others want this "net neutrality" then start a company that offers it. Get all your buddies together, collect investments, and work at displacing the others. Otherwise, FOAD and burn in hell like a good socialist should.

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Mithros said:

I think there's a common misconception as to how the internet actually works. Your ISP doesn't own or run the internet. By definition, no entity does. The internet is essentially a collection networks connected across the world by high speed data lines. Each of these lines are owned/leased/operated by many different entities. But it doesn't matter. That's how the internet works. These tier 1 networks have agreed to route every other networks traffic without charging packet based fees. In turn, the other networks will route their traffic.

To give you some idea, you can use a utility like traceroute or tracepath. Here's an online implementation:
https://w3dt.net/tools/tracepath

Enter an address and it'll show you the addresses of all of the computers you've gone through to connect to that site. You'll note that your ISP is typically only the first or second hop. Those are the lines in question.

That first hop is what we're dealing with here. Any web based service is going to have to connect to the internet. They've already paid for the bandwidth to connect to the internet at large. If they use too much, then all of their customers will be affected.

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Mithros said:

Net Neutrality is dealing with something completely different. What has been happening is that ISP's have been treating packets differently based on where they come from. If a content company is willing to pay them extra, then they will give those bits priority.. but only on the last hop from ISP to you. If a content company refuses, then those bits are delayed or blocked. Again, this has nothing to do with hosting. Those companies have already paid once to connect to the internet. This is an extra fee that those companies have to pay. It's pretty much extortion.

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eohrnberger said:

I never said that the ISPs own the Internet. I said they own their network. And, yes, you describe how the traffic gets from your home PC through the ISPs network to the Internet perfectly, but my experience is that it's typically around 3 or 4 hops, but details, details. Over all you are 100% correct.



Yeah, I realize that it's got nothing to do with hosting. Don't think that ever entered into what I posted.

If a content company wants to invest money by putting direct high speed lines from their source system to the head end of an ISP's network to deliver their content faster / better to that ISPs customers, I don't see the problem. Seems like you wouldn't either.

If a content provide is trying to dictate to an ISP that by entering into an agreement that the content provider's competitors be penalized, i.e. delayed, de-prirotized, I think it foolish for the ISP to accept being dictated to like that, and would expect them to just say no. Internal network management being the sole responsibility of the ISP to provide the most of their customers the best possible user experience in as many cases as possible. What's in it for the ISP other than pissed off customers, which is not in their best interests.

If it's the ISP that trying to hold the content providers hostage, extorting money from them and if not, to de-prirotizing the content providers traffic, What's in it for the ISP other than pissed off customers, which is not in their best interests.

Cue Bono? Who benefits?

If the government get's it's fingers into this pot, it's a sure bet that they'll be wanting to dictate things that they shouldn't be allowed to dictate, if not now, then surely in the very near future.

Are we certain that government regulation and intervention is the best answer to this problem? Seems to me that if an ISP's customer base is pissed off and leaves them, that this is what should be the stick in this arena.

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Mithros said:

I want the least amount of total regulation possible. I don't want government regulation, and I don't want regulation imposed by my ISP.

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Mithros said:

So I'm willing to accept a small amount of government regulation to prevent much more intrusive ISP regulation.

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Mithros said:

Currently ISPs don't have to tell the customers that they're throttling some sites. The "pissed off consumer" is more likely to be upset with the content provider that's being slowed than the ISP who's intentionally slowing it.

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Mithros said:

All in all, ISPs are much more like power companies than they are cable companies. Power companies are highly regulated, cable companies are not. Who's hated more?

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PeteEU said:

What these internet companies want is a tiered pay system, so you pay to get access to Youtube and Netflix and that they dictate what sites you can visit..... that is something everyone should be fighting against, because that will mean even higher prices for internet services.

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