Net neutrality is absolutely essential from a delivery perspective. ISPs want to have their cake and eat it by charging users and content providers. This subject comes up every year at MWC.
ISPs should be providing the infrastructure and charging a competitive price for it. They already have more than enough capacity and are promoting ever higher speeds and capacities. Mobile data will see major change with 5G. Content providers should be optimizing services and content to reduce the strain on certain areas at certain times but the idea of net neutrality is something that should be sacred. Some content providers are in fact collaborating with content delivers already. Facebook/Movistar have just started laying the first 6,000KM stretch of fibre under the ocean.
Then it is your view content providers have no obligation to pay for the network traffic they push? It should be illegal for Google, Facebook or Netflix to set up content networks within popular ISPs to speed traffic to their users? If you agree with John Oliver's diatribe on NN, then you understand a very one sided and highly biased view of the issue. What I am saying is this is much more complex than the likes of Google, Facebook, Netflix (and a few others) make it out to be. This small group of companies represent almost 50% of the worlds network traffic and they are using all of their power to brainwash people into a single view-point so they can pay less for delivering their content.
Likewise, Comcast, TW and other ISP are trying to maximize their profits and stop declining revenue from cable Viewership by pushing and prioritizing their content over the competition. It is a very complicated issue with lots of different views and there is no simple answer like saying: "ISP should be dumb pipes" or "Net neutrality is absolutely essential from a delivery standpoint."
It is complex and my opinion is biased. Biased in the sense that end users should not have to face a tiered internet where first and second class or even third class internet users exist.
I am a little old school and believe the company managing the railway lines must be different to the company(ies) managing the trains that run on them.
For such a potentially complex issue there will inevitably be exceptions to the general rules but there must be legislation to protect users.
I subscribe to the general EU stance (as in the end user must not be impacted by uneven delivery schemes):
It is complex and my opinion is biased. Biased in the sense that end users should not have to face a tiered internet where first and second class or even third class internet users exist.
I am a little old school and believe the company managing the railway lines must be different to the company(ies) managing the trains that run on them.
For such a potentially complex issue there will inevitably be exceptions to the general rules but there must be legislation to protect users.
I subscribe to the general EU stance (as in the end user must not be impacted by uneven delivery schemes):
We already do have first and second class users of the internet. We have for 10-20 years. Companies like Netflix ALREADY have fast lanes by putting content source directly into ISPs like Comcast and TW. They will keep their most viewed content local to the ISP so it is delivered faster to the user. The ISP benefits by not having to pull data from the backbone. The true is for companies like Amazon, Google (and I am confident but not sure of) Apple. The best part is, these agreements free up the backbone for other companies and help the smaller competition at the same time. I do not want to see these setups eliminated.
I fully believe in discrimination of traffic and BITS on the internet. I think this should be limited and controlled fully on the packet type and not the source/destination and this is where I break fully with NN advocates. I fully believe smart traffic shaping and prioritization can provide a far better experience than the EC's view of non-discrimination of data.
It is complex and my opinion is biased. Biased in the sense that end users should not have to face a tiered internet where first and second class or even third class internet users exist.
I am a little old school and believe the company managing the railway lines must be different to the company(ies) managing the trains that run on them.
For such a potentially complex issue there will inevitably be exceptions to the general rules but there must be legislation to protect users.
I subscribe to the general EU stance (as in the end user must not be impacted by uneven delivery schemes):
We already do have first and second class users of the internet. We have for 10-20 years. Companies like Netflix ALREADY have fast lanes by putting content source directly into ISPs like Comcast and TW. They will keep their most viewed content local to the ISP so it is delivered faster to the user. The ISP benefits by not having to pull data from the backbone. The true is for companies like Amazon, Google (and I am confident but not sure of) Apple. The best part is, these agreements free up the backbone for other companies and help the smaller competition at the same time. I do not want to see these setups eliminated.
I fully believe in discrimination of traffic and BITS on the internet. I think this should be limited and controlled fully on the packet type and not the source/destination and this is where I break fully with NN advocates. I fully believe smart traffic shaping and prioritization can provide a far better experience than the EC's view of non-discrimination of data.
If it is already happening where you reside perhaps we will be able to compare how things shape up down the line and the potential impact on end users.
I can understand why companies like Amazon and Netflix would stand for so called Net Neutrality as they consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth and don't have to worry about building or maintaining the networks that delivery their services to their customers. I used to think net neutrality was a good idea, but the more I think about it, I am not as convinced. The ISP's are being forced to spend millions (maybe billions?) of dollars every year to continue to upgrade their capacity. While my service continues to get more and more expensive every year and it seems to get slower at the same time. So why shouldn't the people who are building and maintaining these networks be able to work out better agreements with the content providers? Network management is a very difficult thing and we are all spoiled with the idea that it's just there. It's not magic and it's not free.
Now, it may well be that Apple knows this and is working with the carriers to ensure that their services are given a most favored content status in the future. This could be good for Apple users in the long run.
And if you think's it's bad now, just wait until VR and the MetaVerse take hold of society.
Also, if I am paying for bandwidth, why should I be subsidizing the advertisers out there with the bandwidth that I am paying for? That hardly seems fair.
You have reached the same conclusion I reached after seeing and listening to all "sides" on this issue. It became obvious to me that the "bandwidth equality" arguments were propaganda from the heavy bandwidth users and nothing else.
There are concepts of "Net Neutrality" that make sense to me and others I see as down right wrong. For example, if I want to check my data usage on my Verizon Phone and I am hitting a Verizon hub and Verizon does not want ding my data allowance for using data from THEIR servers on THEIR network on THEIR cell towers, why should this be illegal? Network traffic shaping based on the type of data packet also makes sense.
VoIP traffic, for example, needs lower latency and time deterministic behavior while an FTP file transfer does not allowing data packets to arrive in any order for final assembly. If your network is maxed out, doing smart prioritization has the potential to keep the QoS of EVERYONE reasonably high VS bad for most. Why should this be illegal?
But there is potential for abuse. Blocking traffic from competitors or slowing it down as to be unusable are the simple ones. Defining these borders and boundaries needs to be done instead of the blanket "All data is equal" mantra. It isn't.
That "potential for abuse" is being shoved down people's throats as an absolutely-guaranteed-going-to-happen-can't-be stopped-inevitabllity. In reality, it just private companies choosing how to do business and customers choosing whether or not to support it. Some proponents use the fact that ISP A is the only one in your area, so you can't stop them from abusing you. Its just not true.
If the last mile companies weren't the most hated companies in America (with Comcast at #1) for abusing customers you might have some semblance of a point. But they are and you don't.
If Comcast or Spectrum (TW + Charter) was not also in your market Verizon wouldn't offer you with gigabit service and if you were one of the customers that Verizon screwed with their gigabit pricing weirdness I doubt you'd be singing their praises.
I find the arguments that some folks are making here a bit hard to understand.
So yes, Netflix or Pornhub make up a large portion of Internet traffic, but that's because the users that paid for the Internet service are using these websites. It is not like these companies just pour water down the pipes and it flows into the ocean. The users paid for their Internet, and they have all their rights to enjoy it, be it transferring data from Netflix or Wikipedia. The ISPs shouldn't be penalizing popular (or data-intensive) services. Users are not transferring data at higher rate than what they paid for.
Now you say ISPs should double dip and charge both Internet endusers and content providers? Why? In the (physical) parcel delivery world, the entities shipping more packages get a discount. You wouldn't hear UPS asking CocaCola to pay more per pound because they ship more than Pepsi.
The only obvious reason I can think of that these ISPs are lobbying so hard against NN is that they do something like AT&T prioritizing DirecTV over Netflix traffic.
I find the arguments that some folks are making here a bit hard to understand.
So yes, Netflix or Pornhub make up a large portion of Internet traffic, but that's because the users that paid for the Internet service are using these websites. It is not like these companies just pour water down the pipes and it flows into the ocean. The users paid for their Internet, and they have all their rights to enjoy it, be it transferring data from Netflix or Wikipedia. The ISPs shouldn't be penalizing popular (or data-intensive) services. Users are not transferring data at higher rate than what they paid for.
Now you say ISPs should double dip and charge both Internet endusers and content providers? Why? In the (physical) parcel delivery world, the entities shipping more packages get a discount. You wouldn't hear UPS asking CocaCola to pay more per pound because they ship more than Pepsi.
The only obvious reason I can think of that these ISPs are lobbying so hard against NN is that they do something like AT&T prioritizing DirecTV over Netflix traffic.
I don't think you understand what any of this means. Content providers AND content subscribers have to pay for bandwidth. Period. If you run a web site (from AWS, GoDaddy or what not) you have to pay for the traffic you use. Likewise, consumers of your content have to pay some ISP for access to that data. This is simply how it works. It has been this way for decades.
If you are a massive supplier of data (Netflix for example) you have the technical option to place content directly into ISP server's (assuming the ISP has the ability to do this) allowing you direct access to your user base without going through the backbone. This is not a free service. It benefits you as a consumer by putting you closer to the data and allows you to stream higher bit rates of movies. It benefits the ISP somewhat by decreasing the traffic they pull from the backbone (that costs money as well). It benefits Netflix a bit by minimizing the traffic they put on the backbone. But it added hardware and software and over all system complexity and this costs money. There is this mis-conception data traffic is free.
This is one example of the "evil fast lane" people talk about. The full Net Neutrality advocates would make these types of arrangements illegal.
I find the arguments that some folks are making here a bit hard to understand.
So yes, Netflix or Pornhub make up a large portion of Internet traffic, but that's because the users that paid for the Internet service are using these websites. It is not like these companies just pour water down the pipes and it flows into the ocean. The users paid for their Internet, and they have all their rights to enjoy it, be it transferring data from Netflix or Wikipedia. The ISPs shouldn't be penalizing popular (or data-intensive) services. Users are not transferring data at higher rate than what they paid for.
Now you say ISPs should double dip and charge both Internet endusers and content providers? Why? In the (physical) parcel delivery world, the entities shipping more packages get a discount. You wouldn't hear UPS asking CocaCola to pay more per pound because they ship more than Pepsi.
The only obvious reason I can think of that these ISPs are lobbying so hard against NN is that they do something like AT&T prioritizing DirecTV over Netflix traffic.
I don't think you understand what any of this means. Content providers AND content subscribers have to pay for bandwidth. Period. If you run a web site (from AWS, GoDaddy or what not) you have to pay for the traffic you use. Likewise, consumers of your content have to pay some ISP for access to that data. This is simply how it works. It has been this way for decades.
If you are a massive supplier of data (Netflix for example) you have the technical option to place content directly into ISP server's (assuming the ISP has the ability to do this) allowing you direct access to your user base without going through the backbone. This is not a free service. It benefits you as a consumer by putting you closer to the data and allows you to stream higher bit rates of movies. It benefits the ISP somewhat by decreasing the traffic they pull from the backbone (that costs money as well). It benefits Netflix a bit by minimizing the traffic they put on the backbone. But it added hardware and software and over all system complexity and this costs money. There is this mis-conception data traffic is free.
This is one example of the "evil fast lane" people talk about. The full Net Neutrality advocates would make these types of arrangements illegal.
I fully understand that both content providers and consumers all pay a price (notice how I said CocaCola has to pay UPS), but maybe my phrasing was confusing when I say double dipping.
And sure, putting data across a CDN and hook the data centers up with fast connection is what all those content providers would like to do, have been doing, and will do fine under NN, because you pay for what you get - data centers, CDN servers, and fast connection all cost money. I don't think NN is making that illegal. Data traffic has never been and will not be free. For the past two years it worked fine, before now we are trying to roll NN back.
You see, when you talk about these types of arrangements, they seem to be a good deal for both the content providers and the ISPs. Content providers pay more to make their data more available, and ISPs earn more money and will be able to improve their service. If your statement is true, why are most of these content providers actively and vocally pro-NN and ISPs spending hundreds of millions lobbying against NN (https://maplight.org/story/for-every-1-net-neutrality-comment-internet-cable-providers-spent-100-on-lobbying-over-decade/)?
Therefore I am more convinced that data providers paying more for more bandwidth is simply not the heart of the debate here. "Treating all web traffic equally and fairly" doesn't mean ISPs are distributing contents and ensuring everyone has gigabit connection to Netflix servers for free. It means given what data providers and consumers are paying for, ISPs are not deliberately throttling data transfer based on the content.
Not sure why so many people here are against NN. Is it some Libertarian "market will settle this" theory? If you look at history for lessons, monopolies crush competition, stifle innovation and offer the consumer less choices. Do any of you remember Microsoft in the 90's. It the Government (yes the body of elected officials you all despise) had not stepped in your beloved Apple would not be around today. Here's an analogy. Two customers go to a farmer to buy eggs, one runs a big restaurant and buys a lot of eggs from this seller. The other man runs a small popular cafe and buys less eggs from the farmer. The big restaurant owner makes a deal with the farmer to not sell any eggs to the cafe owner until after he has taken the best eggs first. The cafe owner no can only get smaller eggs, yet pays the same price of the restaurant owner, his small business suffer's in turn.
Great analogy! I'd prefer to buy direct from the hen (chicken), but that option isn't available. Instead we consumers who must purchase through farmers or even worse, farmer wholesalers (Amazon, Box.com, etc.) But part of this is how it must work until consumers are able to directly access "source" sellers. Etsy is an excellent model for this type of consumer/seller interaction. But more similar linkages will be coming. That said, as a consumer, it is tough to be patient -- especially as we watch billionaire middle-men (i.e. Bezos) and their companies continue to accumulate HUGE market share... At some point government intervention will occur, as in anti-trust, but like the development of computer software it takes time and investment to pave the way for our benefits and the future!
If it’s something AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are against, then I support it.
Seriously tho, NN makes sense. Dumb pipes, that’s all these bozos should be. No different than energy companies -- they should have no say in how the bits are used, their only job is delivering them.
These are private companies trying to do business. You talk about them as if they owe you something and you're entitled to broadband internet access. I don't know about you, but I manage to use the internet every day at high speed. That isn't going to change. Unless of Net Neutering is increased and these companies are forced into a situation where it is even harder to do reasonable business.
Nonsense. They owe me delivery of the bits, because that’s their job and we pay them for. They should get no more concern for what those bits are than a utility cares about what I’m using my electricity on.
I can understand why companies like Amazon and Netflix would stand for so called Net Neutrality as they consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth and don't have to worry about building or maintaining the networks that delivery their services to their customers. I used to think net neutrality was a good idea, but the more I think about it, I am not as convinced. The ISP's are being forced to spend millions (maybe billions?) of dollars every year to continue to upgrade their capacity. While my service continues to get more and more expensive every year and it seems to get slower at the same time. So why shouldn't the people who are building and maintaining these networks be able to work out better agreements with the content providers? Network management is a very difficult thing and we are all spoiled with the idea that it's just there. It's not magic and it's not free.
- travel the rest of the world and see their cheaper, faster internet – then tell me we’re spoiled here.
I have Gigabit FIOS. Trust me, I'm not missing out on anything.
Goodie for you. If you’re in the U.S. you’re paying quite a bit for that. When I travel europe and scandinavia they have very fast for less than the same megabits here.
let me paste you a little story about net neutrality:
Think about Netflix. It has unlimited streaming movies now. Comcast has streaming movies too, at $4 per movie. What if Comcast tells Netflix "unless you pay us the equivalent of $20/user per month we are going to put you in the slow lane and your users won't be able to stream." NetFlix's streaming business will be crushed. Comcast, Verizon and AT&T want Congress to allow them to do exactly that, and this is why net neutrality legislation is so important.
This isn't a result of a fertile imagination. This actually happened 100 years ago. Imagine the year is 1900. I run a steel company and you run a railroad. I sell steel for $50 per ton and you ship it for $3 per ton. I have two major competitors. I come to you and offer you $10 per ton for shipping if you agree not to carry steel for the other two. That number will give you far more profit for far less effort so you say yes. You're happy. My two competitors cannot move steel from Pittsburgh to Kansas any other way (what, by horse and wagon?) so they go out of business, or a least their business is limited to local purchasers.
Then I raise my steel price from $50 per ton to $75. The steel buyers have to pay because they have no other choice. The competition is gone. I make huge profits. I'm happy. You make huge profits. You're happy. The consumers and my competitors aren't happy, but who gives a flying f*** about them?
This is the history of the railroad business in the late 1800s. This scenario played out again in the 1920s in trucking. Both times Congress mandated that any shipping company must charge identical amounts for all customers, based only on size, weight, and transit time.
We have 100 years of success with net neutrality. It's working pretty well.
Comments
I am a little old school and believe the company managing the railway lines must be different to the company(ies) managing the trains that run on them.
For such a potentially complex issue there will inevitably be exceptions to the general rules but there must be legislation to protect users.
I subscribe to the general EU stance (as in the end user must not be impacted by uneven delivery schemes):
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/open-internet-net-neutrality
I fully believe in discrimination of traffic and BITS on the internet. I think this should be limited and controlled fully on the packet type and not the source/destination and this is where I break fully with NN advocates. I fully believe smart traffic shaping and prioritization can provide a far better experience than the EC's view of non-discrimination of data.
If Comcast or Spectrum (TW + Charter) was not also in your market Verizon wouldn't offer you with gigabit service and if you were one of the customers that Verizon screwed with their gigabit pricing weirdness I doubt you'd be singing their praises.
http://gizmodo.com/after-billions-in-subsidies-the-final-verizon-fios-map-1682854728
Yeah, it's fucking inevitable. Only someone who lives in an area with any competition thinks different.
http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article160754069.html
So yes, Netflix or Pornhub make up a large portion of Internet traffic, but that's because the users that paid for the Internet service are using these websites. It is not like these companies just pour water down the pipes and it flows into the ocean. The users paid for their Internet, and they have all their rights to enjoy it, be it transferring data from Netflix or Wikipedia. The ISPs shouldn't be penalizing popular (or data-intensive) services. Users are not transferring data at higher rate than what they paid for.
Now you say ISPs should double dip and charge both Internet endusers and content providers? Why? In the (physical) parcel delivery world, the entities shipping more packages get a discount. You wouldn't hear UPS asking CocaCola to pay more per pound because they ship more than Pepsi.
The only obvious reason I can think of that these ISPs are lobbying so hard against NN is that they do something like AT&T prioritizing DirecTV over Netflix traffic.
If you are a massive supplier of data (Netflix for example) you have the technical option to place content directly into ISP server's (assuming the ISP has the ability to do this) allowing you direct access to your user base without going through the backbone. This is not a free service. It benefits you as a consumer by putting you closer to the data and allows you to stream higher bit rates of movies. It benefits the ISP somewhat by decreasing the traffic they pull from the backbone (that costs money as well). It benefits Netflix a bit by minimizing the traffic they put on the backbone. But it added hardware and software and over all system complexity and this costs money. There is this mis-conception data traffic is free.
This is one example of the "evil fast lane" people talk about. The full Net Neutrality advocates would make these types of arrangements illegal.
And sure, putting data across a CDN and hook the data centers up with fast connection is what all those content providers would like to do, have been doing, and will do fine under NN, because you pay for what you get - data centers, CDN servers, and fast connection all cost money. I don't think NN is making that illegal. Data traffic has never been and will not be free. For the past two years it worked fine, before now we are trying to roll NN back.
You see, when you talk about these types of arrangements, they seem to be a good deal for both the content providers and the ISPs. Content providers pay more to make their data more available, and ISPs earn more money and will be able to improve their service. If your statement is true, why are most of these content providers actively and vocally pro-NN and ISPs spending hundreds of millions lobbying against NN (https://maplight.org/story/for-every-1-net-neutrality-comment-internet-cable-providers-spent-100-on-lobbying-over-decade/)?
Therefore I am more convinced that data providers paying more for more bandwidth is simply not the heart of the debate here. "Treating all web traffic equally and fairly" doesn't mean ISPs are distributing contents and ensuring everyone has gigabit connection to Netflix servers for free. It means given what data providers and consumers are paying for, ISPs are not deliberately throttling data transfer based on the content.
Goodie for you. If you’re in the U.S. you’re paying quite a bit for that. When I travel europe and scandinavia they have very fast for less than the same megabits here.
let me paste you a little story about net neutrality:
Think about Netflix. It has unlimited streaming movies now. Comcast has streaming movies too, at $4 per movie. What if Comcast tells Netflix "unless you pay us the equivalent of $20/user per month we are going to put you in the slow lane and your users won't be able to stream." NetFlix's streaming business will be crushed. Comcast, Verizon and AT&T want Congress to allow them to do exactly that, and this is why net neutrality legislation is so important.
This isn't a result of a fertile imagination. This actually happened 100 years ago. Imagine the year is 1900. I run a steel company and you run a railroad. I sell steel for $50 per ton and you ship it for $3 per ton. I have two major competitors. I come to you and offer you $10 per ton for shipping if you agree not to carry steel for the other two. That number will give you far more profit for far less effort so you say yes. You're happy. My two competitors cannot move steel from Pittsburgh to Kansas any other way (what, by horse and wagon?) so they go out of business, or a least their business is limited to local purchasers.
Then I raise my steel price from $50 per ton to $75. The steel buyers have to pay because they have no other choice. The competition is gone. I make huge profits. I'm happy. You make huge profits. You're happy. The consumers and my competitors aren't happy, but who gives a flying f*** about them?
This is the history of the railroad business in the late 1800s. This scenario played out again in the 1920s in trucking. Both times Congress mandated that any shipping company must charge identical amounts for all customers, based only on size, weight, and transit time.
We have 100 years of success with net neutrality. It's working pretty well.