U.S. Democrats Propose Legislation To Ban Internet Fast Lanes 190
An anonymous reader writes: A proposal from Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate would require the FCC to stop ISPs from creating "internet fast lanes." Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said, "Americans are speaking loud and clear. They want an Internet that is a platform for free expression and innovation, where the best ideas and services can reach consumers based on merit rather than based on a financial relationship with a broadband provider." Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) added, "A free and open Internet is essential for consumers. Our country cannot afford 'pay-for-play' schemes that divide our Internet into tiers based on who has the deepest pockets." Unfortunately, this is only half a solution — the bill doesn't actually add to the FCC's authority. It only requires them to use the authority they currently have, which is questionable at best.
Just do SOMETHING (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Insightful)
Making a former lobbyist for wireless and Cable the head of the FCC is a sign the FCC is entirely pointless.
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But only after the dingos objected.
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Hell, even the babies waiting to be eaten by dingoes objected.
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I mean, you can't get too far from "paid lobbyist, now working the job meant to regulate his old industry"
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John Oliver on Net Neutrality (theres a bit about Dingos)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:4, Insightful)
Making a former lobbyist for wireless and Cable the head of the FCC is a sign the FCC is entirely pointless.
Not necessarily -- such a person knows all the tricks, and is in a good position to smack current lobbyists down.
However, in THIS case, his cultural bias is pretty obvious, and it seems that his reason for leaving the lobby was not "I became disillusioned with the whole racket."
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Indeed.
Who do you want leading the FCC? Someone with no experience in the communications industry?
Any perceived good or bad in his bias is just going to be a matter of which side of the fight that you're on.
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Insightful)
So our choices are (1) an industry shill or (2) someone with no experience in the industry?
I beg to differ.
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No.
It's a choice between experience or no experience.
Anyone with sufficient experience will come from some background and bring with them some bias.
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Stop right there.
Some random telecommunications engineer and a lobbyist ain't the same fucking thing.
Ain't no fukcing ballpark neither.
Now, look, maybe your way of judging bias differes from mine, but, you know,
having some personal biases and having a job that literally tries to biasing people
for a 3rd party ain't the same fucking ballpark.
It ain't the same league.
It ain't even the same fucking sport.
Look at Joseph Kennedy (Score:2)
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Informative)
He was a cable lobbyist (sort of--he was head of the largest cable trade association, and that association did do lobbying among other things) 30 years ago, when cable was the underdog trying to provide an alternative to the big broadcasters, and there was no such thing as a cable ISP because the public internet did not exist yet.
He worked for the wireless trade group 10 years ago.
Also in there he founded or was a heavy investor in several companies that were more on the content provider side of things, and would be hurt by a lack of net neutrality. There is no evidence that he is any more influenced by his very old (and irrelevant to internet) cable association or his more recent but still old wireless association than by his association with those other companies that were on the content side of things.
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The Republican bill that would remove ISPs from FCC regulation would allow states to regulate. It would make rent seeking a lot more difficult for ISPs. This bill would do the obvious thing that the Fourth Branch has failed to do. It's a sign that the FCC is entirely pointless if Congress has to order it to do every little thing. This wouldn't address the paid prioritization problem, but seems like it would give consumers more rights against ISPs in re traffic shaping, etc.
So the problem here isn't that the FCC hasn't already tried to do Net Neutrality - they have. The problem is that the Judicial branch told the FCC they don't have the authority to do so, which probably stems from them classifying internet infrastructure and ISPs not as Telcos but as "information" providers.
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Informative)
No, the problem is that the judicial branch told the FCC that *until* they classify ISPs as common carriers, they don't have the authority to mandate anything with regards to paid prioritization or de-prioritization.
With Mr. Wheeler in charge, there doesn't seem to be much impetus to reclassify the ISPs in that way.
I am an independent who often votes republican, and I believe that the republican bill as currently laid out is a bad plan. Internet service is a utility in the 21st century, and should be treated that way.
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If the Dem's bill passes, they will be required to classify ISPs as telcos so that they will be able to enforce net neutrality since that is within their power. Of course, they will bend over backwards to re-interpret the law until it doesn't mean that.
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Informative)
The Republican bill that would remove ISPs from FCC regulation would allow states to regulate. It would make rent seeking a lot more difficult for ISPs.
Not bloody likely. States are already busy shutting down competition for the incumbent ISPs [arstechnica.com].
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Not bloody likely. States are already busy shutting down competition for the incumbent ISPs.
The article you linked to talked about preventing unfair competition from government-run internet, not all competition. You want to run an ISP where you don't like the service from the existing one? Do it. It will cost you a lot of money and won't be profitable, but that's why there aren't more people doing it now.
Government-run internet doesn't need to be profitable or even have any subscribers -- it will simply spend tax dollars. In the corporate world, that's called "unfair competition" and "predatory
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that we can have a monopoly of greedy corporate bastards, or we can have a government-run monopoly that charges a price that's regulated by voters. And out of these two choices, you are selecting the former, because boo-hoo, the voters will set the price at cost, and the corporations want to make a profit, and that's not fair. Well fuck their profit. They want to own our eyeballs and sell them to the highest bidder. Fuck that.
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So what you're saying is that we can have a monopoly of greedy corporate bastards,
No, I'm saying nothing of the sort. I favor NO monopoly and NO predatory pricing. I thought that would be clear from what I said.
or we can have a government-run monopoly that charges a price that's regulated by voters.
In my city, we have a government-run monopoly on sewer and water supply. We have not had a public vote on rates ever in the more than twenty years I've lived here. It is ridiculous to assume that any other government-run service will have voter-set prices. Even were they to be voted on, you'd wind up with the situation easily predicted -- the voters who want free stuff will outn
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Sorry, but physical provision of wired services is a natural monopoly. I generally prefer that governments control natural monopolies. They *will* abuse it, but they already have a monopoly on the use of force, and any private party will also become an abusive monopoly, however they start out.
I'd really rather not have ANY monopolies, but that's just not practical. So one that is at least influenced by the voters is preferable. And that means government. Preferably as local as possible, so that if you
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Sorry, but physical provision of wired services is a natural monopoly.
"ISP" isn't necessarily a wired service, and gosh if the presence of multiple wires on the poles outside my house don't prove you wrong anyway. It's a COSTLY service that creates an economic barrier to entry, but Google in Portland is proving that there is still enough incentive for some to try. The fact that Time Warner never considered it worth the expense to try to overbuild a Comcast system doesn't mean they were legally prevented from trying or that there was a "natural" limitation to them doing so, o
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As to the first case, nonsense! YOU can start up a competitive service if you'd like.
As to the second case, good luck on getting that price "regulated by voters", instead of "regulated by the Mayor".
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And private-run internet doesn't need to provide internet,
Uhh, yeah, it kinda does. Otherwise it would have no subscribers and would not be profitable, and another company would come in and provide the service and get all the customers. It may not have to provide internet service to the standards YOU would like, but that's a different thing. You're not the only customer.
If they aren't providing internet according to their franchise agreement, then when the franchise is renewed it should be given to someone else who will.
That is called a "monopoly" or an "oligopoly" and it is what a surprising number of us live under.
It is what a surprising number of people
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You want your streets constantly being dug up and inexpertly patched? You want your neighbor's inexpertly pointed microwave dish frying your eyeballs? What you ought to be asking for is an end to deals between municipalities and individual providers, and no restrictions on who can get into the market. Maybe it makes sense for municipalities to install last-mile service. Maybe it doesn't. Why not let the local voters decide?
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Interesting)
Did I say I didn't want *any* oversight? I'm not an anarchist. I just want it easier. End exclusive franchises. Open things up. This has to happen at the local level. So, yes, let the *local* voters decide.
BTW, many people already have microwave transmitters in their house. It's called a cell phone. Also, WiFi is microwave. The FCC allows license free use of some frequencies. For all you know, you may already have a dish pointed at your house.
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:) I agree.
My main point was that the stuff is everywhere. A person can setup a license-free 5.8Ghz dish without a license. So the point about "inexpertly pointed" can already happen.
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I don't know that I want the government to own the conduit but I want the conduit to be treated as a public utility too valuable to allow it to be monopolized.
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Except that the real effect of limiting municipal broadband is the increase in prices. Cities that get municipal broadband see reduced pricing from private ISPs. Yes, everyone wants real competition, but just limiting what local governments can do does not in any way, shape or form provide more competition.
Because of the last mile cost issue, the only effective way to get competition is to separate ownership of
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Interesting)
For a moment, let go of the myth that inefficient government is some kind of natural law and not propaganda, and read this:
http://www.muninetworks.org/co... [muninetworks.org]
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:4, Interesting)
The Republican bill that would remove ISPs from FCC regulation would allow states to regulate.
That would be useless, given that most internet traffic is interstate or international. It's enough that one hop is in a state that hasn't forbidden slow lanes, and it's defeated.
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They think tubes run in straight lines.
Re:Just do SOMETHING (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think handing regulation to state government will result in less corruption and a fairer playing field you have no experience with or understanding of state government. Local government is better for some things but state governments are historically and currently the easiest for those with deep pockets to buy regulations and laws they want. I've got dozens of examples in my own state and you could undoubtedly find dozens in your own. Such things do occasionally make the national press such as the Texas car dealers association getting the state of Texas to ban the direct sale of Tesla cars. A key example of an entrenched interest with deep pockets being able to directly control the state government into passing patently anti-competition laws.
Although I don't like the new FCC run by lobbyists and prefer the version from the 50's that was run by engineers. They are at least less corruptible than local politics. If FCC duties are handed to the states we'll have state legislatures writing laws that favor local large businesses in a heart beat. We already have dozens of incumbent written state laws around the nation baring local governments from wiring themselves when the incumbent refuses. I can't even imagine the horror state governments would cause.
just label ISP's as common carriers already (Score:2)
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why not?
is it some magic law that will make them upgrade their edge routers? common carriers just says they have to carry all traffic equally and without discrimination.
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except that all the regional bell companies were common carriers and charged for terminating calls onto their networks
kind of like almost every video provider out there pays commercial CDN's to host their content or transit network to carry. the CDN's in turn pay the ISP's for bandwidth. kind of like the RBOC's of old. almost everyone except your precious netflix who is trying to get special treatment with having ISP's host their CDN for free
Re:just label ISP's as common carriers already (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that provisioning the last mile is what's expensive. Running fiber to the point of presence is easy. So if you regulate telcos as common carriers, suddenly you have competition between ISPs again, and so they can't pull that crap.
Re:just label ISP's as common carriers already (Score:5, Insightful)
common carriers just says they have to carry all traffic equally and without discrimination.
You answered your own question.
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Back when they were still regulating data transmission under common carrier rules, there was competition in the point of presence: the telco had to lease lines to the home at the same price to competitors as to their internal service provider. The consequence of this was that they could not use their stranglehold on the last mile to charge monopoly rents. They could still make money selling Internet, but if they screwed you (e.g. with a "fast lane") you could switch. Now there is no competition, and g
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Agreed. But what is preventing them from doing it in a way that costs less but does degrade the service sold to others?
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That what is means to you. Net Neutrality in the beginning only meant that all packets were treated the same. Peering *does* treat all packets the same. Peering is a good thing so that ONE large provider of content can't spike out the connection for *everyone*. How is that helpful?
Think about my example with long distance companies. Even *with* common carrier it was up to the individual long distance companies to accommodate the required capacity at the local exchange. The entire long distance traffic for a
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No, it means they have to rent it for the same price to whomever wants to rent it. They don't have to upgrade it.
Market (Score:5, Insightful)
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how exactly do you solve it?
you can create a huge company to own all the fiber and last mile wiring, but then the ISP will just dump a lot of debt onto it that they incurred laying the wire and they people will still have to pay the costs?
the ISP's are carrying over $100 billion in debt collectively because upgrades are paid for with bonds that are paid back over decades and we are still paying for upgrades done 20 years ago
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Comcast total debt issuance has flucuated between -2 billion and 2.5 billion over the last 5 years. Compare that with the dividends it pays out in 2014: Quarterly Dividends and Quarterly Share Repurchases Increased 35.5% to $1.3 Billion
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you're an idiot
their TOTAL DEBT outstanding is like $45 BILLION. Time warner is around $20 BILLION. AT&T and Verizon are probably close to $200 billion but that includes their other businesses.
it's in that website you linked to
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Think of the old 1990's ISP model...
You had your local telephone monopoly/government service who gave you your phone connection. Then you could choose your favorite ISP for your internet. You had two bills one for your ISP and one to the Phone Company.
To fix this today
You have the ISP and you have a company/government service providing the cable/fiber infrastructure.
You need to pay for the infrastructure either by paying the company for it, or via your taxes. Then you choose the ISP (probably local) who
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i remember those days. the dial up ISP's used to disconnect everyone who spent more than an hour logged in because no one ever had enough ports available for all of their customers. best you could do was try to dial a non local number and pay for it on your phone bill instead of it being free
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Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Check out these sweet digs [google.com]. Corporations do not just put cash in the bank. They invest it in stuff they can sell later, and depreciate and deduct now, so they pay less tax. So sure, they'll cry you a river about how their profit margin is so low, but booking profit and paying the taxes on it is the last thing they want to do.
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It's not intended to. It's only intended to get some politicians names in the news in conjunction with a popular issue. This is a toothless pointless bill.
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Right. How do you do that? There are a couple of ways. One is the common carrier way: regulate the last mile, requiring that whoever has a connection from their distribution point to your home rent access to that connection (the whole connection, exclusively, or else just access to the IP layer) at the same price their internal ISP business unit pays for it.
Alternatively, you can have the municipality or even the development own the last mile, and rent it out to whichever ISP the end-user chooses. "
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I have 1 ISP in my region that provides cable internet.
In my home county alone, with a population of 216,000, there are at least 25 geographical and political entities that can negotiate deals for broadband service, including an Indian reservation.
The choice is between DSL or cable. I don't see any motivation for a third entrant here.
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I have no ISPs in my region that provide cable, we're stuck down on copper DSL until VZ decides to force me to LTE.
What about slow lanes? (Score:2)
Slowing undesirable traffic down could be (and therefore will be) interpreted as creating slow lanes, not creating fast lanes. To maintain net neutrality both need to be forbidden.
And the Telco response (Score:4, Insightful)
But what does it accomplish? (Score:2)
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Dead in the house (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not to mention the fact that Democrats get just as much money from Telcos/Cable Companies as Republicans. This is just hand waving and PR. If every member of the house was currently a Democrat I still don't think this would pass.
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Yes, certainly a possibility. And again it would be both sides of the aisle that would be responsible!
Not necessarily (Score:3)
Dude, Remember - It's the Government (Score:2)
Always remember, just because someone in government suggests they do something, and that something sounds like a good idea, does not mean it will bode well for the population at large.
The only thing the feds have done right in the last 20 years, IMO, is expand their own power and influence. I expect that to be the end goal in this case as well.
Ok, which one is it? (Score:2)
That sounds like a bill that would actually work FOR the consumer and AGAINST the corporations. So which one is it?
a) A bill that he knows will not pass due to never getting the required support
b) A trojan horse that sounds great but is actually going to make things worse
c) A decoy to paperclip something worse to its back
d) All three
Banf "First Class" air-travel while they are at it (Score:2)
The same lawmakers should ban airlines (and other transportation providers) from offering "First Class" travel [townhall.com].
Oh, and, certainly, the namesake Fast Lanes — now increasingly reserved for customers of E-ZPass and similar payment systems — should be banned too.
All for show? (Score:2)
They should ban (Score:2)
... slow lanes, instead.
Give them a choice (Score:2)
The fundamental problem is that ISPs seem to be in a sort of quantum superposition regarding common carrier status. Whenever they're applying to use common land or using it as a legal defense, they claim to be common carriers. Whenever they want to charge people more money for certain things, they aren't common carriers.
Let's let them pick. Every year, let them choose whether they want to be common carriers or not. If they are, then they get the access to existing utility poles, and the immunity for any cri
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Not going to happen. Sorry. It is a good idea, but there's a good enough mixture of corporate shilling and pointlessly oppositional partisanship to make this not actually make it through the whole process.
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phoenix arise!
I disagree that "it's not going to happen". In fact I think fatalistic attitudes like that are a rather large part of the problem.
Most of this can be solved by simply regulating ISPs as Title II Common Carriers. Do that, and the vast majority of problems go away. No more surveillance without warrants, no more internet activity tracking for profit, no more throttling of certain kinds of traffic.
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Alright, so... let's put it this way: the obstacles to it happening are greater than the collective will to see it happen.
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Alright, so... let's put it this way: the obstacles to it happening are greater than the collective will to see it happen.
How is that different? You merely said the same thing using different words.
I don't think there was any confusion over what you meant. My point was that you appear to be -- intentionally or otherwise -- participating in or even promoting that mentioned lack of "collective will".
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No, I'm all for it, and would absolutely vote against my representative if they opposed it (and I had one right now). I just mean that the very real political obstacles exist, and sheer pluck on the part of supporters won't make that disappear.
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I just mean that the very real political obstacles exist, and sheer pluck on the part of supporters won't make that disappear.
But, see, that's different from what you said before. Now you say there are "real obstacles" (true). Before you implied that it was simply impossible. That's the part I object to. I don't doubt that it could be difficult. But I don't think it's impossible.
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I implied that this bill wasn't going to pass. I stand by that guess.
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As long as comcast builds out their network in addition to the bandwidth yhey sold you, no one suffers. The key is ensuring their faster lane does not degrade your lane.
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They want to ban "fast lanes"....which is a vague (does that mean if you create slow lanes, it no longer applies? etc.) term....
"Fast lane" is the term the net neutrality opponents use to describe what's left after they've artificially slowed down traffic for everyone not willing to pay.
Historically, everything has been a fast lane, and that's what net neutrality fights to keep.
The "fast lane" suggestion is like if a county decided to decrease the speed in right hand lanes to 30 mph, and then charge extra for driving in the left lane, which they now call a "fast lane". Can you imagine the protests?
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Why would an ISP do that if they have the option to peer directly with Netflix?
When the ISP in question sells pay-per-view video as well, and also wants to choke down that IP traffic growth so they don't have to do as many network upgrades.
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How does common carrier fix this? In the old days, if I was an alternative long distance provider, say MCI (they paved the way for others), wouldn't I have to make sure that I had enough capacity at the local exchange? The local exchange would "peer" with me. I can't imaging the local exchanges forcing all the long distance traffic to the various companies out of a *single* port on their switch.
Let's put it another way. Say I had this brand new idea for a phone service (the industry term is "audiotext"). I
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Having not read the proposed bill itself; it seems to me that all it is trying t
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I predicted this would happen. As soon as lawmakers figured out there was this thing called peering they'd freak out and try to control it. The discussion went from treating each packet the same to controlling peering. How long will it take for lawmakers to completely screw up the Internet? Much of what I see about net neutrality is like reading people's thoughts on organic food. Small bits of truth, but mostly junk. Now turn that ignorance over to the power of the Federal government. No good can come of this.
So basically between 1 in 4 to 1 in 2 packets going over the ISP's transit link will be Netflix data. Why would an ISP do that if they have the option to peer directly with Netflix? It makes absolutely no sense. Any spike in Netflix data will cause everyone's connection to be crap. Not just Netflix users, everyone. This is not helping the potential competitor to Netflix, it is hurting them! Peering is a good thing! Please stop trying to regulate it.
Peering isn't the same thing as enforcing QOS on the last mile of the connection. ISP's should be free to peer. They shouldn't be free to force QOS on end users. Having Netflix as a peer is entirely different than having my cable modem hard enforce download speeds of X everywhere, except Netflix which gets a download speed of Y. That's an artificial limitation.
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Why are you assuming it was the cable company that didn't want to upgrade the links? Cogent had just as much incentive not to upgrade the links because they survive on settlement free peering. Upgrading the links would have possibly put them outside of the peering agreement. In fact, it was reported that it did! It was a much better idea for Netflix to handle the peering agreements directly. They are big enough now, they can do that. It only helps everyone's connection. It is a good thing.
BTW, cable compani
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"The ISPs want to sell you the same service instead and are not afraid to degrade Netflix service to get what they want."
More like, they want to sell you a service that's buggy and slow for way more money, and would like to kill netflix so people don't have a choice.
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A) We had net neutrality for over a decade without any issues of this sort. It didn't cripple or destroy anything. Quite the opposite, in fact.
B) There is no competition to cripple. 95% of the urban dwellers in the US have two or fewer choices for wireline broadband ISP. Of rural folks, that number drops to just 55%.
C) Even if we did have competition, the only three ways to compete are on bandwidth (which are reaching "good enough" for most, at which point it ceases to be a differentiating factor), usage (i
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SELF CORRECTION: I shot off my mouth with some numbers I heard the other day, but it turns out I either heard them wrong or they were reported incorrectly to begin with. This report [broadbandmap.gov] seems to indicate that I got the 95% and 55% numbers basically correct, but that it's not "two or fewer", but rather "two or more". Mea culpa.
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Free as in liberty.