What Canada Can Teach the US About Net Neutrality 80
blottsie writes If there are two ways in which the Internet is similar in the United States and Canada, it's that it's slow and expensive in both places relative to many developed countries. The big difference, however, is that Canada is looking into doing something about it. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission—the northern equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)— is examining how the wholesale market, where smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) use parts of bigger companies' networks to sell their own services, should operate in the years ahead. The industry reaction to this proposal provides insights to the potential consequences of re-classifying broadband in the U.S. as a Title II public utility.
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Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it will totally be better for 10 ISPs to decide which web sites will work properly or even be accessible by their customers.
"Hi. Would you like to sign up for turbo-speed AT&T Internet? Yes we have AT&T Facebook. Sorry, there is no AT&T Youtube, but we are working with Google to bring it to you soon."
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If I had a choice of 10 ISPs, at least one of them would offer net neutral access without any government regulation.
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Course, I was referring to the current situation, where there are roughly 10 ISPs [cable, dsl, wireless] for the majority of the country, with the usual 1-2 wired choices and 3-4 wireless choices.
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What Korea can teach US in true broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
The US of A was the world's first nation in implementing broadband, to pave the road for the "Information Highway". That was a few decades ago
Now, the US of A trails behind Korea, Japan, Estonia, and a few other countries in the availability of TRUE BROADBAND that is affordable for the masses
The US consumer not only have to pay through their noses for broadband, and what they got are miserably slow, in compared with what the Koreans (for example) are getting
US of A should learn from other countries to find out how to remedy and rectify the current pathetic situation
Re:What Korea can teach US in true broadband (Score:4, Informative)
Of course S.Korea has an internet capability funded by the government with multiple low cost loans provided to infrastructure builders over the past 20 years. In addition they have actively blocked any moves towards monopoly status.
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It is the regulatory environment that is different. I'm basing this on what I read here so it could be miles off. But the US seems to have given monopoly status to companies to service an area. And then when someone wants to come along and build a second line they are blocked in the courts.
S.Korea has actively worked against that situation. There will still be monopoly holders in the sense of 1 company owning the only physical connection but they are required by law to allow access to their network at t
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This is correct.
What is sad is that America thinks it's a First World Nation, when it's broadband is barely Second World tier.
Even sadder is there are 100 GB/s and 40 GB/s ports at all major US research universities that make the paltry 1 to 20 MB/s speeds consumers get look like a turtle that has been frozen.
Yes, 50,000 to 10,000 times FASTER than you get thanks to the lack of competition in the US.
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The area of South Korea is 100,210 km squared.
The area of New York is 141,300 km squared.
The population of South Korea is 51,302,044.
The population of New York is 19,651,127.
So forget comparisons between America and South Korea. Even the state of New York is spread over a large part of the globe, and with half as many people as South Korea. Why is South Korean internet less expensive? Because per mile of fiber, and per cell tower, and every other piece of infrastructure South Korea has more customers to div
Need a better opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Could someone (who is preferably a frequent contributor) explain what this article is about in no less than 20,000 words?
Thanks.
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I never expected to see a (Score:4, Insightful) post asking for the opinion of Bennett Haselton.
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Sorry, aboot the fact I'm an AC Canadian eh.
Bud, in Canada, there are two main companies: Shaw and Telus. Telus does adsl and Shaw does cable. Alright, time for a beer eh, brb....Okay back! Sorry about that!
Shaw and Telus have stingy rates and stingy services. Only a hose-head would use them. However, there are other companies who use Shaw's cable and Telus' lines and provide a service through them for a MUCH cheaper rate. That leaves more money for your pet beaver, and groceries like bacon and poutine.
For
5 Main Canadian companies (Score:2)
Telecom: Telus, Aliant,
Cable: Shaw, Rogers, Eastlink
Much like the US, you will never have overlapping Cable service, and Telus and Aliant don't compete with each other either.
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In Canada there are 5 "main" companies.
And similarly in the U.S.
But what TFA says about "failed competition" is false. The regulatory setup fostered oligopoly, not market competition. Today there is scarcely any competition at all... thus the 4 or 5 big companies.
Although it is fair to say that population density (or lack of it) does add a bit to costs, the fact is that what governments called "competition" in the market really wasn't. Instead it was crony capitalism and oligopoly.
In those countries where the giant companies are require
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Ah a west-coast canuck. I'm a east-coaster.
We have 5 companies in total that another poster listed. Remember though, up until a few years ago we had zero competition, becuase these companies wanted to maintain a monopoly. Now you can pick any ISP you want, and pretty much get anything you want in terms of speed as long as it's available in your area.
http://canadianisp.ca/ [canadianisp.ca] is a fine resource for those who want to look around, myself I'm on Teksavvy(25/10 grandfathered plan though there are better I'm happ
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Nice to hear from you, Mr. Haselton! ;-)
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Could someone (who is preferably a frequent contributor) explain what this article is about in no less than 20,000 words?
Thanks.
In the time it took a US consumer to download one word of the 20,000 word article real First World Nations can read, a real country would have given you the entire 20,000 word article.
Capiche?
The US doesn't need to be taught (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a matter of lack of knowledge or understanding. The US doesn't need to be taught, or led.
The US is currently on the divide between protecting consumers from potentially abusive practices or allowing businesses to run rough-shod over them. It's a debate regarding priorities between business, consumers, the economy, and social welfare, and despite my strong feelings on the subject, on a national level, there's no silver bullet answer that 'fixes it', especially since Canada hasn't actually done anything either, but commission a study.
In fact, studies of the sort that are being done in Canada have already been done in the US, at several different points in time, and the recommendation they had then was one of non-interference. With the inability for congress to act in any way other than to block action, that's likely how it's going to go.
What we could use is a surefire way to figure out how to light all the democrats and republicans on fire, and replace them with politicians that actually care more about the people they're meant to represent than their next elections, party, or party politics. If you've got one of those, let us know, cause THAT's what we're in dire need of.
Re:The US doesn't need to be taught (Score:4, Informative)
In terms of net neutrality, the CRTC did a heck of a lot more than commission a study, they put their ITMP framework into effect. It's essentially regulation requiring net neutrality be preserved. It's been enforced in the past (when the country's largest cable company was throttling some online games) and has issues currently under review (for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).
It wasn't complicated or simple. We didn't have network neutrality. Then they put some straightforward regulation into effect, and then we did have network neutrality, and a framework for what consumers can do when they need to report a violation.
It's worth noting that the CRTC review of both of the net neutrality violations that I mentioned above were instigated by regular consumers filing a complaint, without any lawyers getting involved (on the consumer side). In the first case, the CRTC ruled against the cableco, and in the second case it's still in progress.
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(for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).
And the winner when the government forces the telecom company to start counting both Netflix and their own video streaming in the user's data cap is ... the telecom company.
Oh, you thought the telecom company would simply lift all caps to solve this problem?
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No, I expected the telecom company to simply start treating the data fairly. And several of the mobile companies did just that.
It provides an incentive to the mobile companies to raise their caps. They want people to subscribe to their mobile television services, but at the same time, they don't want their customers to say "I don't want that, I would pay too much for the data". It may have no impact, but at least all services are on an equal playing field.
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No, I expected the telecom company to simply start treating the data fairly. And several of the mobile companies did just that.
I bet the people who used to have unlimited streaming of telecom-provided feeds are just all warm and fuzzy that they now have a cap.
It provides an incentive to the mobile companies to raise their caps.
So your answer should have been "Yes, I expect the companies to lift their caps." What good is incentive to do so if you don't expect them to do so in return? And how does this help the former unlimited-data user who was consuming only telecom streams -- he's still wound up with a cap, and he's now going to have to worry about paying extra.
It may have no impact, but at least all services are on an equal playing field.
Why shouldn't services that cost l
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Well, since the traditional behaviour of telecoms is that, once they've eliminated the competition, they raise their prices and rent-seek, if the telecoms had been allowed to wipe out the competition then those "unlimited" plans would have suddenly
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Well, since the traditional behaviour of telecoms is that, once they've eliminated the competition,
I cannot speak to Canadian regulations, but down in the US it would be very hard for one wireless carrier to "wipe out the competition", since the FCC auctions for wireless bandwidth were specifically set up so that there were two winners for each service area. It was a design goal that there be competition.
To also address your point about the users of the unlimited service being sad, their unlimited service was effectively a (substantial) discount, subsidised by every other user of the same common infrastructure.
No, it was that they were actually costing less to the telecom so they paid less for the service. It's irrelevant if they were subsidized or not, the point was that they're going to be unhappy. I don't
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It's more of a choice on which companies you want consumers to get screwed by. Content Providers or ISPs. NN gives content providers a huge financial break at an ISP's expense which is inevitably passed onto consumers. Non-NN gives ISPs leverage against content providers. Either way, some set of large companies will win. Myself, I prefer to let my dollars go to the ISP rather than let some large content providers (who I don't use) get a free ride on the network I'm paying for.
I can see why you posted AC, as this is a logical fallacy understood by anyone who thinks about it.
If there were no content providers, just individuals (like in the early days of the Internet), then the individuals pay their ISPs for a connection to the network. Those ISPs have peering agreements so that they can share the data sent by their customers.
Add in the content providers. Wait. Aren't content providers just virtual individuals with large amounts of data someone else wants? Doesn't that mean tha
What is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
No posting on Slashdot about Net Neutrality without including what you think Net Neutrality is.
It is many things to many people. Most wrong.
What is it? I don't know. Tell me.
Re:What is it? (Score:5, Funny)
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This is a very good point. There's a very active campaign going on to confuse people about net neutrality. I've gotten into enough arguments with people that actually agreed with me but had been misled by some of these campaigns that I have to ask people what they think it is before we talk about it.
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What is it? (Score:3, Informative)
There is only one correct definition and the rest is noise. Net neutrality is the idea that all packets get equal treatment, regardless of source, destination, or anything in the packet's payload (especially in layers 4+).
Net neutrality has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with usage-based billing or unlimited rates or flat throttling of all traffic after reaching some threshold. This is where I think all the confusion is.
Basically, it's the principle of treading network traffic as a dumb utility like water, wh
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"FIFO for packets" is another way you can describe net neutrality.The base philosophy is a good idea but 100% dumb networks are a terrible idea.
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Usage-based billing is not treating packets differently, because packets aren't treated with bills.
Throttling is, sort of, because the destination is your computer and that is throttled, so pre-throttle packets are privileged.
I'd go with the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org].
I would generally say that bandwidth throttling a user based purely on the volume of use is *not* a neutrality violation, even if you could kind of stretch the argument that it discriminates against bandwidth-heavy c
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Throttle and congestion are two different ways to achieve the same result. Only one of those would be in violation of net neutrality.
There is only one way to do this (Score:1)
The government builds the pipe, and the companies can manage the routing, with no monopoly contracts allowed. It has to be open to anybody. Until we can circumvent it with wireless mesh neural networks, this is the best we can ever do.
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The governments already built the pipe, the taxpayers paid for it several times over. Wireless is a boondoggle because of the bandwidth limitations and losses. Copper and fiber both have bandwidth well beyond the current necessities. What needs to happen is that our governments need to ask where our money went and mandate the last decade of profits to be spent in the network. This needs to happen for all utilities that have been privatized. Foreign corporations are profiting while the entire US electric, ga
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In Canada the taxpayers paid for the network up until about 25 years ago. After that it was privatized and every cent spent since has been done by the private companies, not the taxpayers. Given that the past 25 years has included huge amounts of broadband build outs (it effectively didn't exist before that) and entire new technologies (fibre to the home) this becomes a much more complicated question.
What incentive will a big player have to develop it's broadband infrastructure if they legally have to give
The CRTC... (Score:2)
...has done some decent things for Canada.
Unfortunately some strikes against them are not forcing the cable companies to support BYOD (CableCard) and the mandating of playing a Justin Bieber and/or Drake song every 17 minutes on Canadian pop-music stations.
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they are pushing a la carte tv
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Except a la carte will end up costing you more for what you actually want. The cable companies have always been ok with a la carte but CRTC was pushing it for the multicultural aspect. Pretty much most of the french channels wouldn't be here if alacarte was allowed.
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Yes and they also pushed 2 year contracts on cell phones vs 3. Guess what happened? Pricing went up at least 20% or more across the board within days, while data was reduced, even for those who didn't want contracts.
What I see of a la carte tv is $10 per channel. or for $20 you get a theme pack of 10 channels!
I bet a la carte will be seldom used because the pricing will be outrageous.
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Ok, so instead you have obama. Great tradeoff.
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Funny you should bring this up, because that's exactly what this is all about.
Currently the incumbent telephone companies are legally required to offer their network to their competitors at prices that do not cover the costs of build or maintenance. This means that competitors can always undercut prices of the incumbents because they don't have to pay full price for the circuits. Pricing for the customers of the incumbent on the other hand have to cover not only the cost of their own circuit, but also the p
Canadian: No Thank You (Score:2)
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That's pretty much the BLOODY OPPOSITE of net neutrality, you daft so and so. Are you this irrational on all subjects?
Re: Canadian: No Thank You (Score:2)
Doo-doo de-dupe (Score:3)
The US government and Title II (Score:1)