Comcast Says Should Be Able To Create Internet Fast Lanes For Self-Driving Cars (theverge.com) 121
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Comcast filed comments in support of the FCC's plan to kill the 2015 net neutrality rules today. And while pretty much everything in them is expected -- Comcast thinks the rules are burdensome and hurt investment, yet it says it generally supports the principles of net neutrality -- there's one telling new quirk that stands out in its phrasing: Comcast now says it's in support of a ban on "anticompetitive paid prioritization," which is really a way of saying paid prioritization should be allowed. "The commission also should bear in mind that a more flexible approach to prioritization may be warranted and may be beneficial to the public," Comcast says in its filing. The key qualification is "anticompetitive," which is a term that could be interpreted in a lot of different ways depending on who's defining it.
Comcast doesn't just see paid fast lanes being useful for medicine, however. It also thinks they might be fair to sell to automakers for use in autonomous vehicles. "Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it," the filing says. This makes Comcast's position pretty confusing. Comcast says it opposes prioritizing one website over another. It even suggests the commission adopt a "strong presumption against" agreements that benefit an ISP's own content over competitors' work, but it's not clear how benefiting one car company or telemedicine company over another is any different.
Comcast doesn't just see paid fast lanes being useful for medicine, however. It also thinks they might be fair to sell to automakers for use in autonomous vehicles. "Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it," the filing says. This makes Comcast's position pretty confusing. Comcast says it opposes prioritizing one website over another. It even suggests the commission adopt a "strong presumption against" agreements that benefit an ISP's own content over competitors' work, but it's not clear how benefiting one car company or telemedicine company over another is any different.
Already have 100 Gbps Internet3 (Score:1, Interesting)
Why should we use slower Comcast lanes in medicine?
Re:Already have 100 Gbps Internet3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep.
And hands up who wants their automotive safety to depend on a Comcast Internet connection?
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Yep.
And hands up who wants their automotive safety to depend on a Comcast Internet connection?
OK, heart surgery under way.
Scalpel check
(2 hours later)
What do you mean it's reached it's data cap and it's buffering? This patient is going to die!
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And hands up who wants their automotive safety to depend on a Comcast Internet connection?
Everyone whose car provider uses a Comcast business internet connection to provide data to the vehicle, even if there is a failover provider.
From the Summary:
Prioritizing car or telemedicine over website is not benefiting one car company over another. It's a restateme
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Any autonomous vehicle that is dependent on a network connection should be relegated to the off road hobby market. If dependent on a network connection; a RF jammer would be a quick ticket to causing major traffic accidents.
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If dependent on a network connection; a RF jammer would be a quick ticket to causing major traffic accidents.
That statement applies just as well to any AV that uses mesh networking to communicate with neighboring vehicles.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not really communist, but definitely an oligopoly. Or legally-backed market collusion (which is illegal normally)
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It's ok, when I got FUDed with "comcast wants to help self-driving cars" I suddenly decided I'm not so sure I want a self-driving car anymore. If it works as well as my cable modem, I'm pretty sure I will crash 3-4 times a day, and a technician will hover over my corpse saying "you should have used our modem".
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Exactly. By making the whole thing so confusing and weighed down with technicality that nobody would understand it, they get the vast majority of people to switch off and not care. At that point, they get to do whatever the fuck they want, and only a tiny minority will notice until it's already enacted and too late.
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I don't trust those fuckers to get a grumpy-cat meme email to it's destination. Why would I trust them with life-critical data?
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Pure Astroturf. Do you get paid by the post, or is there a quality metric involved? Or hopefully, you only get paid if nobody refutes your bullshit.
Comcast demonstrably doesn't care about the customer insofar as to give them any choices other than "how much more do you want to pay us." They care about locking the customer in, and rent-seeking their wallet empty. They don't give two shits [arstechnica.com] about the customer's well-being or satisfaction, because they don't have to. That's what being a regional monopoly m
Enough with the lies (Score:2, Insightful)
Quit selling internet saying it's the fastest when you actively slow things down. I don't care if you think other things are more important, I've paid the same price and expect the same service.
Also there's nothing about self driving cars that requires super low ping. Routes are precalculated and the real time data coming from on board sensors shouldn't have to go over the net for it to operate. Data coming from other vehicles doesn't need to go over the net immediately as the relevant cars are within wifi
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-- This is 100% correct. They simply cannot make a self driving automobile in the US that would depend on on the internet for navigation as there are way too many internet and cellular dead zones. Maybe when they invest those USF funds and those state subsidies
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Then again for something like that maybe having a
Fast Lanes For Self-Driving Cars, net neutrality?? (Score:2)
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I'm confused; there isn't any reason why Comcast can't sell a particular service to automobile manufacturers, or self-driving car users, etc. Any ISP can provide a speciality service to anyone they want to provide it to, at least that is my understanding.
I thought that the idea of net neutrality and common carrier status is that if I (a consumer) purchase a general purpose Internet service, Comcast (the provider), doesn't interfere with the data that I want to transmit/receive over that service, regardles
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I thought that the idea of net neutrality...
Lots of people have their own ideas about what constitutes net neutrality, and not many of them are the same. There are some absolutists on both sides, and from what I hear talking to people, the general public is too unaware about the uses of contentionless/prioritized networks, and the measures necessary to keep harmful traffic at bay on the network at large, to sympathize with the provisions necessary to get the most out the Internet. Doesn't help that the telco companies are such a bunch of odious nip
Re: Fast Lanes For Self-Driving Cars, net neutrali (Score:2)
Rent Seeking (Score:2)
What exactly do you get without net neutrality except rent-seeking?
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It's hard to have that discussion unless you are willing to explain your own personal definition of "net neutrality"
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If you insist on muddying the waters, yes, conversation is difficult. The definition in common use however would be "don't prioritize traffic based on endpoint".
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Well, I wouldn't agree that there is a common definition.
But since this is yours, that's good enough for argument's sake.
Now, your question was "what exactly do you get without net neutrality except for rent seeking"
Since I don't advocate abolishing all forms of "net neutrality" I don't have any reason to mount a devil's advocate defense of that posture... I was clear that some portion of the network bandwidth should be considered public space, though I would say some service-based prioritization is merited
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Feel free to discriminate between protocols or even to some degree applications. You should not be allowed to prioritize (e.g.) HTTP traffic based on whether the client is requesting netflix.com or comcast.net. Apparently you are unclear on what is being discussed on many levels.
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I'm confused; there isn't any reason why Comcast can't sell a particular service to automobile manufacturers, or self-driving car users, etc. Any ISP can provide a speciality service to anyone they want to provide it to, at least that is my understanding.
Depends on if that specialty service cripples other things without you having to pay more for your other services. Should all that be legal?
I thought that the idea of net neutrality and common carrier status is that if I (a consumer) purchase a general purpose Internet service, Comcast (the provider), doesn't interfere with the data that I want to transmit/receive over that service, regardless of where the data comes from; and doesn't start charging more just because the data is coming from source A rather than B.
Yes but Comcast also selling a service has been known to interfere with traffic that competes with them.
Re: Fast Lanes For Self-Driving Cars, net neutrali (Score:2)
The current net neutrality rules extend common carrier even to those that zero-rate (prefer) their own content. This was done early-Obama era so providers could provide their own music and video sites which didn't go against your data. Prior to that, cell phone and other ISPs were common carriers and zero rating would've lost them that status.
The practice of simply ignoring your competitions bandwidth at the exchange (e.g. Letting your connection with Netflix and YouTube go to 100% and refusing to accept mo
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"Prioritization" (Score:2)
You know, in the good old days of the internet, if you wanted faster speeds, you'd order up a thicker pipe. If you ordered a thicker pipe, and one site on the internet couldn't deliver faster upload speeds (your download speeds), it meant that site needed to upgrade its pipe as well. If you ordered up a thicker pipe, and many, if not most of the internet, couldn't deliver faster upload speeds (again, your download speeds), it meant your ISP, or your ISP's ISP, or your ISP's ISP's ISP needed to upgrade their
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Re: "Prioritization" (Score:2)
The problem is that ISPs refuse to allow large bandwidth providers to peer at higher rates with them. Additionally Obama era net neutrality rules allowed those same ISPs to zero rate their own content providers which is now on the chopping blocks.
The main problem are the Obama-era mergers of baby bells into what soon will be AT&Comcast and it doesn't seem like Trump or Hillary have any intention to stop that.
I would like for this FCC to not just remove the Obama regulations of zero rating but simply rem
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well with comcast muilt-gig you can get your own p (Score:2)
well with Comcast muilt-gig you can get your own pipe*.
Starting at $299/mo
*home use only, 3 year contract required, $1000 install fee, you must rent our hardware at an added cost, limited part of our cable network only.
WRONGHEADED. (Score:2, Insightful)
Comcast wants to essentially privatize what is currently public domain, rather than alternatively building out its own private domain. What a bunch of cunts. Build your own separate super-fast network and sell it privately, leave the rest of us *(the entire world)* out of your greedy rationalizations of monopoly and usurpation. Comcast is a giant sucking sound.
In other news (Score:2)
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and next week it will be ATT/HBO. Our game of cable guys is our best show for the past 5 years.
Bullshit... (Score:5, Informative)
My comcast internet service has been up and down for the past year. Every time I call to get it fixed I get the same song and dance. We are or have sent someone out to fix it and this is no longer a problem. Only to have it go down for a week or so later.
So, if they can't keep my fucking cable modem up a month or so, why the hell should I trust them with a automatic car?
Re: Bullshit... (Score:2)
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Please don't use the public internet for communication to the vehicles.
You don't expect car companies to build out their own communications infrastructure to provide data to their vehicles, do you? What communications system do you think they will use if not the "public internet"?
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Also, just to be clear, you're not renting your modem from comcast, are you? The way you phrased that makes it sound like you are, though being on slashdot, I would think you would know better than that. If you are renting, that's probably your problem. You're paying an outrageous
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Look. Our country isn't a total cyberpunk dystopia (yet) so when corporations want to injure the public to improve their own position, they need to come up with some words to put in the mouths of their government puppets. The words don't have to make sense, or be a good argument. They only need to kind-of look like one. They're set dressing for our pretend democracy, nothing more.
Oh, and once you accept the con that the quality of the argument they're making matters, they've already won.
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Huh? That takes a special kind of stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
No engineer in his/her right mind would ever even consider designing a self-driving car in such a way that it required instantaneous communication. There's too much potential for network failures even under ideal circumstances with a perfect signal, just from routing problems alone. And that's before you consider vehicles driving through tunnels, rain fade, spectrum congestion, deliberate interference, etc.
Basically, the FCC asked, as part of people's filings, to come up with ideas for innovation that would be made impossible without paid prioritization. As expected, Comcast tried, and as expected, failed.
Fundamentally, Internet service either works or it doesn't. If slowness causes something to fail, then the service doesn't work, and therefore the best that paid prioritization can do is give the customers the service that they paid for. If slowness does not cause something to fail, then paid prioritization serves no beneficial purpose.
Therefore, there is no plausible situation in which paid prioritization can possibly be beneficial to consumers. Period. At best, it can only increase the potential for consumer harm, and at worst, it is the direct cause of consumer harm.
fringe roaming is an issue as well as 1GB can cost (Score:2)
fringe roaming is an issue as well as small as 1GB can cost near the cost an new car as some networks bill $15-$20 a meg when roaming.
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so tunnels will be use less as well very rual areas (maybe the union trucks can get the union wire line techs to take out the towers in real ares so truckers don't get layed off)
Re:Huh? That takes a special kind of stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is highly likely that you're wrong. And by highly likely, I mean absolutely certain. I can guarantee you with absolute certainty that no self-driving car system will ever be a centralized control system, because that would be fundamentally unsafe, for several reasons:
It is simply not realistic to believe that anyone would design a self-driving car system that is controlled from outside of the vehicle itself. That's why nobody is doing that. Nobody.
Note that self-driving cars do periodically use the Internet for things like asking for road condition updates, both to avoid closed roads and to alert it ahead of time about lane closures that might require special attention. None of that functionality, however, is life-critical, and any self-driving car must be able to cope without that information (both because it might not be kept up-to-date by local authorities and because the network might not always work). And in any case, that data communication is not continuous. A single data burst every couple of hours would likely be perfectly fine, and when you're talking about something that infrequent, you have a lot of opportunities to retry before it becomes important. That makes autonomous vehicle communications quite possibly the single least important data flowing over the Internet, priority-wise.
In other words, it's hard to imagine how you could possibly be more wrong.
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Actually fixing the problem (Score:2)
Therefore, there is no plausible situation in which paid prioritization can possibly be beneficial to consumers. Period. At best, it can only increase the potential for consumer harm, and at worst, it is the direct cause of consumer harm.
Your title was "special kind of stupid". Here's a question for you:
Background: The existing rule was notable in that 1) It was a gross overreach for the FCC, in that it was implemented under Title II classification 2) It actually does not completely or correctly implement net neutrality (in the way people expect when they use the term).
My question: Since net neutrality is apparently so obvious that anyone who doesn't "get it" is stupid, can you come up with a regulation that solves the problems noted in the
Re:Actually fixing the problem (Score:4, Informative)
IMO, it solves all of the most egregious problems. And I don't think it is an overreach. The purpose of Title II classification was historically to cover voice telephony. A large percentage of Internet users now do their voice telephony over broadband. Therefore, it is completely reasonable to treat the underlying broadband under Title II, as it would be impossible to enforce Title II on telephony companies without the underlying communication infrastructure being covered by similar laws.
Whoa there. I didn't call everyone stupid. I respect some people who disagree with the Title II reclassification. I just don't respect people who make patently absurd claims, like saying that self-driving cars won't be possible without paid prioritization (when, in fact, self-driving cars barely use the Internet at all; they don't need it).
In theory, you bet. The problem is that the FTC has been completely toothless for as long as I can remember. At least the FCC occasionally acts. :-)
I'm not going to dig into the problem of peering agreements and the way they've been set up, as that's not my area of expertise. Instead, I'll focus on the consumer problems.
The fundamental problem is that Internet service is a commodity. One provider that passes packets is as good as another, assuming they all provide the same quantity per unit time and with similar levels of quality. There are very narrow areas in which they can compete, mostly involving the amount of speed that they provide. So to provide any useful value-add, companies are forced to package unrelated services, such as cable TV, telephone, video-on-demand, etc. Because those services compete with other Internet services, but are almost always provided by servers within the company's network, those services are almost inherently less affected by network speeds than third-party services unless the providers take reasonable steps to ensure that services are not getting de facto throttled by insufficient external bandwidth.
The ideal solution would be to pass a federal broadband access act that creates an unfunded mandate for states to provide fiber to every home and business by a particular date, owned by the state, and leased to any ISP that wants to lease lines. This would create a huge flurry of competition that would largely negate the need for any sort of additional net neutrality regulation. But the cable and phone companies would never let such a law pass.
A slightly less ideal solution would be to take the leased line rules that currently apply only to telephone lines (IIRC) and extending them to all companies that own any communications infrastructure (whether fiber, coax, twisted pair, or cellular). Specifically, require that they make that infrastructure available to any ISP that wants to provide service, at a cost just above the cost of maintaining the wires. This would make it trivial to have proper competition in broadband. This would, of course, cause all of the existing ISPs to wet themselves, and they would find ways to guarantee that any such bill never saw the light of day
What overreach? (Score:2)
The existing rule was notable in that 1) It was a gross overreach for the FCC, in that it was implemented under Title II classification 2) It actually does not completely or correctly implement net neutrality (in the way people expect when they use the term)
How was it a “gross overreach” and a failure in regard to network neutrality?
As far as I understand, the FCC was created (through the Communications Act of 1934) for the regulation of the commerce of communication services by wire and radio. Its goals are, in part, the establishment of “a rapid, efficient, nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges”, which is “available ... to all the people of the United Stat
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An actual law was proposed and voted on by congress: http://www.legisworks.org/cong... [legisworks.org]
Here is the relevant text:
It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage
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No engineer in his/her right mind would ever even consider designing a self-driving car in such a way that it required instantaneous communication.
Ah, but see, we're talking about what Comcast's engineers would do...
Re:Huh? That takes a special kind of . (Score:1)
I could imagine some situations where paid prioritization might be actively beneficial. Unfortunately, the possibilities for abuse are far too great to ignore.
Any positive effects from paid prioritization would stem not from some nebulous increase in speed, but from reduced interruptions due to congestion. I could easily imagine traffic being bifurcated into two categories, where if a router reaches capacity it ensures that traffic in one category takes priority so that it can continue with minimal disrup
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You're certainly right about it being useful to prioritize traffic based on whether increased latency will affect usability. The part that is inherently anticompetitive is where you insert the word "paid" in there and prioritize one content provider's traffic over another instead of prioritizing one type of traffic over another.
I have yet to see anything even approaching a legitimate argument in favor of paid prioritization.
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The whole concept is ridiculous anyway. You don't need to-the-microsecond updates about traffic 30 miles away; to-the-minute is fine, and we can do way better than that.
Real-time situational awareness from anything other than your own sensors should come from a mesh network with nearby cars.
If you need that for your "self driving" car (Score:1)
It isn't self driving at all, and I don't want to be in one either. If it needs that level of connection to drive itself then what happens when the connection cuts out even for a bit? Also who would want to sell something with that sort of ongoing cost attached if they could avoid it?
Almost like they have a solution and are searching for problems, without regard for truth or even respect of the intelligence of the people they intend to pass the "problems" off to. If I was a government official and receive
Trolley problem (Score:2)
Do ambulances automatically get higher priority than rich people in their cars, or does the ambulance's allowed speed depend on the bank balance of the patient?
Will people who are allowed to go faster than everyone else be taxed appropriately, or can rich people pretend to be poor when it suits them?
Funny! (Score:3)
Comcast cant deliver any of the bandwidth they promise. Their infrastructure is well over 10 years old and they REFUSE to upgrade it all over the place.
They can barely deliver 50mbps to customers regularly and reliably, they have ZERO chance of getting anything wireless working for self driving cars.
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Not sure on the details, but my experience with their 10 Mb product matches your statement: they had overloaded routers and high latencies throughout their network.
Comcast's data caps (Score:2)
Comcast now says it's in support of a ban on "anticompetitive paid prioritization,"
Yet comcast is in favor of, and even implements, data caps on their ISP service, while comcast's video on demand services are exempt from those data caps.
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Data caps imposed upon competitors' video on demand services but not imposed on comcast's video on demand services are anti-competitive.
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Yet comcast is in favor of, and even implements, data caps on their ISP service, while comcast's video on demand services are exempt from those data caps.
Video on demand (OnDemand) uses cable TV channels, not internet data. And OnDemand data doesn't cross an exchange boundary.
Data caps imposed upon competitors' video on demand services but not imposed on comcast's video on demand services are anti-competitive.
Do you think there should be a cap on the amount of cable TV you can watch when you pay for "cable TV"? That's what you are calling for when you imply that data caps on internet data that will limit your access to competitor's internet streams should also apply to Comcast's video services.
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This wouldn't even be a valid question if congress broke up ISPs so they couldn't legally own content or content delivery.
I asked about cable TV, not ISP. Comcast will ALWAYS own content and content delivery as a cable TV provider, and any laws that prohibit an ISP from also providing content (besides being stupid and harmful to the consumer) will not apply to the cable TV side of Comcast. (Stupid because that would prevent your ISP from being your mail server or having a web presence to deal with your account. That's 'content'.) And saying an ISP cannot own content or content delivery is also stupid, because content delivery
And consumers should be able to create a giant bin (Score:2)
To hold Comcast's bullshit.
Re: How about a different protocol (Score:2)
No. ATM gives you e. coli.
so when the brakes fail how long will I wait holdi (Score:4, Funny)
so when the brakes fail how long will I wait holding the line for jay (not his real name) to help me with an deep foreign accent?
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is it better or is it just some bot where you can have 1 person looking over 5 bot chats at the same time.
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Bad example (Score:2)
If self driving cars are using public internet (especially Comcast internet) for time-sensitive communication, they are doing it wrong. They should be using short-range real-time networks for fast local communication, and then when they need to talk to a server, they don't need to be in such a hurry.
Different classes of service are a different thing (Score:2)
Net neutrality has nothing to do with different classes of service. If Comcast wants to offer a special class of service that has high-throughput and well-characterized latency, then there's no problem. That's no different than offering both high-speed fiber and slow dial-up service.
What net neutrality prevents is Comcast offering such a service, but then charging customers differently depending on where they want to send their packets.
Also, nothing would prevent Comcast from creating whatever restrictions
Some applications don't need the Internet (Score:2)
If Comcast wants to fast-lane a single application like manufacturer-to-car communications on a private network there is and should be absolutely nothing to stop it. Not all applications need the Internet. Most any large ISP will happily sell you a lightning fast MPLS network, a mobile version of such (MPN, DMNR, dedicated APN), or lease a lambda or dark fiber for dedicated point-to-point traffic. These arguments are completely irrelevant to the discussion of Internet neutrality issues.
Just eliminate common carrier status (Score:2)
If Comcast, et. al. want to prioritize traffic, that means they know what traffic is going through their lines. How else would you know how to charge OrgA more than OrgB. Ipso facto, they have to drop the argument for why they qualify for common carrier status. You can't say you know and don't know what's going through the lines in the same breath. Well, yeah, I guess they can...but, nobody has to believe it.
If they're not going to be a neutral pipe, they can't logically continue to have common carrier
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If they're not going to be a neutral pipe, they can't logically continue to have common carrier status and will be responsible for any child pornography transmitted through their servers.
ISPs are not common carriers until the Title II reclassification goes into effect (which the FCC is now trying to preempt). The laws preventing them from being liable have nothing to do with their becoming common carriers a few months from now.
Why does Comcast know about self driving cars? (Score:2)
So comcast lets people on for free (Score:2)
So COMCAST wants to do self-driving cars. Lets see, these cars will probably cost 100,000 USD each. So instead of building better infrastructure and invest the profits in the infrastructure, they want yet another freebie.
Remind me, why is COMCAST regularly at the top of list of the most hated companies again ?
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ROFL (Score:2)
At this point it seems Comcast is coming up with the most bullshit drivel they can muster to see if people get confused by them and ultimately believe by default... I wonder what's next. Fast lanes are needed to solve climate change, create a cure for cancer, and avoid WW3?
As if car automation would rely on Comcast service whatever form it comes, and as if Comcast could guarantee instantaneous data transmission for them.
Pretty much the opposite is true. Comcast and the others that are part of the ISP oligop
And ther Faster Speed Equals (Score:1)
Nope.. (Score:2)
How is that different from QOS? (Score:2)
"Comcast says..." (Score:2)
Nope, already lost interest.