Charter Seeks FCC Permission to Impose Data Caps and Charge Fees to Video Services (arstechnica.com) 102
"Charter Communications has asked federal regulators for permission to impose data caps on broadband users and to seek interconnection payments from large online video providers, starting next year," writes Ars Technica.
Long-time Slashdot reader Proudrooster shares their report: Charter, unlike other ISPs, isn't allowed to impose data caps and faces limits on charges for interconnection payments because of conditions applied to its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable. The conditions were imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for seven years and are scheduled to elapse in May 2023. Last week, Charter submitted a petition asking the FCC to let the conditions run out on May 18, 2021 instead. The FCC is seeking public comment on the petition...
When it sought FCC permission for the merger, it told the FCC that it provides service "without any data caps, usage-based pricing, or modem fees" and that it "has been involved in no notable disputes over traffic management and has long practiced network neutrality."
When contacted by Ars yesterday, Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so.
Long-time Slashdot reader Proudrooster shares their report: Charter, unlike other ISPs, isn't allowed to impose data caps and faces limits on charges for interconnection payments because of conditions applied to its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable. The conditions were imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for seven years and are scheduled to elapse in May 2023. Last week, Charter submitted a petition asking the FCC to let the conditions run out on May 18, 2021 instead. The FCC is seeking public comment on the petition...
When it sought FCC permission for the merger, it told the FCC that it provides service "without any data caps, usage-based pricing, or modem fees" and that it "has been involved in no notable disputes over traffic management and has long practiced network neutrality."
When contacted by Ars yesterday, Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so.
Re:Why would they need to ask? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why would they need to ask? (Score:5, Funny)
"I'ts in the fucking summary."
You must be new here, welcome.
The Problem with the Net Neutrality (Score:1, Troll)
Net Neutrality, as it was implemented, came festooned with all kinds of unrelated mandate and conditions. Government can't just keep it simple.
A good analogy for what NN should be is perhaps a water company. You provide water to people. It doesn't matter what they do with the water, why the want it, etc. You can charge for how much water they use, but not why the use it. If you offer a package that promises 100 gallons per minutes, then you need to provide 100 gallons per minute, whenever they want it, for
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Even the water company can enforce things like fixing leaky pipes. Also most summers around here, there are water restrictions, no washing your driveway kind of thing.
But basically you're right, though around here with net neutrality, speeds are promised at "up to" and there are often data caps.
Water is interchangeable. More like shipping (Score:3)
Water molecules are interchangeable. Data packets are not. You don't know or care which source the water in your pipes comes from, or how long it takes to get to you. You very much care that get the data you ordered from SycCreditUnion.org, not the packets from BearsAndTwink.com that somebody else ordered. Shipping, FedEx, UPS, and USPS, is a much closer analogy.
In shipping, sometimes you want something big delivered so you use freight service which might take a week or two, sometimes you want a letter d
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I think you're bringing up an important issue, and forgetting recent history to apply a term to it that means something else.
What wording to ISPs should use for particular kinds of internet plans is important. "Unlimited is indeed not perfectly descriptive of what the plan sells anymore.
The term "unlimited" was used to distinguish between the old plans that had X GB/month before you got cut off or got overage charges, vs a new type of plan that has no cut off or overage charge. On the newer "unlimited" pla
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Well, if you go back far enough (I'm an old fart), even dial-up connections were
They call it Open Connect, and they have DCs (Score:2)
> Last *I* checked, Netflix primarily runs on AWS and they pay their bills (pretty hefty bills, I might add).
Their databases and other business processing was transitioned to AWS in 2015 and 2016. Video delivery isn't primarily through AWS because that would be way too expensive. So that's a change after they had tried to get free hosting by political means, and doesn't account for 99% of their bandwidth.
You can read a bit about how their video is delivered here.
https://openconnect.netflix.co... [netflix.com]
Of cours
PS - Netflix still has dozens of data centers (Score:2)
I would be remiss if I failed to mention Netflix still has dozens of their own data centers, and large rooms inside of third-party shared data centers.
So there are thousands and thousands of Netflix servers that arw neither in AWS (compute) nor hosted by ISPs (the primary content delivery servers).
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SRC: https://www.datacenterknowledg... [datacenterknowledge.com]
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It's interesting that four years ago they said they shut down their data centers, and today on Netflix's site they say they run "over 60 data centers".
Better info could probably be found by picking through their annual report, if somebody wanted to spend the time to do that.
My guess as to how both could be true today would be they do what a lot of companies do - lease a room in a datacenter building owned by somebody else. In one place they call that "our 60+ data centers", in another place they say "we do
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Better?
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I was told by Net Neutrality zealots that I was going to have to pay a fee to post this comment. But nope.
Meanwhile no one did anything to address the monopoly of the cable companies. Because the Net Neutrality religion would rather make rules to rule over our few bad choices than give us more better choices.
Re: Why would they need to ask? (Score:2)
Because people only care about so many things. Thus, any political battles must be prioritized and NN was a stupid fucking choice, not least because it wasn't being significantly abused whereas the cable monopolies very much were.
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Are you seriously suggesting that if people hadn't pushed on NN, then instead the cable monopolies would have been dealt with?
Re: Why would they need to ask? (Score:2)
If all the effort that had been put into the NN train had been spent on cable monopolies instead, especially with concrete examples of harm to point to instead of possibilities, there is a very good chance that it would have gotten dealt with, yes.
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That seems wildly optimistic. NN would mean telecoms would make less profit, but lack of local monopolies would destroy many of them. They will fight far harder for survival.
Also, I'm not sure what you want to do to get rid of them. We have cable monopolies because it's very expensive to have one set of cable wires to each home; having 2 or more sets becomes crazy-expensive. We could have one set of cables which could be activated by multiple companies, but few areas have the infrastructure for that, no
Re: Why would they need to ask? (Score:2)
You appear to think by cable monopolies I mean situations in which only one company wants to service an area. This is incorrect. I mean situations in which only one company is contractually allowed to service an area. That is the area of greatest harm. For the areas in which there is not enough demand for more than one provider, Starlink will end up solving that issue, forcing the cable companies to at least be better than them.
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Where are you that only one cable company is allowed to service an area? I don't believe that there are any of those in the US.
In general, the "one cable company per area" restriction is intentionally done by the companies, not mandated by any government. Governments may give access to municipal poles or rights-of-way in exchange for concessions, but these are usually not exclusive. But no cable company (aside from Google Fiber) will move into an area where another company is already running; the ROI wo
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Ohh, you're saying that net neutrality was wanted in lieu of breaking up the monopolies?
I'm saying what I said. Not whatever other thing you're saying instead.
Also, what compliance burden does net neutrality have on an ISP?
We are 10000% in favor of this Net Neutrality rule that Google and Netflix created to protect their profits. We don't know the details of how it affects anyone.
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I'm just trying to understand your perspective here. Are saying saying that they were hyping up net neutrality, to the point they were monopolising the discussion about the problems ISPs, to the exclusion of all other ideas such as breaking up the monopolies? Are you saying that this was intentional or just a frustrating consequence of their behaviour?
1. Yes
2. At least partly intentional by some. Others are true believers or just parrot the dogma for social cred.
A decade gone and no meaningful internet competition. Congrats NN holy warriors.
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Thanks, I think I understand you now. If net neutrality didn't/hadn't monopolised the discussion and the discussion about monopolies had occurred and the monopolies were broken up, would you support net neutrality at that point?
Some form of it maybe. Rules should be carefully tailored to fit the problem and examined to determine the costs and benefits. And re-evaluated periodically after implementation to make sure they're doing what they were written to do.
Net Neutrality was created as the one true answer to a mostly hypothetical problem at the time. And then it was hyped a million times by big corporate interests working together with cynical political jerks. So it's the answer regardless of the question. And nothing else t
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...articles like this seem to indicate we were right to be concerned about such behaviour...
It's still just talk. Not behavior.
I think it's a bit much to blame us for trying to retain what little we had and trying to avoid being screwed over even further. All these issues should be treated with the level of seriousness they warrant, I think your frustration is more an indictment on how politics are these days then net neutrality in particular? Are we really to blame here in regards to that?
It's still a mostly hypothetical problem. And neutrality isn't the answer, saying no to specific actions is the answer. Some all-encompassing philosophical rule doesn't fit specifics, treats helpful actions as wrongdoing when they don't match dogma, and is generally just a dumb way to handle any technical problem.
Rule compliance has real costs. Rules should be for real problems. And I don't consider Google and Netflix profit margin a real problem. Even this
Re:Why would they need to ask? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Net Neutrality religion said they all would immediately start doing this and 50 worse things the minute Net Neutrality ended.
And not only do they want to do so the moment they are legally allowed to, they want that point to come sooner rather than later.
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Yeah, this seems like a 2-year process to get a 2-year move ahead...
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"The Net Neutrality religion said they all would immediately start doing this"
They did but we sensible people use a VPN, so they can go fuck themselves.
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They did but we sensible people use a VPN, so they can go fuck themselves.
1) How does using a VPN prevent Charter from capping your data? The summary says Charter is seeking to impose data caps AND charge for video connection. It does say that Charter seeks to impose data caps FOR video.
2) How sensible is it to pay extra for something that you shouldn't have to pay? If you want your connection secure, go ahead and use a VPN. If you want to play Netflix and don't care that your ISP is spying on you, why do you need to pay more just to get Netflix without your ISP trying to interfe
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The indirect scheme is just to route packets for a service over a highly utilized circuit.
If you don't pay up (Amazon, Netflix, et all) you get put on the shit tier circuits which they won't be upgrading. This gets choked out due to usage while the rest of the service keeps working. Then Comcast reps say well your internet looks fine to me... perhaps you should complain to the service that is performing poorly... also tell them Big Mickey is looking for them.
LIkely, since Comcast is going to be able to do t
Re:Why would they need to ask? (Score:4, Interesting)
The indirect scheme is just to route packets for a service over a highly utilized circuit.
No. Charter is looking to meter your connection. It doesn't matter if all your packets go through your VPN to Netflix or you go directly to Netflix if Charter is tallying how much data you use. If you hit their arbitrary cap, you have to pay them more.
If you don't pay up (Amazon, Netflix, et all) you get put on the shit tier circuits which they won't be upgrading. This gets choked out due to usage while the rest of the service keeps working. Then Comcast reps say well your internet looks fine to me... perhaps you should complain to the service that is performing poorly... also tell them Big Mickey is looking for them.
That's the additional charge Charter wants. For that yes a VPN would be useful as Charter can't know if you are watching a Netflix movie or a Twitch stream. Here's why: Charter can extort Netflix for more money AND they can sell your Internet habits to third parties. With some deep packet inspection, Charter could figure out your viewing habits which is additional revenue.
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Because they agreed to not do it until 2023 as a condition for being able to do other things (mergers and acquisitions limiting the number of players in the market). Now they're asking to be let out of their voluntary agreement.
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Comcast did and does? You just don't Amazon and Netflix whining about their blood money because they don't want something unfortunate to happen to their packets.
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The FCC originally tried to do it without the Title 2 designation, but they were quickly sued by companies like Verizon, for whom current FCC chairman Ajit Pai worked as a lawyer and was heavily involved in the suit, and the courts found that without the Title 2 designation they didn't have the authority to do so. Hence they made the designation, which made the Net Neutrality rules legally
anti-net-neutrality (Score:1)
and all of the anti-net-neutrality people that I've known (mostly Conservatives) are convinced that the poor, poor telcos are being robbed by greedy customers taking advantage of the "unlimited" offer.
They have no concept of "oversubscribed" or "upgrades"
And they certainly have no concept of "Anti-trust"
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Anti-trust isn't even an
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As opposed to doing what other countries do, and let the ISP's lease space on the line. Levelling the playing field. One thing I do know, the idea of levelling the playing field has marked me as a "socialist" in the USA.
Re:anti-net-neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
What they don't know is that cable monopolies aren't being handed out all that much any more. It's mostly "gentleman's agreements" between cable companies keeping the monopolies going now. There's few enough players that they can come to such tacit agreements.
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Simply not possible to do, it is exactly the same as demanding, we can not have roads and footpaths provided by one company (the government), we want competing roads and footpaths (for that to happen all the land on the planet would be consumed by roads and footpaths.
There realistically can be no competition in fibreoptic connections and there should be one backbone supplied by the government and you pay to access it. They can have retail/business providers between you and the government backbone (down eve
Cable companies (Score:2)
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as a video gamer fag, I can't play on starlink, so stfu boomer.
Or if you live in a city. Fag or not.
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But there is no way for a Starlink to be able to provide adequate service beyond about 20 customers per square mile IIRC.
I would say it is a better advertisement for municipal dumb fiber for independent ISPs. Keep the physical last mile a public service, and give competitive options for service on said pipe.
P2P is dead, long live streaming. (Score:2)
Charter's problem here is that they need some help from the streamers in order to get the data they want closer to the users. YouTube is no longer explainable as just one server. Amazon's the same way, and both Google and Amazon have enough data centers to rent VPSes to nearly anybody who wants one.
P2P was the wrong business model for the Internet. Even if there was payment, it still overran local line limits. Consumer bandwidth is designed to give you fast download and okay upload... if you're uploading a
Re:P2P is dead, long live streaming. (Score:5, Informative)
" Consumer bandwidth is designed to give you fast download and okay upload..."
Change that to American consumer bandwidth. Synchronous speeds are common in the rest of the world.
Re:P2P is dead, long live streaming. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, with "net neutrality" dead, they need to get some better links between YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, CBS All Access, Peacock, etc. The question Charter is asking is why they have to pay for this, while everything is profitable on the other side of the line.
Other than the fact that is what consumers are paying Charter to do? That's like saying if people want more clean water why should the water company pay for that. Also like the water company, it's not like consumers have much of a choice in most areas.
B2B negotiations here... with the FCC being asked to fast-forward a limitation.
No the FCC is being asked to revoke a key restriction Charter agreed to when they purchased another ISP.
Really, this doesn't amount to much if you don't invest in these players.
What a ludicrous statement. What you're saying is that it doesn't matter much if I don't choose stream content at all. See all I use my internet for is to forward cat photos. . . . that's why I need a minimum of 30 mbps down. Some of us use those services and have Charter. It doesn't affect you so it's not a problem right?
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No, Charter’s problem is that they have a stranded asset in the cable television franchise and they want to pay it off from someone other than the end users in order to not loose even more customers.
The internet is multipoint to multipoint. Trying to fight that means you will compromise other services that are not as highly centralized, but equally (or more) important. Business VPNs scream out currently in that category.
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Charter's problem here is that they need some help from the streamers in order to get the data they want closer to the users. YouTube is no longer explainable as just one server. Amazon's the same way, and both Google and Amazon have enough data centers to rent VPSes to nearly anybody who wants one.
P2P was the wrong business model for the Internet. Even if there was payment, it still overran local line limits. Consumer bandwidth is designed to give you fast download and okay upload... if you're uploading a lot to the world, you need a business line and that makes you pay more.
So, with "net neutrality" dead, they need to get some better links between YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, CBS All Access, Peacock, etc. The question Charter is asking is why they have to pay for this, while everything is profitable on the other side of the line. B2B negotiations here... with the FCC being asked to fast-forward a limitation. Really, this doesn't amount to much if you don't invest in these players.
So, you're saying that it is inevitable that my $190 Charter/Spectrum Internet + TV bill that went to $65 + various Streaming Subscription fees (total of about $120 for everything), is about to go back up to the same $190 PLUS the Streaming Subscription Fees? And that's ok?
So much for cord-cutting...
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> So, you're saying that it is inevitable that my $190 Charter/Spectrum Internet + TV bill that went to $65 + various Streaming Subscription fees (total of about $120 for everything), is about to go back up to the same $190 PLUS the Streaming Subscription Fees?
Yes, it is. Except you forgot that it'll actually be more than that, because you'll exceed your cap every month.
> And that's ok?
No, it's not. But that's what a corrupt FCC and legislative branch gets you - and I don't just mean *this current* FC
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To clarify a few things for the inevitable "but, muh capitalisms!"...
Charter reached its current position overwhelmingly via taxpayer funding, has a government-supported monopoly in its region, and a collusion agreement with the other cableco's - the only organisations capable of "competing" at this point - not to do so. It has taken millions (in the 10s or 100s range by now, I expect) of dollars from the government to "build out" and not followed through on those commitments, and of course not returned tha
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But it's only BECAUSE they haven't been able to pull exactly the kind of shit that they're now trying to. If we had competition in the US market, I wouldn't care if they could do this or not. But we don't, and they are LITERALLY the only game in town, here and in hundreds of other towns in the West.
I know. In my largish city, there are exactly 2 Cable providers, who both have protected territories, negotiated about 40 years or so ago. One eventually became CommieCast, and the other eventually became Spectrum. So, you "choose your cable provider" based on where you live. That is in no way "competition".
But all that being said, I am quite glad I ended up in Spectrum-dom. A bad as any Cable provider is, CommieCast is usually the worse-choice. But it will still suck if they are allowed to play "overage" g
I call bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
"Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so."
Yeah, that is complete bullshit. We have no plans to do this, but have discussed this enough that we went through all the trouble to petition the FCC to let us do it "just in case". You do not go through all of that, including the negative press that comes with it, without a plan in place to use it.
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Yeah, when folks yearn for the "good 'ole days" for me that means back to when we could tar and feather jackasses like whoever felt that particularly lie needed to be voiced.
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"Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so."
Yeah, that is complete bullshit. We have no plans to do this, but have discussed this enough that we went through all the trouble to petition the FCC to let us do it "just in case". You do not go through all of that, including the negative press that comes with it, without a plan in place to use it.
Yes, they don't plan to currently. Totally believable to.
Because they plan to the very next January 1st after they get permission.
modem fees?? Like $12.99 to rent or $12.99 use you (Score:2)
modem fees?? Like $12.99 to rent or $12.99 use you own access fee?
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Charter provides modems for free. At one point it was to force you to use theirs, but now you can bring your own. They do charge $5 per month for a wireless router if you opt for that.
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modem fees?? Like $12.99 to rent or $12.99 use you own access fee?
Actually, Spectrum's MODEM is not an extra charge. I don't think that gets rebated if you BYOM; but I could be wrong.
I do know that I got rebated $5 because I told them I wasn't using the WiFi portion of their MODEM/Router (I use a downstream WiFi Router in Bridge mode). Interestingly enough, they didn't disable the WiFi; but still didn't charge me for it. I went in to the Spectrum (Arris) Router and disabled it myself.
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Double dipping (Score:5, Interesting)
This is plain and simple double-dipping by the ISPs.
I pay a monthly fee to connect my home to their uplink. I do this specifically because they peer with other major Internet nodes. In theory they advertise to do so, and given $100 Billions of profits on many telcos, they should have the funds to fulfill that obligation: https://about.att.com/story/20... [att.com].
But then they go to the services I want to access, and ask them for protection money... ahem... extortion racket... sorry... fees to deliver service to their customers. I have already paid the telco to do that. But they realize they have the power to say "see. your service has these nice customers using my uplink. it would be bad if something happened to their packets"
And this is not counting the triple-dipping efforts (like changing DNS to have sponsored ads).
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While I generally agree with you, how do you reconcile the ISP’s cost for their end of the interconnection to yet another service? Peering isn’t free.
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While I generally agree with you, how do you reconcile the ISP’s cost for their end of the interconnection to yet another service? Peering isn’t free.
If I'm paying them for an allotment of bandwidth and a connection to the greater internet and not just their network then how is it not already built into the bill I pay every month. Charging multiple parties for the same service is double billing.
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Say Comcast has 100,000 customers they sell a 100Mb pipe to. That means they need peering for about 100Gb with standard contention rates. That does not guarantee adequate capacity if everybody is using Netflix at the same time, so the typical approach is to directly interconnect with their CDN. That interconnection is generally in excess of the base peering.
So, say that the equipment associated with that supplemental peer, along with time required to manage it on an ongoing basis is $10,000/month, and ma
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Peering = The Internet
Otherwise you're just on a WAN.
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The whole reason I am paying them is because they do the peering. That cost is already covered by my monthly payment to them to provide me internet connectivity.
They COULD reduce their costs by going to major sources of traffic their customers want and making a mutually less expensive deal, but instead, they just go to them and demand protection money. For example, go to netflix and offer colo and bandwidth for a sweet deal if those colo-ed nodes only serve other customers on their own network. Suddenly the
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The logistics of the agreements I have had any direct insight on would mean in your case Netflix needs to rent a rack in Comcast’s POP that likely serves less than a critical mass to make it work... and they cannot use transit on Comcast’s backbone— “they” wouldn’t just let you connect at each HUB and use the common backbone from there... and you would pay a fee for the port on Comcast’s end.
That experience is several years ago (wow... maybe a 15 years!), before 100
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Comcast has their own backbone. They could avoid a lot of traffic over peering points by coloing Netflix in a few of their more central facilities, each reaching millions.
I doubt very much that Netflix would refuse if the offered terms reflected the mutually beneficial nature of the colo.
Fuck charter (Score:5, Informative)
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This is an extreme example, but fairly normal from what I have seen. They were doing "malicious compliance" with the verification of every last customer detail in the port request and their customer records. I have seen a telco reject a port request multiple times over just minor variations of the street address that the post office would not have had any trouble with.
You should have saved yourself a bunch of time and filed the PUC and FCC complaints after the first 3 or 5 phone calls.
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Fuck Charter (Score:2)
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With net neutrality gone, they are losing massive opportunity to gouge their customers and extort the streaming services. This contract restriction is really digging into their ability to do that, because it would otherwise be legal.
When they make 100x more off their customers who have no alternative and stay, well they don't really care who leaves because those customer's wallets are insignificant compared to what the alternative is bringing in.
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And some customers have NO other affordable broadband options. :(
Anyone have an actual link to post comments? (Score:2)
Come on! The most important part of the entire article and THERE'S NO LINK TO POST A PUBLIC COMMENT! The FCC link is a PDF with a generic link to the comment database.
I swear they're purposefully making it hard to enter a comment. Direct link to filing: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filin... [fcc.gov]
Anyone figure out how to enter a public comment?
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Come on! The most important part of the entire article and THERE'S NO LINK TO POST A PUBLIC COMMENT! The FCC link is a PDF with a generic link to the comment database.
I swear they're purposefully making it hard to enter a comment. Direct link to filing: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filin... [fcc.gov]
Anyone figure out how to enter a public comment?
It'll probably be full of comments asking the FCC to drop the restrictions, all posted by bots being run by a lobbying/pr firm contracted out by Charter anyway.
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Asking for permission is the first step... (Score:2)
We should allow this (Score:2)
On the condition that they they spin off all Time Warner's assets as a separate company including their original customer base where customers came through the acquisition. I'm also willing to take a 2x writedown in the total value of Time Warner's assets.
Then you **********ers can impose whatever caps you want.
ISPs, telcom firms, broadband companies (Score:1)
There's a confusion in the market about what to call a company that offers a variety of services. Charter Telecom is a telecommunication company that offers "last-mile" (industry term) connection to their network. Some Telcos use other Telcos to provide that "last-mile" (because they laid the wire in the ground 40 years ago). That's called at Type-II service. You (the end user) pay your provider (Charter?) who then pays the real last-mile provider. Internet service is not part of this.
Charter also offe
Charter is telling stories (Score:2)
so Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so. Bet there is, just no start date.
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Of course. Can't make plans without knowing when they'll be approved.