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Stop 'Harmful 5G Fast Lanes', Legal Scholar Warns America's FCC (stanford.edu) 41

Posted by EditorDavid from the needing-net-neutrality dept.
America's FCC votes on net neutrality April 25th. And the director of Stanford Law School's "Center for Internet and Society" (also a law professor) says mostly there's "much to celebrate" in the draft rules released earlier this month. Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that have been degrading video quality for mobile users will have to stop. The FCC kept in place state neutrality protections like California's net neutrality law, allowing for layers of enforcement. The FCC also made it harder for ISPs to evade net neutrality at the point where data enters their networks.
However, the draft rules also have "a huge problem." The proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane — where they'll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon are all testing ways to create these 5G fast lanes for apps such as video conferencing, games, and video where the ISP chooses and controls what gets boosted. They use a technical feature in 5G called network slicing, where part of their radio spectrum gets used as a special lane for the chosen app or apps, separated from the usual internet traffic. The FCC's draft order opens the door to these fast lanes, so long as the app provider isn't charged for them.
They warn of things like cellphone plans "Optimized for YouTube and TikTok... Or we could see add-ons like Enhanced Video Conferencing for $10 a month, or one-time 24-hour passes to have Prioritized Online Gaming." This isn't imagination. The ISPs write about this in their blogs and press releases. They talk about these efforts and dreams openly at conferences, and their equipment vendors plainly lay out how ISPs can chop up internet service into all manner of fast lanes.

These kinds of ISP-controlled fast lanes violate core net neutrality principles and would limit user choice, distort competition, hamper startups, and help cement platform dominance. Even small differences in load times affect how long people stay on a site, how much they pay, and whether they'll come back. Those differences also affect how high up sites show in search results. Thus, letting ISPs choose which apps get to be in a fast lane lets them, not users, pick winners and losers online... [T]he biggest apps will end up in all the fast lanes, while most others would be left out. The ones left out would likely include messaging apps like Signal, local news sites, decentralized Fediverse apps like Mastodon and PeerTube, niche video sites like Dropout, indie music sites like Bandcamp, and the millions of other sites and apps in the long tail.
One subheading emphasizes that "This is not controversial," noting that "Even proposed Republican net neutrality bills prohibited ISPs from speeding up and slowing down apps and kinds of apps..." Yet "While draft order acknowledges that some speeding up of apps could violate the no-throttling rule, it added some unclear, nebulous language suggesting that the FCC would review any fast lanes case-by-case, without explaining how it would do that... Companies that do file complaints will waste years litigating the meaning of "unreasonably discriminatory," all the while going up against giant telecoms that stockpile lawyers and lobbyists."

"Net neutrality means that we, the people who use the internet, get to decide what we do online, without interference from ISPs. ISPs do not get to interfere with our choices by blocking, speeding up or slowing down apps or kinds of apps..."

They urge the FCC to edit their draft order before April 24 to clarify "that the no-throttling rule also prohibits ISPs from creating fast lanes for select apps or kinds of apps."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Stop 'Harmful 5G Fast Lanes', Legal Scholar Warns America's FCC More

Stop 'Harmful 5G Fast Lanes', Legal Scholar Warns America's FCC

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  • Mobile Video Quality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aBlueMe ( 7317380 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @12:46PM (#64393722)

    My carrier uses a stream size management tool that drops YouTube video quality to 480p. There is a switch if I want to turn it off.

    My "unlimited" plan has 16gb or so of priority data. It's in my best interest to keep my video consumption to a modest level so that I stay within that priority window.

    The carriers only have a fixed amount of bandwidth to work with anyhow. So discouraging bandwidth management is not really helpful to everyone.

    • Re:Mobile Video Quality (Score:4)

      by DarkVader ( 121278 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:19PM (#64393770)

      You're missing the point.

      That's a user-initiated quality drop. It's up to you whether you drop the video quality or not, it's up to you whether you want to use the data or not.

      The problem comes when they say "We're going to force you to have lower video quality, by limiting the speed of your connection when you go to certain video streaming sites who didn't pay us. We're also not going to do that when you go to the sites that did pay us."

    • Re:Mobile Video Quality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Raven ( 30575 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:20PM (#64393774) Homepage

      It's not about bandwidth management. That's fine. It's about discriminatory bandwidth management, where some apps (perhaps the ones that pay a kickback to the ISP) get priority over others, allocated a larger share of that limited bandwidth. ISP side QoS can be a good thing in theory, in practice it's just another avenue for them to squeeze more money from the customers and from the service providers by paying for the privilege of being on the 'fast' QoS lane.

      • > perhaps the ones that pay a kickback to the ISP

        Kickback? What about apps *owned* by the ISP? Most service providers also offer their own brand of on-demand services. Even if anyone can buy priority traffic for better speeds, they can give it to themselves for free. It's extremely anti-competitive.

        =Smidge=

      • Wait, didn't they have this thing called "Net Neutrality" a while back??/s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by davecb ( 6526 )
        One risk is that non-discriminatory bandwidth management (eg, the stuff the bufferbloat team does, like fq_codel and CAKE) will not be easy to distinguish from the discriminatory stuff that enables the ISP to demand kickback and/or being paid extra by the provider of the service. That would result in shitty service for everyone and, perversely, more motivation to pay the ISP to work around the rules.

      • A gaming or VOIP app should get priority over an app that's downloading podcasts or uploading photos because it's actually sensitive to latency. Allocating bandwidth neutrally here is a loss for everyone.

        So long as the platform doesn't discriminate between apps doing the same thing, this seems totally reasonable.

      • > ISP side QoS can be a good thing in theory, in practice it's just another avenue for them to squeeze more money from the customers and from the service providers

        "Nice bandwidth usage you have here. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it"

        (Pay up or be left behind)

    • The carriers only have a fixed amount of bandwidth to work with anyhow
       
      Nowhere NEAR as limited as they have you believe. Short of the handful of assholes that would use their cell phone as a torrent seed box, everyone could have ACTUAL unlimited data without throttling and the system would not suffer

      • They are selling home broadband internet 5G so there is going to be lots of usage have you seen the size of video game and update downloads?

    • Re:Mobile Video Quality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:38PM (#64393794)

      The carriers only have a fixed amount of bandwidth to work with anyhow. So discouraging bandwidth management is not really helpful to everyone.

      You are missing the point. Bandwidth management is fine. What ISPs are doing are allowing apps to pay for "different" bandwidth management. Which large app companies can easily pay and small one will never be able to pay. That favors a lack of small business online.

      My carrier uses a stream size management tool

      Nothing wrong with putting it in consumer hands. What this article is talking about are distinctly things you WOULD NOT have in your hands. Giving ISPs power to form special contracts with apps is anti-small business and anti-consumer. It's literally everything we should be opposing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rta ( 559125 )

        you say bandwidth management is fine, but in these debates/articles/bills I don't see that coming through. The techniques and tools for "evil" QOS are the same ones for "good" QOS.

        The orders of magnitude difference in size and latency sensitivity of different types of traffic makes it hard to just throw everything together and not with about it except if you have crazy over provisioning. Fortunately bandwidth availability due to improvement at link level and processing power in router has grown incredibly

    • That is bullshit. All major carriers have multiple YouTube servers locally on their network. They do not NEED to throttle. It is just a means to segregate users.

      • That is bullshit. All major carriers have multiple YouTube servers locally on their network. They do not NEED to throttle. It is just a means to segregate users.

        I retired from a major corporation that operates a major US cellular carrier; you would know the names instantly if I mentioned them.

        I never saw any such servers in their data centers, and I had 'badge access' to those centers along with the switching centers. In fact that carrier REFUSED to have 3rd party servers on it's premises or directly connected to it's networks since there was no SAFE way to secure that 3rd party device from the internal networks when that 3rd party needed to "manage" their server.

        • Well, as an expert you would understand internal network differently than other people. The caching media servers are often in the interconnects so technically where the ISP terminates (if small) or peers (if large). So if wouldn't be on the "internal network" how you would understand it, it could be owned by the ISP and on the ISP premises (though it could also be the organization handling peering agreements, depending on country), but from a networking point of view it would be treated as either external

          • I guess you are clearly demonstrating that you have butt cheeks ... everybody has got them, right?

            If it was anywhere on company property, and we OWNED all of our own locations, cell sites, switching centers, data centers, and so forth ... then I would have known about it; that was the primary responsibility of the workgroup to which I was hired.

            It was our point of pride back then (maybe not now): We owned all of our own gear & sites so we could respond very quickly without having to wait for a trouble t

  • What a waste! Let's stop with the charades (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If it's not a dumb pipe, it's not "net neutrality".

  • OTOH (Score:3)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:46PM (#64393800)
    There is a place for prioritized traffic, without violating neutrality. For example, let all users mark up to 10% of their traffic as high priority. The user can pick if that's used for video, or games, or monitoring their EKG, not the provider, and every user is treated the same. The percentage might be vary depending on how oversubscribed the path is.

  • Nothing wrong with a minimum speed set by the gov that makes sure everyone gets through at speed X and volume Y. Larger sites pay to increase minimum values.
    I get we don't want people to abuse network traffic but net neutrality is not the answer.

    • Is it still forbidden for a local hospital to pay the ISP so a radiologist can get stat MRI's faster than his neighbor gets cat videos?

      Some places have like 10 meg of bandwidth for the neighborhood. FCC may imagine everybody has gigabit FTTH.

    • These larger sites already pay for their hosting costs. They should pay zero dollars to anyone else.
      Users are already paying their ISP to access it. The speed/amount should be clearly labeled in their plan
      Everyone is paying their share.
      • No not really, people like google practically mandate traffic from the devices of their clients you’d have to jump over a lot of hurdles as a consumer to avoid it.

  • Republicans (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday April 14, 2024 @02:49PM (#64393876)

    Stupid republicans support scams "it's freedom, companies should be allowed to choose what content you have access to, users can choose a different provider or if not too bad!" .. and then these same idiots get pissed off when social media does the same thing. What needs to happen is ISPs need to start making Republicans pay more to access right-wing nationalist freak content.

    • Stupid republicans support scams "it's freedom, companies should be allowed to choose what content you have access to, users can choose a different provider or if not too bad!" .. and then these same idiots get pissed off when social media does the same thing. What needs to happen is ISPs need to start making Republicans pay more to access right-wing nationalist freak content.

      That's quite literally what the D's are saying with reference to social media and Section 230. Different application, same effect.

  • If the main telcos fixted on, say, a Facebook Video fast lane, to the detriment of YouTube, and the people of the land is clamoring for a "YouTube fast lane" phone plan, be certain that one (or more) MVNOs will create a "YouTube fast lane" plan for the masses.

    That's the beauty of a solid ecosystem of MVNOs and Number portability like you have in the USoA and Europe.

    Us, in LatAm? We can only dream.

  • They warn of things like cellphone plans "Optimized for YouTube and TikTok...

    Just fine as long as they offer a fast lane for torrents as well.

  • Stop 'Harmful 5G Fast Lanes'

    Wonder which side of this Dominic Toretto and his crew will come down on ... but am predicting it'll be straight to video. :-)

    [Either way, one political party or the other is sure to be furious. :-) ]

  • Just choose a provider that doesn't throttle, but remember that I do not want to subsidize your 20GB/hour porn habit. That's Freedom!

    • Unfortunately, you've declared that no-one is allowed to choose something that goes against your beliefs, so there is no freedom to be had.

      BTW: You're paying your shared service provider. By definition, you are subsidizing their 20GB/hour porn habit. That's basic economics!

  • ISPs like to spin their throttling and priority adjustments as providing a "fast lane."

    A real fast lane would be an improvement on the network that provides greater throughput and/or lower latency.

    What some ISPs are actually doing is building a slow lane by throttling traffic, then charging to get out of the slow lane.

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