
Net neutrality - austenallred
http://blog.samaltman.com/net-neutrality
======
snitko
I wonder. I wonder. I live in Russia and I have 2-3 very good providers on the
block constantly competing with each other and offering better connection and
prices. They would show up on time and connect you very fast. They fix things
quickly (in my government maintained house, the basement once became filled
with water after the rain, and the wires were damaged. Even though it wasn't
their fault, the ISP came and fixed it the same day). I pay about $120 a year
for my internet. It's faster than anything I saw when in the US. And that's in
Russia, that authoritarian backward country. Do you know why I pay so little?
That's because we have the free-est goddamn ISP market, government hasn't been
interfering with it (it's starting to, though). Everything I see government
touches is of low quality, whereas everything that's good in my country is
private enterprise.

And yet, you claim free market fails. Dear american internet users. The only
reason you have what you have - shitty speeds and near monopolies - is BECAUSE
you have government sticking its nose where it shouldn't (I'd say, it
shouldn't stick its nose anywhere, but that's another story). Comcast is the
second largest lobbyist in Washington. And still you want to fix the problem
by introducing more of the same, that is more regulation and more government,
whereas the only way to fix things is to not allow governmental interference
in the first place. You can't blame evil Comcast. Why? Because if not them,
someone else would lobby and win. If you can lobby, you have to or you're
gone.

~~~
lonnyk
>whereas the only way to fix things is to not allow governmental interference
in the first place.

But we are past this point. So what is the solution now?

~~~
snitko
Good question. The solution is not go full retard, it seems, but to stop doing
wrong things. Whatever you do, you don't ever introduce new regulation. Don't
introduce more opportunities for government bureaucrats to feed from. Because
if you do, it's gonna lead to worse and more expensive things for the
consumer.

~~~
harpastum
I understand your point, and I don't want to derail this thread into a
discussion on language. However, saying that introducing more governmental
regulation is going "full retard" (even if the idea behind it is actually
true) is reductive and detracts from your point.

This is not an issue of political correctness. Saying "not go full shit-head"
falls into the same category. Please treat your opposition with respect, even
if you disagree with them.

~~~
snitko
Oh, ok, sorry. I never realized "retard" is super offensive in that way. It
didn't sound like a very strong word to me, so I apologize.

------
rayiner
I don't see how a normally libertarian-leaning group of people have embraced
regulation rather than deregulation as to this issue. Why do local ISP markets
tend towards monopoly, even though it has been illegal since 1992 to grant
local cable monopolies? Two words: universal access.

It's the same principle that led municipalities to grant taxicab monopolies,
of the kind that stifle companies like Uber today. The idea is that in a free
market, providers would only focus on the profitable parts of the city,
leaving the lower-income areas without service.

Universal access is why it's impossible to "disrupt" the market for local
internet. A new entrant can't just come into the market and pick off the most
desirable customers or the ones that are cheapest to service. They have to be
prepared to service everyone, even many customers who can only be served at a
loss, in order to be allowed to operate at all. Additional regulation in this
space isn't going to eliminate the underlying problem, it will just make
infrastructure construction a more unattractive business and decrease
investment.

There is no free lunch. You can have: neutrality, universal access, or a
mostly privately-funded telecom infrastructure, but you only get to pick two.
If you think universal access is important, and net neutrality is important,
you have to be willing to publicly subsidize the construction of telecom
infrastructure.

PS. Some folks have mentioned BT OpenReach, but it's important to understand
what did and did not happen there. First, BT was originally a government-owned
corporation before it was privatized, so the government was in a position to
set the terms of the privatization. Second, the government used a fairly
generous "RPI - X" price cap to certain of BT's services. Between monopoly
pricing power and a relatively generous price cap, BT made very healthy
returns on investment. See:
[http://www.academia.edu/3399930/LESSONS_OF_PRIVATISATION_IN_...](http://www.academia.edu/3399930/LESSONS_OF_PRIVATISATION_IN_THE_UK)
(p. 28-9).

In the U.S., unbundled DSL was a failure. First, it got caught up in
litigation because the infrastructure was never public at any point. Second,
it was an almost pure losing proposition for the telecom companies. The FCC
mandated a not-very-generous cost-based price control (TELRIC), which made
further investments in DSL infrastructure unattractive.

~~~
Retric
I don't see how internet is any less a natural monopoly than electricity.
Picture a residential street with 100 completely separate fiber optic networks
vs 10 vs 1, now which seems more efficient. It's not like everyone connects to
a different Hacker News.

~~~
exelius
Because with electricity, everyone gets the same power. You're tied to the
same grid; your provider just meters your usage, bills you, then pays
wholesale prices for the power you used. But the system as a whole only
measures inputs (from power generators) and outputs (consumers). It works for
something like electric power where a volt is a volt and a kilowatt is a
kilowatt.

With Internet access, you're looking for SPECIFIC packets. Those packets have
to be routed in a certain way and delivered over a shared, multicast last mile
infrastructure. If you want the ability to choose your ISP, then while it may
be the same Hacker News, the route the packets take to get there might be very
different.

~~~
zanny
Your ISP does not give a shit where your packets are going to or where packets
directed towards you are coming from. That is the backbones problem, and most
ISPs do not manage it at all. For an ISP, it _is_ effectively electricity -
the cost to route a packet is always constant, assuming they don't have
meterage deals with different backbone routers depending on the destination.
To them, they just care where the packet is going, to just send it in the
right direction either way. And maybe billing for data usage is a valid
business model, but the real world per unit costs of packets are magnitudes
lower than the per unit costs of even electricity in traditional measures like
kwh. IE, the modern "pricing schema" for data, where a gigabyte costs multiple
dollars, is an insanely unrealistic measure - if you are not paying for the
wires in the dirt.

~~~
exelius
> assuming they don't have meterage deals with different backbone routers
> depending on the destination.

That's a big assumption, and an incorrect one at that. Most content delivered
to large ISPs is delivered by CDNs over paid interconnects (and it's been that
way for a decade or more). They either pay the ISPs directly or for transit at
a peering point.

> IE, the modern "pricing schema" for data, where a gigabyte costs multiple
> dollars, is an insanely unrealistic measure - if you are not paying for the
> wires in the dirt.

If you're expecting pricing to be tied to cost, you're gonna have a bad time.
That's just not how modern product pricing works for ANY product. You pay as
much as the service is worth to you; if it wasn't worth it, you wouldn't pay
it.

------
njs12345
> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile
> infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer
> wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the
> problem. [2]

This is pretty much how it works in the UK; see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach)

It does seem to work pretty well.. there are a wide variety of operators and
prices are very low. If I had to pick out common criticisms, Openreach can
take their time if you have to deal with them directly (getting a line
installed in a new office or apartment can take a few weeks), and there seems
to be very limited innovation in the last mile - even in London it's hard to
get more than 20mbps, and many people in rural areas are stuck with a crappy
DSL line at 2mbps or so.

~~~
twoodfin
_If I had to pick out common criticisms, Openreach can take their time if you
have to deal with them directly (getting a line installed in a new office or
apartment can take a few weeks), and there seems to be very limited innovation
in the last mile - even in London it 's hard to get more than 20mbps, and many
people in rural areas are stuck with a crappy DSL line at 2mbps or so._

That's exactly what I'd expect. Make infrastructure a low margin utility and a
true monopoly and you'll get utility-grade results.

If everyone here (as I do) hopes they'll have gigabit speeds to their homes in
a few years, you have to plausibly explain how those upgrades happen in a
utility infrastructure regulatory world.

~~~
chimeracoder
> If everyone here (as I do) hopes they'll have gigabit speeds to their homes
> in a few years,

Unless you already live in a very densely populated area[0], I don't think
there's any reasonable chance of that happening for most people, whether we go
the Title II route or not.

Title II is better than the alternative, but having gigabit speeds for most
households is quite a ways off no matter how we do it.

[0] And even then - I live in Manhattan and several buildings on my block have
FiOS, but mine does not (thanks to TWC's exclusive agreement with the building
owner).

~~~
exelius
> [0] And even then - I live in Manhattan and several buildings on my block
> have FiOS, but mine does not (thanks to TWC's exclusive agreement with the
> building owner).

This is a problem with MDUs and why the big telecoms have dedicated sales
teams assigned to make these kinds of deals. The more likely scenario is that
Verizon was working on getting these kinds of deals set up, then they halted
FiOS expansion and stopped adding new buildings before they got to yours.

I don't think contractual exclusivity is legal, but a building owner does have
to set up agreements with a company like Verizon or TWC to allow them access
to the building, provide a contractual basis as to who owns what wiring, etc.
So if Verizon doesn't reach out to the building and set that up, FiOS isn't
going to be offered.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The more likely scenario is that Verizon was working on getting these kinds
> of deals set up, then they halted FiOS expansion and stopped adding new
> buildings before they got to yours.

Actually, no, they are still adding new buildings in NYC, but only on the
condition that they provide _both_ television and Internet service to the
building. (For a short period of time they did Internet-only out on Long
Island, but they've stopped that).

I got very far up the Verizon chain and found out a lot of information about
this, which is why I know the specifics here.

In my case, I requested that Verizon figure out whether they wanted to provide
service to my building (they did) and that they then contact my building (they
did), at which point it turned out that TV (not Internet) for the building
could only be provided by TWC.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Verizon uses this as an easy excuse to
avoid expanding their service (since 2010 or 2011, Verizon has been very half-
hearted about FiOS and doesn't really seem to care about expanding FiOS as
much as they care about _appearing_ to care)[0].

> I don't think contractual exclusivity is legal,

No, but they've found creative ways to get around it, and it's certainly not
something that's widely enforced.

[0] My evidence in favor of that comes more from my experience dealing with
them in New England.

------
cs702
I agree, there's no real competition for the "last mile." (If there were real
competition, ISPs would be trampling over each other to deliver the best
Netflix experience and bragging about it in their advertising campaigns!)

Requiring the incumbent mono/duopolistic last-mile ISPs to lease their lines
may improve the situation, but I'm not as sure as Sam Altman that it would
bring about real competition, because of the difficulties inherent in
enforcing "fair, transparent leasing." Incumbents surely would find lots of
clever ways to game any leasing scheme imposed by the FCC while technically
"complying" with it.

I expect it would be better for US consumers than the status quo, though.

~~~
Retric
One option would be to prevent any company from operating a last mile AND
selling it to retail customers.

Honestly, what I find most striking is how bad cable boxes are simply because
there is no completion.

~~~
MBCook
Recently, due to their (Comcast's) own stupidity, I ended up having a couple
of visits from Comcast techs trying to fix an issue.

Every single one was _wowed_ by my TiVo. Just seeing how fast it was to
respond (which has never been a TiVo strong suit) and how reasonable the
interface was amazed them.

That's pathetic.

~~~
JTon
Why bother attacking the comcast techs? These guys are just trying to make a
living. The real problems come from well above

~~~
MBCook
Sorry, I meant due to _Comcast 's_ stupidity, not the techs.

The two techs I worked with were very nice and clearly frustrated with their
inability to help me at times due odd barriers in the way Comcast has things
setup, stupid hoops to jump through.

I've edited my comment.

------
bmelton
I've been fairly on the fence regarding net neutrality, and this article
turned me around on the issue.

Previously, it was nearly impossible for me to reconcile a valid reason for
regulating the telcos. It's their pipes, they should be able to route it
however they want. And aside from that, we've never had net neutrality --
there's no ISP I've ever used that allows unfettered upstream access to port
80 from my home, for example. That was, up til now, my belief, which I
understand is not a popular one.

That said, the final paragraph actually hit home with me.

"As long as consumers don’t have freedom of choice, last-mile traffic
discrimination should be per se illegal."

If the game is already rigged, then the players should have to play by the
same rules.

Edit: s/traffic/pipes/g

~~~
angersock
_" It's their traffic, they should be able to route it however they want"_

It's their _pipes_ , not their _traffic_. A minor distinction, but an
important one. :)

~~~
bmelton
You are 100% correct. I'll edit.

------
AnthonyMouse
> Unpaid prioritization is sometimes necessary; if everyone in a neighborhood
> is trying to stream 4k video, something is going to get prioritized.

I don't understand where people get this impression. If there is not enough
capacity in the network then yes, some packets have to be dropped, but there
is no cause for the ISP to be looking at what kind of packets they are.
Building a network where this is considered necessarily is inherently
defective because the ISP cannot possibly even know what every kind of packet
contains.

The only sensible algorithm for ISPs to use is to drop the packets of the
users currently transferring the most data. This actually does the right thing
in the large majority of cases. If you're using VoIP, your packets don't get
dropped because VoIP is not very bandwidth intensive. If you're doing some
bulk transfer at full bore then your transfer slows down because you're
transferring more data than anybody else. If you're streaming video then
you're fine as long as the bitrate is less than what the ISP can currently
provide to each active user, and if it isn't then you're screwed in any event.

The alternative is begging for gamesmanship. You can easily make a bulk
transfer look like a hundred VoIP streams. Especially with P2P. Building a
network where cheaters get ahead and innocent but unrecognized protocols get
downgraded is completely unreasonable. You can't cheat an algorithm which is
completely fair to all protocols.

------
mkx
Direct link to the proceeding on the fcc website:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display)
(Proceeding #14-28 here:
[http://www.fcc.gov/comments](http://www.fcc.gov/comments))

~~~
cyorir
I'd love to see someone scrape all of these comments (since they're provided
in convenient tabular form, might as well!) and analyze them to see if there
is any interesting data to be seen.

Just browsing through a couple, some people give one-liners but a few comments
are all-out, nearly essays. I assume the FCC doesn't read all of these. Do
they just use a program to analyze these comments, and gauge overall content?

------
kokey
There is a lot about the wording of this that I really like. It clearly
acknowledges the real cause of the problem, which is basically locally rigged
markets, and actually suggests a solution that won't simply help entrench the
incumbents through increased regulation similar to price and quality fixing.

------
zoba
Folks: If you go here:
[http://www.fcc.gov/comments](http://www.fcc.gov/comments) and click 14-28
("Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet"), it will take you to a form
where you can submit your comments.

~~~
jonahx
In order to post comments, you have to make your name and address available on
the site publicly? Am I understanding that correctly?

~~~
zoba
Yeah, looks that way. Putting my name on protecting the internet is something
I'm proud to do. Putting my address down is a bit obnoxious though - I doubt
they're going to do any verification on these.

~~~
loumf
They don't have to. If anyone wants to, they could verify it. I helped support
an effort to find evidence of astroturfing an FCC request for comment. Having
this data enabled us to do that work.

Knowing that the data could be verified is supposed to be a deterrent to
acting in bad faith. Later, one could do the verification if they doubted the
comments were genuine. Given the amount of tech power behind keeping net-
neutrality, we should want the process to be as open as possible, so we could
verify it ourselves.

~~~
jonahx
They could ask for the information, but not make it public.

~~~
loumf
Making things public is how the government gets data closer to the truth with
less work, and you don't have to trust them to do it. Groups with interest do
the verification (lobbyists, journalists, you, etc). This is part of what
makes democracy work.

The alternative is that we have to trust the government to do the verification
with no check or balance.

------
hezakia1
"I have met with the Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, and I believe he is a
good actor that wants to do the right thing. But he is fighting against very
powerful lobbyists and large companies that want to disrupt the freedom of the
Internet."

"Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and
lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry" -Wikipedia

Really? Somehow I doubt that he has turned a full 180 and is now trying to
protect the internet against people in his former occupation.

~~~
btilly
Rule of thumb. Assume people are operating fairly until proven otherwise. If
you meet someone and treat them as a good actor, it becomes easier for them to
BE one.

Truth is he is probably a politician. He will do whatever he thinks is going
to get him the most support. So if you can convince him that is going against
his former friends, he will do that. (180 flips in policy are very common in
politicians.)

~~~
webmaven
Yes. AssumeGoodFaith:
[http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith](http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith)

------
pdkl95
In this debate, a lot of people - especially those discussing "paying per GB"
\- that seem to be missing a key issue. Sometimes this is intentional, but I
suspect that is a fairly small minority.

The central problem: trying to apply the concept of _money_ and _economics_ to
packets doesn't work, because money and economics are tools for handling
_scarce resources_ , while the major benefit of the modern "digital age" is
that you can copy those bits without a per-copy cost[1]. As bits are not
scarce, "pay per GB" becomes a case of applying to wrong tool or trying to
solve the wrong problem.

Observing that the infinite scalability of bits isn't leading to free high-
speed internet for everybody, a better question is: which resources really are
scarce? These are the costs that billing should be based upon.

With networking, those costs are things like creating the network hardware,
installing it, and maintaining that hardware. The first two are a one-time
cost. We usually distribute that kind of high-variance, unpredictable cost
into "monthly payments" in a variety of industries, and tthe maintenance costs
are inherently a "per-unit-time" cost as well. This includes the expensive
routers that you _need to have anyway_ to be able to tolerate variations in
usage[2]. At no point does the contents ("number of packets") enter into this
as a cost.

A common rebuttal to the idea of usage not being a cost is to point out the
problem of saturation and how an oversubscribed line would the ISP to make
expensive upgrades. This problem _does_ exist, and should be part of the
billing... because it is a problem about _bandwidth_ , not _bits_. You don't
get to keep billing someone indefinitely for a one-time cost. Attempting to do
make up costs like that would be rent-seeking[3].

Various ISPs have shown that billing for a given amount of bandwidth (at some
defined defined guarantee of service) can easily be profitable.

[1] Electricity costs are not relevant, and are often not relevant anyway in
physical layers where you have to send an empty carrier if there is no data.
Most of the rest of the "costs" are associated with _using_ those bits (see:
CMOS), which is addressed above.

[2] The specific amount of tolerance required being defined by the guarantees
(sometimes with SLA) offered by the ISP.

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking)

~~~
rlpb
To add to this, 95 percentile billing seems to work very well in the UK. But
since this isn't useful to an individual end user, this requires the last-mile
provider to be required to resell wholesale access under 95 percentile
billing, and for multiple ISPs to compete buy under this cost structure and
resell to consumers under price structures that work better for them.

This works very well in the UK. We have no "net neutrality" problem as a
result.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing#95th_percenti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing#95th_percentile)

------
natmaster
The structural reason is the government itself. There is no free market. There
are no checks and balances from consumers. Telecom is a government enabled
monopoly, and now you're seeing the dangers of consolidating power into a few
corrupt men [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/wake-up-
internet-t...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/wake-up-internet-
time-to_b_5207303.html)

------
blakerson
When you submit a comment, don't forget to click the text link "Confirm" or
else your comment will be lost. It's easy to miss since the screen looks like
a post-submission confirmation.

------
the_watcher
The wireless v. home internet is a great thing to point out. It's the exact
same companies, but operating with less of a monopoly.

~~~
jusben1369
I now get about 30down/20 up at my house with LTE from ATT and pay for and get
15/5 with ATT U-Verse. 6 months ago we paid maybe $160 per month for two
phones and 2 GB per month download. Now it's $160 per month for 4 phones and
10GB. So it seems to me that, when I factor in the cost savings of $50 per
month of shutting down cable internet, won't I be happy to soon spend $200 to
$250 per month with ATT LTE to get 30/20 and say 100GB per month?

------
jusben1369
This feels very much like the kind of thing Marc Andreessen would complain
about. Whatever the original good intent government created a monopoly or
duopoly in many markets for cable companies. So now we have a lack of
competition. Now we need more government regulation on top of the regulation
in place to fix the original problem. It seems to me that sites like NetFlix
are artificially cheap because they're subsidized by all websites and end
users paying into the internet access pool and that artifical cheapness
results in? Higher usage which in turn drags down the overall performance of
ISP's.

------
NoPiece
_This is not the case for the “last mile”. Consumers often can only buy
Internet access from a single provider; there is no choice._

This is often asserted, but not true. According to the FCC, 97% of consumers
have access to at least 2 broadband providers. 67% of people have access to at
least 2 providers at 10mbps.

Here is the graph from the FCC:

[http://i.imgur.com/xhn1YCF.png](http://i.imgur.com/xhn1YCF.png)

and the original source doc:

[http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2013...](http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2013/db1224/DOC-324884A1.pdf)

~~~
tehwebguy
The "last mile" argument is true, your numbers don't disprove it because they
don't represent a percentage of consumers with said broadband options.

The report's title is: Percentages of Households Located in Census Tracts
Where Providers Report Residential Fixed-Location Connections of Various
Speeds as of December 31, 2012

If the census tract where a household is located has access to 2+ broadband
providers it satisfies this test, even if the household itself has access to
less than 2. An entire tract that includes 2 cable companies that offer 10+
mbps but only offer exclusive service to locations would still satisfy this
test even though 0 of the residences have access to 2+ services.

~~~
NoPiece
Yes it seems possible that they could be overestimating, but it is the most
thorough report I have seen. And if their sample set is large enough, they
should have accounted for it. Do you have any actual data that shows different
numbers?

~~~
tehwebguy
No I don't think they are overestimating, the graph just doesn't say what you
said it does. It does not count the residences that have access to 2+ options,
it only counts the number of houses that lie within census tracts that have 2+
broadband options available anywhere in said tract.

This means that even a residence with literally 0 options would be counted as
a "2+ broadband options available" house if there were 2+ broadband options
available anywhere in the census tract it lies within.

The numbers don't have to be refuted, they simply aren't numbers that indicate
whether there is a problem or not because they answer a different. But
unfortunately no, I don't have any data other than this report. I was super
disappointed when it came out because I don't know of anything else.

~~~
NoPiece
You are right, what the report says is that 97% of people live in census tract
where there are two broadband providers. What percent have access to the two
is unknown, but absent any evidence to the contrary, and given the relatively
small size of census tracts, it is reasonable to assume a majority have access
to the providers in their tract. I'm open minded here, show me some data that
shows a large group of people don't have access to at least 2 broadband ISPs.

~~~
fpgeek
Apartment buildings often make exclusive deals with cable companies for a
variety of reasons. And even when they don't, it can be very hard to deploy
new infrastructure anyway.

~~~
NoPiece
Yes of course, like I've said, the number is overstated, but by how much? How
many people in the country live in apartments like you describe? 2%? 5%? 10%?
It still doesn't make much of a dent into 97%

------
orblivion
I'll try not to be an overbearing libertarian here talking about how this is
all the government's fault. It's not 100% clear to me and somebody else has
that covered. But I do want to put one concept out there as food for thought.
The FCC's mission statement (amended in 1996) is the following:

"make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States,
without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin,
or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio
communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."

Net Neutrality seems to fit within the spirit of this mission statement. And
yet the FCC is also in the business of censoring nipples. Do you want to risk
the FCC to be in the business of censoring nipples on the Internet? I can
already anticipate what people will say when that day comes. "Look, the
government isn't perfect, we don't have to dismantle it, We the People just
have to vote somebody into office who will speak for us and implement
reasonable standards.". Ok, so when was the last time that happened to your
satisfaction? Do you really want to risk having this kind of future on the
prospect that reasonable people will be voted into office?

This is one reasons libertarians and certain conservatives fight tooth and
nail against every increase in the scope of government, no matter how
reasonable it may seem. I'm more interested in the future of mesh networking,
or any number of things we haven't even thought of, to work around this sort
of thing.

~~~
markkat
To play devil's advocate, Apple also censors nipples. Both can change their
stance on nipples. Like private companies, representative governments do
respond to popular opinion, the avenues of applying pressure are just
different.

Government and corporations each have certain advantages and faults by design.
I'd prefer a public road and a private car, to a private road and a public
car.

------
geekam
Honest question from a non-citizen about this line "But he is fighting against
very powerful lobbyists..."

I do not understand lobbying? Is it a euphemism about bribing a bunch of
politicians? If yes, then why isn't it illegal? If no, then can someone please
throw some light on it.

I was not born here in the US so I am always confused by what "powerful
lobbyists" can do to deter someone like the chairman of FCC who can literally
make the rules (right?).

~~~
icehawk219
Lobbying in its purest form is supposed to be a way for people to have a voice
in their government. Anyone in this country can ring up, or write, or email,
their representative and push for an issue they feel strongly about. Likewise
they can also make campaign contributions to the representatives, or
candidates, they like and want to see in office. And the two can very easily
be tied together: "I'm donating to your campaign because ...". If you keep it
that simple it's a pretty good idea and is one that I think most people can
get behind.

However in our modern world it really is just blatant bribery. Because
corporations and rich individuals are able to donate such vast amounts that
they are the only ones people care about. Take a look at how much money is
spent during election cycles and it's obscene how many millions are poured
into running for office. All that money has to come from somewhere. Say, for
arguments sake, you _must_ raise at least $5m to have a chance of winning an
election but you think you can only raise about $2m from small donations
(individuals) and then a few companies come along offering you nice big money
bags if you agree to support their causes. Who do you care most about?

~~~
geekam
I see. So, the only way to have fair "for the people, by the people, of the
people" elections is to have people fund the elections?

Thanks for a nice explanation.

~~~
icehawk219
Well the idea is that anyone can run for election and in order to afford to do
so people can pool their resources and help out. So if I want to run for mayor
and you really like me a lot better than the other person you can pitch in in
different ways. You can help me reach out to voters, you can make calls for
me, you can help me with social media, or you can donate money to me so I can
pay people to do those things. This by itself really isn't a problem
especially when there are caps on how much money people can donate, which
there are. But if you donate as much money to my campaign as you are allowed
what's to stop you from calling up the local TV station and paying them
directly to run an ad for me? I might not even necessarily be involved at any
point.

The big problems come when we do things like decide a multinational
corporation qualifies as a person and therefor the rules around how much money
a company can donate don't apply to them. And we do things like change the
rules around what the limits are. And then people do things like fund PACs
where they pool their resources and promote a candidate on their own without
actually donating to the campaign itself directly. Some of these are just
outright stupid decisions that never should have happened in the first place
and others are loopholes. Campaign finance reform in the US doesn't have a
single silver bullet that's going to fix everything. There's a lot of things
that are wrong with it. Citizens United (the corporate personhood ruling) is
probably the biggest but it's still just one problem among many.

------
eglover
I hate this debate. It's mostly politics and buzzwords with 0 cost/benefit
analysis. Google already buys last mile access and if people keep acting like
profits don't already come from customer choice they're going to end up with
slow socialized internet and you'll never see 4k video. Net neutrality helps
competition... In what world? That's like saying public schools increase
competition in education.

------
vog
_> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile
infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer
wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the
problem_

This is not enough. In Germany we already do have that situation, and the big
leader (German Telekom, who own the vast majority of cables) just leases them
for bad conditions. For example, their own customers got "real" flatrates
while leasing competitors got only traffic-based contracts, so when they sell
flatrates they have big trouble with traffic-intensive customers. (In the last
year, the situation became more complicated, but that's another topic).

We should go one step further and require a _complete separation_ of
infrastructure providers, ISPs and content providers.

That is, a company who owns cables should only lease them to ISPs and should
not be allowed to play ISP itself. Also, the ISPs should not be allowed offer
content themselves.

(Also, the owner of the infrastructure (cables) should probably not be a
company at all, but that's another topic and not important here, as long as
the separation works.)

As a bad analogy, a company who sells cars should not own the streets.

------
Touche
> I would love to see a world where the companies that own last-mile
> infrastructure are required to lease the lines to any ISP the end consumer
> wants; this would create a competitive market and mostly eliminate the
> problem.

Devil's advocate, why would any company want to be the infrastructure-owning
company then? Aren't they in the worst spot?

~~~
asadotzler
Why would any company want to sell electricity or water? This is not a new
problem. Let's stop pretending it is.

~~~
danielweber
The electricity and water systems, while definitely needing upkeep, don't need
to prepare for a doubling of usage every few years.

 _Edit_ Plus, the electric company _definitely_ does some kind of demand
shaping: shutting off AC compressors on a rolling, as-needed basis. In water
emergencies the water company will declare which days I can water the lawn or
wash my car. "Utility" isn't synonymous with "totally dumb pipe."

~~~
lukeschlather
The electricity and water systems don't benefit from their component costs
being cut in half every few years. This isn't some situation where people just
unreasonably expect better service for no reason, the technology gets better
and cheaper.

Furthermore, Internet bandwidth is not a commodity like electricity or water.
There's no supply to diminish. What the telecoms want to do is more like if
suburban streets were toll roads, Amazon owned the toll roads, and Amazon
wanted to add a "congestion" charge for trucks carrying non-Amazon packages.

~~~
danielweber
_Internet bandwidth is not a commodity like electricity or water_

I agree

------
joelhaus
Really interested in hearing more about sama's meeting with Wheeler... Did he
discuss concerns about putting new rules in place that would not withstand
court challenge (i.e. the "commercially reasonable" standard)? Any additional
creative ways to help him push Title II classification beyond commenting and
contacting congress?

Also, you describe a last-mile competitive scenario that is very similar to
the energy deregulation that recently occurred in New Jersey. I think it has
produced pretty good results for customers. Here's a good/concise explanation
of how they did it:

[http://www.njelectricity.org/about-electric-
choice/](http://www.njelectricity.org/about-electric-choice/)

------
caster_cp
I know this may end up seeming a pretty useless comment, but I cannot miss the
opportunity of recommending a VERY good book about this subject, by the guy
who coined the term net neutrality: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-
Information-Empires/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-
Empires/dp/0307390993/)

The book analyses monopolies in information businesses, since Western Union,
going through Bell and proceding all along to the era of Google and Apple. The
end of the book is filled with very good insight on the subject. If this is a
topic that interests you as much as it interests me, you should get yourself a
copy of this.

------
ajb
If you want competition, perhaps the simplest way of doing it might be for
municipalities to provide universal service at layer -1: run an underground
plastic pipe to each house from the street. That way it suddenly becomes cheap
for multiple telcos to run fibre to each house, but the municipalities aren't
doing anything with an ongoing technical burden which they might be bad at, or
running an ongoing service which might be subject to some kind of capture. Of
course, this assumes that laying a pipe isn't drastically more expensive than
fibre, which I don't know.

~~~
_archon_
As I understand it, laying pipe is the fundamentally high cost of expanding or
rebuilding a network. The cable itself has a non-negligible cost, but getting
zoning and town permissions, securing land for junction cabinets, and digging
through existing roads and around existing utilities is hugely expensive.

What I don't understand is why any new neighborhood could be built without
such underground conduit in place. If they're going in for water, sewer,
power, etc. then it should be trivial to pop in an additional tube for "future
connections."

~~~
codfrantic
When my part of Amsterdam was built (1) all houses were provided with a
phoneline (about 6 different providers), Cable (sadly only 1 provider) and
Fiber (about 5 providers).

(1)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJburg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJburg)

------
Sami_Lehtinen
I've seen solutions where connection provider and Internet service provider
aren't same entity. If connection provider connects customers to POP where
there are several Internet provders, it makes it trivial to switch service
provider.

I've also always avoided deals where Internet operator owns cabling. It's much
better that those are separated. There was a free offer for fiber
connectivity. I refused it, ordered own fibers and now it's possible to choose
provider quite freely. Because switching provider doesn't prevent using the
same fiber with them.

------
rdl
DSL competition/local loop unbundling did seem to work pretty well, after a
rough few years.

I wonder technically how hard it would be to do this with DOCSIS 3, by having
channels per competing ISP. There would be a relatively small limit to the
number of cable ISPs which could be overlaid on the infrastructure (5?), but
that would still be preferable to what we have today.

------
atlantageek
How about this. The speed rating that you advertise for your cable modem (or
dsl) service should be the slowest download rate on the last mile. In other
words if the best I can get is 10mbps from the MSO headend and netflix should
be able to prove this then that is what should be advertised. Consumers should
get money back when customer service fails.

------
staunch
What if everyone physically helped? I bet 100 million adults could dig up
their streets and lay fiber in a weekend if we made it a point of national
pride. Okay, a few power lines would come down and water pipes would burst. If
you planned it well and let cities organize volunteers I think you could just
maybe pull it off.

------
endlessvoid94
I went to the fcc.gov website but couldn't figure out how to "file in
support". Any tips?

------
bowlofpetunias
Forced leasing of the last mile nor any kind of actual competition doesn't
solve the problem, and the US wireless market is far from healthy.

Half of this article is still free-market wishful thinking.

The Netherlands, where there are plenty of ISP's to choose from, made Net
Neutrality law exactly because the mobile providers "magically" nearly
simultaneously announced plans for breaking net neutrality. (And after net
neutrality became law, they all decided to raise their data prices.)

In a market with a limited number of players (and there will always be a
limited number of players, regardless of regulation), it's way too easy to
form informal cartels. A free market doesn't mean we magically don't need
consumer protection or civil rights.

Also "wireless Internet is good"? All mobile services in the US are
overpriced, suck balls and generally exploit the lack of regulation in a way
that would see consumers in most other countries revolt.

------
NickWarner775
What we should put on priority is city wide wireless internet capabilities. I
think there are some early versions of this in some states but it would be
very useful if it were more widely used.

------
gameguy43
Not Sam's (and pg's) usual style of super-pithy and easy-to-read writing. Did
this get rushed out the door?

------
sacheendra
The petroleum industry seems to know how to balance fairness with profit
making. ISPs need to learn some lessons from them instead of making decisions
which hurt the platform itself in the long run. If all ISPs become like this,
people will be very willing to move to an alternative that becomes available.
This will just make them more vulnerable to 'disruption'.

------
dnautics
so why don't we fix the real issue and disallow municipalities to create
monopolized last-mile infrastructure?

------
whistlecrackers
The author of this article -- like most others who write on the topic -- fails
to understand that the lack of competition is not due to a "market failure".
Rather, it is due to government intervention that allows only a few -- or a
single -- provider in an area.

~~~
saucetenuto
From the article:

> Municipalities, often for good reason, gave these edge providers a monopoly
> (the bad kind of monopoly where consumers can’t choose to leave) and often
> used tax dollars to fund the development.

Your guess about the author was mistaken.

~~~
whistlecrackers
The opening paragraph indicates otherwise. It's not very well-written.

------
justizin
Thank You.

