

An opposing viewpoint on net neutrality  - roshanr
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/fcc-neutrality-mistake/

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skolor
Ha-rumph. Allow me to call them out on their "three points":

1\. The networks are running at capacity. Well, maybe they are, I don't have
inside information as to the big ISP's networks. What I do know, however, is
that other countries have networks with 5x the bandwidth that the fastest
internet connections available here have.While it may be prohibitively
expensive to roll that out all across the country, there is no real reason not
to have it available in major cities, except to create an artificial scarcity
of bandwidth.

In addition to that, traffic shaping doesn't help the problem, it makes it
worse. There are two ways an end user sees the speed of their connection:
latency and throughput. Traffic shaping works by lowering the throughput of
bandwidth-intensive applications, so that there is more bandwidth left over
for the rest of the users. However, if all of the bandwidth intensive
applications are being shaping, and slowed down, then the overall throughput
the user sees will decline sharply. In addition, latency, or the overhead time
it takes for any request to be processed goes up when traffic is being shaped,
making it take longer for individual pages to load too, and make the service
seem slower in a non-quantifiable way.

2\. We can't enforce it. This is simply not true. Its relatively simple to
check to see if your traffic is being shaped and/or impeded, and several
applications have been released to do so. Sure, it would be difficult for the
government to do so, but if the average user can quickly and easily check,
that is not nearly the problem the article makes it out to be.

3\. Ok, you have a point there. Having regulations does add bureaucracy into
the situation, which is rarely a beneficial thing. _Now the FCC is proposing
taking a free market that works_ Except that it doesn't work. The ISPs are
already threatening to close down their networks, and make things much more
closed off. We already regularly have ISP peering problems, there is little to
stop them from just cutting off portions of the internet at their whim. Blind
faith in "Free Market" is not infallible, it requires the public to be well
educated, both in how the service/product works, and in the alternatives to
it. At this point, neither of those are true. Your average user understands
how an ISP works to about the point of: "It gets me my Youtube and MySpace".
On top of that, there largely aren't alternatives. Want high speed? You have
one, maybe two options, depending on where you are. Live out in the country,
and you're lucky to have one.Sure, you could have some kind of satellite
setup, but that is slow and expensive, and generally harder to set up/keep
maintained.

I am generally against government regulations, but with something like the
internet, I think Net Neutrality is a necessary thing, and that the government
needs to step in and make sure ISPs don't start abusing their networks.

~~~
tc
Since I'm in this industry, I'd like to point out that bandwidth is not
_artificially_ scarce. It is just _scarce_ , necessarily limited by the
capital available to buy equipment and lease facilities, fiber, and copper.
Before talking about the _artificial_ scarcity of bandwidth, I'd encourage you
to check the prices on some Cisco or Juniper gear. No one buys this stuff to
intentionally underutilized its capacity. And correspondingly, no one avoids
buying this gear to create scarcity; they avoid buying it because it is
expensive.

Carriers are bound by the same forces as other businesses. People buy
expensive equipment if and only if they expect to see a return on their
investment.

~~~
niels_olson
No knock on you in particular, but the comment is typical of a sort of insider
Stockholm syndrome where members of one industry, or one sector of an industry
are presently at the mercy of another sector, and the "prisoner" tells
outsider "Well, from the outside, idea B might appear attractive, but if you
have my inside information, you'll see Plan A is Plan A for good reason."

Your comment does not address why the equipment is expensive (Cisco exerting
oligarichic price controls?), or why the market won't bear added expense (eg,
where do so many other countries find the money?)

~~~
tc
I think using the Stockholm syndrome is an absurd metaphor in this case. In
the Stockholm syndrome, the victim defends the attacker. In this case, the
'attacker' is the regulation, and I'm opposing it.

Seriously though, I think I've addressed some of those questions elsewhere in
the thread. Many other countries you would compare against have heavily
subsidized consumer internet via government spending. Many countries also have
a significantly higher population density than the US, or they had less
existing infrastructure (laying fiber is cheaper if you are building all new
roads anyway).

As for why Cisco or Juniper equipment is expensive: it is expensive because it
is relatively low-volume industrial-strength gear that needs to run far in
excess of 99.999% reliability while supporting an absurdly large number of
protocols and standards. To put the problem as a bit of a tautology, if you
think it is so absurdly overpriced, why aren't you raising a venture round to
build cheaper gear?

(Incidentally, I think you probably could, but it is still a hard problem that
requires time to solve. Not all things that could theoretically be improved
can be improved _instantly_.)

~~~
niels_olson
> I think using the Stockholm syndrome is an absurd metaphor in this case. In
> the Stockholm syndrome, the victim defends the attacker.

fair enough. It was a convoluted enough metaphor that I've since forgotten how
I stitched it together. Anyway, I appreciate all your information in this
thread.

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padmanabhan01
"when we’re talking about ISPs that are near-monopolies built in large part on
the basis of government subsidy or exclusive federal licensing,"

Isn't that the real problem? Govt first helps create monopolies and then
worries about how to deal with them with antitrust and what not and starts
lecturing about the flaws of free market or capitalism. Why create those
monopolies in the first place? Why not have free market all along? This is the
same story in telecom, healthcare, etc etc

~~~
aaronblohowiak
"Why not have free market all along?" -- Because having every company dig up
ditches along public thoroughfares and through yards would be untenable. Also,
some companies only decide to make the infrastructure investment in towns if
the town council would agree to allow that provider to be exclusive (a town
council then has to decide if the monopoly is better than no service... but
the problem is that these contracts are sooo long.)

~~~
tc
More companies than you probably realize lay fiber and copper. You can check
the permits issued by your local municipality to see what I mean.

If you wanted to lay a few miles of fiber yourself, you'd find that it is
fairly straightforward in most areas. You cross a bit of red tape, fill out
all the forms, and pay the impact costs. If you don't want to do it yourself,
companies like Comcast actually do a good bit of work laying fiber on contract
for smaller carriers.

As far as cable monopolies, those are fortunately on their way out anyway, at
least in Tier 2 cities and their near suburbs. Increasingly, Brighthouse is
competing in Comcast territory, and vice-versa. That's the direction. But of
course, networks take time to build, with or without a bunch of government
mandates.

~~~
seabee
> More companies than you probably realize lay fiber and copper.

Could be misleading, since these jobs are often performed by contractors, at
least in the UK. If you see work being done, there's often a sign by the site
saying "X ltd., on behalf of Y plc".

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pierrefar
Fine, let the ISPs charge us for what we use. Just like they did with dial-up
modems. In a truly free market, competition between ISPs, apparently limited
by their technical abilities, will only lead to better service as they try to
gain market share by providing better service cheaper.

Imposing a constraint now does not mean long-term doom. So fine, let them
charge and see what we, the customers, do.

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tc
This is the most important point:

 _Third, the new regulations create an additional layer of government
bureaucracy where the free market has already proven its effectiveness. The
reason you’re not using AOL to read this right now isn’t because the
government mandated AOL’s closed network out of existence: It’s because free
and open networks triumphed, and that’s because they were good business._

~~~
ewjordan
Don't forget the next statement: _Now the FCC is proposing taking a free
market that works, and adding another layer of innovation-stifling regulations
on top of that?_

Of course, the problem is that we don't really know whether a free market
would work or not without the looming specter of net neutrality legislation,
since the current market (which may be free, but is _certainly_ not
competitive, at least where I live) has the internet providers arguing
strongly against such legislation based on the following argument: "Hey guys,
we haven't been so bad so far, just _trust_ us, okay?"

Call me a cynic, but I'm not convinced that this good behavior is based on the
fact that they think it's ultimately good business to feed the customer
through an unblocked tube; I tend to think it's a lot more likely that they
would _love_ to start squeezing websites for "delivery fees" and the like, but
correctly realize that with all the current net neutrality fuss they can't try
anything now, for fear of proving how necessary said regulation is. Better to
cross their fingers and hope the issue dies down...

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. Personally, even if I'd pay more than I do now,
I'd rather actually pay for the bandwidth that I use and have a more
transparent service agreement than find that it's impossible to find a
provider that will give me unfettered access to any site, service, or data
that I want, regardless of its origin or content. IMO the general public
_should_ be somewhat more directly exposed to the true costs of bandwidth than
they are now, that might actually lead to some downwards pressure there.

~~~
tc
Speaking as just one person in this field, every new regulation makes me
reconsider my desire to be in the industry.

It doesn't so much even matter who the regulations favor. It's that at some
point, after spending countless hours with lawyers, filing government
paperwork, and fretting about current and future regulatory issues, you
_really_ begin to see your customers as being politicians and regulators
rather than the people who pay you for service.

Which is all to say that, I believe, if you regulate enough, you will get the
monopolies that you fear.

~~~
niels_olson
If you want to see what happens in the absence of regulation, look at the
healthcare industry.

------
symesc
Net neutrality? Has to happen.

Unlimited bandwidth? Can't happen.

No business is sustainable without a usage cap. The all-you-can-eat buffet
will get a few pigs at the trough but there's still a cap: night falls and the
restaurant is closed.

What I seek is value in the equation, whereby I can choose how much bandwidth
I can reasonably eat, pay for it, and not be bankrupted if I go over. The
chart of bandwidth cost should not look like a hockey-stick stock price.

My wireless provider does this with text messages. I hate them for it. And I
always will.

------
paul9290
This is a no brainer! The cost and way we pay for Internet will have to
change; resemble cell phone and electric bills. Economies have been hurt by
the Internet and when it starts hurting the ISPs we will finally start to feel
it. The ISPs offer Cable TV & phone services and those services can be enjoyed
for free using the net now. ATM only a select few connect their computers to
TVs to enjoy a free Cable TV like service(thanks Justin.TV) and only a few use
iPod Touch's as a cell substitute, but in time .. more and more will do this
and the ISPs will be hurting as no one is buying their Cable TV or phone
services anymore. GIve it five to ten years but the cost of Internet is going
to increase. Either bill by the byte or hefty costs for unlimited monthly
broadband. Sucks but it makes economical sense!

