

AT&T Exec Calls Netflix’s Reed Hastings “Arrogant” For Net Neutrality Post - testrun
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/21/att-exec-calls-netflixs-reed-hastings-arrogant-for-net-neutrality-post/

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adamnemecek
> Someone has to pay that cost.

You mean like your customers who are already paying you for that?

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njyx
This is really all about whether or not network providers can flips the switch
and charge both sides of the traffic flow for traffic. They are trying to make
that switch.

Ultimately charging large content sites more is going to spiral into charging
all content providers, because behaviors will change, new services will get
popular and everybody ends up having to pay on both sides. Netflix is already
paying to get traffic from its servers to the peered internet.

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gnoway
"Company with established history of monopoly behavior asserts: monopoly
behavior is right, true and good for you."

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pixelcort
The argument that Netflix non-subscribers would have to pay for the bandwidth
of subscribers doesn't make sense:

Most ISPs already charge differently for Mbps (speed), GB/mo (quantity), or
both. So therefore the cost of the bandwidth is already being applied somewhat
fairly amongst different ISP users.

If the ISP wants to be more fair, create new tiers of Mbps or GB/mo.

Netflix users who like HD could chose a higher Mbps connection, and Netflix
users who like to watch more could choose more GB/mo.

Because the whole point about Net Neutrality is, once I get an ISP with a
certain speed and cap, I expect all internet services to behave similarly
within that speed and cap.

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MAGZine
Simplifying a bit here--but essentially, what happened before is that AT&T
owned a wire. Two parties wanted to talk to each other over this wire, and so
AT&T only charged one party for bi-directional use of that wire.

In the past few years, AT&T has said, "we're going to limit how much a single
party can transfer on that wire in a month." Now, they're saying "both parties
need to pay to use the wire." Again, a bit of a simplification.

Ultimately though, nobody should care where the traffic is coming from or
where it is going--be it Netflix, Steam, Amazon, or anywhere else. AT&T
offered their customers use of a wire, hoped that traffic between backbone
peers was equal, and then started to cry when people saturated their
connections to a single source.

Your customers already paid for delivery on your network--the whole idea of
double dipping is ridiculous. UPS doesn't charge amazon because they send a
lot of packages--the cost is the burden of one party, and one party only.

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dragonwriter
> Who cares where the traffic is coming from--be it Netflix, Steam, Amazon, or
> anywhere else.

AT&T does. Particularly, AT&T, who has a quite lucrative business selling
video _content_ , doesn't really want video content being sold and delivered
over their network unless they are getting a payment for it to compensate for
the potential loss to their own video content sales from the competition, in
addition to getting paid for the bandwidth.

There is a reason why this _exact scenario_ with regard to video content and
discriminating against competition was highlighted in the Open Internet Order
as one of the things it was intended specifically to prevent, and that its the
one specific instance of non-neutral policies that immediately became a huge
deal when the Order was struck down.

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DiabloD3
I've read Reed Hastings' post on Net Neutrality, and AT&T calling him
arrogant... isn't that just proving Reed's point?

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area51org
Hello, Pot? This is kettle. You're black.

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jmvoodoo
If Netflix really wanted to turn this around on AT&T, they would just have
different prices based on how much each provider extorted from them. Comcast
customers would pay more for Netflix than Cablevision customers. Netflix would
pay the tax, then pass the cost onto the customer, but not onto each customer
equally. It would then publish this data for all to see.

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pixelcort
Haha this is an awesome last resort. I genuinely hope Net Neutrality wins, but
if it doesn't this is a way to re-level the playing field.

~~~
xur17
This would definitely be interesting, but it would work a lot better if most
people had more than one or two internet choices.

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ryandrake
I think AT&T has a point. The cost of all that content streaming is currently
being passed on to us ISP customers, no? Imagine if we got our Internet
service bill each month, and the costs were itemized based purely on traffic:

    
    
        Your share of...
        Everyone's Netflix streaming:  $40.00
        Everyone's porn:               $35.00
        Everyone's movie pirating:     $10.00
        Everyone's spam E-mails:       $ 7.00
        Everyone's web browsing:       $ 0.01
        TOTAL:                         $92.01
    

If your use of the Internet tended to not involve the above, wouldn't you feel
a little cheated?

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wmf
Do you want to switch to metered service? Most people don't, because the value
of a predictable bill is higher to them than the savings they'd theoretically
get from metered billing.

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adestefan
But the real fix to this problem actually is metered billing. The ISPs screwed
themselves by offering "unlimited" plans to begin with. It's the same thing
that happened to the wireless providers.

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wmf
Before admitting that ISPs are screwed I'd want to see their books. How much
capex would it actually cost them to support Netflix without congestion? The
unlimited business model is totally reasonable if almost all the cost is in
maintaining the last mile.

