
Comcast Hints at Plan for Paid Fast Lanes - ivanech
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-quietly-drops-promise-not-to-charge-tolls-for-internet-fast-lanes/
======
legitster
I think the idea that Comcast is going to change their pricing model around
tiered access is patently ridiculous

\- They are already extracting near maximum value from monopolistic pricing

\- Services like this were tried before Net Neutrality, and they failed pretty
dramatically

\- Bad PR could lead to future litigation

\- _Most Importantly_ This process has only shown that it could be completely
reversed again with the next administration. So they don't want to rebuild
future revenue models knowing that the rules can be reversed again in 4 years
at the drop of a hat.

The whole thing is really about Comcast's ability to shake down other
companies to pay for their infrastructure improvements. It's really expensive
to sell a $5 a month plan to a million users. It's really cheap to get $500
million dollars out of Netflix to pay for your line upgrades. And for the next
4 years, they have a blank check to shake down companies in the background.

~~~
bo1024
> _They are already extracting near maximum value from monopolistic pricing_

Not true. When you remove net neutrality, you open up new possibilities for
price-discrimination for the monopolist and they can extract more revenue for
providing the same service.

Simple illustrative example: Suppose for the sake of argument that almost all
VPN users are willing to pay an extra $1 / month for VPN access. Then Comcast
can make strictly more money by charging everyone exactly the same as before
except VPN access costs an additional $1/month.

(Also, I know you didn't bring it up, but there are lots of important free
speech NN issues as well as economic ones, for example, Comcast might easily
decide to completely block sites like Wikileaks.)

~~~
legitster
If they truly have monopoly pricing, and almost all users were willing to pay
an extra $1 for VPN, they are already charging you for it.

In fact, it would be worse for them, because if everyone is paying as much as
they can bear for internet, and they have given some the option to opt out of
an unneeded service, then they will lose money.

Assuming they have total monopoly power.

~~~
cannonedhamster
They are literally the only provider for a large number of Americans. Many
Americans only have 1 provider. It's been proven numerous times that they
raise rates if competition doesn't exist and lower them when it does. You'd
literally have to be willfully ignorant of the facts to say that Comcast won't
just add fees because they can. They've done it numerous times already.

~~~
legitster
That's my whole point. _Comcast is already charging you for whatever they
want_. If they think everyone in their area will pay an extra $15 for Netflix,
_they will just raise everyone 's price by $15_. Bundling and tiering not
required.

~~~
bo1024
Ah, but what if only half the people want to pay an extra $15 for Netflix? If
they raise everyone's price by $15, the other half will cancel service or go
to a lower tier. So this won't work. However, without net neutrality, they can
charge the Netflix-watchers $15 more and not charge the other people any more.

------
lwansbrough
I think you mean unpaid slow lanes. A neutral network operates at maximum
speed always. Prioritization really means deprioritization here.

~~~
rhino369
Prioritization pretty much always implies something is less prioritized.

Where I draw the line is throttling when the network could support higher
speed. Say the fast lane is using 20% of resources and the slow lane is only
using 20%, then the slow lane shouldn't be artificially slowed.

But I really have no huge issue with an ISP creating a fast lane that gets 30%
of resources even if the slow lane wants 90% and gets throttled to 70%. Priced
based mechanisms are useful for allocating scarce resources.

~~~
dboreham
>Where I draw the line is throttling when the network could support higher
speed.

I have news for you : this is the service you're already receiving. All ISPs
throttle user traffic to below their network's capacity.

~~~
rhino369
I mean beyond any explicitly stated rate limit. Or do you mean something else?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I think they're talking about the trunk lines, which are mostly dark (unused).
The bandwidth technology has outstripped demand by orders of magnitude.
There's no traffic-related reason to 'prioritize' any traffic. The real goal
is to charge rent on content they don't produce, just because its going over
their cable.

------
brandonbloom
"fast lanes" is just a euphemism for throttling. It's still a protection
racket.

------
apeace
Sounds entirely reasonable to me:

> [T]he Commission also should bear in mind that a more flexible approach to
> prioritization may be warranted and may be beneficial to the public. For
> example, a telepresence service tailored for the hearing impaired requires
> high-definition video that is of sufficiently reliable quality to permit
> users "to perceive subtle hand and finger motions" in real time. And paid
> prioritization may have other compelling applications in telemedicine.
> Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data
> transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually
> stifle innovation instead of encouraging it. Commercial arrangements that
> entail prioritizing such traffic could ensure the low latency levels needed
> to achieve the high level of data quality necessary for such services to
> thrive.

VoIP really needs low latency. Buffering a Youtube video or downloading a
torrent doesn't.

Selective prioritization could improve the former drastically, while having no
noticeable effect on the latter.

Note I'm not taking a stance on the issue either way. Maybe it would be better
to keep Net Neutrality and add provisions for latency-sensitive applications.
Maybe it's better to nuke it and let the markets figure it out.

Either way, this is an important point and I'm surprised that the HN crowd
doesn't discuss it more.

~~~
mikeash
Prioritization is only necessary or useful when bandwidth is scarce and your
endpoints would use more than you have if they could. The best solution for
all of the applications listed is more capacity, not prioritization.

What, then, does their eagerness for prioritization tell us? It tells us that
these companies would like to stop investing so much in increasing capacity,
and instead squeeze as much money as they can out of their existing
infrastructure.

They're going to make things worse (or let them gradually become worse over
time) just so they can charge extra money to people who need something better.

Beyond that, prioritization is not in conflict with net neutrality. If my ISP
wants to offer me a premium subscription that prioritizes my traffic over
normal subscribers, that's fine. Where we run into trouble is when they start
doing this for _other_ people who aren't their customers. If they want to
charge me more for better service, that's fine. If they want to charge Netflix
more to provide _me_ with better service, that's not fine.

~~~
andrewjl
Comcast has $5 billion USD on their balance sheet in cash. They can afford to
add more capacity.

~~~
fancyfacebook
They also have about $120 billion USD in debt. Not exactly the healthiest
company in the world financially speaking.

------
warent
If net neutrality is lost, this could inspire a renewed invigoration of
decentralized internet, e.g. Tor and P2P style. This may also inspire new ISP
startups and create rapid innovation in networking.

The prospect of net neutrality being repealed definitely sucks, but great
things can come from hitting rock bottom

~~~
dragonwriter
ISP blocking of P2P protocols (notably Comcast and BitTorrent) was one of the
acts that accelerated the net neutrality policy efforts; the technologies you
point to are at least as likely to be early casualties of the non-neutral net
as to take off under it.

~~~
bo1024
Agreed. Instead, I'd hope for more interest in steganography.

------
tedchs
In fairness, Comcast didn't "hint" at any such thing -- this is based on Ars's
conjecture based in what Comcast _stopped_ saying.

~~~
plandis
Also in fairness, what trust has Comcast built with consumers? Why should I
not believe that a company would attempt to make more money if possible?

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LeoJiWoo
Of course they are. They are a corporation.

The real question is what do we after net neutrality is repealed?

Do we try to break up the cable monopolies ? FTC lawsuits ? Start having
Cities or States write laws enforcing neutrality ?

~~~
azemetre
If you care about net neutrality you vote for politicians who want to
legislate NN into law, and seeing the voting calls on NN (past and present)
it's become a partisan issue.

Your best odds is to never vote for a GOPer if you care about NN. This can
easily be reversed next election/presidential cycle.

~~~
LeoJiWoo
Sure, but what actions to enforce or restore NN do we force democrats to
campaign on.

Both sides are hugely pro-corporation (not counting the bernie fringe wing),
we need to force them to run on specific issues related to net neutrality not
vague notions.

I'm thinking an analogous to how many NRA republicans campaign very
specifically and with specific actions they'd take. The NRA should be the
model we coopt to protect NN.

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lasermike026
20 years ago I helped start an ISP. I would like to do it again.

~~~
daeken
I keep thinking about what my ideal ISP would look like, then weighing the
options. It's just so, so expensive to get one off the ground.

~~~
digikata
I've idly wondered about setting up an ISP company that would focus on buildup
of community networks. A city could issue bonds to pay for the network as well
as a build and maintain contract with the company. Part of the deal should be
that the city is free to select a different company maintain the network after
a certain point in time, but the city/community maintains ownership of the
physical assets.

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jasonkostempski
> For example, a telepresence service tailored for the hearing impaired...

It should be illegal to use children, handicap, illness and death to promote
products unless all of your money goes to helping just those things.

~~~
briandear
Why? Why should the government have a say in how people promote products?
Unless they are being fraudulent, why can’t the consumer simply use their own
brains to decide what to buy?

~~~
jasonkostempski
You're right, I hate laws that try to fix problems like that. And I hate that
"it should be illegal..." phrase. It should be illegal to use that phrase. I
used it lazily to convey how exploiting emotions to sell products and views
makes me angry.

> why can’t the consumer simply use their own brains to decide what to buy?

I wish I knew.

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cortesoft
I am always a bit confused as to how the ideal Net Neutrality rules would
work.

ISPs always have to make decisions about who to peer with, how many links to
have with each other network, etc. These decisions are made with business
motivations, and have a huge effect on QOS for various upstream services. You
can't tell an ISP they need the exact same bandwidth for each upstream
connection.

So what rules SHOULD they have as far as their peering and transit
arrangements?

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pcora
Hahaha... not long after
[https://twitter.com/comcast/status/933396998958567442](https://twitter.com/comcast/status/933396998958567442)

\-- edit: this is in the article.. I saw it after..

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jenga22
The one thing that is good about this is that a lot of cities are now talking
about rolling out their own broadband network. If Comcast does anything
remotely as not adhering to the principles of net neutrality, then you are
going to see even more cities talk about getting their own network.

~~~
exhilaration
They're one step ahead of you. Comcast & Co have already gotten municipal
broadband outlawed by many state legislatures:
[https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-
tel...](https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-
smothers-city-run-broadband)

See previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655548)

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joshuaheard
If they want to build a faster parallel pipe, and charge more for it, I don't
see a problem with that.

~~~
ProAm
The problem is that we, the tax payers, helped to fund the first set of pipes
for them.

~~~
w0rd-driven
I feel like this should be part of the stipulation. If we repeal net
neutrality and you're caught degrading the internet further than it already
is, you should be forced to pay all of that money back to the public. This
seems to be the only incentive that may work from within the new framework.

The existing ISP infrastructure is not something I opted in, even though I
fortunately get to enjoy gigabit speeds via AT&T. I already have "buyer's
remorse" but can I be given a clause, a lot like our "lemon laws" that state
that if they, free from the shackles of regulation, make things arguably worse
for everyone involved, that we can get some of that money back? I feel like
there needs to be some sort of "upper bounds" to deregulation that to use a
metaphor says something like "We'll give you the Wild West but it's still
illegal to murder people." in whatever highly damaging thing "murder people"
turns out to actually be.

------
plandis
I’m not sure what can be done. When my vote doesn’t count (the man who
appointed the FCC chair didn’t have a mandate and didn’t receive a majority of
the popular vote). The FCC has stated that they won’t listen to my comment.
What power do I have? None!

I truly hope someone physically removes Pai from power as the people have no
say.

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api
So broadband speeds are now frozen for normal Internet traffic. Only paid
traffic will see any upgrades from here on out.

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Havoc
Well that didn't take long

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noncoml
Does anyone else gets this feeling of being helpless in front of the corp
mega-machine?

What can one do when is forced to deal with psychopathic corporations that lie
straight into one's face? i.e.
[https://twitter.com/comcast/status/933396998958567442](https://twitter.com/comcast/status/933396998958567442)

~~~
fiftyacorn
I sometimes wonder if this type of policy would result in me using the
internet less on a point of principle? I mean I watch netflix but could live
without it

