
Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections - venti
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/job_snijders/dont-terminate-peoples-internet-connections
======
nreece
Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have
already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service
suspensions.

[https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-
ann...](https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-announced-
covid-19-response/)

Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored,
substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

~~~
arcboii92
As a kiwi it blows my mind how bad your broadband is over there. My cousin
recently moved to some rural Aussie town and will be getting 25 megabit, tops.
Here in NZ we're rolling out 4 gigabit connections nationwide over the next 6
months.

EDIT: props for getting rid of limits and disconnects though. NZ providers are
just saying we'll be able to cope with everyone working from home because we
have a fancy network.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
At least some of that could be due to the fact that Australia is way larger
geographically though, right? It's a lot more cable to run.

~~~
stephen_g
Not at all. NZ is even less urbanised than Australia. The long-distance
transit cables between cities in Australia all mostly already existed before
the NBN even started.

You could cover more than 80% of our population just cabling up (literally)
about half a dozen reasonably dense cities.

The actual reason is political. One side of politics privatised the state
owned monopoly telco, creating a single huge, anti-competitive behemoth. That
made progress with the internet stagnate for a decade. Then the other side got
in, tried to work with the telco but they wouldn’t budge, and then surprised
everybody by deciding to just build a provider-neutral network that was FTTP
to 90-93% of the population. This was going fine - a few months behind
schedule but on budget (projected at AU$44.1bn) after a few years.

But the opposition managed to convince a bunch of people in the media that it
was hugely over-budget (despite the fact it wasn’t, _and_ that all their
financials were on the public record) and that a sensible solution was to stop
that, and instead buy the old copper networks off the incumbent provider and
spend a few billion to do a bit of an upgrade. They were “absolutely confident
25 megs is enough for anyone” and said this would cost max $29bn. They won
Government, turned the network on its head and it’s just been one problem
after another with huge widespread service quality issues, massive cost
overruns, delays etc.

So now the cost of their “more sensible, cheaper, and quicker to build”
network is nearing $60bn and finishing two years later than the original FTTP
schedule (before they won Government, the party that wrecked the project
promised to have it done by the end of 2016!)

So it’s just a big mess. Nobody really knows why they chose to do what they
did when pretty much all the experts said to just continue with FTTP (they
paid some consultants with links to their party to say their idea was great to
get around that). Some say it was business links between party members and the
incumbent telco, or the cable TV network they own half of. Others say it was
because they had a deal with Murdoch (the leader of the opposition actually
happened to have lunch with him the day before they announced their policy)
because he owns the other half of the cable TV network. Perhaps it was just
because they couldn’t accept that it was a good idea the way it was...

------
Stranger43
If the current strategy of making telecommuting the default takes hold post
corvid-19 the governments of the industrialized world is going to be forced to
treat internet the same way it treats other core infrastructure like roads or
railways which means that nationalization will happen if the industry fail to
deliver high speed and low prices to the undeserved rural areas.

~~~
whatshisface
I'm not an expert, but my local MUD board has made basically no improvements
since the invention of plumbing. I happen to know how their systems work and
they are designed to be the deadest-simple things that will work reliably
forever. There's no such thing as a "high performance sewage system" unless
you count a really big one as high performance. This attitude generalizes to
civil engineers in general who prefer safety over experimentation.

Now, let's compare this to my state and local governments. They're slow, hate
change, they're very careful about who to give money to because their main
problem is avoiding corruption. A prominent local politician campaigned and
won by promising to vote no on or veto everything. Every slow-down comes from
a totally legitimate anti-corruption rule and you aren't going to speed the
process up without creating Tammany Hall. My local politicians have only one
way to make the news, and that's by messing something up. There is no carrot,
only a stick.

Those two pictures align perfectly! As a result, my water service has never
been interrupted, and I have never gone to the polls with a negative idea
about anyone on the MUD board. It's a great system for everyone involved.

Now, my question is, how in the world does this work with internet service, an
area in which there are changes at a rate greater than once per century?

~~~
Stranger43
Plumbing or Highway constructions were/are highly complex high-tech when the
government decided the private industry was unable to maintain it to the
standards society needed 50+ years ago.

You might also be mistaking the fad driven high margin web for the rather
stable internet sitting underneath it, especially if you go all the way down
to the cable duct where a lot of rural houses are still using copper put down
in the 30ies.

The problem here is that laying down cable ducts requires both "right of
way"(often exclusively held by whoever laid down telephone cables in the
30ies) expensive survey work and real physical labor(someone have to an actual
trench), all of which requires capital and if you already own the copper cable
for no significant increase in revenue.

Things can be done with radio signals and i suspect whenever 6G mobile arrives
it might be municipal, but radio will likely never match the bandwidth
potential of even the first optical cables ever laid down.

------
z3t4
In this time and age I think an internet connection is a human right. There
should be free internet access, although limited bandwidth, for those who
cannot afford it.

~~~
mcalus3
In first world countries it is. In Poland since 2009: [http://www.prepaid-
wireless-internet-access.com/page/Poland+...](http://www.prepaid-wireless-
internet-access.com/page/Poland+-+Aero2+%28Free+Internet%29)

~~~
ge0rg
Not universally. In Germany, there is only a federal decree guaranteeing
56kbit/s modem speed, and this is not a human right but merely an obligation
to the state telco.

~~~
chewz
In Poland Aero won its licence on preferential terms with obligation to
provide free mobile internet for everyone who wants it.

It is limited and many people will rather choose commercial providers (faster,
more flexible plans) but it is working and is free.

PS. Germany has toll-free highways, Polish are quite expensive..

------
rhacker
Smart message, hopefully it is received at the cell phone companies. I noticed
TMobile is going to give everyone unlimited internet for a couple months
whether you have that plan or not - but they didn't say if they were going to
avoid shutoff's for no pay.

~~~
concerned_user
For cell phone companies physics is an actual limit, you can have multiple
cables laid to improve bandwidth but radio spectrum is only one. You can of
course keep making cells of the wireless network smaller and smaller but if
you go so small that say each house/apartment has personal one you have
invented wi-fi basically.

------
rolph
to all those who are blackhat , this is not the time to commit crimes and give
people reason to want to dissconnect services, if you are a criminal at least
realize that you are overtaxing your bread and butter. give it a break for a
while until the system can handle the load of light and dark together

~~~
skissane
Sadly, I think the people who are irresponsible enough to commit crimes in
normal times are also going to be irresponsible enough to commit crimes in a
crisis situation, and even to look for ways they can exploit a crisis to their
own benefit.

~~~
schoen
For example, there have been COVID-19 phishing and malware scams already. Yes,
people are using this pandemic to scam other people!

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sys_64738
Internet should be viewed as a utility.

~~~
nradov
Most other utilities charge based on how much you consume.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Most other utilities have cost structures that scale with actual consumption
rather than capacity.

If you use more water, even if there is plenty of delivery capacity, they
could literally run out of it. There is only so much in the reservoir.

If you use more electricity, even if there is plenty of transmission capacity,
they have to burn more fuel to generate it.

Transferring more bits doesn't risk depleting the supply of bits and doesn't
require burning more fuel. The worst it can do is consume all of the available
transmission capacity. But the amortized cost of a bit is very low -- if you
charged true cost then it wouldn't meaningfully deter usage, so you'd still
need about the same total amount of transmission capacity. At which point
charging for usage serves no legitimate purpose.

~~~
nradov
ISPs have cost structures that scale with actual usage. Cables and routers
have a fixed maximum capacity. Within that capacity each marginal bit is
virtually free, but as traffic increases they eventually they have to pay for
hardware upgrades. Cisco doesn't give routers away for free.

Legitimacy or lack thereof is irrelevant when setting prices.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> ISPs have cost structures that scale with actual usage. Cables and routers
> have a fixed maximum capacity.

In other words, they don't scale with actual usage, they scale with maximum
capacity.

When you take your monthly cable bill and divide it by what it pays for,
almost all of it is going to things that don't scale with capacity. Having
routers that are ten times faster doesn't require you to have ten times as
many staff. They don't use ten times more electricity. They don't require ten
times more office buildings or utility poles.

If you take the cost of the capacity upgrade and amortize it over total usage
during peak hours, it adds a couple of bucks to the bill for the people who
use the most. But that's not enough to deter usage by so much that you don't
need the capacity upgrade. You need the capacity upgrade whether you charge
per bit or not. At which point the upgrade is a sunk cost and charging for
usage is inefficiently discouraging use of a resource that is being paid for
either way.

------
rammy1234
message needed in this time. Please don't think about money in times like
this. we need each other and we are all in this together. stay safe and let
other's be safe too.

------
Havoc
>We'll mop up society's collective bills at a later point in time

Very much doubt faceless corporations with automated billing cycles will take
such an altruistic view on this but perhaps I'll be surprised.

Most will do the exact opposite I believe. The last financial crash caused
massive cashflow issues for the big corps.

------
mirimir
> To illustrate, in the Netherlands we are in lockdown, because of the
> COVID-19 hazard: you are expected to _only_ leave your house if it is
> absolutely critical, such as to pick up food from the food distribution
> centers, to get meds, to go work in a hospital, etc.

You have food distribution centers?

I'm jealous.

~~~
MonaroVXR
I'm from the Netherlands, I think what he means is supermarket. Because
distribution centers deliver food to the super market itself instead of the
customers. Otherwise I'm not sure what he/she is talking about.

We have a full lockdown, yet everyone is outside and it's really crowded.
There aren't people that give a (...) About the situation, especially in this
city, because most of the people are higher educated.

~~~
eythian
We don't have a full lockdown. We have "work from home if you at all can, try
not to socialise, etc." It's certainly not "you may only go out if you're
going to the supermarket, pharmacy, hospital or you risk fines." Many shops
are still open, for example.

This said, I also wouldn't say it's really crowded, I took the tram in to the
office this morning to pick some stuff up (last day that'll be possible for a
few weeks) and it was very quiet.

------
projektfu
Funny language issue - as terminating a connection also means providing an
endpoint. Perhaps "Don't disconnect people's internet".

------
znpy
Here in italy Fastweb pledged set up a 1-million gigabytes traffc pool from
which all subscribers draw automatically. Once the million is over, traffic
will be drawn from the account (granted, Fastweb offers ~50 GB/month for
9.90/month).

This is for now, i wouldn't be surprised if they extend it later on.

The thing is, Fastweb is big in residential internet connection but pretty
minor as mobile provider.

No word from major providers (Vodafone, Tim, Iliad)

~~~
dingo454
Currently for me 4G is the only option to work remotely (the only alternative
would be going with a wimax provider, or sat). I don't normally incur in the
data size caps, but I will soon in the current situation, even when trying to
be conservative.

It also doesn't seem worthwhile to switch at the moment, since other solutions
require a 1-2 year contract which I do not need (not to mention, it would also
take 2-3 weeks to get a connection with those anyway).

------
goblin89
About a month ago my Hong Kong mobile service provider offered subscribers a
free local data package. Not unlimited, but a nice gesture.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
What's "local" mean here?

~~~
goblin89
I believe this is their speak to make it clear you cannot use that data while
roaming.

There are not enough resources hosted within the region to make the
distinction pointed out by donavanm worthwhile, unlike e.g. China or Russia.
The local data from my plan gets used up predictably while I access resources
in any part of the Internet.

~~~
taejo
Could it be that they're including the rest of China in local? Are peering
arrangements between HK and the rest of China such that this would make sense?

~~~
goblin89
No, China and Macao both mean roaming data (not included in “local data” quota
on regular plans), though the rates are good.

------
fargle
Overall, maybe a good sentiment and maybe a good idea. In many areas I think
this is being done.

However, I don't at all like the argument that if your neighbor can't pay her
bill, it might not just impact her, but two of her neighbors, one of which is
some kind of network engineer who fixes BGP thingies. And neither of the
leaching neighbors who have some kind of critical need of _her_ internet can
help pay for it???

If you can fix BGP thingies, you ought to have your own WiFi, or be able to do
better than leaching it.

~~~
lightgreen
On the internet this sentiment is called virtue signalling: it costs you
nothing, but people around you think you are a good guy.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Except this "sentiment" will genuinely help people who lose their jobs due to
corona and won't be able to pay bills. That extra money from not paying a bill
can really help out.

~~~
fargle
AND... I didn't say it was a bad thing.

But it is bad that you have two people leaching off some hypothetical other
person's WiFi, neither of which is willing to pay for their own or help her.
And you aren't "fixing BGP thingies" for free or if you are out of work.

Why isn't the mooching neighbor helping pay?

I'm ALL for the ISP's relieving bandwidth caps and not cutting service due to
emergency related financial difficulties - for their subscribers.

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gaius_baltar
Knowing how evil telcos can be, I'm legitimely surprised they didn't exploited
this crisis and their virtual monopolies to squeeze more money from customers.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
At a certain level of evil, during a crisis, they risk causing enough trouble
to receive congressional attention. The last thing they want is new laws and
regulation that impact their future ability to be evil.

------
vmokry
If you live in a condo, what about sharing your internet on the guest WIFI
network? Does it make sense? Will people misuse it? (It probably violates TOS,
I guess.)

~~~
paganel
Not sure about any TOS but I’ve been sharing my WiFi for more than 10 years
now. I live in an appartment block in an Eastern European capital.

~~~
gray_-_wolf
I guess it depends. At least in my contract for connectivity is a clause then
I cannot share the connection with people not living in the same household. I
would imagine it is fairly common.

~~~
capableweb
Does that mean you cannot have guests using your connectivity? I'm assuming
they still can. What if they stay outside your apartment? What about staying
outside apartment for one week? So many questions

~~~
gray_-_wolf
It excludes people even temporary present in the apartment. So guests are
supposed to be fine. If they are outside and their phone auto-connects, it is
technically a breach, yes.

I asked about it and have in writing that the intention is to prevent sharing
with neighbors. But I mean, there is no way to enforce it either way so
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
TrackerFF
Where I live, it is illegal for utility companies to cut power during winters,
for obvious reasons. Same should be for internet.

In fact, I'd go as far aa saying thar internet today is an absolute necessity,
on par with water and electricity.

------
slcjordan
I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on net neutrality in light of this
new work from home situation. Would it make sense to offer a free tier with
limited access?

~~~
whatshisface
Anyone working from home doesn't need a free tier, right? What is a working
professional going to do with an internet connection that only goes to
Facebook and Wikipedia?

------
zajio1am
The message does not really make much sense to me. Both service payments and
pay dispute handling is overwhelmingly done online, so it is not affected by
coronavirus and lockdowns.

We do not really know how long it will take. Emergency state and lockdowns may
be the new normal. Everything that could work as usual should work as usual to
not cause additional disruption.

~~~
simion314
>Both service payments and pay dispute handling is overwhelmingly done online,

You could be in hospital or you always pay cache not online, many people pay
everything with money in hand in shops(that have such payment points) here in
Romania, also if you have a smartphone I imagine attempting to setup accounts
and try to pay online from the phone is a pain.

------
slovette
Eh.. there won’t be. But it’s not because of some altruistic motivations, it’s
bad PR and the sheer numbers of lost customers would out weight the benefit of
terminating for non-pay.

~~~
jascii
At least in the US, the few the major residential ISP's have a virtual
monopoly so wont loose many customers and have proven in the past not to give
a $#@ about bad PR.

~~~
CrazyCatDog
Actually, Comcast has been a hero of late. The have advertised that they will
give away basic internet for free, and bumped up the speed of existing
subscribers in addition to bumping up their data caps.

Asking university students to leave campus is hard. Switching from on-prem to
online teaching overnight is harder yet. But teaching across the connectivity
divide, where students don’t have access at home and the state just shuttered
all the businesses providing “free” Wifi, is impossible.

I have been wronged many times by Comcast over the last 24 years; at least
from my POV, this offer—provided they abide by it—erases most if not all my
ill-will towards them.

Well done

------
johnminter
Here in the US the vendors are not doing this.

~~~
tssva
AT&T has dropped all data caps, waived any late payment fees, will not
terminate service and has opened their WiFi hotspots to everyone.

Charter is waiving late fees, not terminating service, offering free service
to households with students which don't already have service and opening their
WiFi hotspots to everyone.

Verizon is waiving late fees and will not terminate service.

Cox is waiving late fees, not terminating service, opening WiFi hotspots to
all and upgrading speeds on connections in their programs for low income
customers to 50Mbs.

Comcast is eliminating data caps, waiving late fees, not terminating service,
opening WiFi hotspots to all and offering 2 months of free service to those
eligible for but not enrolled in their $9.95 per month program for low-income
families. They are also increasing data rates for their low-income program
connections.

Many other providers have also pledged to not terminate service.

------
wwarner
I'll play the devil's advocate. Bandwidth is a finite resource, and it could
be in critically short supply. In those circumstances, I wouldn't expect
everyone to get _more_ bandwidth, I'd expect it to be rationed.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
The problem is how do you establish effective rationing with no preparation?
It's nigh impossible.

Even with preparation, It would be a very difficult and impossibly contentious
process.

~~~
wwarner
For the downvoters, I'm just pointing out that removing all caps and limits
doesn't automatically create abundance.

As far as establishing effective policy: ISPs have a lot of practice rationing
bandwidth, I'm sure there's a way that's fair enough. Putting a price on it is
a good start.

~~~
Johnny555
_For the downvoters, I 'm just pointing out that removing all caps and limits
doesn't automatically create abundance._

True, and if they can provide reliable service without the data caps, then it
makes the public (and in a perfect world, government regulators) question why
they need the data caps at all -- if their network runs fine for months
without any data caps, then why do they need those caps at all?

