
The end of the level playing field - mooreds
http://avc.com/2017/02/the-end-of-the-level-playing-field/
======
intended
There isn't a new level playing field coming along anytime soon.

The internet was the pinnacle of a series of benign regulatory choices, clear
and present dangers of older models being avoided, and lack of incumbent
awareness, and adaptation.

This era has ended, we are in the end game, and how America fights and sets an
example here, <despite> all odds, will influence how this resource gets used
for generations.

This is not a fight you can give up.

~~~
djsumdog
I use to have this notion too, but keep in mind that the Internet was started
as a military project. The fact that it ended up being commandeered by large
conglomerates shouldn't really be surprising.

There are countries in Europe, the South Pacific, et. al. where carriers offer
"free social" where they don't charge for Facebook and Twitter. Wikiepdia is
offered for free by some African carriers; which allows them to also benefit
from a lack of real network-neutrality.

When it comes to media and freedom vs industry, I think this video from the
mid-2000s explains the situation best (in terms of network neutrality):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66PbSzwnLes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66PbSzwnLes)

~~~
Retra
It wasn't a military project any more than the radio or telephone were. Or
railroads and highways.

~~~
Inconel
Slightly off topic but wasn't the original purpose of the interstate system to
be able to move war materiel around the country by land efficiently?

~~~
pc86
And to land bombers, if memory serves.

~~~
WorldMaker
This was not a goal of the American Interstate system:
[http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp](http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp)

------
danjoc
Fred's a smart guy. I hope the end of the neutral internet hastens the rise of
mesh networking.

If I want to order a pizza online, it really shouldn't have to go through the
ISP gatekeepers, travel along a Level 3 trunk, be inspected by the NSA, and
then be routed back down to the pizza joint 3 blocks from my house.

~~~
mahyarm
Mesh networking has theoretical limits that guarantee that normal internet
will beat it by a mile.

~~~
lend000
This is not true. Any network topology, including the present-day Internet,
can be considered a subset of a mesh network topology.

~~~
hvidgaard
And it works because there is capacity where it is needed, and the network is
deterministic with authoritative lookup services. Even if everyone had
100/100mbit and we use a mesh network with a relatively efficient topology,
with say random walkers to find ressources, it will wouldn't scale well
enough.

~~~
vertex-four
A mesh network with an incentive system could provide incentive for building
out infrastructure where it's needed, without our existing oligopolies over
the last mile. In other words - if you were to pay each of the nodes your
packets pass through, you'd have competition where absolutely anyone could
hook into the network at any point and provide the necessary bandwidth and get
paid for it, no permission necessary.

~~~
mahyarm
Thats the current internet with a twist, which means wires, which mean land
rights, regulations and large telecom competition.

~~~
vertex-four
The point is that your last mile can be a proper meshnet, and the backbone
operates in real-time competition, and people wanting to compete on parts of
the backbone are much more able to - and people wanting to compete in the last
mile are able to as well. You could have someone pull fiber from the backbone
to somewhere vaguely near you, and depend on the meshnet from there, or you
could travel a few kilometers over meshnet hops, or some combination of the
two depending on whether a packet relates to something user-interactive. It
solves a problem - monopolies in Internet transport - it just doesn't handwave
away basic understandings of physics.

------
peteretep
I still can't get excited about net neutrality, but maybe that's because I'm
from a country (UK) where telco competition is strong enough - and number
porting etc easy enough - that anything that's anticonsumer will get punished
by the market.

~~~
arjie
The UK extensively regulates and censors Internet access. It's possible you
can't get excited about it because you don't have a culture of a free
Internet.

British providers have happily performed deep packet inspection in order to
"prioritize" traffic with little to no resistance from the public. Britain
just doesn't share this principle.

~~~
corford
Yes and no. The market works in the UK. If you don't want a "hand holding" ISP
that filters and DPIs your connection you have a range of good alternatives
e.g. [http://aa.net.uk/](http://aa.net.uk/)

The shittiest providers in the UK are usually the vertically integrated
players (Sky, Virgin, BT) that optimise their business around selling bundles
to consumers (TV, mobile, net and movie subs).

Fortunately, thanks to local loop unbundling providing a relatively level
playing field, there are lots of "net only" providers that focus on delivering
a technically strong, unadulterated connection to the internet for consumers
that value that.

Bonus: VOIP is also really easy in the UK. When I lived there, I ported my
landline number to [http://www.voiptalk.org](http://www.voiptalk.org) (which I
still maintain now), had a 4G unlocked SIM from Virgin with virtually
unlimited data and an 18MBit ADSL connection from Andrews & Arnold. All
monthly contracts, no tie in. Total cost was ~£50/month iirc. Worked
beautifully and felt very "free" (as in freedom) to me.

~~~
radiowave
If we accept that neutrality regulation is unnecessary in the UK due to the
effectiveness of the market that exists here, we should remember that this
market itself exists because of other forms of regulation which have been
imposed, including: the ease with which customers can switch ISPs, publishing
official figures of the frequency of complaints about ISPs, the incumbent
telco being required to provide wholesale internet access (with price
controls) which can be resold by any company who wish to set themselves up as
an ISP.

It seems to me to have done reasonably well at encouraging suppliers to
compete on price, and on customer service quality (provided you don't take the
ISP's word for it).

It _hasn 't_ been great at hastening the widespread availability of > 20Mbit
broadband, and that is probably in part because of a particular technological
and financial internet access model becoming somewhat entrenched, due to the
very same regulation.

I tend to be of the opinion that net neutrality is a useful tactic where a
functioning competitive market doesn't exist, and is beyond hope of being made
to exist. Outside of that, I'm much less certain of how valuable it is.

(I'm not going to address the whole UK internet censorship and data logging
thing, because it's orthogonal to the structure of the market. And also
because it's really fucking depressing.)

~~~
corford
Yes, I'd argue that the UK's approach to regulation may as well be network
neutrality by another name. It's looser than the FCC's interpretation but the
desired end result (from a consumer perspective) is very similar.

Re: UK internet censorship and data logging - agree not connected to this
debate (and, yes, it's fucking depressing).

------
sytelus
I don't get it. So is FCC just silently sneaking in anti net neutrality again?
I thought they pulled that out after huge outcry. Were they just waiting for
public to forget and move on?

~~~
coldpie
It's not "sneaking in," Pai has been explicitly against net neutrality and
consumer protections for his entire tenure. This was one of the things
Americans decided last November: a free and open Internet is bad thing, and
access to it should be controlled by the big multimedia companies.

Turns out, you get what you vote for.

~~~
ChrisLTD
I don't remember this issue coming up at all during the presidential election.
Although, I'd wager even if it had, the outcome of the election would not have
been altered in any significant way.

~~~
coldpie
Doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to realize Republicans are against
regulations and favor big businesses over consumers. It was absolutely on my
radar during the election, the Republican members of the commission have been
exceedingly clear about their opposition to small businesses and consumer
rights.

~~~
ChrisLTD
Sure, I just don't think we should make broad claims about the will of the
people vs. consent to govern in broad way. To put another way, Americans may
be happy to say they are against regulations, but yet still may favor a
particular regulation if it was brought up in a poll.

------
paulsutter
SpaceX's low latency internet access won't come a moment too soon. Competition
hasn't been possible but it could be.

Maybe Google can reconsider their decision to deproritize Google Fiber.

~~~
brokenmasonjars
How feasible would it be to just crowd source something through maybe an
organization like EFF or a collection of organizations? How many satellites
would be required? Could they be rebuild so they cost less? What else would
this entail? I know nothing of the subject so these are idiot questions I
know.

------
mrdrozdov
Would this only effect up and coming telecom firms and high bandwidth services
(video streaming, audio streaming, gaming, etc.), or also your every day SaaS
startup?

Edit: how exactly would this have a negative impact on SnapChat?

Double edit: I think net neutrality is a good thing, and worth finding clear
arguments to fight for.

Triple edit: Reasons I believe the net should be neutral...

1\. Consumers should be able to use any internet service they choose.

2\. Consumers should pay the same for data usage regardless of what the
service is.

3\. Businesses should be able to provide their service for the same data usage
cost as any other business.

~~~
ryanworl
If Facebook makes deals with cell phone carriers to have their traffic be free
to the end user, it may incentivize SnapChat users to switch to Instagram for
a comparable experience minus the data charges.

Luckily, most of the largest technology companies are incentivized in one way
or another to keep net-neutrality as it is. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon
literally sell cloud computing services to tons of companies large and small
who could be negatively impacted. Apple wants new apps made in the App Store
and would prefer these new apps hurt Facebook, Google, and Amazon in some way
if possible. Facebook relies on third-party mobile applications and websites
for collecting tons of data to feed back into their ad system. Google prefers
an open web to index and serve search ads against.

I don't think the lines are as clear as Fred has drawn here. There are
plausible reasons for major technology companies to come out in support of net
neutrality that are in their own self-interest, not just good-will.

~~~
richardwhiuk
The opponents of net neutrality aren't those guys - it's AT&T, Verizon,
Altice, Comcast, CenturyLink, Charter, TimeWarner, etc.

With net neutrality, they are essentially forced into a very low margin
business of selling data pipes, where it's all very comoditized, and it's
difficult to 'add value'.

Without net neutrality, they can pick and bundle services over the top and
give them prioritised traffic on their network, so watching Comcast Video is
prioritized, but watching Netflix buffers every 4 seconds. Offer subscribers a
short term discount to try Comcast Video, and then watch as the money rolls in
when everyone dumps Netflix and moves over to Comcast Video.

~~~
trome
I can attest to this experience on Centurylink gigabit trying to stream
Comcast's Xfinity Go, or streaming Netflix while on Comcast before they made
the backroom peering deal. In the evenings, they would either run at the
lowest quality, or buffer very often while running in potato vision.

------
panic
Why are we giving up? Tech workers, startups, and VCs collectively control
huge amounts of money and skilled labor. Organizing it all would obviously be
a challenge, but fighting this is a solvable problem!

------
jeffdavis
Are there technical solutions here?

The client-server model of the WWW seems to tilt in favor of consolidation.
What about something more akin to database replication for sharing
information? Data moving around asynchronously, viewed at the users leisure,
and synchronous actions are only needed sometimes (e.g. for buying things).
Right now, a lot of synchronous things happen, requiring users' action and
attention for little reason (but encouraged by the client/server model because
you need to make a request).

It would certainly change things. "Engagement" might be harder to measure and
monetize, so it might force us toward something more like micropayments. But
micropayments might be more possible in such an environment as well. With
little money on the line, it's easy to update a database record and move the
real money around later (if that's even required -- you could imagine digital
IOU records acting like currency).

And more importantly, I think it would reduce the need of companies like
facebook and other consolidating forces (though perhaps not google search).

~~~
acdha
It's not a technical problem so I think the best thing would be figuring out
ways to make it visible to the average user: e.g. imagine if Netflix could
reliably show a “Comcast's network is throttling your movie” message.

------
PublicFace
There never was a level playing field? Narrative fallacy.

Occasionally technology produces moments where dynamic conditions allow for
people to leverage large amounts of energy if they get lucky. But all those
people participating on a "level playing field?" they are "cheating" as hard
as they can at every step.

The perception that things were ever even is just that. A perception. Our
ecosystem is not "even". Nature doesn't "know" what "fair" is.

~~~
matthewmacleod
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.

The idea being presented—which I agree with—is that the nature of the Internet
up until relatively recently was that any organisation could participate with
equal access to any other – regardless of their size. That was a good thing,
and is a really excellent tool for democratisation of a resource, because it
removes essentially all barriers to entry. Any company could, for example,
offer streaming audio or video services, and Internet users were free to
purchase those which they think are worthwhile.

This changes when the Internet stops being a public communications network in
principle.

~~~
PublicFace
Basically: the internet was never a level playingh field. It was always
controlled by telecom and Big Gov. It wasn't designed to be equitable and has
never been a laissez faire system of any sort. To participate you need
capital, clout, and insider status.

My point is that the principle of an open Internet is a fallacy of narration,
trying to fit a story to the situation for the purposes of journalism.

------
qwrusz
Big fan of Fred. But I am struggling to connect all the dots on the FCC
statement and what the various companies responses will likely be and how long
that will take?...

Basically, there's new people at FCC, where will we see the effect of new
policy first and when?

Is my Verizon bill going to double? Is my phone going to give me mild but
painful electric shocks if I don't click on any fucking Google AMP links?
Fred, what is going to happen?

~~~
origami777
Your bill won't change. It's the companies that want to offer things on the
internet that will have to pay a premium. The cable companies can now tax
every little startup as well as big companies. It means only well funded
companies will be able to offer things online.

~~~
gr3yh47
> Your bill won't change.

 __yet __

wont be long at all before these monopolies start double dipping i.e. charging
customers for netflix traffic (either via having it count towards a cap while
hulu doesnt or some other method) while still charging netflix.

there's no business incentive for this not to happen because 90% of people
have no choice, and when verizon and comcast both do it almost no one will
have a choice

------
strken
I wonder how difficult it would be to stream data over Facebook video or
messenger? With messenger I assume they'd rate-limit you, but video might be
harder to stop.

------
fuzzfactor
Fundamentally, net neutrality is when everyone's upload speed matches their
download speed, there is no throttling, and it is enforced.

Otherwise individual creators or those who can not pay for preferential
treatment are at a disadvantage to those who can, with the spoils going to the
most predatory actors.

------
nojvek
May be Elon's satellite cluster will come and deliver the deathblow. Fast,
cheap, anywhere, wireless.

~~~
pdimitar
To be fair, that's my only hope as well. There doesn't seem to be almost
anyone on this miserable little planet who doesn't bend when they receive some
very particular phone calls. It's disgusting and discouraging.

------
grandalf
"Neutral" just means using some QoS setting that someone thought was "fair".

It's heavily biased toward current protocols and their current uses, and is
just as unfriendly to potentially groundbreaking tech as an "unfair" QoS.

While the alarmists predict that all google.com requests would be redirected
to bing, I think the reality is likely to be far more like T-Mobile's recent
controversial approach.

Some factual points to keep in mind:

\- There is a big difference between peak and average bandwidth, and it's very
specific to the protocol what defines acceptable performance. This applies to
every upstream provider, not just ISPs.

\- Bandwidth providers (ISPs, ISP's ISPs, etc.) are often in the business of
speculating on demand. Simply put, this means that they preorder bandwidth
that they expect to be adequate for the peak and average bandwidth demanded by
their downstream nodes.

\- The characteristics of bandwidth demand are a function of the protocols in
use and random variation. QoS is used to create a graceful fallback when there
is not quite enough bandwidth to route all traffic instantly. Optimal QoS
settings are a function of the protocols being used by downstream nodes. It is
not guaranteed that every network congestion situation can be mitigated by QoS
without a desegregation in service to someone downstream. This applies to ISPs
as well as upstream providers.

\- So aside from the google => bing scenario everyone pretends is worrisome,
in reality what would happen is that removing net neutrality would allow for
bandwidth speculators (ISPs and everyone upstream) to make smarter longer-term
deals which required less extra bandwidth. This is analogous to an improved
financial instrument to make longer-term thinking (and longer-term deals)
possible, with less uncertainty about demand, etc. For example, a startup
could offer a 4K streaming service by negotiating a deal with ISPs to ensure
high quality. See the next point for an example of why this matters.

\- Services with heavy demand such as youtube are not vulnerable to QoS
(except for the google=>bing dystopia). Why7? Because there is extremely
predictable demand. If you are an ISP and your upstream provider offers you
discounted bandwidth for youtube only traffic, you can safely make that
decision for the medium/long term because you know youtube is infrastructure
and your customers are going to use it. This predictability creates the
incentive for firms to add fiber links and capacity between youtube and ISPs
so that customers get high quality video without slowdowns at peak times. Note
that Youtube encouraged this competition between ISPs by having an ISP ratings
page a few years back.

\- For services like Tor or BitTorrent, there may be increased fees for
residential circuits that require those services, because they will
opportunistically use up any available bandwidth. This doesn't really fit the
residential pricing model that is arbitraged by ISPs, and is more akin to a
business level circuit. If the protocols become more widespread then that will
change, and it will be included in the profile of residential data.

In conclusion, net neutrality limits the ability of firms to offer long term
deals. It's why we don't see things like $4.99/month youtube only data plans
or $1.99/month email only plans. Sure you may think that all users should
subsidize those running tor or bt nodes, but that's really more of an extreme
position.

Also, it would probably be better for privacy if protocols like Tor and BT
started to be more indistinguishable from regular residential traffic.

~~~
dragonwriter
> "Neutral" just means using some QoS setting that someone thought was "fair".

No, it doesn't. The Open Internet Order doesn't dictate any particular "QoS
setting".

> While the alarmists predict that all google.com requests would be redirected
> to bing

No, they don't, they predict that prioritization of ISP-preferred (either
first-party or because of payment to the ISP, often for exclusive preference
in a category) will result in degradation of service to competing services and
squeeze out competition, particularly for services like internet telephony and
video streaming, where ISPs are often first-party providers.

No one, or nearly so, has predicted redirection of the type you describe;
that's a strawman.

~~~
prostoalex
> prioritization of ISP-preferred (either first-party or because of payment to
> the ISP, often for exclusive preference in a category) will result in
> degradation of service to competing services

Currently the payment to ISP is conveniently handled by the CDN industry. They
pay the ISP for the privilege to place a server rack or two in the ISP's data
centers, and then charge customers for speedier delivery of their content to
the subscribers of that particular ISP.

So what is the change that's being protested here?

~~~
grandalf
This is a great point.

------
Shivetya
Honestly I am not worried, I am pretty sure one or more carriers will attempt
to capitalize on the restricted or limited offerings from other carriers to
move the market in the right direction.

by offering bound services the carriers are only going to increase users
appetite for more and they will have to open the gates as the carriers will
not have access to exclusive content that requires a data connection. those
that offer unfettered access will win subscribers to their cell service and
those that do not will adapt or just take what they can get.

would I like to see a bit of pressure from the FCC, sure but I would like to
see the market work. the carriers for the most part cannot deliver bandwidth
reliably but this will push them to get better

------
jimmywanger
This is fearmongering at its greatest.

He goes from "Companies can pay for competitive advantage" and cites a S1
which is not backed by evidence, and jumps to the conclusion that the free net
is over.

Somebody had some column inches left to fill or a click quota left
unfulfilled.

~~~
aptwebapps
> This is fearmongering at its greatest.

That's some pretty extreme hyperbole.

> He goes from "Companies can pay for competitive advantage" and cites a S1
> which is not backed by evidence, and jumps to the conclusion that the free
> net is over.

The IPO story was merely illustrative. He's basing his argument on what he
sees happening in the market today and the changing regulatory climate.

> Somebody had some column inches left to fill or a click quota left
> unfulfilled.

He's not a journalist. He's a (very successful) VC and that is his blog.

