Did ISPs throttle competition?
I haven’t seen any reports of this happening. I haven’t seen any studies showing this happening systematically.
I’m woefully uninformed, so I really would like to hear more about this. What has been happening these past few years?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...
Think about it: these are service plans offered through cables that already exist, and that cross defined borders right? But what all an ISP has to do to offer different service plans in California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is to merely offer different terms to different people based off the State they reside in. That’s just paperwork (and you know, delivering on the agreed upon service for the agreed upon price), not automobiles.
So I don’t really buy the argument that because California did a thing, ISPs couldn’t do all the supposed bad evil stuff they were going to immediately do once the FCC failed to “save the internet” anywhere else (although maybe other States also did the thing California did).
All that network management would require teams of engineers and specialized hardware, all for something that may change on a whim and be obsoleted. What if New York copies California law? Bam. That investment instantly evaporated.
What I've never understood is the argument that what Europe does regarding privacy could actually affect the privacy of other countries.
Sure, some websites detect your location and apply different rules to you but a lot end up just following GDPR and apply it universally because it is easier and cheaper to do that than do a "means testing" and apply specific rules. Creating all those rulesets makes for an increasingly complex system, makes it more prone to error (which includes doing those banned actions within California and resulting in a lawsuit), and just is overall more expensive. Determining country origin is presumably a lot easier than determining state origin too. Not to mention that California is the most populous state and the biggest tech sector. Pretty much the argument is ISPs have bigger fish to fry when they're restricted from doing something to a large portion of their customers.
No one and nothing are truly independent. That's always been a lie being sold. Choices you make affect others and choices collectively made affect you. It's literally the definition of a society. On HN we have these discussions about Chrome's dominance allowing them to have control over how the internet is structured. We've had these discussion about Apple's dominance influencing right to repair. And so on. Monolithic forces are never going to be stopped by single player boycotting. My usage of Firefox for over a decade never did anything to dethrone Chrome and I never expected it would, but hey, it also can't happen without people like me. Just needs to happen at a larger scale.
It looks like this law was challenged on those grounds, but the challenge lasted until after Biden was elected and the suit dropped.
It is not, there are plenty of state laws that have applied to the internet. On the specific issue of net neutrality, the FCC in 2019 lost in the D.C. Circuit in its attempt to assert that state law regulations for neutrality were preempted, specifically because the repeal rested on them reclassifying in a way which means they don’t have the power to preempt state regulations.
> It looks like this law was challenged on those grounds
It was (EDIT: well, not on the broad “internet is a federal law domain” grounds, but the narrower “net neutrality regulations by the states were preempted by the terms of the FCC neutrality repeal” grounds), by multiple parties, and those challenges failed.
> but the challenge lasted until after Biden was elected and the suit dropped.
No, while the DoJ dropped its case then, the case making the same arguments by the broadband industry continued until the industry participants dropped it after the Ninth Circuit ruled (similar to what the D.C. Circuit had previously), that by reclassifying broadband under Title I in its net neutrality repeal, the FCC had removed its ability to restrict state regulations, which would only exist if it were regulated under Title II.
Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31062799
T-Mobile begins blocking iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay in US https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29880073
>T-Mobile’s situation is a little more complex: most customers shouldn’t have any issues with iCloud Private Relay. But those who use content filtering services (like the carrier’s Family Controls) won’t be able to use iCloud Private Relay, the carrier tells us.
Which is reasonable, since a content filtering service is incompatible with a VPN
Many also lie on speedtests, though I don't know if that counts.
If you value the internet at large, never get your service from Comcast.
So how about "We send BackBlaze, Dropbox, Acronis, etc., huge volumes of our customer's backup data, so we should be paying them"?
Hah. Not likely.
edit: strange to post this and find a second post with exactly the same two points submitted while writing. I guess my thoughts aren't that special
Also, by default Speedtest tests the connection from you to the nearest testing node. A lot of times it's the one hosted by your ISP, so the measured speed is the speed inside the ISP's local network and not the speed from you to outer Internet.
The original Net Neutrality rules exempted cellular. The FCC used Title I regulatory authority hoping to use a "light touch" least ISPs sued and an appeals court voided the regulation with the rationale the FCC did not have the authority to do as long it continued to classify broadband as Title I "information service" instead of "telecommunications."
When the Net Neutrality regulations were re-done the FCC re-classified broadband as Title II "telecommunications" for more solid legal authority.
When the FCC changed to Republican majority they repealed the regulation and reclassified broadband back to Title I.
That's an example of non-neutral net
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/verizons-zombie-cookies-will-f...
I sure as shit do not.
Probably any political faction on earth is going to want to control information flows to their advantage. Whoever you vote for will probably want to censor or limit the reach of the speech of their enemies. The parties don't have actual principles on this stuff--vote for whomever has the same enemies as you I guess.
> Probably any political faction on earth is going to want to control information flows to their advantage. Whoever you vote for will probably want to censor or limit the reach of the speech of their enemies. The parties don't have actual principles on this stuff--vote for whomever has the same enemies as you I guess.
I'm reminded once again of why I dislike the political party system in the US. Principles are not necessary for candidates to win votes, and the political parties don't value people with principles, such as Gigi Sohn with respect to internet access policy [3].
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2021/07/23/senators-klobuchar-lujan...
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/31/judge-blocks-unconstitut...
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/08/gigi-sohns-full-statemen...
Side B: Puts net neutrality in place.
You: "It's not clear to me how these are different."
Seriously? You have to be kidding or downright silly to be an enlightened centrist in this situation.
None of the promised apocalypse materialized, because the marketing materials used to make the case for it were fundamentally wrong.
Keep in mind that states passed net neutrality laws [1], and large ISPs such as Comcast and Verizon tried to ban states from doing so [2]. Even so, the reclassification of broadband from Title II to Title I formally removed much of the FCC's authority to regulate ISPs at all [3]:
> A big part of the FCC’s plan involves rolling back the FCC’s tailor-made authority over broadband providers, then shoveling all remaining government oversight to an FTC ill-equipped to handle it.
> Why is that a problem? The FTC has no rule-making ability, and can only move to protect consumers after a violation has occurred. And that action can only occur if it’s painfully clear that an ISP engaged in “unfair and deceptive” behavior, something that’s easy for an ISP to dodge in the net neutrality era, where anti-competitive behavior is often buried under faux-technical jargon and claims that it was done only for the health and safety of the network.
Federal net neutrality rules were significant but nonetheless were a fraction of the broadband consumer protection debate. You are correct that an apocalypse didn't happen. Rather, the US already was mired in monopolization, fraud, and regulatory capture. These are problems net neutrality can provide only a bandage for. The FCC couldn't begin to help with the larger issues without restoring at least some of its Title II authority (regardless of whether the FCC would actually acknowledge the monopolization in the first place [4]).
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/01/28/courts-again-shoot-down-...
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2017/11/06/comcast-urges-fcc-to-ban...
[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw5d5g/net-neutrality-big-te...
[4] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/net-neutralitys-dead-tim...
US ISPs have been an unmitigated disaster that have exposed everything wrong with how infrastructure is built under a capitalist organization of the economy. Monopoly franchise agreements, rent-seeking, bundling of cable channels, lobbying for laws against net neutrality, lobbying for laws against municipal broadband and lobbying for laws against "overbuilds" in general.
On top of that ISPs place significant hurdles over anyone who gets permission to build. This can be as simple as the process by which cables are strung up to poles. In some places each pole may require a separate planning application and existing cables may need to be moved. The owners may have 90 days to move their cables. They will take that. They may even take longer and just pay the fine. If several need to be moved they may be done serially so it may take 1-2 years just to get permission to put a cable up on a pole that the city technically owns.
We have service blackspots where ISPs are given huge sums to roll out service and simply don't. A lot of municipal broadband started because Comcat, AT&T, Spectrum or whoever simply refused to provide service or charged a ridiculous amount (eg $50k to connect).
The best Internet in the US is municipal eg Chattanooga.
Utilities are heavily regulated because we know what would happen if they weren't: inelastic demand would simply result in providers jacking up prices to increase profit. People would die from necessities like electricity, water and heating being withheld.
I support net neutrality but it largely wouldn't be necessary if we had municipal broadband and the infrastructure for virtual network providers. Some effort would still be required for peering arrangements.
I'm sure its opponents say it's bad for the general public for some reason, and one of them might be some kind of "let market competition work it out" etc. If you discard that, what is left?
There is probably also the argument that various businesses want this repealed, this is kind of clear.
One is the double charging of services. Buy service XYZ on the internet then the ISP says 'hey you buy or special package or ABC is throttled'. That is the one most people think of when they hear net neutrality. Or 'we have not cut a deal with XYZ no data for you'.
Then there is the 'stop the cap' ones. Where 'hey here is a nice unlimited service except when you use more than X data then its not'. 'want more data pay for more on top of your "unlimited" plan'.
Also at one point both 'sides' playing the other side. The donations flowed and the 'sides' were drawn up. I have watched this since it started. That was wild to watch. Then instead of passing laws to do it right they again are pretzelling the existing laws. Made some up and said yep thats good. Each "side" of the argument has had control of both houses and the presidential. Yet none of them got it done. Instead we are going to end up with more rubish and no real laws. Just made up interpretations that can change on a whim (and it will).
Then both sides are pretending there is robust competition and not oligopoly/monopoly pricing. When the reality is I used to be able to choose from 20 ISPs with different perks or whatever. I can now realistically pick between 2. They are then stepping in with a bunch of rules that make it even harder to make an ISP. That is by design and called regulatory capture. Not once have they talked about how to make competition more robust.
However, you can read through this thread and see if you feel this is true or not today in practice, let alone in perpetuity in theory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37945011
In reality that would be solvable.
On cellular the effect of priority is much more apparent. The "bundled" phone call service has very high priority and can function normally under network stress/congestion. Over the top Whatsapp or Facetime calls will suffer audio glitches or fail to connect under the same conditions.
As weird as it might sound, net neutrality really doesn't present any meaningful technical challenges. As a network engineer working for one of the big service providers, the only major change I foresee would be the person telling me which/whose traffic they want me to prioritize/throttle...
The other aspect I wanted to mention is when we're talking about service provider networks QoS ought to be viewed as a short-term answer rather than a permanent solution. (which is almost always more bandwidth) Think of it like taking a pain med when you have a cavity... Great way to alleviate some of pain in the moment, the problem is only get worse if you don't see the dentist.
However, I think rules could be put in place to prevent the anti-competitive practices without limiting the legitimate use cases for going against net neutrality.
This is not convincing to me at all. ISPs could have supported low latency internet for everything, not just for gaming. If latency is too low then it's because the large ISPs are purposefully doing a bad job of upgrading to fiber and expanding fiber to places without internet access. Fiber would allow ISPs to provide service for cheap and still profit in the long term [1]. Subsidy fraud is as normal as breathing among large telecom companies such as AT&T [2], Comcast [3], and Verizon [4].
Internet bandwidth is not like shipping of physical goods. Sending twice the data doesn't cost the ISP twice the money, nor does it take twice the time. Data caps are artificial and unnecessary [5]. Any ISP trying to justify expensive, fast internet by bringing up metaphors of physical transfers and physical scarcity is lying to you.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/why-slow-networks-real...
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/06/mississippi-says-att-too...
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/report-shows-comcast-con...
[4] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/16/verizon-t-mobile-oversta...
[5] https://publicknowledge.org/no-cap-the-truth-about-data-caps...]
Could you provide an example of how net neutrality might impact a companies ability to form peering relationships and/or raise the difficultly of securing reasonable/enforceable SLAs with service providers?
The primary reason for people supporting net neutrality is due to the existence of clear-cut ISP monopolies. This problem of monopolistic ISPs could be easily solved by enforcing the existing anti-trust laws that have long been on the books. Net neutrality essentially gives these monopolies a pass, so long as they make some vague promises about not throttling.
Net neutrality is the convoluted nonsense regulation that gets written by politicians who are trying to balance the various sets of competing lobbying interests.
The correct and proper solution would be to simply enforce existing anti-trust laws.
It's good? Did you catch the part about "give the FCC more authority"?
The FCC ceded authority as a way to get around having to make a damning call not to assert net neutrality under the last administration. Unless I'm misreading, this is just a return to form.
What the FCC does need is the authority to restore net neutrality laws, which it can't have without reclassifying ISPs back to Title II. Admittedly, Congress would do well to pass legislation declaring ISPs utilities and giving the FCC the authority to enforce net neutrality without invoking Title II.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter#Conte...
Sidebar: I was 1000% pro-Title II last time this came up in 2015 and went through https://www.battleforthenet.com/ , I think to email my legislators.
Fortunately, I used a tagged/aliased email address. That address has apparently gotten into the Democrats' "never lose this email" bin. I regularly get emails from politicians I absolutely never wanted to hear from, all to that email. I try to unsubscribe, but they won't let me go.
Why?
Because...I think...at some point somebody fell for a fake tweet? Also because regulation is bad because of..completely unrelated example of regulatory excess involving restaurants in SF?
I mean, is he saying he's against any regulation of anything, now? Or just against Title II? I'm sure he can't seriously mean the former. But as to the latter, I honestly missed the part where he substantiates why Title II specifically is excessive.
Seriously, I think I clearly missed a crucial step in his argument.
1. The problems that supporters say net neutrality would fix are fictitious (the tweet), already handled (Comcast and bittorrent traffic), or not necessarily addressed by net neutrality (zero rating)
2. Title II classification entails much more regulation than net neutrality
3. Therefore applying Title II to ISPs will raise the barrier to entry for new entrants and not address the supposed harms
> at some point somebody fell for a fake tweet?
Not just "somebody"--the guy who coined the term "net neutrality" and advises the government.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/proposing-reestablished-open-in...
I know I'm far too cynical these days, but this smells like the beginning of the Great American Firewall.
That implies routing control. I would expect the NTIA (Dept of Commerce) to be tasked with that, closely advised by CISA.
The FCC's purview is more tied to licensing and regulation.
Even if you have a problem with other parts of Title II, net neutrality is a net good for consumers. Or, it would be if the FCC believed in fighting for consumers in the first place [3]:
> And while Democratic FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks talk a good game about bridging the “digital divide” and addressing the “homework gap” (a lack of affordable broadband for kids), they generally lack the courage to even identify that concentrated monopoly power is the primary reason US broadband is spotty, slow, and expensive. It’s a political risk to do so.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttle...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/14/finally-close-to-having-...
The quoted segment sounds like they want to extend that to residential ISP's which makes sense to me. Using network hardware from an adversary nation is very risky. Especially when it's China which has an extensive record of state involvement in it's tech companies.
Fortunately there is no indication yet that regulators in the US want to get involved with routing, or anything resembling a great firewall. The closest thing to that right now is "age verification to visit porn sites" laws that some states have enacted.
That ISP not be fulfilling that requirement due to insufficient funding.
https://www.lightreading.com/regulatory-politics/-rip-and-re...
Plainly, I don't believe they need or deserve that money merely because they have lobbyists/bought politicians that say they do.
We start with state interference of the free market in a small way, and it mangles the fair game. And then we "need" laws to "protect" us from issues caused by state interference in the first place.
So sick of it all.
We started with a free market. People acted poorly. In came regulation. Specifically: regulation that was not imposed on us as society, but of our own choosing.
Not to say that regulation can't cause issues of it's own. But regulation (believe it or not) is there for a reason, even if imperfect.
Actually, it's quite telling that you confused 'free market' with 'fair game'. Who says a free market is a fair market? Free market doesn't mean fair, it means free. Free to exploit people, to act monopolistically, to abuse your market power and inflict pain. It does not mean fair.
Regulation is a means to an end. Sometimes the goal is to curb some bad behavior. Sometimes the goal is to give the appearance of doing something (like looking tough on crime). Sometimes the goal is fundamentally corrupt, such as the bans of municipal fiber networks pushed through by incumbent ISPs. Sometimes the regulations even mostly achieve their goal without much in the way of unintended consequences. But it's certainly not as simple as regulations are always an effective response to bad behavior that do not themselves cause bad behavior.
I expect to get dogpiled on Hacker News though. The demographic here has a fondness of rules. We give computers rules. That fondness translates to non-technical fields, for better or for worse. In this case, worse.
Is it better? Congress and the FCC has never done much to punish wrongdoing by ISPs [1]. Large ISPs including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon commit subsidy fraud with impunity. (See the links in my other comment. [2])
And on the issue of fairness, large ISPs [3][4][5] and some government officials [6][7] do their best to prevent broadband subsidixes from reaching small local ISPs. At the very least, the FCC should (and won't, but should) place heavy penalties on large ISPs for their abuses of customers [8]. By heavy penalties, I mean at least 80% of the revenue gained from anti-competitive practices.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/22/fcc-adds-a-nutrition-lab...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37949298
[3] https://communitynets.org/content/monopoly-providers-mire-nt...
[4] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/report-shows-comcast-con...
[5] https://www.techdirt.com/2015/04/16/alec-threatens-to-sue-cr...
[6] https://www.techdirt.com/2021/02/19/new-bill-tries-to-ban-co...
[7] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/11/illinois-missouri-and-ne...
[8] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/couple-bought-ho...
Capitalism only works if purchasers can choose between options that are competing on their own merits. Monopolies are the opposite of a free market.
I think it's an incredibly succinct way of describing how libertarians look to non-libertarians "just let the free immune system decide" to hell with these medical "interventions."
