Net Neutrality

[frayne]

Thoughts, opinions, good, bad or indifferent. My understanding is the net is pretty much like the wild, wild west and you can get/find/view about anything you want. If this changes, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) can dictate what you can get/find/view. Is this pretty much your understanding ? What is the rationale behind wanting to change it ? So ISPs can charge you additional for content ?
I know follow the money.

Just wondering if anyone is following this issue and your thoughts.

 

[gerntz]

Net neutrality has only been in effect for 2-1/2 years. What's different since it went into effect - meaning changes that have affected you? Me, I haven't seen any. Net, I don't expect any when it goes away.

 

[cooch96]

I’m generally anti-regulation. Treating ISPs as monopolies using laws similar to those crafted to regulate Ma Bell seemed very unnecessary to me.
Dumping Net Nuetrality could mean that you can get internet services similar to cable packages: if I never use the internet for gaming, then I don’t need to pay for gaming. This can potentially free up bandwidth and lower prices.
Regulation also tends to protect the status quo, and I appreciate innovation. I saw a sci-if looking add where WiFi was all balloon and satellite mounted and one could pay for internet similar to cell phone use: by the minute or prepaid services. Gives the consumers more options.
Net Neutrality wasn’t a problem 3 years ago when when the laws were adopted. I didn’t understand why they tried to fix a problem that didn’t exist.

 

[bUU]

Dumping Net Nuetrality could mean that you can get internet services similar to cable packages: if I never use the internet for gaming, then I don’t need to pay for gaming. This can potentially free up bandwidth and lower prices.
... I didn’t understand why they tried to fix a problem that didn’t exist.

Well the problem is that there was a problem that existed - two really. Net neutrality didn't fix either, but there were two problems.

The biggest problem is that, unlike cable television, you cannot continually clone an IP stream so that more people can use it. As such, pay one price make no sense, especially when there is still a comparatively enormous range between consumption of the lightest consumers and the heaviest consumers. The correct fix would have been to mandate metering as the means of selling such a service. Bowing to the pressure for unlimited service breaks the market. (A hybrid, base plus, arrangement would be fine as well.)

The other problem is that too many essential services are now available most effectively through the internet, meaning that a certain amount of internet service is akin to water, heat, and food. Therefore, making internet service unaffordable is immoral. A certain amount of the service should fall under the same provisions that once assured basic cable remained affordable. Of course, those provisions are no longer in force anymore, so the trend is toward unfairness, so expecting fairness is increasingly unreasonable.

 

[ERD50]

I’m generally anti-regulation. Treating ISPs as monopolies using laws similar to those crafted to regulate Ma Bell seemed very unnecessary to me. ...

But for many people, the ISP is a monopoly (at least an oligopoly).

So if xyz-ISP is your only reasonable choice, and say xyz-ISP owns xyz-streaming-movie-company, but you like Netflix better. From what I understand, the Net Neutrality laws mean that xyz-ISP cannot throttle back your speed when streaming from Netflix, but give you great speed when streaming their own (inferior in other ways) xyz-streaming-movie-company.

I've heard the argument that places like Netflix are getting a 'free ride' from your ISP. Simple solution, don't offer 'unlimited' GB per month, but charge like any other utility does, by the GB. High users pay more - makes sense. So the ISP would make more money form people doing a lot of streaming.

I'm guessing the law is complex like most things Congress does, and that is only part of it, but that's what I think I've come to understand. I could use enlightenment or confirmation from anyone who does know.

As far as regulation, I'd prefer to see steps taken to open the market - natural competition usually serves the customer better than slow-as-molasses regulations.

-ERD50

 

[gerntz]

So far I haven't heard anyone say how they've been affected by NN one way/other, only what might be.

There metered use approach sounds like a good idea that neither way - open/nn - deals with.

 

[REWahoo]

Here's a quick and hopefully neutral look at the net neutrality debate:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-net-neutrality-debate-in-2-minutes-or-less/

 

[gerntz]

Here's a quick and hopefully neutral look at the net neutrality debate:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-net-neutrality-debate-in-2-minutes-or-less/

It's not. It's clearly pro-NN. But then maybe that's the meaning of your .

 

[donheff]

This is a complicated issue but I think ERD has pointed to the most sensible way to deal with the problem - charge for data use. Hogs pay more on both ends. If I watch all my TV online I can pay the freight. If I just read email I pay less. Same for providers. I'm not sure this is a real problem for the providers now. They are making money hand over fist charging for speed (and to a lesser extent, data) now. They can adjust how they sell their services to deal with this now without throttling specific services.

The problem with eliminating net neutrality is that telecoms will be able to shape the market to their benefit and could slowly strangle innovators who challenge their favored services. I doubt that we would see egregious abuses early on but we could see a slow erosion that would affect us substantially over the long term.

 

[audreyh1]

Did net neutrality rules ever prevent an ISP for charging by the speed of data or total data or throttling back when some data limit was exceeded? I don’t think so.

I think it’s only about giving some data types or data source preferential speeds/limits over others. So that Netscape has to pay your provider extra for streaming videos to you, for example.

 

[Which Roger]

This is a complicated issue but I think ERD has pointed to the most sensible way to deal with the problem - charge for data use. Hogs pay more on both ends. If I watch all my TV online I can pay the freight. If I just read email I pay less. Same for providers. I'm not sure this is a real problem for the providers now. They are making money hand over fist charging for speed (and to a lesser extent, data) now. They can adjust how they sell their services to deal with this now without throttling specific services.

The problem with eliminating net neutrality is that telecoms will be able to shape the market to their benefit and could slowly strangle innovators who challenge their favored services. I doubt that we would see egregious abuses early on but we could see a slow erosion that would affect us substantially over the long term.

Users are currently indirectly charged more for using more data - if I'm a data hog, I need higher bandwidth, so I have to subscribe to a more expensive service. If I just read e-mail, I can pay less for lower bandwidth.

 

[bUU]

Bandwidth is not necessarily an indicator of total consumption, which is what ERD and I were referring to.

 

[jollystomper]

Factoring into this, I believe, is the fact that nothing on the internet is truly "free". If you are not paying for it with dollars, you are paying for it with information about yourself - some of which you freely give up - that others monetize. So I always look at these things from the standpoint of "who benefits financially one way or the other" - because while the impact to us consumers is discussed, the impact to those making money off of us is not truly covered.

 

[ERD50]

It's not. It's clearly pro-NN. But then maybe that's the meaning of your .

Just because the discussion leads to being pro NN, does not mean it is biased.

-ERD50

 

[gerntz]

Just because the discussion leads to being pro NN, does not mean it is biased.

-ERD50

Nor that it's unbiased.

 

[ERD50]

Nor that it's unbiased.

True. Is there something about that article that strikes you as hiding or misrepresenting something?

=ERD50

 

[GrayHare]

The correct fix would have been to mandate metering as the means of selling such a service. Bowing to the pressure for unlimited service breaks the market. (A hybrid, base plus, arrangement would be fine as well.)

+1

NN means someone who hogs net resources pays no more than someone who is efficient. If this were the case 50 years ago, someone who made 10 hours worth of long distance phone calls per day would pay no more than someone who used only 10 minutes.

Understandably ISPs do not like NN, but instead of charging the big data users more they want to charge big data providers, such as Netflix, more. It's not clear to me why that should be the case.

 

[CaliforniaMan]

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about net neutrality. It does not mean providers cannot charge more for more usage, more bytes transmitted, it simply means that providers cannot charge differently because of what is contained in those bytes or who sends them. Wikipedia has a decent definition. Seems to me there has to be at least agreement on a definition before one can discuss it.

"Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.[1] For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content."

 

[GrayHare]

So why don't ISPs charge heavy users more?

 

[USGrant1962]

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about net neutrality. It does not mean providers cannot charge more for more usage, more bytes transmitted, it simply means that providers cannot charge differently because of what is contained in those bytes or who sends them. Wikipedia has a decent definition. Seems to me there has to be at least agreement on a definition before one can discuss it.

+1

I'm actually kind of neutral on the issue, but I can't believe how much confusion there is surrounding this. And the "sky is falling" attitude for something that is just going back to the way it was 2 years ago is perplexing.

As CAMan and others have said - NN has nothing to do with consumer's data rates or usage. It simply says that ISPs cannot charge Netflix more for access than they charge Amazon video or Xfinity. Even under NN, your ISP can charge you for higher speed or even data usage.

 

[USGrant1962]

So why don't ISPs charge heavy users more?

They can but have made a business decision not to. They do charge more for faster access / higher bandwidth.

 

[ERD50]

So why don't ISPs charge heavy users more?

A couple guesses:

1) They wanted to get users 'hooked' on using lots of data, so it becomes expected and normal to use that much, and they will want to keep using that much.

2) I think I heard that the infrastructure has been overbuilt, so the extra traffic really isn't costing them that much, it's almost all fixed cost. It might be almost all fixed cost regardless?

So maybe the wails against net neutrality by the ISPs are really about locking in users to their own offerings, and shutting out the little guy?

-ERD50

 

[RetireAge50]

If I want to read the early retirement forum $1/mo please to Comcast.

 

[CaliforniaMan]

So far I haven't heard anyone say how they've been affected by NN one way/other, only what might be.

There metered use approach sounds like a good idea that neither way - open/nn - deals with.

Nobody really knows what it will be like without net neutrality, we have always essentially had it since the internet began. That was the way the internet evolved. Eliminating it is something entirely new.

 

[meierlde]

Bandwidth is not necessarily an indicator of total consumption, which is what ERD and I were referring to.

But looking at the costs of an ISP it is the bandwidth that costs money, not the moving of a bit. Total consumption does not necessarily add to costs for example moving data at 3 am is probably moving in a low bandwidth environment. To have this make sense you would have to go to time of day pricing for data.
Actually commercial electric rates have a similar feature. The commericial customer pays both for energy used and the max 15 min demand in a month. This latter is designed to cover the costs of the infrastructure needed to deliver the power to where it is used.
So since an ISPs costs depend mostly on the peak bandwidth they are asked to deliver, the demand charge makes sense.