U.S. Appeals Court Killed Net Neutrality

[theeedude]

Sounds to me like ISPs are double dipping. They want subscribers to pay once through their ISP bill, and second time through the services they consume.

 

[Texashiker]

Sounds to me like ISPs are double dipping. They want subscribers to pay once through their ISP bill, and second time through the services they consume.

Pretty much, yea.

You would pay for your internet connection, and then pay extra for every service and device.

Want to tether a laptop off your phone? That is going to be an extra $100 a month, and with a 4 gig datacap.

Want to use smtp/pop to send email through a leased server? That is an extra $100 a month.

Quite simply put, net neutrality prevents a carrier from offering a high quality internet connection that consistently delivers top performance for all applications including voice, video, gaming, streaming, etc.

Net neutrality would prevent companies like verizon from blocking aftermarket programs.

 

[Oldgamer]

Quite simply put, net neutrality prevents a carrier from offering a high quality internet connection that consistently delivers top performance for all applications including voice, video, gaming, streaming, etc.

With net neutrality in place all traffic is best effort regardless of application. That is the dark ages of networking. So your video quality suffers, voice quality suffers, gaming quality suffers, etc. Everybody suffers poor performance, every application suffers poor performance.

That's the entire premise and why it's such a bad idea.

Ok forgive me, but I am still not understanding how taking away net neutrality laws will suddenly allow Tier 1 ISP's to provide this better consistent performance for all apps. Explain how the laws prevent the carriers now from doing so? In addition, if the ISPs are able to do this without the net neutrality laws (on the technical side) then why wouldn't they just provide this better consistent performance now, how does this law prevent them from updating their services or upgrading technically for their consumers?

The other thing I don't get is that Google Fiber which is being laid out currently in other areas of the US apparently can handle high bandwidth performance, much better, faster streaming performance for application like gaming, video, ect. So why wouldn't AT&T and Verizon just update their lines and lay down the fiber optic cables and provide updated better, faster performance now?

I am still not getting how the net neutrality laws are preventing them from doing this on the technical side.

 

[Doppel]

Quite simply put, net neutrality prevents a carrier from offering a high quality internet connection that consistently delivers top performance for all applications including voice, video, gaming, streaming, etc.

With net neutrality in place all traffic is best effort regardless of application. That is the dark ages of networking. So your video quality suffers, voice quality suffers, gaming quality suffers, etc. Everybody suffers poor performance, every application suffers poor performance.

That's the entire premise and why it's such a bad idea.

Actually I agree with you in theory that, a benevolent carrier, could use an absence of net neutrality to make the experience better. A moment extra surfing the net doesn't affect me, but a moment extra in an online game does.

The problem is you fail to recognize that this perfect world of benevolent carriers doesn't and never will exist. Instead, they will nickel and dime every last corner of the internet.

The utopia you speak of sounds nice. It's just never going to happen.

 

[Oldgamer]

Actually I agree with you in theory that, a benevolent carrier, could use an absence of net neutrality to make the experience better. A moment extra surfing the net doesn't affect me, but a moment extra in an online game does.

The problem is you fail to recognize that this perfect world of benevolent carriers doesn't and never will exist. Instead, they will nickel and dime every last corner of the internet.

The utopia you speak of sounds nice. It's just never going to happen.

Having worked with big fat cats in companies I can tell you first hand they are greedy fucks, and when it comes to making money off the consumers they will do it, they will find a way... so yea, anything to increase profits, especially for their shareholders. LOL There is no such thing as caring about the consumer anymore... those days are long gone. I mean just look at all the small made up fees and charges they put on your phone bills and on your internet bill? LMAO

 

[Mai72]

When I was living in South Korea I couldn't believe the choices that I had when choosing an internet provider. And the speed! Amazing quick and all for $25 USD a month. In New Jersey I had the choice between Comcast and Verizon. Both suck and my monthly bill was normally $65.00

The downside to internet in Korea is that they block porn.

 

[Oldgamer]

When I was living in South Korea I couldn't believe the choices that I had when choosing an internet provider. And the speed! Amazing quick and all for $25 USD a month. In New Jersey I had the choice between Comcast and Verizon. Both suck and my monthly bill was normally $65.00

The downside to internet in Korea is that they block porn.

Yea I have a friend who lived in China and travels there frequently from the US and says the same thing about the speed of their internet. Same thing in Japan. Lightening fast.

Sad that the US companies are so greedy they willfully lag behind other countries in these areas.

 

[Bowfinger]

Quite simply put, net neutrality prevents a carrier from offering a high quality internet connection that consistently delivers top performance for all applications including voice, video, gaming, streaming, etc.

With net neutrality in place all traffic is best effort regardless of application. That is the dark ages of networking. So your video quality suffers, voice quality suffers, gaming quality suffers, etc. Everybody suffers poor performance, every application suffers poor performance.

That's the entire premise and why it's such a bad idea.

That's complete nonsense. That's not what the regulations require at all.

The complete text of this Free and Open Internet requirement is available on the FCC website. Here are a couple of key portions:

Open Internet Report and Order
[ ... ]
I. PRESERVING THE FREE AND OPEN INTERNET

1. Today the Commission takes an important step to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression. To provide greater clarity and certainty regarding the continued freedom and openness of the Internet, we adopt three basic rules that are grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as our own prior decisions:

i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services;

ii. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; and

iii. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
​

We believe these rules, applied with the complementary principle of reasonable network management, will empower and protect consumers and innovators while helping ensure that the Internet continues to flourish, with robust private investment and rapid innovation at both the core and the edge of the network. This is consistent with the National Broadband Plan goal of broadband access that is ubiquitous and fast, promoting the global competitiveness of the United States.

[ ... ]
82. Upon reviewing the record, we conclude that the definition of reasonable network management should provide greater clarity regarding the standard used to gauge reasonableness, expressly account for technological differences among networks that may affect reasonable network management, and omit elements that do not relate directly to network management functions and are therefore better handled elsewhere in the rules — for example, measures to prevent the transfer of unlawful content.

We therefore adopt the following definition of reasonable network management:

A network management practice is reasonable if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service.
​

Legitimate network management purposes include: ensuring network security and integrity, including by addressing traffic that is harmful to the network; addressing traffic that is unwanted by end users (including by premise operators), such as by providing services or capabilities consistent with an end user’s choices regarding parental controls or security capabilities; and reducing or mitigating the effects of congestion on the network. The term "particular network architecture and technology” refers to the differences across access platforms such as cable, DSL, satellite, and fixed wireless. ...

Note this regulation expressly allows reasonable network management. What it prohibits is blocking and unreasonable discrimination. Unsurprising, that is what the court struck down, parts 2 and 3, "No blocking" and "No unreasonable discrimination". Their purpose was to keep ISPs from discriminating against competitors by unreasonably impairing access to those competitors' content and services. As others suggest, the court has undone this, allowing Comcast to block or degrade access to competing video services compared to its own cable service, for example. It's a bad ruling,m yet another example of screwing the public for the benefit of deep pockets.

 

[spidey07]

That's complete nonsense. That's not what the regulations require at all.

The complete text of this Free and Open Internet requirement is available on the FCC website. Here are a couple of key portions:
Note this regulation expressly allows reasonable network management. What it prohibits is blocking and unreasonable discrimination. Unsurprising, that is what the court struck down,
parts 2 and 3, "No blocking" and "No unreasonable discrimination". Their purpose was to keep ISPs from discriminating against competitors by unreasonably impairing access to those competitors' content and services. As others suggest, the court has undone this, allowing Comcast to block or degrade access to competing video services compared to its own cable service, for example. It's a bad ruling,m yet another example of screwing the public for the benefit of deep pockets.

The extremely few times that actually happened the FCC put a stop to it right quick. Those ruling and their power to do so still stand.

You're scared of something that can't or won't happen. Worse so something you don't understand.

 

[Oldgamer]

Sooo in an effort to really try and understand what Spidey07 is saying (I am honestly trying to understand, not to be a dick), I found this other article on this. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...eutrality-rules-seen-as-loss-for-netflix.html

So the ISPs are complaining that services like Netflix and Youtube are big bandwidth hogs, and contributing to network congestion and they feel they should pay more if they are going to use more bandwidth. My question however, is this, why don't these ISPs simply start upgrading their lines to handle the heavy load of traffic?

They make so much money now that their simply is no excuse to upgrade their lines and equipment. It seems that they are using this as an excuse to charge people more, and in the end they will start throttling and blocking content. By lifting the net neutrality laws that is exactly what they intend on doing and it says so in this article and others.

I really think that this is bogus on their part. They could provide better service by upgrading their lines and equipment, put down fiber optic cable (then you would see customers willing to pay more) because they are getting a better product. But we are left with the status quo as it is now, and nothing changes as I see it in the way of quality service. The only thing that changes is these ISPs get to charge more money, and there is no guarantee they are going to deliver a better quality product than what we have now.

 

[CitizenKain]

spidey07, upon your very first post in this thread I thought maybe you would take some time to logically explain the technical aspects of what your talking about and convince me and others that killing Net Neutrality would be a good thing for the consumer. But all I see in every one of your posts is insults at the members and no real explanations. You say you are in the technology business (I am assuming you work for a Tier 1 provider) a tech, or maybe a network administrator of some sort? If this is the case then you could very easily explain in a post to us how killing Net Neutrality would be good for the consumer. If you have time to make the posts calling everyone idiots then you have time to make your technical explanations.

He doesn't have any explanations because he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

He seems to think that for some reason, ISPs are just itching to give us the high speed circuits we want, but those big bad regulations are keeping it from happening. I mean, Comcast would simply love to give everyone 50mb/s of traffic, but that silly thing where people want to use this traffic for things that doesn't make Comcast money is holding them back.

What is holding things back from having a decent network is ISPs sitting on money and doing shit to upgrade the infrastructure in this country.

Sooo in an effort to really try and understand what Spidey07 is saying (I am honestly trying to understand, not to be a dick), I found this other article on this. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...eutrality-rules-seen-as-loss-for-netflix.html

So the ISPs are complaining that services like Netflix and Youtube are big bandwidth hogs, and contributing to network congestion and they feel they should pay more if they are going to use more bandwidth. My question however, is this, why don't these ISPs simply start upgrading their lines to handle the heavy load of traffic?

Because any money spent on upgrading their infrastructure is less money used to give bonuses to senior management. No other reason.

 

[Bowfinger]

The extremely few times that actually happened the FCC put a stop to it right quick. Those ruling and their power to do so still stand.

You're scared of something that can't or won't happen. Worse so something you don't understand.

At this point I'm thinking I understand it better than you do. You continue to repeat the industry talking points while failing to offer anything factual to support them. Until you can do so, you have zero credibility.

 

[spidey07]

He doesn't have any explanations because he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

He seems to think that for some reason, ISPs are just itching to give us the high speed circuits we want, but those big bad regulations are keeping it from happening. I mean, Comcast would simply love to give everyone 50mb/s of traffic, but that silly thing where people want to use this traffic for things that doesn't make Comcast money is holding them back.

What is holding things back from having a decent network is ISPs sitting on money and doing shit to upgrade the infrastructure in this country.

All ISPs are in a constant state of upgrading. Just who do you think is buying those 40 and 100 gig router ports? Comcast specifically has undergone MAJOR upgrades all over the country the last few years. Have you not noticed their speeds are much higher now for the same price?

Hell, I can get a 100 meg connection. ATT and Insight cable are falling over themselves competing for business.

 

[Oldgamer]

He doesn't have any explanations because he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

He seems to think that for some reason, ISPs are just itching to give us the high speed circuits we want, but those big bad regulations are keeping it from happening. I mean, Comcast would simply love to give everyone 50mb/s of traffic, but that silly thing where people want to use this traffic for things that doesn't make Comcast money is holding them back.

What is holding things back from having a decent network is ISPs sitting on money and doing shit to upgrade the infrastructure in this country.

Yea that is what I was kind of asking. I am not an expert in this field. But from what I understand you have Tier 1 providers Verizon, and AT&T and then the Tier 2 providers Comcast, etc.. right? Those are the broadband providers. But it is the Tier 1 providers that won't utilize profits they make to upgrade infrastructure and existing lines. So instead they want to complain about bandwidth load problems during peak hours and kill net neutrality laws and thus charge more to the Tier 2 service providers. By reading some of the articles it looks like right now they are too scared to start charging internet customers directly so they are going to go after companies like Netflix, Youtube etc. But in the end we all get screwed, and the little upstart companies won't have the money to pay said fees and it will kill small businesses who utilize the internet. In other words the consumer doesn't get a better product out of this. We are still left with the status quo, but are paying more.

 

[Oldgamer]

All ISPs are in a constant state of upgrading. Just who do you think is buying those 40 and 100 gig router ports? Comcast specifically has undergone MAJOR upgrades all over the country the last few years. Have you not noticed their speeds are much higher now for the same price?

Hell, I can get a 100 meg connection. ATT and Insight cable are falling over themselves competing for business.

But isn't Comcast a Tier 2 provider who will be the one that will be charged higher fees by AT&T and Verizon who are the ones pusing this? So, I thought Comcast is using the Tier 1 lines? I am confused.

 

[Doppel]

Sooo in an effort to really try and understand what Spidey07 is saying (I am honestly trying to understand, not to be a dick), I found this other article on this. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...eutrality-rules-seen-as-loss-for-netflix.html

So the ISPs are complaining that services like Netflix and Youtube are big bandwidth hogs, and contributing to network congestion and they feel they should pay more if they are going to use more bandwidth. My question however, is this, why don't these ISPs simply start upgrading their lines to handle the heavy load of traffic?

They make so much money now that their simply is no excuse to upgrade their lines and equipment. It seems that they are using this as an excuse to charge people more, and in the end they will start throttling and blocking content. By lifting the net neutrality laws that is exactly what they intend on doing and it says so in this article and others.

I really think that this is bogus on their part. They could provide better service by upgrading their lines and equipment, put down fiber optic cable (then you would see customers willing to pay more) because they are getting a better product. But we are left with the status quo as it is now, and nothing changes as I see it in the way of quality service. The only thing that changes is these ISPs get to charge more money, and there is no guarantee they are going to deliver a better quality product than what we have now.

It is bogus, because profit margins on home broadband are increasing. These companies ARE making money hand over fist. I know I saw a chart at least for time warner affirming this.

I'd much rather see bandwidth caps than lack of neutrality. I don't like those, either, but they are reasonable to argue for certain users.

I just cut my satellite cord last year. I'll be pissed if my internet cost shoots up due to my streaming

 

[berzerker60]

Because any money spent on upgrading their infrastructure is less money used to give bonuses to senior management. No other reason.

And lobbying! You can't forget that they have to invest lots and lots of money in their lobbying infrastructure to avoid having to provide good service!

 

[ivwshane]

Spidy works for AT&T based on his comment about choosing the wrong provider and the fact that he must work for a tier 1 carrier. No surprise, I wouldn't want people to know I worked for them either.

This is the carrier that rolls out a fiber network and then hampers it by connecting to its old ass telephony lines. Smart move! Let's use fiber and make it so that it has the same restrictions as DSL (mainly distance based).

The company is all about short cuts and half assery.

 

[blankslate]

I'll have to find links to verify this but apparently the FCC does have the authority to declare ISPs common carriers or information providers.

If the FCC were able to revisit their decision and classify companies like Verizon, Comcast and others common carriers as telephone companies are then the net neutrality rules would be back in effect.

--edit--

Here is a link from arstechnica
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-court-strikes-down-fccs-anti-blocking-rules/

The FCC got itself into trouble with some wishy-washy rulemaking. The commission did not declare that ISPs are "common carriers," yet it imposed restrictions that sound strikingly similar to regulations that can only apply to common carriers.

I don't know that the FCC can revisit their decision not to classify ISPs common carriers as telephone companies are but if they can anyone who wants an open internet should encourage that action.



...

 

[blankslate]

Spidy works for AT&T

-snip-

So if there is an event at an AT&T office we'll know who the perpetrator is...

 

[brycejones]

Sounds to me like ISPs are double dipping. They want subscribers to pay once through their ISP bill, and second time through the services they consume.

Correct, even worse they want to do this on a product that is actually growing fatter margins each year currently.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

I don't know that the FCC can revisit their decision not to classify ISPs common carriers as telephone companies are but if they can anyone who wants an open internet should encourage that action.

They can if they want to.

 

[Oldgamer]

I don't know that the FCC can revisit their decision not to classify ISPs common carriers as telephone companies are but if they can anyone who wants an open internet should encourage that action.

I think in that article I linked that is the discussion of the next move when they take it to the supreme court. But then it will be up to the supreme court to hear the case. I really hope they do.

 

[Nintendesert]

We can bitch at this decision and decry the companies, but the FCC done fucked up with their classification of those companies. They need to fix it now.

 

[Engineer]

Hell, I can get a 100 meg connection. ATT and Insight cable are falling over themselves competing for business.

Insight was gobbled up by TWC over a year ago. Less competition is good.