With the net neutrality ruling, would an ISP contract offer any protection?

[BurnItDwn]

Im guessing its probably time to sign up for a commercial VPN to prevent the ISP from throttling things. (If they throttle VPNs it will be very bad for businesses since many businesses rely on VPN for B2B communication as well as for workers to do work.) Of course they may decide to throttle specific/individual VPN providers, or certain IP ranges, but, not sure what is the best option to maintain a free and open internet if the rules are now set up to guarantee the opposite.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

If they throttle VPNs it will be very bad for businesses since many businesses rely on VPN for B2B communication as well as for workers to do work.

Expect them to. It'll be trivial for them to institute a 'professional VPN plan', paid for by your employer, providing unfettered access to a single VPN endpoint, and shunting those wretched 'users' back into the 128kb/s group where they belong.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

i don't think the ISPs will be dumb enough to actually charge customers subscribers. what they'll do is say, "oh you want to access our customers subscribers? that'll be $XXX."

This. I agree.

BUT - I think this is where should ultimately fight back here. Instead of Netflix bending over and having Comcast's dick rammed into them, how about they refuse? When consumers bandwidth sucks when they access Netflix they are going to be pissed, and I'm pretty sure they will be yelling at their ISP instead of Netflix.

 

[tommo123]

This. I agree.

BUT - I think this is where should ultimately fight back here. Instead of Netflix bending over and having Comcast's dick rammed into them, how about they refuse? When consumers bandwidth sucks when they access Netflix they are going to be pissed, and I'm pretty sure they will be yelling at their ISP instead of Netflix.

and then what? they just swap ISP like i could? afaik the US in its wisdom allows ISPs to "own" areas and be the only provider in that area. want a different provider? move.

 

[ElFenix]

and then what? they just swap ISP like i could? afaik the US in its wisdom allows ISPs to "own" areas and be the only provider in that area. want a different provider? move.

well there's local monopolies but last mile costs means natural monopolies anyway, at least for similar service types. it's a bit of a historical accident that we have cable and phone and electric coming to each house now, since all three could be carried over the electric wire given today's technology (and who gives a crap about landline?).

the monopoly part is that the cable company was never forced to have a CLEC type market, and it seems like CLECs are pretty much dead in the residential space (though are still around in the commercial space).

 

[pcgeek11]

lolol Those fortran coders needed work.

fortran. OMG it has been a long time for me. Fooled around with fortran in my first computer classes many moons ago.

 

[highland145]

fortran. OMG it has been a long time for me. Fooled around with fortran in my first computer classes many moons ago.

1982 for me.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Fortran is awesome

I took a Fortran 77 class back at university around 99. It was a lot of fun to program in. I'd rather use C, but, Fortran is great!

 

[tommo123]

well there's local monopolies but last mile costs means natural monopolies anyway, at least for similar service types. it's a bit of a historical accident that we have cable and phone and electric coming to each house now, since all three could be carried over the electric wire given today's technology (and who gives a crap about landline?).

the monopoly part is that the cable company was never forced to have a CLEC type market, and it seems like CLECs are pretty much dead in the residential space (though are still around in the commercial space).

clec sounds a bit like LLUs here in the UK. made to increase competition after splitting BT

 

[Paratus]

A talking head on the finance channel said that Portugal is in the midst of this transition now and to watch and see.

For some reason I'm thinking that you're in Europe, right?

This might be our future.

In portugal it sort of kind of already is

These aren’t packages in the same way that we buy a cable package or we can’t watch those channels. What it does do is you can basically pay more and the data used as part of those packages won’t go against your cap.

So in the past you would pay Comcast to allow you to access the Internet. Then you payed to Comcast to access the Internet up to your cap and then you paid some more.

Now, hypothetically you pay Comcast to access Comcast and the internet up to your cap. Or you can pay more up front to get more of a particular slice of the Internet. Comcast can also hypothetically charge the websites and internet services to be included in one of their packages.

Example (Heavy Video User):
Watch a lot of videos on Patreon? Well Comcast’s video package doesn’t include them so their bits would count against your cap, YouTube on the other hand paid to be part of a package and you can pay to not have their streams count against your caps. Business that pay Comcast can also get preferential speeds. So Patreon stays where it’s at, say 720P-1080P quality with buffering but YouTube can run at 1080P+.

It’s freedom all around.

• Patreon gets screwed or has the freedom to pay more.
• YouTube takes advantage of the freedom to paymore than today
• Our heavy user has the freedom to pay twice (once for service again for The YouTube package)
• Comcast has the freedom to get paid 3 times and has an incentive to NOT improve its infrastructure as the artificial bottleneck increases the demand for speed lanes for those who can pay.

 

[pcgeek11]

1982 for me.

Pretty sure it was in 1978.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Fortran is awesome

I took a Fortran 77 class back at university around 99. It was a lot of fun to program in. I'd rather use C, but, Fortran is great!

It's all bout dat COBOL....

I had a class on that in ~2009.... and the professor swore by it that plenty of companies are still stuck on it.

 

[BurnItDwn]

It's all bout dat COBOL....

I had a class on that in ~2009.... and the professor swore by it that plenty of companies are still stuck on it.

Lots of companies do still have significant inventories of COBOL applications that still see daily use.
Your professor spoke the truth.

 

[gill77]

The good old days:

 

[Mayne]

How does the leader of the free world let this happen>

 

[highland145]

The good old days:

An do not drop the stack of cards.

 

[gill77]

An do not drop the stack of cards.

The first thing they tell you. Stuff still happens though.

 

[Mayne]

I'm still locked into a 20 dollar a month grandfather clause.

 

[highland145]

I'm still locked into a 20 dollar a month grandfather clause.

So you're paying some kid to hang with you? Creepy.

 

[Thebobo]

This might be our future.

In portugal it sort of kind of already is

These aren’t packages in the same way that we buy a cable package or we can’t watch those channels. What it does do is you can basically pay more and the data used as part of those packages won’t go against your cap.

So in the past you would pay Comcast to allow you to access the Internet. Then you payed to Comcast to access the Internet up to your cap and then you paid some more.

Now, hypothetically you pay Comcast to access Comcast and the internet up to your cap. Or you can pay more up front to get more of a particular slice of the Internet. Comcast can also hypothetically charge the websites and internet services to be included in one of their packages.

Example (Heavy Video User):
Watch a lot of videos on Patreon? Well Comcast’s video package doesn’t include them so their bits would count against your cap, YouTube on the other hand paid to be part of a package and you can pay to not have their streams count against your caps. Business that pay Comcast can also get preferential speeds. So Patreon stays where it’s at, say 720P-1080P quality with buffering but YouTube can run at 1080P+.

It’s freedom all around.

• Patreon gets screwed or has the freedom to pay more.
• YouTube takes advantage of the freedom to paymore than today
• Our heavy user has the freedom to pay twice (once for service again for The YouTube package)
• Comcast has the freedom to get paid 3 times and has an incentive to NOT improve its infrastructure as the artificial bottleneck increases the demand for speed lanes for those who can pay.

Holy shite F that.

 

[highland145]

Holy shite F that.

QFT

 

[CountZero]

Your contract likely offers you almost no protections. It likely doesn't specifically offer you a neutral connection but instead has generic language like "complies with all regulatory requirements" as regulations change they just have to comply. It also likely has a clause that lets them change the terms at any time at which point you either agree or find another provider without any early termination penalty (you likely only have a contract because it locks you into something).

It is worth noting that long term the impact of such a change could be huge and is potentially as dire as alarmists make it out to be but short term there isn't likely to be a huge impact.

First there will be court challenges, several states have already said they intend to enforce NN at the state level which will lead to a legal challenge to the provision of this rollback that explicitly prohibits that.

Second as soon as some party can show some form of harm from this change there will be a court challenge about the rules themselves.

Third they have moved the regulation to FTC. There have already been cases where companies have successfully argued FTC can't regulate them since it has a narrow focus. Having won those cases before it might be a possible challenge to declare the entire rollback illegal due to the fact that the FTC cannot be the regulatory body that overseas ISPs.

Fourth congress could just tell the FCC no, Trump could veto but its possible he doesn't care that much.

Fifth congress could just pass NN laws themselves making all of this FCC/FTC stuff irrelevant.

Now, assuming the majority conservative SC shoots down all legal challenges, and congress sits on its hands and this all happens before a new administration can come it and stop it in its tracks then we get into what happens. At first not much, some small potato stuff might show up but it mostly will be minor at first. No ISP will move to do anything drastic where the cause and effect is so obvious. Americans have relatively short memories and are even worse at tying together laws/regulations and the impacts of those past one year or so.

Changes will happen on two fronts. The first will be somewhat invisible. Charging companies for not slowing them down. This was happening before this regulation went into effect. This will cost you more if you use anything from that company as that cost will make its way to you. The second front will be incremental items that look like wins but really aren't like the Portugal example of paying to have some sites not count towards your cap where your cap is relatively low. It looks nice, like you can save but ISPs didn't push for this to save you money so you will be paying more one way or the other.

Longer term than that the impact is that the next big thing that uses moderate or high bandwidth will not likely happen in a country without NN. No startup will be able to pay to get access to the people necessary to get their startup to have enough traction to be able to pay to get that access to begin with. This gives more power to Google, Facebook to pick winners and losers (they already have a lot of this power but could be surprised). This also gives an even bigger edge to large companies looking to enter a new space like Disney's streaming ambitions.

Not everything will happen but you can be sure these companies didn't push hard to have the FCC rollback NN without a plan to make more money and that money will come from end users one way or the other.

 

[snoopy7548]

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, or something, blah blah blah...

 

[gill77]

Posted by my ISP:

You’ve probably seen headlines about yesterday's FCC vote to remove 2015 internet regulations often called net neutrality. At XXX, we do not throttle, cap or prioritize web usage for our customers — and we have no plans to start. We understand that many people have concerns about this ruling, but please know XXX has no intention of making changes to our service. Our single concern is giving you the best internet experience available — today and in the future.

Only makes sense.

 

[highland145]

Posted by my ISP:

You’ve probably seen headlines about yesterday's FCC vote to remove 2015 internet regulations often called net neutrality. At XXX, we do not throttle, cap or prioritize web usage for our customers — and we have no plans to start. We understand that many people have concerns about this ruling, but please know XXX has no intention of making changes to our service. Our single concern is giving you the best internet experience available — today and in the future.

Only makes sense.

= break out the lube.