[19guid]

1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.

In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs.

2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.

However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It wasn't necessary in the past. Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.

The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.

[DarqWebster]

Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.

There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service.

And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls.

By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.

[patrickaljord]

> So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.

How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:

- prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution)

- slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable)

- invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)

So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.

[feikname]

> How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:

IMO, if you're selling more than you can provide, you're already doing it wrong...

It's not acceptable to prioritize some content over another when having the appropriate infrastructure would solve the problem.

> invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)

People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits (altough I suspect their profits might way higher than they should, and not being used to improve the ISP's as they should. I do not live in US though), that's what most other sellers around the world do and I really believe it's the most appropriate model.

[patrickaljord]

> People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits

Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to make it the less noticeable possible while providing the best prices for their customers (market at work). Forcing high bandwidth for all people even those that don't care will leave people out of internet connection at all as they won't be able to pay at all. So people won't be able to pay anymore but at least your principles will be respected, sounds like the classical case of unintended consequences of leftists policies that always end up hurting the poorest while giving good conscience and a good deal to the rich. Not a big fan of that kind of things personally.

[lallysingh]

No. My internet is completely useless at peak times - as in even HN won't load. Expecting competence out of ISPs is simply too much.

My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.

[patrickaljord]

Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to watch a video on youtube at more than 144p resolution. That's a bargain I was willing to take and never complained about it, life was cheap. If you want better services that costs billions in investment, move to a place where it makes business sense for someone to invest in such infrastructure and don't expect anyone investing free money for you out of their good heart. You wouldn't do it either, why should they? Here's the thing, you will _never_ get better or equal infrastructure and services in a small town than in a big city. Whether it's the diversity of asian food, schools, museums or internet speed. You'll never get it by living in a small town. Want all those fancy things? Move to these big cities and don't ask people to subsidize your small town more than they already do, big cities folks already pay enormous bills each months, they don't need more of it.

[no_wizard]

For the record, Net Neautraility does not and is not a legal framework for telling ISPs about how to manage their bandwidth. In its most simplistic terms:

Net neutrality is simply tha concept of treating access to the network (in this example the ISP and the greater internet it connects to) where it does not prioritize one set of bits and simultaneously and purposefully (and typically for the exchange of money) slow down access to something else.

Bandwidth management, or the idea of prioritizing on the fly to ensure quality service, does not inheritantly violate those principals. What does is if the video people paid th ISP money for faster bits and to slow down competitors and/or the ISP slowing down competitors to promote its own services.

Notice it also has no legal framework for specific types of access or information, simply that the pipe should be neutral and non-interfered. In fact, net neutrality laws can help improve privacy and gives more standing for companies to fight back against gov surveillance

[rhino369]

Managing bandwidth based on a paid fee is a type of a bandwidth management. In analogous fields, we accept paid prioritization. Pricing/auctioning is a commonly used method for assigning resources efficiently.

If my ISP is hitting peak throughput at 8pm on monday night, it makes sense for high priority traffic to pay for priority (streaming, telephony, etc), while low priority traffic (bittorrnet, dropbox updates, etc) slow down because they are unwilling to pay.

I don't think outright blocking is justified or even purposeful slowing down (rather than speeding other stuff up). But i don't think treating everything the same is economically justified.

[dcow]

Net neutrality in its purist form definitely means every packet is treated equal. The whole discussion started because ISPs wanted to charge more for streaming content because it's an increased load on their network.

Your argument is usually what I tell people when they ask about NN. It's a lot more complicated than treating every packet equal because at capacity networks want to manage bandwidth.

You could also think of it this way, why should the general user be required to subsidize a heavy BitTorrent user's traffic? Now maybe ISPs shouldn't oversell in the first place, but the operating state of a network is congestion.

Your argument is very moderate and is not NN, but it's close. I would tend to agree and prefer what you describe: content neutral bandwidth management. But that's pretty much an oxymoron.

[mediocrejoker]

I think what the parent comment was referring to in regards to government censorship is the fact that the legislation in question (the one the current government is trying to repeal) is the classification of ISPs as "common carriers" under Title II of the communications act of 1934.

This has the effect of enforcing net neutrality, which is why everyone is in favour of it. However it also gives the FCC the power to censor content, like they did with television and radio in the past.

[neuterlize]

Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business.

Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?

[patrickaljord]

>Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business.

No, that's not how business work. If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere. The business is not forced by government to improve its infrastructure, just by customers pressure. The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over-regulate right to pass and install fiber.

> Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?

Once you turn the internet into a public utility, it gives the power to the FCC to censor it anyway it wants, just like TV or radio. Of course it won't be done overnight. Just wait for a big nazi/antifa/pedophile/terrorist internet scandal that would lead to a tragic death, than people will rush in a bill that says "sorry folks but we can't allow people to publish anything they want, think of the children" just like they did with public broadcasting on tv and radio. Making the internet a public utility is a requirement to pass these censorship laws, it's a first step. Censorship always happens in small steps. Think of the patriot act, if you give the government the power to take your rights away, they eventually will. Although to be fair they already have that power, but this will basically give them even more justification and power.

[lallysingh]

> If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere.

For much of the US, that isn't the case with ISPs.

[Avernar]

> The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over-regulate right to pass and instal fiber.

Limiting how many companies can dig up the streets is a good thing. Imagine if every delivery company wanted to pave a road to your house.

Where the government screwed up is not making the last mile common to all ISPs.

[throwanem]

And if this was anything other than a question of whether to maintain the status quo, you might have a point or two here.

[patrickaljord]

I'd rather have the status quo than giving full censorship power to a government agency. Not to mention that fiber is getting to more places each day with most of the densest cities covered now. Looks like the problems Net Neutrality was supposed to protect us from are not as grave as they used to be and that the market kind of sorted itself out. Why give the FCC/Trump full censorship power now and force ISPs to jack up their prices just because progress is not happening as fast as some elitists say it should? You think adding more regulations will make fiber be deployed faster?

[throwanem]

Net neutrality is the status quo. No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.

[patrickaljord]

> No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.

If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl...

[nneu]

Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business.

Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?

[thomastjeffery]

> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field.

Yes it is.

> It wasn't necessary in the past.

There have been abuses already. I don't expect ISPs will dive into full-blown abuse immediately, but they will ease their way into it.

> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination

Could you give an example, because I certainly can't think of any.

> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.

Absolutely! That is exactly the problem I was trying to express. To abolish net neutrality while the market is in this state is clearly a bad idea.

Abolishing net neutrality will not do anything to promote a competition, so it's important that we start finding things that will.

[kelnos]

> 1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.

Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be able to do _if_ it were possible to have sufficient competition.

> 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.

> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field.

It's not, but no one seems to have any better ideas. Simply ditching net neutrality is nearly guaranteed to erode that level playing field. I'd be happy to entertain other ideas to maintain it, but no one seems to be presenting those, and the FCC is removing something useful without proposing an effective replacement (or any replacement at all, for that matter).

> It wasn't necessary in the past.

Wasn't it? Isn't the current net neutrality regulation a direct response to anti-consumer behavior by ISPs?

> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.

The only benefit I can think of is short-term "lock-in" type behavior: stuff like Spotify streaming not counting toward your data cap. All that does is make Spotify more enticing and get users locked in, all due to an entirely synthetic advantage.

While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.

Uncapped streaming is a fairly minor thing they could do (some streaming services already do this, and I'm pissed they're able to get away with it) and likely wouldn't hurt competitors enough to kill them, but unwinding net neutrality regulations would allow them to engage in crippling anti-competitive behavior, like making deals with ISPs to charge _their_ customers more for access to other streaming services.

> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.

We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable, and radio spectrum is too scarce a resource to allow robust competition. Do you have any ideas as to how to get around that?

[jscholes]

> While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.

Realistically how much more of an issue will this be than it is now? In the UK, mobile providers already offer 6-month Spotify/Netflix/whatever subscriptions as a sweetner with your contract, which seems like the same issue to me but in a non-technological sense. New upstarts don't have the money nor the brand recognition to make that happen.

Netflix has become a part of the Collective consciousness, arguably on a similar level to googling something. Even with all the net neutrality laws in the world behind them I pitty the upstart who think they can go up against the current big players in the market (which includes content studios) and win. Spotify can't be said to have the same sort of recognition but Apple Music probably can, owing to it being featured on every iPhone and iTunes installation. New upstarts can't afford to release a smartphone to push their services, either.

It's capitalism. ISPs love short-term customer benefits, because the customers love them too. Once their customer base are fed up with their free Spotify sub, the ISP will have had 12 months to come up with the next thing. And so it will continue in theory until we all have huge data caps as standard anyway so none of this will matter. And then somebody will come up with a way to double the size of Netflix streaming video for a few more pixels and then we start again.

[Avernar]

> We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable

Yes you can. Have the municipality be the one responsible for running fiber from reaidences to common access points. The the ISPs all have equal access and you can change ISPs very easy.

But again, politics and encumbent ISPs will prevent this.