[ivarious]

https://i.imgur.com/DhL4vKq.jpg

Indonesia doesn't have net neutrality laws. That's the screenshot of Indosat (Internet Provider)'s app where you can buy data plan from. But as you can see, they sell data plans ala carte, per application in this case. If your favorite app is not there, you're shit out of luck and have to use the more expensive universal data plan.

Not only that, last year, the biggest home internet provider (Indihome), and the biggest mobile internet provider (Telkomsel), which both are owned by the government, banned Netflix under the guise of "Netflix hasn't rated nor censored their contents based on our country's rules". The truth is that both of them are selling their own movie streaming service. Indihome has partnership with iflix, and Telkomsel with HOOQ.

Now, if you buy new prepaid number from Telkomsel, this is the kind of data fuckery you will get. https://i.imgur.com/wb6gMBo.png

[reustle]

Just for the curious, this isn't how every ISP in Indonesia is. Friends and I have had your standard sim cards which allows you to access any site freely.

[mediocrejoker]

So maybe these plans are serving a different market segment. Is there any reason to believe an ISP would get rid of all their regular offerings in favour of these site-specific plans?

[rainbowmverse]

The big ISPs (in the US) haven't earned the benefit of the doubt.

[wildmusings]

Okay, so if they do this, then the government should act. Preemptive regulation has all the downsides of regulation (eg lower investment) but potentially none of the benefits. This isn’t the kind of thing that will cause immediate, long-lasting, harm if a few ISPs explore this route before being shut down by the FCC or Congress.

[themaninthedark]

The Internet providers are have already tried to do this. Couple that with the fact that Internet provider are generally a monopoly or duopoly then there is very real harm if only a few explore this route. The following is from Reddit 6 months ago, link at the bottom. The original comment has links supporting each claim.

>This dude's ridiculous.

>... if you look at the Internet that we had in 2015, we were not living in some digital dystopia. There was nothing broken about the marketplace in such a fundamental way that these Title II regulations were appropriate. >2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.

>2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.

>2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.

>2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)

>2011-2013, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace

>2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (edit: they were fined $1.25million over this)

>2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.

>2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.

>Like, dude. If you're gonna be a corrupt piece of shit, at least makes your lies more believable. This dude wants 'after-the-fact' regulation as opposed to preemptive regulation. Fucking news flash, you piece of shit. This is already after-the-fact.

>6 month late edit: Replaced Sprint with T-Mobile in the Google Wallet example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/69dnox/fcc_chie...

[shmageggy]

The lower investment argument seems totally backwards to me. If we kill net neutrality, that gives ISPs a path to further monetize their existing infrastructure without any additional investment via paid preferential fast lanes and such. However, with net neutrality in place, the only means by which they have to compete is overall service quality, which means they have to invest in their networks. It seems obvious that ISPs are lobbying for repeal precisely because it allows them to make more money with zero investment.

[LoSboccacc]

the current setup is not exactly working either - https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/11/22/the-mo...

there needs to be some action - not removing net neutrality rules per se, but the utility/monopoly status has to go so that local provider can compete without being tied in billionaire lawsuits for the control of every municipality

[Pharylon]

They did. Verizon was throttling Netflix for a long time. Title II regulation was put in place to address ISP abuses. Now they're going to come back, and probably get worse than before.

[bpicolo]

There have already been a variety of attempts by these corps to undermine net neutrality even while it's been illegal. They lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. The telecom giants are as consumer-hostile as it gets

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...

[SolaceQuantum]

How would eliminating net neutrality increase investment? I think it will cause immediate, long lasting harm if ISPs, which are often incredibly large and serve countless people, force people to do this- imagine if you are poor and need the internet to find a job!

[uremog]

"Our business is being regulated, so let's stop trying to make more money," said no business ever. A business is not going to stop making a good investment in their market just because there is regulation.

[mediocrejoker]

That's fair but you also have to ask what's in it for them to screw their users in this way.

Why would an ISP want to prevent some small, unrelated startup from gaining exposure?

[AnthonyMouse]

> Why would an ISP want to prevent some small, unrelated startup from gaining exposure?

Once the startup takes all the risk to demonstrate market demand, the ISP can come in with their own offering and use the ISP monopoly to destroy the competition.

[creaghpatr]

You mean like Google or Facebook?

[rainbowmverse]

Google was a small, unrelated startup for a long time. Google Fiber was a real threat to the ISPs, but they already had a lock on municipalities and states. Some new upstart might find a way through that. Why risk it when they can just keep them from gaining traction in the first place?

[DubiousPusher]

Telecos across the board are parts of massive conglomerates with fingers in every pie. There are virtually no "unrelated" startups.

[spokewoke]

Charging for access to a website like this should be considered a form of piracy. The only appropriate response is a full IP range block.

[jbob2000]

Exactly! How is Google OK with this ISP basically charging a subscription fee to use YouTube? They're essentially reselling Youtube services.

[vilmosi]

Oddly, the UK does have net neutrality and you can get those app-specific data bundles in addition to universal access.

[jplayer01]

While the EU does have net neutrality, there are loop-holes for some forms of zero-rating (which is basically the same bullshit, just jumping through a few hoops).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating

[webXL]

Do NN proponents really believe that they could prevent the loopholes here?

[Brakenshire]

The loopholes were deliberately built in during the drafting of the law, the European Council forced the Parliament to include them. It was widely reported on at the time.

[mediocrejoker]

my first question would be how the prices of the unlimited plan compares to the regular plans of other ISPs.

In other words, are these ‘walled garden’ plans aimed towards people who would otherwise buy a regular data plan or are they aimed at people for whom the choice is a walled plan or no plan.

[donkeyd]

The screenshot in OP's post and this[0] comment, make me think that cheap plans will mostly allow you to use apps/sites where the companies pay the ISP. These will be things like YouTube and Netflix, who need visitors for profit. Things that will be blocked by default are sites like HN, company websites, personal websites and anything else that isn't a huge company. So in the cheaper plans, the one being visited pays, in the expensive one, the one who visits pays.

In the end, it's just another revenue stream where, if they play it right, the consumer still pays the same, but the content providers also start paying. This means more money from the same bandwidth.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15757190

[mediocrejoker]

Do they actually block any of those things? What makes you think they would start blocking HN?

[gervase]

My understanding is that it's not that they're "blocked", it's that "you only can access what you pay for", which in this case is only those specific sites for which you pay to access. In other words, they don't "block" HN, they only provide access to Facebook, for example.

[AnthonyMouse]

> In other words, are these ‘walled garden’ plans aimed towards people who would otherwise buy a regular data plan or are they aimed at people for whom the choice is a walled plan or no plan.

You say that like there's a hard line between them. No matter what it's "aimed at" it will hit people who want to save a buck and think they only need Facebook. Except that when there is a critical mass of people who no longer have the choice, Facebook's practices can become much more abusive because it becomes that much more difficult to leave. You have to convince everyone you know not only to use something else, but to use something that requires a more expensive data plan.

Moreover, consider what you're asking for, even if only lower income people subscribed. You want to take away the benefits of competition from the people with the least means. Talk about the poor get poorer.

[biafra]

Do they block or throttle VPN traffic?

[ivarious]

Some ISPs throttle P2P/torrent. I don't know specifically about VPN.

[westbywest]

VPN tunnels that go over port 443 SSL are difficult to throttle w/o affecting other services. They'd have to throttle by destination address, which can be more complex when available VPN endpoints are geographically distributed.

[knubie]

> If your favorite app is not there, you're shit out of luck and have to use the more expensive universal data plan.

So, under net neutrality your only option would be the "more expensive universal data plan"?