[spindritf]

Maybe it's different here in Poland, where ISPs really have next to nothing to offer except for Internet access and maybe some VoIP services, but the whole discussion around net neutrality sounds panicky to me. Using your ISP's services is obviously technically easier and cheaper for them so why wouldn't/shouldn't it be reflected in prices?

Maybe we'll reach a point when consumer connections start to be billed like business ones are now (95th percentile, or whatever) but I don't think there's anything wrong with pricing that better reflects real usage. It may turn out to be a little more expensive for some of us, here on HN in particular, but if we want a better Internet infrastructure, we'll have to pay for it because AFAIR ISPs' ROIs aren't particularly impressive.

[victork2]

In the long run not preserving net neutrality will give a competitive advantages to the big companies. Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of lobbying with Comcast and they manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of your network cap whereas Youtube will be limited. Who do you think users that want to preserve their caps will turn to? Now imagine that the same scenario with Google vs a small company that does search with a totally revolutionary technology. Same thing, Google lobbies a lot and they come to an agreement and they add 1000 ms to every request that is not made to Google Search. Again, who do you think will win?

Net neutrality is the safeguard of many things but for entrepreneurs it guarantees they get the same treatment as big companies. In other words what matters most is the quality of your product and not the ties you have with ISP.

It works and guarantee pretty much the same thing as the antitrust laws. Fair competition is a huge source of wealth but requires constant care.

My leitmotif is always: Think about the [negative] externalities!

[spindritf]

> Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of lobbying with Comcast and they manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of your network cap whereas Youtube will be limited.

OK, let's imagine MS actually puts their servers in Comast's closets or arranges for some sort of direct connection(s) and it becomes cheaper for Comcast to serve Microsoft's content, now hosted on Comcast's own network or topographically close by. Should Comcast not be allowed to pass (some of) those savings to their customers just because a smaller company couldn't afford to keep their servers with multiple providers?

[X-Istence]

Akamai and other CDN's do exactly this. They buy closet space on the providers networks so that they are extremely close by and on the customers network, not outside of it. Use anycast, and DNS that directs you to the closest site and you are no longer touching the public internet...

Akamai and other CDN's pay for this privilege to Comcast, and Comcast still counts those downloads against the users bandwidth cap...

[markkanof]

That's an interesting way to look at it, but I would frame the issue in a different way. It's unlikely Comcast would pass on the savings to their customers. It's more likely that they would charge their customers more for accessing the other services that are not hosted in their closets. Then that becomes the scenario that so many people are worried about where big companies who can negotiate deals with Comcast have a huge competitive advantage over smaller competitors who might not be able to negotiate the same deals.

[spindritf]

> It's unlikely Comcast would pass on the savings to their customers.

It's not unlikely, actually, the probability is 100% because they just did. Customer's quota didn't change but Xfinity app usage doesn't count against it.

[ajross]

I don't think the idea that a "private" service within the ISP is less expensive is that obvious at all, really. Backbone bandwidth is overbuilt and comparatively cheap. Datacenter space and service management are new costs vs. just letting MS run it on their network.

[crusso]

You can be assured that they're charging for datacenter space and service management -- so that part is a wash... hell, they're probably making a little something on that.

Even if you manage to eliminate all outside telco costs, you're still going to have extra costs setting up a multi-corporate interconnect vs just routing the traffic through your own internal network.

Private service within the ISP is almost always considerably less expensive.

[ajross]

Of course they're charging for it (in this case via a subsidy from Microsoft). But they'd charge for it in either architecture. The argument is that they can get away with discounting it to their customers (i.e. dropping the bandwidth cap) because it's "cheaper".

And I don't entirely buy that, nor have you managed to sell me. You're simply asserting the same stuff without evidence: you think the cost of user-driven bandwidth (to pull content from Microsoft) is higher than managing the infrastructure to host it locally. And I don't see why that's true without numbers to back it up.

[Shanakam4]

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[roc]

> "Using your ISP's services is obviously technically easier and cheaper for them so why wouldn't/shouldn't it be reflected in prices?"

That's not what Net Neutrality is about.

Truly it's cheaper for, say, Comcast to send VOD data across its own network than it is for Netflix to pay for its own ISP service and the various peering agreements it needs to get its data into Comcast's network. So those differences in costs can be reflected in their respective prices and that's fine. [1]

Net Neutrality concerns come into play if/when Comcast is allowed to set additional arbitrary restrictions on competing services, to make its own offerings more effective. Either by deprioritizing Netflix traffic in favor of its own, interfering with packets connected to services or protocols it would rather Comcast customers not use, outright blocking competing services, charging Netflix an additional fee above and beyond what a non-competing service would pay for a similar amount of packets, or any number of other nefarious schemes that the operator of a network could concoct to degrade the experience of competing services or drive up their prices.

Net Neutrality isn't about taking away an ISP's home court advantage. It's about making sure they can't actively sabotage their competitors.

[1] Trick is: the difference in marginal cost is negligible compared to content costs. So there's no real room for Comcast to 'win' against Netflix on price-advantage alone. Further, Comcast's motivation to violate Net Neutrality isn't to advantage its own IP VOD service against Netflix, but to keep the price of all IP VOD services high, to avoid IP VOD from cannibalizing the profits they earn from broadcast VOD. (Which are priced high because US cable operators often enjoy a local monopoly.)

[crusso]

The problem is that broadband access is a veritable monopoly in most areas in the US. If this were an open market where lots of different providers could compete on price, then I'd agree with you.

Since you're usually locked into one or at best two broadband providers in a given area, it's too easy for them to manipulate the system.

Comcast already has a pretty solid history of abusing its monopoly over cable TV. The frustration I've had just using my "digital ready" TV with Comcast when they insist on renting you cable boxes that you shouldn't need has pretty much eaten through any free market sympathy that I might otherwise have had for them.