[seynb]

>So the DSL infrastructure?

It's not so much about the last mile anymore. Since most customers want bundled voice/data/video, it's about linear video channels and that means content. The big players are always going to have more clout in negotiating the best rates for their bundled channels because they have the most subs (subscribers). Even if FCC mandated unbundling of the CableCos' HFC plant and the Telcos' FTTx plant, no one will be able to compete with the big boys on content.

Also, alot of these plants were not designed for interoperability with other vendors' equipment and troubleshooting would be difficult to impossible. It's no longer as simple as a 2-wire local loop (twisted pair) that you can break out from a split bank to your own frame and DSLAM. The technologies share the same physical media -- think bus topology like a token ring. One faulty ONT in a B-PON or G-PON network can impact service for ~30 customers.

What the FCC could do is mandate the reselling of data services like UNE-P with POTS, and the reseller (e.g. Netflix) could then bundle their own pure VoD product for video over the carrier's data platform So, deregulation (unbundling - platform) is one option.

Otherwise, there would have to be a mandated and fair policy for exchange data between ISPs either at free or at tariffed rates across the board, just like voice trunks.

Data is the new voice and the FCC needs to weigh in and start (de)/regulating or this is what the internet is going to look like 10 years from now.

a.pomf.se/qtkuqv.jpg

[danielweber]

That JPG is one of the worst arguments on the Internet. It's popular because it works up the rage of "this might happen" netizens, but "might" has been reduced to "doesn't violate the laws of physics."

[seynb]

But, it's not just FUD. https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r20614148- Taxpayer subsidies helped build the telco network, not dime one of which has been repaid. Meanwhile, they https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Study-We-Should-K... rip out the copper because it's no longer as profitable (as a regulated service) as video and wireless. Cablecos that have a captive market raise their rates as much as their consumer base will bear. As soon as carriers can find a way to monetize something, they won't stop. Value-added services, fees, rate-hikes. It's rent-seeking behavior, like the railroad tycoons. Cable & telco greed is practically a law of physics. That's why we have regulated service for electricity and telephone, because we recognize how essential it is to modern life. And it should be no different for internet.

[danielweber]

Even if I bought all your negative emotions about ISPs[1], none of your scare scenarios are at all about the ISP charging more money to the customer depending on what websites they go to.[2]

Even right now, with whatever asshattery Verizon is doing, they haven't even peeped one single word about making the customers of theirs that use Netflix pay more money to Verizon.

"These people do bad things, so you should believe these other bad things I say they might someday do." Lots of people have made very good careers out of enraging the rabble that way.

[1] Your first link uses a bunch of Google searches as evidence, so I can't be 100% sure what it's talking about. But there's a decent chance it's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709910 forex

[2] The second article is about AT&T wanting to get the hell out of the wired communication business. Investors hate the wired business. One way or another you have to pay for that infrastructure, and talking about applying utility-level regulation to the companies eager to leave is not going to draw in new dollars.

[mbreese]

It isn't that the ISPs will force their customers to pay more for access to third-party services, but rather that they will selectively manage their network so that certain third-party services will have sub-optimal data rates. I'm sure that Verizon would rather those customers use their PPV service (or another more-favored service) rather than use Netflix. And because Verizon is making it more painful for people to use Netflix, that is likely happening. This entire thread started out talking about how Netflix is informing their mutual customers where exactly the blame for their degraded service should fall.

To use Comcast as an example, now Netflix is paying Comcast for a connection to their customers as opposed to Cogent (which should have had good bandwidth between them and Comcast). As a result, Netflix will have to charge their customers more. So, don't think that just because the ISPs won't be charging doesn't mean that the customers won't have to pay more.

Now, you could make an argument that it's good that Netflix customers will have to pay more for their service because they were clogging the pipes for everyone else. The problem is that this is a very slippery slope and could lead to a balkanization of the Internet, very similar to the tiered access presented in the JPG you so adamantly disagreed with. What happens when your ISP (because you only have one choice) doesn't have a peering agreement with the network hosting Service X? Sure, you could use Service X, but your experience wouldn't be very good. But good news for you! They do have an agreement with Service Y that will provide you with almost the same data as Service X, but it costs a little more. Did I mention that Service Y kicks back 20% of your monthly service fee back to your ISP for "hosting"? There are plenty of ways that the ISPs can get more of your money. Not all of it involves getting it from you directly.

[danielweber]

The reason that asinine JPEG gets shared so much is because it makes people rage because they think they'll have to sign up ahead of time for any website they might want to visit. If it were accurate -- if it said "$2 of your Netflix subscription goes to paying ISP interconnection costs," people would shrug and say "well, of course Netflix has ISP costs."

Hey, Netflix could charge more to customers of certain ISPs, too. What a nightmare! If I make a JPEG showing that will everyone go nuts and share it on the Facebook and demand Netflix stop fucking with net neutrality? I mean, Netflix might do it.

[x0054]

People who are normally getting <500Kbit connection on a Verizon DSL can get the full 3Mbit connection over a VPN during the same time of day. So, is it that Verizon does not have the capacity, or is it that they are specifically throttling your connection to Netflix? These last miles ISPs get all kinds of benefits for their wire, they get tax benefits, and protection. For instance, they have sued in many cities to keep Google Fiber or other municipal fiber networks out.

I have no idea how this isn't an antitrust case yet. Also, considering that most cable packages cost $80+, and Netflix costs $7, what makes you think that the ISPs will stop at charging Netfix just a few dollars extra per customer. Don't you get it, they don't want to get Netflix to pay them more money, they want to drive Netflix out of business.

I think more so than Netflix, Google has a stake in this. Block youtube and gmail for one month on any ISP that does not sign a Net Neutrality pledge, and see what happens. If black mail is good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

[zero_intp]

You make big claims about what other people perceive. This is a straw-man. Clearly it makes /you/ rage, but I suspect it is because it threatens you with cognitive dissidence.

I've experienced this with other MSO engineers. Some MSO engineers even argue that charging a content provider to access their mutual customers is not a rent seeking behavior.

[ZachPruckowski]

>they haven't even peeped one single word about making the customers of theirs that use Netflix pay more money to Verizon.

Not directly, but if the ISPs charge Netflix a fee that forces Netflix to raise prices for its customers to re-coup those costs (or hypothetically pass it as a surcharge on to its customers on a given ISP) they've essentially taken that money from their customers who also use Netflix. That the money went through an extra set of hands first is a mis-direct. That non-Verizon Netflix customers might be impacted ends up getting cancelled out if most of the major ISPs do the same thing. If Netflix doesn't charge a fee to re-coup those costs, then Netflix has less money to make rights agreements with, and I've got less content to watch. No matter what, I as a Verizon/Netflix customer lose.

[mhurron]

You can't hear the fast lane/slow lane (or the hilarious fast lane and faster lane counter from the ISP's) and not see that they are indeed aiming for a tiered system can you?

[danielweber]

Consumer ISPs already sell different speeds to different customers.

I understand that it's easy for you to believe that people who have done things you don't like in the past might do entirely different things you don't like in the future, because they do things you don't like.

But for all the ISPs sins, they have never taken even one step down this particular road.

[mhurron]

>Consumer ISPs already sell different speeds to different customers.

That's not what the fast lane/slow lane is. Fast lane/slow lane is you pay for 50/5 BUT there is an extra charge (on Netflix for example) for you to get Netflix at full speed. Otherwise it's throttled all to hell.

Basically all that image missed was the ISP's going after the content providers instead of adding fees to their existing users.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/the-fccs-fast-lan...

[danielweber]

Companies pay for faster Internet connections all the time. That's Akamai's entire business.

Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to.

[dasil003]

Everyone is paying for Internet access already. Customers are ostensibly paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, Netflix is providing for a certain amount of bandwidth. ISPs now want more money because "Netflix is generating so much traffic". Your point is essentially that there is no indication they would be asking consumers for more money to use Netflix, except they are doing something even slimier which is throttling Netflix and threatening to sue Netflix for revealing whose fault it is that the customer is not getting what they pay for. Instead of charging more for a specific service they essentially make it impossible to use in their monopolized customer base and hold up their hands like they're doing nothing.

Given the ugliness of what they are doing, the only reason I agree they probably wouldn't charge for tiered service is because they probably don't yet have the balls to take that to the court of public opinion, but in their heart of hearts I'm sure they'd love to triple dip by trolling (in the under-the-bridge sense) Netflix and also charging extra to consumers. If they don't get smacked down now I fully believe they'll take it there.

The disgusting thing is they pretend like they own the Internet rather than acknowledging that Internet only works, exists, and has created their market because of peering agreements. The minute networks start trying to nickel and dime each other the whole thing unravels. God we need to get more lobbyists on the right side of this issue into Washington, and hopefully a fewer congresspeople who were born after the invention of color television.

[pdonis]

> Companies pay for faster Internet connections all the time. That's Akamai's entire business

Akamai doesn't pay for faster connections to ISPs. They pay for more servers located at more places in the network, so that the average network distance from an Akamai server to a user is smaller, using the connections that already exist.

> Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to

No, it's about websites or web services paying more to ISPs so that customers can get to them at full speed instead of being throttled back, even though the website or web service is already paying to have their content on servers spread around the world so it is closer to customers.

[mhurron]

Now you're just being deliberately obtuse. Which ISP do you work for btw? I'm going to guess Comcast.

> Akamai's entire business

Akamai's business is not charging company Y extra to not get throttled by Comcast and you know it.

> Nothing about this is having the ISP's customer pay more to the ISP based on which websites they want to go to.

And now you continue to harp on this specific angle. As I said, all that graphic missed was individual ISP's going after content providers specifically instead of (further) screwing their customers. But it is still creating a tiered experience.

[crusso]

they have never taken even one step down this particular road

Because they've been stopped from doing so? Isn't that what this whole fight over Net Neutrality is about?

because they do things you don't like

It's not just a random pattern of dislike. It's a specific monopolistic pattern of market control that content distributors have demonstrated over and over. How stupid would we have to be to not see where they would like to take this?

I'm normally arguing with folks on HN from my pro-capitalist perspective, but treating monopolies like the major ISPs as players in a free market is a huge mistake.

[danielweber]

Because they've been stopped from doing so?

This is straight out of the rabble-rousers' playbook when questioned "hey, before you get us worked up about the next disaster our enemies will bring out, why don't you tell us why the disaster you predicted last year didn't happen?"

"Well, it's because we fought so hard against it!! Come on, how stupid do you have to be to not see this? Look at this next tragedy they are going to do, of course it was only because of our brave work stopping them that they couldn't continue." Then link to a cable comedy host agreeing with them as proof they were right.

[mikeash]

All you have to do to make that image accurate is replace the names of popular web sites with the names of big ISPs.

This is pretty much what Netflix is faced with at the moment. They pay $X for basic internet access, and then pay an additional $Y to access Comcast, $Z to access Verizon, etc.

The ISPs are just making the service slow rather than blocking it, but it doesn't change the fundamentals.

[crusso]

This is exactly the model that Comcast would like to see in effect. It's exactly how they manage their cable television service and they've been extremely resistant to even allowing customers to choose channels a la carte. Let's face it, this model works well for them. They aren't arguing with the FCC to change it. They're arguing with the FCC to change how they're allowed to manage their Internet traffic.

[danielweber]

"Comcast is bad people, and does bad things, so believe me about these bad things I say they want to do, even though they've never talked about it."

Surely the ISPs have done enough actual bad things that we don't have to imagine bad things they might someday do.

[crusso]

I have no idea what you're talking about. Comcast is already pushing for the ability to create a multi-tiered Internet.

That fact is even splashing over into popular culture, so I'm not sure which set of facts you're dealing with:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

[wmf]

There are several different forms that a multi-tiered Internet may take, and the differences matter. Charging customers to access content (as in that fictional strawman image) is not the same as charging content providers to access customers (which is actually happening).

[zero_intp]

Money is fungible. Costs to service providers /must/ be passed to those paying bills. There is no logical difference between costs to content providers and direct charges to customers.

The argument provided is an illustration to demonstrate who is paying in the end.

[danielweber]

If a comedian repeats it, it must be true? K. . .

Seriously, though, when has Comcast indicated it wants to charge its ISP customers per-website? When has any ISP ever put a surcharge on someone connecting to certain websites?

[crusso]

I had the option of putting an LA times link and several others that said the same thing, but the John Oliver link has the same information, draws conclusions without my having to repeat them, and is funnier.

Fact is that Comcast is lobbying big time to allow multi-tiered Internet access. That's public, easily-googleable information, so I don't understand why you're arguing otherwise.

[undersuit]

>Since most customers want bundled voice/data/video

I don't think that's what they want. That what they are offered.