[wmf]

I agree with msandford that Moore's Law is supposed to take care of this. Assuming that it doesn't (e.g. the "exaflood"), we come to the trickiest part of net neutrality.

If extra money has to come from somewhere, I think it's better for the Internet ecosystem for all those costs to be passed on to the customer as price increases, but obviously a lot of customers are more concerned about their own bill than the health of innovation in the Internet.

[ikeboy]

I think Netflix customers should be paying for Netflix data. If an ISP can't charge netflix and instead raises the price to end users, they're basically charging everyone for Netflix users. If I don't use netflix, why should I subsidise those who do?

[msandford]

> I think Netflix customers should be paying for Netflix data.

They are. They're buying 50/5 or 50/10 internet and then asking their ISP to (horror of horrors!) make good on their claim. If the ISP isn't DRAMATICALLY overselling their capacity, things are totally fine. If they can actually deliver on 10% of what they're "promising" (but have cleverly worded the contract to avoid having to actually make good on those claims, a shady practice also), there are no problems with Netflix whatsoever.

Level3 offered to pay for the direct cost of the upgrades, namely a few grand for the fiber transceivers on Comcast's side of the peering point in the carrier hotel. That would mean it's a "free" upgrade, and no end-users are paying for it. But Comcast didn't bite.

That makes your objection COMPLETELY nonsensical.

[ikeboy]

>They are. They're buying 50/5 or 50/10 internet and then asking their ISP to (horror of horrors!) make good on their claim. If the ISP isn't DRAMATICALLY overselling their capacity, things are totally fine.

The question is whether all consumers' prices should go up, or Netflix prices should go up. In the first case, consumers are subsidising netflix for those that use it.

>Level3 offered to pay for the direct cost of the upgrades, namely a few grand for the fiber transceivers on Comcast's side of the peering point in the carrier hotel. That would mean it's a "free" upgrade, and no end-users are paying for it. But Comcast didn't bite.

This is meaningless. As I said elsewhere, they are not complaining about the cost of the upgrade. They're complaining about the cost of taking the extra data. That cost is what would either be passed on to users, or to Netflix. Talking about the direct cost is missing the point.

[msandford]

ISP makes a promise to deliver data at a certain rate for a certain amount per month.

ISP can't actually deliver said data, and so, can't deliver on their promise.

I can't see how this is Netflix's fault. ISP makes a promise, ISP can't deliver.

Yes it does happen to be coming from Netflix, but Netflix didn't FORCE the ISP's customers to become Netflix customers, did they? Or does Netflix not only have some magical ability to FORCE data upon people, but also mind control to MAKE certain people sign up?

You're arguing that the ISP should be allowed to overstate their capacity as much as they want, and if it causes any problems anywhere, that the counterparty is at fault no matter what. That's completely nonsensical.

> The question is whether all consumers' prices should go up, or Netflix prices should go up.

> They're complaining about the cost of taking the extra data.

Basically they're complaining that they have to make good on the promises that they've made to customers. They were hoping that they could way, way, way oversell their capacity (and charge more for a theoretical peak capacity that you can never use) and get more money from their customers as a result.

Now what's happening is that many of their customers are asking them to make good on 10% of their promises all at the same time. This causes problems for the ISP, so they flail about trying to blame other entities than themselves.

Nobody is asking the ISP to give them a HIGHER data rate than they've already paid for.

They're asking the ISP to give them a mere 10% of what they've already paid for.

[ikeboy]

This isn't really accurate. None of the proposals would require ISPs to fulfill all of the connection speed at once.

Whether ISPs should need to build out enough network to satisfy peak usage completely is a separate issue, but irrelevant here.

[msandford]

> Whether ISPs should need to build out enough network to satisfy peak usage completely is a separate issue, but irrelevant here.

No, that's exactly the issue. If the ISP doesn't massively overstate their capacity, there is no congestion. If there is no congestion, there are no complaints. If there are no complaints, there is no problem!

Remember, customers aren't asking the ISP to allow them to utilize their connection 100%. They're asking for 10%. Asking an ISP to not overstate their capacity by more than 10x is a pretty fucking reasonable thing to do, Net Neutrality or not.