I will also add a thanks to DC for showing this is a more complicated issue than it initially appears, and after reading up on it I feel that me and you are arguing over different issues that seem to be the same at first glance. The real issue is that there is no real competition in this industry and to few companies are only getting bigger and more powerful with no oversight or free market to adjust their behavior. Net neutrality might not be the answer but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. This article sums things up pretty well http://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing/ Couple of key takes from it.
Oh now I totally agree with more competition. Where I live, I have my choice between Frontier, a couple satellite providers, and Verizon wireless. At&t just put in a new tower but won't sell access in this area?? Frontier's DSL service is really poor, slow and unreliable. I had Satellite service before but they over sold it and had to throttle down everyone, but it maybe time to give them a go again with their new higher speed service. I see no role for the Feds in this, I hope for more competition. on the ground. Satellite can never be adequate with the unavoidable delay associated with the distance involved.
Problem with more competition is that this industry has a very high barrier for entry in regards to infrastructure investment. The only way to get more competition is for the government to be involved somehow.
The real barrier is local legislation barring competitors from building out infrastructure. I keep saying remove those and they will build it. Google is choosing where it builds fiber almost exclusively based upon how much regulatory hassle and other govt. restrictions put upon them by cities they consider. That should be a huge red flag. I'm all for economic liberty, but that does not entail corporations buying government officials and getting favorable legislation passed. The barrier to entry isn't that high for an AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox, Google, etc., to build the infrastructure. They don't have to run fiber to every home before selling service and turning a profit. They can do that on one neighborhood and build out from there. Just to be clear, a peering arrangement is one where two big networks, like AT&T and Verizon, exchange traffic. The idea is that all of Verizon's customers fetching content (WWW pages, files, whatever) from sites connected to AT&T's network is roughly the same traffic as the opposite pattern (AT&T customers accessing Verizon). It is incredibly unfair for Google (YouTube) and Netflix to continuously force the ISP to spend lots and lots of money keeping the peering points (there are numerous ones on big networks) while the ISPs aren't raising fees but Netflix and Google (via ads) are raking in ever increasing profits. Unlike a fair peering arrangement, any deal made that exchanges data coming from Netflix is going to be lopsidedly unfair in Netflix' favor. The ISPs are in the business of selling connectivity. That's what they sold to Netflix and everyone won. They sell connections to us, too. And to corporate offices, and so on. To keep up with Netflix' demands, the ISPs are also forced to upgrade what's called their "outside plant." This is the cables that run from their offices to the neighborhoods and ultimately to peoples' homes. To increase bandwidth from 10mbit for the whole neighborhood to 100mbit might be as simple as sending out a fleet of trucks and construction workers to replace lots and lots of switching equipments on phone poles or in manholes. Or they may have to replace coax cable in all the streets throughout the city with fiber optic, which they do in phases. The ISPs have a business model where they oversell their network. If their network is 10mbit throughout, they might sell 100mbit worth of connections to customers (small example). They bank on people using bandwidth to load a WWW page (like this thread) and then use no bandwidth for minutes (while you read all the words on the page). The bandwidth expectations is "bursty" in almost every sense. Where it is not is when you have 20 customers trying to watch 1mbit streams from netflix at the same time. If the ISPs were to build 100mbit and sell 100mbit, I don't think they'd make a profit, or they'd have to charge 10x what they do now. If any ISP does decide to block sites as net neutrality alarmists fear, both the customers would revolt and it would be an opportunity for another ISP to come into town. Think about it. After all Comcast has done to not allow people to see the Blazers games, there is a certain amount of anger that might drive people to jump from Comcast Internet service to any other provider with decent quality. Opportunity.
One more thing. donkiez' post about forcing cable companies to allow ISPs to use their infrastructure is nuts. Why would the cable companies spend $.01 to build any new infrastructure (see how AT&T stopped!)? What if NEWCO ISP gets access and specializes in torrent sharing? It could bring the cable company's network to its knees. Only the cable company can and should have the ability to control the traffic on its infrastructure.
It never ceases to amaze me how it is that so many people think the government is needed in their business. When you dig down deep it is damn near always incorrect and in the rare cases they do some good, the politicians will change that before you know it. Like eliminating Glass-Steagall restrictions in banking rules. I have an FCC licenses and I can't really say I want to see the FCC regulating anything more than allocating band usage and even that makes little sense or is contrary to international normal usage. Please study what you want before approving of the Federal government coming to your aid. Remember, a business man only wishes to make a profit. A Politician wants your vote and that comes easier for him when he controls what you need, he needs you to need him. 99 time out of a 100 you really don't need him, you need better educated consumers as allies.
It appears as if I am not the only one who thinks AT&T's 100 city promise was complete BS. http://arstechnica.com/business/201...er-bluff-demands-detailed-construction-plans/
While reading the last story I came across this from 2007 that I knew nothing about. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
D'oh? I say busted and clearly biased. http://www.att.com/att/gigapowercities/mobile/ It also appears your article is from over 10 years ago?
biased as an att.com talking about at&t? Looks like we can watch them beat each other up over it for the next few weeks. 10 years ago? You mean the one that i said was from 2007? Its just history that I thought was interesting and relevent to the conversation.
A lot has changed since 2007. Did Google run fiber in any city back then? Did AT&T announce their fiber service? If think AT&T would be in big trouble with the SEC if they lie on their Website. A lie of the proportion that is being imagined would certainly influence stock prices and deceive investors.
Do you think they could really get pinned down on a lie like that? I mean the web site doesn't have a lot of real information on it. Seems any level of consideration could get them off that hook, even if was just Bob in pay roll chatting with Cathy in receiving about it over lunch. The FCC is just asking them to prove how much consideration they were actually putting into it, Ill be curious to see what they come up with.
The site is pretty specific. Itemizes which cities are planned, considerations, etc. Google won't run fiber in cities that have hostile regulatory environments. I don't know why AT&T or any other company would. As a publicly traded company, their spending, budgets, etc., are required to be transparent. They are reported according to SEC rules.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/...for-details-on-plans-to-halt-fiber-expansion/ Directly quotes the AT&T CEO saying 100 cities. Also, read the comments.
A thoroughly good read. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2014/11/25/how-netflix-poisoned-the-net-neutrality-debate/ Misunderstandings of modern network engineering by lawyers explains much of the current public confusion. When Netflix announced that Comcast’s alleged throttling had forced it to switch its transit from Cogent to a direct connection with Comcast, for example, Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who coined the phrase “net neutrality” in 2003, claimed it was “the first-ever direct interconnection deal between a broadband provider, like Comcast, and a content company, like Netflix or Google.” The beginning, once again, of the end. But that too proved to be wildly inaccurate. As Rayburn noted in May, nearly every major content provider, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and Google had long since established such deals with nearly every large ISP and backbone provider. Not because they were forced to, but because such deals made good technical and business sense. Indeed, despite its public rhetoric, Netflix privately acknowledged the unremarkable nature of these deals–and their cost. At a June event sponsored by the Aspen Institute in Washington, as reported by fellow Forbes contributor Hal Singer, a Netflix representative admitted that the price the company was paying Comcast to connect directly to its network was too trivial to report, or to serve as a source of competitive marketing. (Content licensing from copyright holders accounts for the vast majority of the company’s expenses.)
I met Mark Cuban a few times in the old days before he sold his audio and video streaming company for $billions to Yahoo!. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...net-neutrality-i-want-there-to-be-fast-lanes/ Why Mark Cuban opposes net neutrality: ‘I want there to be fast lanes’
Porn Stars Explain Net Neutrality http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/9873757f97/porn-star-net-neutrality Kind of NSFW.
Net Neutrality is just another bleeding heart progressive attempt to forced equality. Equality for all! Bah! Make the heavy users pay for use which will also provide resources for the gear needed for good service for the common use at a standard price. Of coarse, I want every advantage I can find, to hell with equality. Government not required.
