<story><title>House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/house-passes-bill-sabotage-net-neutrality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jauco</author><text>We tried that in the netherlands. Our approach did not work out that well. In all cases there&amp;#x27;s the maintainer of the hardware (cable) and a lot of &amp;quot;providers&amp;quot; on that hardware.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not well informed enough to know why, but in all cases (cable, railroad, powerlines, ether frequencies) the system devolved into a state where the &amp;quot;provider&amp;quot; linked to the hardware maintainer is the dominant player still.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not syaing it can&amp;#x27;t work, just that over here it didn&amp;#x27;t really work.</text></item><item><author>AnkhMorporkian</author><text>The solution, in my humble opinion, is having the government open up that cable. Figure out a way to share it, not keep it a monopoly.</text></item><item><author>equalarrow</author><text>Sure, but the reality is that none of the ISPs are going to lay any new cable. Don&amp;#x27;t forget, all of the original copper laid was financed by the govt back in the 50&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;60&amp;#x27;s. For fiber, unless there&amp;#x27;s a real need for an ISP to add more, they&amp;#x27;re just not going to do it. There is absolutely no incentive.&lt;p&gt;I am not a believer in big or overbearing govt per se, but I feel like, just like power or water, Internet is a utility and it needs to be regulated - hard. The future depends on it. Imagine you&amp;#x27;re a startup and between 2p-6p you don&amp;#x27;t have any or super stoddy internet access. Kinda like Comcast from 5p-11p actually..&lt;p&gt;Anyway, It&amp;#x27;s pathetic really; we invented the f-ing internet and other countries completely surpass our speeds and ability to access. My brother teases me all the time because he has gigabit in Japan (in the early 00&amp;#x27;s, he had 100 Mb).&lt;p&gt;Step outside the US and you realize our options are a total joke.&lt;p&gt;(Edits: spelling)</text></item><item><author>chongli</author><text>Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they&amp;#x27;re a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it&amp;#x27;s increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise &amp;quot;We won&amp;#x27;t slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don&amp;#x27;t know some fairly arcane details of what&amp;#x27;s going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And the flow of money looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What&amp;#x27;s happening is that some consumer ISPs aren&amp;#x27;t happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
                      ^_____________________________________________________|
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn&amp;#x27;t choose, and can&amp;#x27;t walk away from. From a consumer&amp;#x27;s perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website&amp;#x27;s fault rather than their ISP&amp;#x27;s fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn&amp;#x27;t really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn&amp;#x27;t match who&amp;#x27;s providing services to who; it&amp;#x27;s less like normal business, and more like extortion.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson&amp;#x27;s ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what&amp;#x27;s happening. They&amp;#x27;re smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greggman</author><text>It worked amazingly in Japan&lt;p&gt;Practically overnight (metaphorically) it went from only metered dial up or expensive isdn to ultra fast dsl. There was huge competition mostly lead by SoftBank Japan. The actually handed out routers at subway station exits. Every time their competitors including the old monopoly matched their speed they&amp;#x27;d double it. It was awesome to watch</text></comment>
<story><title>House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/house-passes-bill-sabotage-net-neutrality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jauco</author><text>We tried that in the netherlands. Our approach did not work out that well. In all cases there&amp;#x27;s the maintainer of the hardware (cable) and a lot of &amp;quot;providers&amp;quot; on that hardware.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not well informed enough to know why, but in all cases (cable, railroad, powerlines, ether frequencies) the system devolved into a state where the &amp;quot;provider&amp;quot; linked to the hardware maintainer is the dominant player still.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not syaing it can&amp;#x27;t work, just that over here it didn&amp;#x27;t really work.</text></item><item><author>AnkhMorporkian</author><text>The solution, in my humble opinion, is having the government open up that cable. Figure out a way to share it, not keep it a monopoly.</text></item><item><author>equalarrow</author><text>Sure, but the reality is that none of the ISPs are going to lay any new cable. Don&amp;#x27;t forget, all of the original copper laid was financed by the govt back in the 50&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;60&amp;#x27;s. For fiber, unless there&amp;#x27;s a real need for an ISP to add more, they&amp;#x27;re just not going to do it. There is absolutely no incentive.&lt;p&gt;I am not a believer in big or overbearing govt per se, but I feel like, just like power or water, Internet is a utility and it needs to be regulated - hard. The future depends on it. Imagine you&amp;#x27;re a startup and between 2p-6p you don&amp;#x27;t have any or super stoddy internet access. Kinda like Comcast from 5p-11p actually..&lt;p&gt;Anyway, It&amp;#x27;s pathetic really; we invented the f-ing internet and other countries completely surpass our speeds and ability to access. My brother teases me all the time because he has gigabit in Japan (in the early 00&amp;#x27;s, he had 100 Mb).&lt;p&gt;Step outside the US and you realize our options are a total joke.&lt;p&gt;(Edits: spelling)</text></item><item><author>chongli</author><text>Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they&amp;#x27;re a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it&amp;#x27;s increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise &amp;quot;We won&amp;#x27;t slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don&amp;#x27;t know some fairly arcane details of what&amp;#x27;s going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
And the flow of money looks like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What&amp;#x27;s happening is that some consumer ISPs aren&amp;#x27;t happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Consumer --&amp;gt; Consumer-ISP --&amp;gt; Backbone-provider &amp;lt;-- Business-ISP &amp;lt;-- Website
                      ^_____________________________________________________|
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn&amp;#x27;t choose, and can&amp;#x27;t walk away from. From a consumer&amp;#x27;s perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website&amp;#x27;s fault rather than their ISP&amp;#x27;s fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn&amp;#x27;t really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn&amp;#x27;t match who&amp;#x27;s providing services to who; it&amp;#x27;s less like normal business, and more like extortion.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson&amp;#x27;s ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what&amp;#x27;s happening. They&amp;#x27;re smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavedwalden</author><text>Why does one provider get a privileged relationship with the maintainer? I&amp;#x27;m surprised that in all those industries there was never a complete division of control.</text></comment>