Net neutrality non-neutrality



  • @izzion said in The official unpopular opinions thread:

    @NedFodder
    I mean, at this point, the 4G market is pretty close to being competition in the cases of the typical end user - email, web pages, and a slice of Netflix...

    The only reason there's anything more than token competition is because the FTC stepped in and blocked some mergers. If it were up to the providers, we would only get to choose between AT&T and Verizon.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @wharrgarbl said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @boomzilla said in The official unpopular opinions thread:

    Uh...yeah, that messaging app is "stifling" competitors by out competing the other apps by getting a partnership with the ISP.
    And the ISP's customers get that benefit.

    Product bundling is bad for consumers.

    Your link disagrees with you:

    Bundling is the setting of the total price of a purchase of several products or services from one seller at a lower level than the sum of the prices of the products or services purchased separately from several sellers.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Dragnslcr said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    The only reason there's anything more than token competition is because the FTC stepped in and blocked some mergers. If it were up to the providers, we would only get to choose between AT&T and Verizon.

    That may be true in some places. I have a choice between Verizon and Cox. I've had a very good experience with Verizon (no, not Jeffing this back to unpopular opinions thread).

    http://broadbandnow.com tells me that there are other providers around here but they're all much more expensive for slower service, though it tells me I live in "one of the more competitive cities for broadband service in the US."


  • sekret PM club

    @boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @Dragnslcr said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    The only reason there's anything more than token competition is because the FTC stepped in and blocked some mergers. If it were up to the providers, we would only get to choose between AT&T and Verizon.

    That may be true in some places. I have a choice between Verizon and Cox. I've had a very good experience with Verizon (no, not Jeffing this back to unpopular opinions thread).

    tells me that there are other providers around here but they're all much more expensive for slower service, though it tells me I live in "one of the more competitive cities for broadband service in the US."

    That last sentence is what emphasizes it.

    Around here, I have two options as well: Verizon and Service Electric cable (though some areas around me would be Verizon or Comcast as their options.)

    Thing is, those aren't comparable. The cable options around here (for residential service) have typically topped out around 50Mbps down. I think they JUST added the capability for my ISP to go to 100 down/10 up around here. Verizon? 3Mbps down ancient DSL.

    That's not competition. That's a joke.



  • @boomzilla It is half of a great idea. You want to encourage innovation and competition, you need to remove the restrictions that allow for pseudo monopolies for ISPs.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @e4tmyl33t I certainly agree that most areas need improved service and options.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @boomzilla It is half of a great idea. You want to encourage innovation and competition, you need to remove the restrictions that allow for pseudo monopolies for ISPs.

    I agree. But the FCC's net neutrality ain't the way to do that, is my point.



  • @boomzilla I agree, it isn't. But removing a kludge and not addressing the issue underneath only makes everything worse in the long run. If they had any intent to address the real problems I would be all for it. But I have seen no action in that direction (and if recent events are any indication, I see action going in the wrong direction)



  • I'm always astounded that you guys think that two ISPs are "competition".


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Dragoon said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    But removing a kludge and not addressing the issue underneath only makes everything worse in the long run.

    I agree with that in principle, but I wouldn't agree that net neutrality is even that WRT broadband competition.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Rhywden said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    I'm always astounded that you guys think that two ISPs are "competition".

    Yes, your economic ignorance is kind of a legend.



  • @boomzilla So are your notions of what makes a good political system. Oh, I see: Two parties are fine, so two ISPs must be fine as well.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Rhywden said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @boomzilla So are your notions of what makes a good political system. Oh, I see: Two parties are fine, so two ISPs must be fine as well.

    I like how you live 100% off of strawmen. All that fiber must keep you very regular.



  • @boomzilla That all you got? Boring.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Rhywden said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @boomzilla That all you got? Boring.

    Oh geez, now you're imitating Lucas?



  • @anonymous234 said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    I.e. like when you go to a restaurant, and the food is cheap but the drinks are super expensive to compensate,

    Who orders drinks at a restaurant? Water or green tea for me, thanks.



  • @boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    Uh...yeah, that messaging app is "stifling" competitors by out competing the other apps by getting a partnership with the ISP.
    And the ISP's customers get that benefit.

    That's what people are missing here.

    ISPs haven't been charging the customers.

    And besides, there are good arguments for throttling streaming if it's taking up that much of the internet.

    @anonymous234 said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    But now imagine I'm allowed to sell MY drinks or food in the same restaurant alongside theirs. The prices will change to better reflect how much each product actually costs to make. It seems to me like that is simply better for (almost) everyone.

    It's more like you're being allowed to sell your food inside THEIR restaurant, and they have to let you, even though they have their own food as an option.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @xaade said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    And besides, there are good arguments for throttling streaming if it's taking up that much of the internet.

    Using economics in a discussion of net neutrality just isn't fair.


  • FoxDev

    @dangeRuss said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    Who orders drinks at a restaurant?

    Me: I normally go for a beer or a cocktail



  • @xaade
    Or, more specifically, ISPs are charging their customers that use ${HIGH_BANDWIDTH_CONSUMPTION_SERVICE}, indirectly, by charging Netflix or streaming music services for zero rating -- presumably those streaming services will (eventually have to) pass those costs on to their direct customers.

    But this way ISPs aren't forcing their Internet & email only customers to subsidize the Internet service of the cord cutters. Either the cord cutter pays directly via "overage" costs when they exceed the cap, or they pay indirectly via Netflix and other services being charged for the bandwidth they're consuming, and passing that cost on to the actual customer.



  • @boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    Your link disagrees with you:

    No, it doesn't

    The effect of the practice is to divert purchasers who need the primary product to the bundling seller and away from other sellers of only the secondary product. For that reason, the practice may be held an antitrust violation as it was in SmithKline Corp. v. Eli Lilly & Co.[1] and LePage's, Inc. v. 3M.[2]



  • @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    presumably those streaming services will (eventually have to) pass those costs on to their direct customers.

    Price has very little correlation with costs in a monopoly or oligopoly market



  • @wharrgarbl
    I mean, if you think Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime or Spotify/Pandora/etc are monopoly or oligarchy markets, then there's not much I can do for you...



  • @izzion I mean the ISPs



  • @wharrgarbl
    So did you just mis-quote, or did you mis-understand my point?

    • A few ISP customers use substantially more service than the average / normal amount, by being cord cutters or just straight heavy users of streaming services
    • The pre-data caps ISP pricing model didn't really give a way to differentiate the cost for someone who watched one Netflix stream all the time versus the average user who might view an hour or two of Netflix a night but generally only does standard browsing and e-mail
    • The heavy user puts more strain on the ISP's costs, requiring more network upgrades because streaming video/audio requires 100% bandwidth availability on the network, compared to standard browsing or e-mail where the bandwidth consumption might only be using bandwidth 1/10th or 1/20th of the time the user is active on the Internet.

    So either the ISP has to charge more to everyone (Net Neutrality), or they need to properly adjust the cost for the heavy users whose consumption pattern is dramatically different than average (data caps). And then, to give people an alternative to sudden and unpredictable overage costs, ISPs pioneered the concept of "zero rating" - letting the heavy bandwidth using services pay to have their traffic excluded from data caps. And the bandwidth using services aren't monopolies, so if the cost of delivering their service goes up, the price of that service will go up as well.



  • @izzion My point is that the cost for the ISP has little impact on the price they charge because oligopolies can get away with large margins.



  • Fuck corporations trying to turn Internet into cable. The worst thing is that once they get their way in USA, they will impose it to the rest of the world as usual.



  • @wharrgarbl
    I don't concede that they're oligarchies (see my previous posts for the alternatives to "basic" Internet service that do exist and are available in the market). But even the most evil oligarchy isn't going to have too much of a market if they're charging 10 times their costs.

    And yet we're supposed to believe that they can suddenly absorb all the increased Netflix traffic (going from 5-10% utilization rates to 100% utilization rates) without changing their pricing model?

    And yes, right now they're not dealing with 100% of their customers being Netflix streaming cord cutters, so they aren't seeing a 10x increase of bandwidth usage across the board. But if the cost of providing you service is $5 and the cost of providing me service is $50, why should we both be paying the same rate?



  • @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    I don't concede that they're oligarchies

    I said oligopoly



  • @izzion

    The relevant ISP costs are effectively fixed costs: the network infrastructure. They're not adding fractions of new routers for each new user. Instead, they do phased roll-outs of last-mile and backbone infrastructure.

    This means that the issue is one of rationing. Why they are provisioning so little? The cost of laying fiber isn't strongly correlated with the number of fibers laid. The real cost is the labor, the equipment, the permits, the land easements. They should be laying 10 times as much fiber when they have the chance.

    Heck, they probably are laying far more fiber than they are provisioning for use...



  • @Captain
    At my last job (a 7k user fixed-location wireless ISP), we had to replace our entire network infrastructure every 3-4 years to account for bandwidth growth (we went up 100% per 18 months, geometrically).

    Per point of presence (the tower site where we provided service to customers with basically a purpose built Linksys router on steroids and some amplifying antennas) we had to spend about $20-30 per customer (depending on the density of the site) to upgrade the tower equipment and the backhaul radios that delivered bandwidth from our upstream provider to the tower site. However, we didn't gain any benefit from the tower site upgrade until we also upgraded all the client premise equipment (the receiving connector on the client end, effectively the modem)... at a cost of $70 in hardware plus time for installation, coordinating the service call, etc PER CUSTOMER. Meaning now you're spending over $100 per customer every 3-4 years just to upgrade the tower sites.

    And you haven't even gotten into the backbone infrastructure at that point.

    Plus, on a recurring monthly basis, besides traditional overhead (billing, support, etc), you're paying per Mbps that you use at your peak interval. If your peak interval is 7,000 customers browsing WTDWTF and using a few Mbps for 1 second out of 20, that's not too bad -- maybe 350Mbps peak traffic at $40 / Mbps (rural area, so we didn't exactly have direct connectivity in Chicago) for $2 per customer per month in bandwidth cost.

    If you go up to 1,000 active Netflix HD video connections at 4Mbps each, all the sudden now your bandwidth charge is based on a peak of 4Gbps, and you're paying $22 per customer in bandwidth. A 10x increase in transit costs from just 14% of your customer base turning on Netflix.

    So, no, the core cost for most ISPs really isn't the network infrastructure - it's the transit cost from bandwidth to the backbone.

    And the ones that are big enough to be Tier 1 providers that have their own backbone bandwidth are the ones that have built out and are continuing to maintain hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cross-country fiber connectivity that is getting obsoleted every 18 months when the bandwidth consumption on their backbone doubles again. At which point the cost of upgrading all of that fiber equipment (or running new fiber) is big enough that it's similar in scale to the cost of the small fish purchasing transit.



  • @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    you go up to 1,000 active Netflix HD video connections at 4Mbps each, all the sudden now your bandwidth charge is based on a peak of 4Gbps, and you're paying $22 per customer in bandwidth

    I pay $60 to my ISP, so what's your point?



  • @wharrgarbl
    My point is, for most US based (small) ISPs, the cost of transit is about 35-50% of the monthly cost they charge the customer.

    Incidentally, there's another greedy, money grubbing monopolist that builds their pricing model around limiting the cost of the good they sell to 35-50% of what they sell to you.

    Spoiler McDonald's


  • @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @wharrgarbl
    My point is, for most US based (small) ISPs, the cost of transit is about 35-50% of the monthly cost they charge the customer.

    Incidentally, there's another greedy, money grubbing monopolist that builds their pricing model around limiting the cost of the good they sell to 35-50% of what they sell to you.

    Spoiler McDonald's
    Indeed so...

    I worked for a Burger King franchise for a while, and at our site, the basic Whopper was sold at just under cost. Yes, under; we paid more to make a Whopper than the customer paid us for it. The biggest factor there was the meat patty.

    We more than made up for it in the pricing for add-ons, though. Cheese, extra tomatoes, and bacon easily jacked the price up into profitability. Fries are also amazingly cheap, and so the profit margin on them is fairly significant.

    However, the biggest money-maker by far were the drinks. Of the parts that go into serving a drink (syrup, water, CO2, paper cups, straws, lids), the most expensive part per cup was actually the paper cup itself, which cost only a few pennies each. The cost for a drink was only a small fraction of the price, making them almost pure profit.

    That is why fast food workers are trained and encouraged so much to up-sell drinks with each sale, whether they know it or not. It's also why the more friendly franchises (of any fast food chain) offer free refills. It's a tiny cut to their margins that sometimes results in a significant boost to their sales. (Often, such locations also allow you to bring in a cup from their chain and get a free "refill", even at a different visit.)

    There are plenty of regulations for this area of business, but they are mostly local, so each location is on a "fair playing field" with their local competition, instead of having federal regulations that force them to compete with other locations across the country. (That's not to say that there aren't federal regs; there are.)



  • @izzion Comcast spends 15% of revenues on network infrastructure. How much faster would your internet connection be if Comcast spent 35%?



  • @Captain
    if they spent 35%, I wouldn't have any connectivity after a few months, because they'd be broke after accounting for transit costs, overhead, etc. etc.

    There just isn't a magic 20% profit margin sitting around in ISP work.



  • @izzion
    Also, for a less snarky version of my answer... they spend 15% of their revenues on network infrastructure both because that's what they need to and that's what the rate of technology change supports.

    Back to my last job - even if a money tree sprouted in the back yard and we could have doubled our annual spending on updating the network, we wouldn't have gotten very much benefit out of doing it. The difference between equipment this year and equipment installed 1.5 years ago isn't really wide enough to justify the additional time and labor cost to plan for, test, and deploy the upgraded equipment (incidentally, I also wonder if that 15% figure for Comcast actually includes the cost of installing the new equipment, training staff for the changes in how to manage it, etc etc etc).



  • @boomzilla Since we're using anecdotes, broadbandnow also says I have 6 wired Internet options. Of those:

    • One is Wide Open West, the cable company I already have.
    • One is AT&T, which caps out at 3Mbps DSL.
    • Two are resellers of the same 3Mbps AT&T DSL service.
    • One is Comcast, which doesn't operate in this zip code.
    • One is Lightspeed fiber, which doesn't operate in this zip code.

    In other words, their results are total BS.


  • Fake News

    On top of what @izzion has stated - hey, an opinion from someone who actually knows the business! - the US and state tax rules around depreciation of business assets are fucking brutal to any sort of business that needs a significant capital base of electronics. (Yes, motherfucker, businesses pay taxes, and they can be pretty fucking substantial, despite what all the communists think.) Even on the most accelerated depreciation schedule, businesses in the US still have to depreciate assets over at least five years IIRC. Of course, electronics are always getting faster, cheaper, better in every way, on a much shorter time frame than that, which means that all the hardware you buy today is utterly obsolete by the time you can finally stop paying taxes on it. In other words, if you make the wrong tech choice, you'll be lucky to pay for it twice - once to buy the wrong shit (and pay taxes on its depreciation), then a couple years later to buy the right shit (and pay taxes on its depreciation).

    The unlucky ones go bankrupt. That's a pretty serious risk - one for which any business with reasonably sane management compensates by doing what it can to get a better profit margin. No, asshole, they aren't wanting to play Scrooge McDuck; they just want to have enough in the bank to survive a fuck-up like that.



  • @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    if they spent 35%, I wouldn't have any connectivity after a few months, because they'd be broke after accounting for transit costs, overhead, etc. etc.

    Someone doesn't understand %s


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    It undermines innovation and competition.

    There is not much competition between ISPs anyway. On the other hand, there is a lot of competition between companies offering services over the internet (e.g. streaming, messengers, social networks). Not enforcing net neutrality and allowing ISPs to prefer one provider could ruin that existing, currently healthy market.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    though the cost is generally not competitive yet, unless you're defraying the data cost over many cell phone lines, at which point you're going to hit the throttling cap even faster and Netflix will suck even more during peak hours

    I used to live in a place where cable didn't exist on our road. The only option for any kind of internet was Verizon 4G LTE via hotspot (mobile data). For a while it had a 10GB soft cap for... I wanna say $80/mo. With $15/GB for every GB over the limit. Then they added more plans. For a few hundred a month you could up the data cap to 50 or more. Still with that overage charge though.



  • @Erufael
    Yeah, 4G mobile data definitely isn't a replacement for power user Internet (I, for example, would never use it as my primary source of Internet access). But for my parents, who only really check e-mail / Facebook and maybe watch a few hours of streaming Netflix a month max (preferring to use the DVD by mail mode instead)? Totally a viable alternative for them, if the terrestrial ISP they have gets too frisky with bad pricing or service.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @wharrgarbl said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    Someone doesn't understand %s

    printf(): too few arguments.


  • Banned

    @Zecc who cares? Definitely not gcc.



  • @Erufael said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    though the cost is generally not competitive yet, unless you're defraying the data cost over many cell phone lines, at which point you're going to hit the throttling cap even faster and Netflix will suck even more during peak hours

    I used to live in a place where cable didn't exist on our road. The only option for any kind of internet was Verizon 4G LTE via hotspot (mobile data). For a while it had a 10GB soft cap for... I wanna say $80/mo. With $15/GB for every GB over the limit. Then they added more plans. For a few hundred a month you could up the data cap to 50 or more. Still with that overage charge though.

    I know some folks who have maintained a cell phone plan from one local company that was bought by another local company that was then bought by Alltel, which was bought by Verizon, so they've got a grandfathered service plan with unlimited data (using a MiFi hotspot card) for only $60/month. They watch just about everything online (they Redbox DVDs occasionally), so data usage can easily be 50+ GB/month. They used to get calls from Verizon pestering them to upgrade their phone for free, but that requires a new plan, which no one can currently beat. The last caller (that I know of) told them to never let that plan lapse. :D
    But that's an exceptional case, and they still get hit with a soft cap that throttles their download speed once it reaches a certain amount each month.



  • @Gąska said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    @Zecc who cares? Definitely not gcc.

    GCC will give you a warning and proceed to compile a program that blow up


  • Banned

    @wharrgarbl not by default. And not with -Wall. I think -Wextra doesn't enable it either, but I'm not sure.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @lolwhat said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:

    (Yes, motherfucker, businesses pay taxes, and they can be pretty fucking substantial, despite what all the communists think.)

    Hi, your local communist-lite here. I know businesses pay taxes, and they can be pretty substantial. I also know that the bigger businesses can afford to manipulate things to their advantage, tax-wise, and end up paying next to nothing (beyond the required SS and Mediwhatever taxes).

    I'd even say that it's okay if they didn't because they didn't make a profit - taxing businesses only on profits (again, exempting the payroll taxes which are an implicit part of the payment packages to workers) is perfectly fine with me, as long as the definition of "profit" is reasonable.

    Of course, you may find some of my other (curently tentative) positions about what businesses should (and shouldn't) pay more disagreeable.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    So, uh, what does everyone here think net neutrality is? I've seen it put in a few different ways, implicitly and explicitly, here and I'm wondering if people are talking about slightly (or majorly) different things.


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