Net neutrality non-neutrality
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The party of "small government" has just moved to control the way we use the internet.
Eh? The party of small government just repealed government regulations. For once I do think the party is acting in a classically conservative manner.
Also, "AynRandPaulRyan". What a username.
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@hungrier said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@sockpuppet7 Well, not my ISP since I'm in Canada. But all the endless whining I read will be mandated to be at least 30% Canadian content
Renegotiation of NAFTA is coming soon!
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It always seemed intuitive to me that the more you "split" or "unbundle" a product, the better the market works, since it can pick the best product for each part.
For example, compare buying shaving razors, blades and cream vs only being able to buy "shaving kits" that include all three.
With the kit, you can still pick the best brand, but you might have to compromise on one of the items (particularly if your needs don't match the rest of the market's). Whereas it's hard to imagine getting a worse deal when buying the three parts separately. The shop can always tape the three together and pretend they are one product, but they can't do it the other way around.
Or in other words, cost(A+B) >= cost(A) + cost(B).
The limit is, of course, when there's a technical cost to splitting a product into two, or when the product is so trivial that it's not worth the hassle. Like with removable smartphone batteries allegedly making the phone too thick to be worth the cost.
Music streaming will always have data costs and licensing costs. Clearly there's no technical reason for them to go together (on the contrary, it takes some effort to combine them) so it would be best for everyone to keep the two separate.
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@boomzilla So how long before the world ends?
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@anonymous234 Maybe, but if you bundle a product, you can sell it more cheaply, because one product means your advertising budget can be lower, for example, and people will buy the bundle when they only wanted certain components of it if the bundle is all that's available, resulting in more sales.
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GitHub says that net neutrality is "a free and open internet". Apparently, government regulation == "free and open". Do you think people who say things like that are even aware of the twist?
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Now, would you explain why you support net neutrality? I'm equally curious. I've never heard an argument that adequately justifies the increased regulation.
I'm sorry, I don't understand why anyone would need to justify increased regulation.
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@tharpa Are you insinuating that regulating something can't possibly make it more free and open? What about the various constitutional amendments in the US? Are those not regulations?
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@lb_ said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@tharpa Are you insinuating that regulating something can't possibly make it more free and open? What about the various constitutional amendments in the US? Are those not regulations?
The amendments to the U.S. constitution (especially the ones in the Bill of Rights, to which you are probably making primary reference) are to protect the citizens from the government, not from corporations. It is unsurprising that limitations on government would make the society more free and open. It would be surprising (but not impossible) if a restriction on the citizens (or associations of citizens, such as corporations) made the society more free and open.
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@tharpa With net neutrality people can make a website that everyone can access without needing permission from ISPs, and visit any website they want. That is what is meant by "free and open". Regulation is needed to stop ISPs to close down the internet to make more money.
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@magnusmaster said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@tharpa With net neutrality people can make a website that everyone can access without needing permission from ISPs, and visit any website they want. That is what is meant by "free and open". Regulation is needed to stop ISPs to close down the internet to make more money.
How were websites made before net neutrality? I had websites before net neutrality, and I did not ask my ISP for permission, nor did it even occur to me to do so.
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@tharpa said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
before net neutrality
This doesn't make sense. Net Neutrality was enabled by default, and has been slowly eroded over time.
Many laws are made in response to someone doing something that people realized after the fact should not have been done. It's the same way here - internet companies for many years had not been brazen enough to violate net neutrality, so we only had net neutrality by accident. Then companies started getting more brazen, but there was no way to stop them, no laws or enforcement to keep them in place. So we've slowly lost net neutrality over time as a result of nobody stopping and reversing such actions.
@tharpa said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
and I did not ask my ISP for permission, nor did it even occur to me to do so.
Right, because we started off with net neutrality originally. It just wasn't enforced or codified into law.
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@tharpa said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
GitHub says that net neutrality is "a free and open internet". Apparently, government regulation == "free and open". Do you think people who say things like that are even aware of the twist?
"The internet" != "the ISPs".
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Shocker: FOIA Request Shows Yet Another Core Justification For Repealing Net Neutrality Was Bullshit
We’ve pretty well established by now that the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality is being justified by a lot of fluff and nonsense with no factual basis in reality. Like claims that net neu…
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The single largest advancement to technology in the history of the world was researched, designed, and tested by the US Government.
Harms innovation, huh.
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@captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
The single largest advancement to technology in the history of the world was researched, designed, and tested by the US Government.
Harms innovation, huh.
If you're talking about the Internet, that's a highly disingenuous description. Most of the work was done in spite of the government (in this case the military establishment), not because of it. And it didn't take off until freed from the prison of government and academia. Left purely in government hands it would have been a curiosity, nothing more.
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@benjamin-hall said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Left purely in government hands it would have been a curiosity, nothing more.
Well, it would have been a useful communications channel for the military.
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Kind of like GPS. Another curiosity only the government uses./s
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@captain Yes. But what does any of that have to do with net neutrality?
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Two prongs:
- You argue that the owner takes the risk, and therefore should get the reward.
The tax payer took the risk. Why is pricing policy changing to give private monopolies the reward? Sounds like socializing costs and privatizing profits.
- These private companies would not even exist without the foundational research it took to create these industries. Why should their taxes be lower, when they reap the majority of benefits?
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@captain said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Two prongs:
- You argue that the owner takes the risk, and therefore should get the reward.
The tax payer took the risk. Why is pricing policy changing to give private monopolies the reward? Sounds like socializing costs and privatizing profits.
I think you're confusing monopoly issues with net neutrality. And probably also inflating the risk and investment of the taxpayer.
- These private companies would not even exist without the foundational research it took to create these industries. Why should their taxes be lower, when they reap the majority of benefits?
Their taxes should be lower because that's better for us all, but this isn't the tax thread so I won't elaborate on that.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
I think you're confusing monopoly issues with net neutrality.
It's not confusion. Monopolies (and occasionally, if you're "lucky," duopolies) are the entire reason we have net neutrality; if there were strong competition, it wouldn't be necessary because consumers would be able to leave abusive providers.
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@masonwheeler Except that it also applied to mobile providers. And net neutrality wasn't exactly about monopoly pricing power. There's nothing about it that prevented ISPs from raising rates.
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First off, pricing power isn't the only aspect of monopoly power; there's another well-known aspect of monopolies which is the relevant one here: the power to not have to care about innovating or offering a good-quality product, because it's not like your customers have any other choice.
Second, the Open Internet Order was mostly targeted at cable companies; it contained exemptions for mobile providers so huge that they might as well have not even been subject to it at all. (Not coincidentally, mobile is an area in which there's a decent level of market competition in the USA.)
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You're such a retard.
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
First off, pricing power isn't the only aspect of monopoly power
I never said it was. I was just responding to what @Captain said.
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
there's another well-known aspect of monopolies which is the relevant one here: the power to not have to care about innovating or offering a good-quality product, because it's not like your customers have any other choice.
Oh, STFU with that. NN literally stifles some forms of innovation.
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@boomzilla It stifles "innovation" in screwing your customers over. That's bona fide innovation, technically speaking, but it doesn't make it something desirable. I was referring to innovation in producing useful features for your product.
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But other developments during the week show why the hue and cry about "net neutrality" is so utterly misplaced.
The same day the FCC issued its repeal, SpaceX launched test satellites for Starlink, a global broadband network envisioned by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
The day before that, Dish Network (DISH) told the SEC in its 10K filing that it plans to commit $1 billion to build out an ultra-high-speed 5G wireless network over the next three years.
The day before that, AT&T (T) announced plans to roll out its 5G network in Dallas, Waco, Texas, and Atlanta this year. By the end of the year, it plans to have 5G in a dozen markets. Verizon also plans to start rolling out its 5G network this year.
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@boomzilla
More talk about infrastructure investment? That's irrelevant; just a strawman that ISPs love to beat on. They claimed that net neutrality would impair infrastructure investment, and then it never actually did, so it should not surprise anyone that infrastructure investment continues with net neutrality repeal. The two don't have any sort of causal link.
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@masonwheeler I should apologize for not putting more of a point. Nevertheless, you continue to be wrong on this subject. If you look at the types of investment listed there, you'll see that they actually go towards neutralizing land based broadband monopolies or oligopolies, which provides a competitive marketplace that should be expected to counteract any tendencies for providers to do the sorts of "non-neutral" things people complain about.
But I realize that I didn't put that in and so I can understand why you went with the comment that you did.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
If you look at the types of investment listed there, you'll see that they actually go towards neutralizing land based broadband monopolies or oligopolies, which provides a competitive marketplace that should be expected to counteract any tendencies for providers to do the sorts of "non-neutral" things people complain about.
Do they, though? SpaceX is producing satellite internet, which is terrible and everyone hates it because of high latency and subpar speed. Elon Musk has a reputation for being able to greatly improve difficult engineering challenges, but the speed of light is in play here, and he cannae change the laws of physics, as they say.
Dish's and AT&T's plans are for wireless networks, which have never been as good--or even in the same order of magnitude--as good broadband. They say 5G is supposed to be better, but I remain skeptical. Yes, sucky competition is technically better than no competition at all, but being sucky, it's likely to not make much of a difference. (Not to mention that AT&T is one of the existing, entrenched "land-based broadband monopolies or oligopolies," so how is a new offering from them going to improve competition?)
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Do they, though?
Yes.
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Dish's and AT&T's plans are for wireless networks, which have never been as good--or even in the same order of magnitude--as good broadband. They say 5G is supposed to be better, but I remain skeptical.
The point is that they are getting better. And also more and more people are relying on mobile for their internet. It sounds like it may be finally ready to plausibly challenge land based broadband. But yes, it hasn't happened yet, and I approve of your newfound skepticism of untested technology!
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Not to mention that AT&T is one of the existing, entrenched "land-based broadband monopolies or oligopolies," so how is a new offering from them going to improve competition?
OK, you didn't think this one through. Land based broadband monopolies are very localized. AT&T operates wireless networks in a lot of places where they don't offer broadband service. I don't recall ever living in a place where I could get AT&T broadband. You also didn't mention Verizon, which offers land based broadband, but the same thing applies there.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
The point is that they are getting better. And also more and more people are relying on mobile
forto supplement their internet.FTFY. In the USA at least, the largest consumption of Internet bandwidth by far is video streaming. Modern phones have the hardware to display HD video at full quality, but wireless internet don't provide the bandwidth to stream it--to say nothing of the data caps! Is 5G projected to be able to fix that? (Honest question; I don't actually know, but I know enough related stuff to find it doubtful.)
It sounds like it may be finally ready to plausibly challenge land based broadband. But yes, it hasn't happened yet, and I approve of your newfound skepticism of untested technology!
That's the thing. It is tested. We've been testing it good and hard for almost a decade now, ever since the introduction of the iPhone. It's been tested and consistently found wanting.
OK, you didn't think this one through. Land based broadband monopolies are very localized. AT&T operates wireless networks in a lot of places where they don't offer broadband service. I don't recall ever living in a place where I could get AT&T broadband. You also didn't mention Verizon, which offers land based broadband, but the same thing applies there.
Yeah, Verizon used to be my residential ISP. I didn't mention them because the quote I was talking about didn't mention them. :P
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
n the USA at least, the largest consumption of Internet bandwidth by far is video streaming. Modern phones have the hardware to display HD video at full quality, but wireless internet don't provide the bandwidth to stream it--to say nothing of the data caps!
I see a lot of people streaming stuff on their phones over mobile. There certainly are unlimited plans out there. The idea seems to be that 5G will provide:
tens of megabits per second for tens of thousands of users
@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
That's the thing. It is tested. We've been testing it good and hard for almost a decade now, ever since the introduction of the iPhone. It's been tested and consistently found wanting.
Wait, is it new and you're skeptical about it or is this new stuff that hasn't been built yet well tested and insufficient? What if I told you that some really smart folks had figured this stuff out?
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I totally forgot about this thread. Shouldn't we have had Armageddon by now?
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Qualcomm’s simulated 5G tests shows how fast real-world speeds could actually be
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The future of internet is really, really fast
The SF simulation:
Browsing speeds went up from 71 Mbps for the median 4G user to 1.4 Gbps for the median 5G user (in mmWave coverage), with response times roughly 23 times faster. Download speeds for 90 percent of users went from at least 10 Mbps to 186 Mbps on 5G, with the median speed clocking in at 442 Mbps. Video quality also improved dramatically in both tests, with median 5G users seeing 8K, 120 FPS, 10-bit color video streaming.
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@antiquarian said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
I totally forgot about this thread. Shouldn't we have had Armageddon by now?
Nah, it's government. They only just got around to actually doing anything and we still have 60 days of comments or something before we get
mysql_real_net_unneutrality.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
wireless internet don't provide the bandwidth to stream it--to say nothing of the data caps! Is 5G projected to be able to fix that?
Here in Poland, LTE internet in a big city on average day gives about 30Mbps bandwidth with about 10ms latency. 5G is supposed to be an order of magnitude better. To watch HD stream comfortably, you need 5Mbps.
Mobile internet in the USA sucks, but not because technology isn't there.
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@gąska said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Mobile internet in the USA sucks, but not because technology isn't there.
I think that strongly depends on where you are. I was honestly baffled by @masonwheeler's assertion that current mobile can't stream, because as I've said, I see people do it all the time. But I'm in a fairly dense area so there's pretty good coverage by multiple networks.
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Qualcomm’s simulated 5G tests shows how fast real-world speeds could actually be
The future of internet is really, really fast
The SF simulation:
Browsing speeds went up from 71 Mbps for the median 4G user to 1.4 Gbps for the median 5G user (in mmWave coverage), with response times roughly 23 times faster. Download speeds for 90 percent of users went from at least 10 Mbps to 186 Mbps on 5G, with the median speed clocking in at 442 Mbps. Video quality also improved dramatically in both tests, with median 5G users seeing 8K, 120 FPS, 10-bit color video streaming.
That's a very nice simulation. If they can achieve that quality under real-world conditions (geography, load, etc) I'll be quite impressed!
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@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@gąska said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Mobile internet in the USA sucks, but not because technology isn't there.
I think that strongly depends on where you are.
Exactly. If I'm in USA, it sucks
But seriously. $20 can buy you TWO unlimited data plans in Poland, but you'd be hard pressed to find any data plan in US for that price. Also, your phone works with only half of mobile carriers, which further restricts your options.
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@gąska said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
But seriously. $20 can buy you TWO unlimited data plans in Poland, but you'd be hard pressed to find any data plan in US. Also, your phone works with only half of mobile carriers, which further restricts your options.
Yes, mobile stuff is generally more expensive in the US than in Europe. But then you have Europe on you.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Qualcomm’s simulated 5G tests shows how fast real-world speeds could actually be
The future of internet is really, really fast
The SF simulation:
Browsing speeds went up from 71 Mbps for the median 4G user to 1.4 Gbps for the median 5G user (in mmWave coverage), with response times roughly 23 times faster. Download speeds for 90 percent of users went from at least 10 Mbps to 186 Mbps on 5G, with the median speed clocking in at 442 Mbps. Video quality also improved dramatically in both tests, with median 5G users seeing 8K, 120 FPS, 10-bit color video streaming.
That's a very nice simulation. If they can achieve that quality under real-world conditions (geography, load, etc) I'll be quite impressed!
Spoiler: they won't.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Dish's and AT&T's plans are for wireless networks, which have never been as good--or even in the same order of magnitude--as good broadband.
There's at least three types of "wireless" networks for Internet access:
- There's mobile (cell phone) radio networks, which are the ones that most people think of, and they do often have limited access speeds. These are long-range, but depend on expensive towers for coverage.
- Then there's wifi networks, which are becoming more and more common as businesses and even cities open up public access to their access points. Access points are cheap, but because of their low range, a lot of them need to be distributed to get decent coverage.
- The third one is line-of-sight from an access point to a receiving dish antenna. This is a mid-range access system, and has speeds approximating that of wifi access. It does well in rural areas where a few customers are in a narrow band, but it would be expensive to run new landlines to them (like up a valley).
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@djls45 said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
There's at least three types of "wireless" networks:
- There's mobile (cell phone) radio networks, which are the ones that most people think of, and they do often have limited access speeds. These are long-range, but depend on expensive towers for coverage.
Yes, this appears to be what Dish and AT&T are working on.
- Then there's wifi networks, which are becoming more and more common as businesses and even cities open up public access to their access points. Access points are cheap, but because of their low range, a lot of them need to be distributed to get decent coverage.
This is, for all intents and purposes, a wired network connection that replaces the Ethernet cable at the end with a wi-fi signal. It's not what I was referring to.
- The third one is line-of-sight from an access point to a receiving dish antenna. This is a mid-range access system, and has speeds approximating that of wifi access. It does well in rural areas where a few customers are in a narrow band, but it would be expensive to run new landlines to them (like up a valley).
Wow. I actually didn't know that was a thing. TIL. :)
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
And also more and more people are relying on mobile
forto supplement their internet.FTFY.
It didn't need fixed. A lot of people, especially in rural areas with poor landline coverage, tether their phones or use a dedicated tethering device (like Verizon's MiFi cards) as their primary internet access point. Or just use their phone itself, like @boomzilla noted.
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@masonwheeler said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Qualcomm’s simulated 5G tests shows how fast real-world speeds could actually be
The future of internet is really, really fast
The SF simulation:
Browsing speeds went up from 71 Mbps for the median 4G user to 1.4 Gbps for the median 5G user (in mmWave coverage), with response times roughly 23 times faster. Download speeds for 90 percent of users went from at least 10 Mbps to 186 Mbps on 5G, with the median speed clocking in at 442 Mbps. Video quality also improved dramatically in both tests, with median 5G users seeing 8K, 120 FPS, 10-bit color video streaming.
That's a very nice simulation. If they can achieve that quality under real-world conditions (geography, load, etc) I'll be quite impressed!
Like vacuum trains?
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@djls45 except 5G researchers have actually achieved 1Gbps transfer rate in real lab. We've yet to see soundbreaking train even in micro scale.
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@gąska That's the joke.
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@djls45 said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
The third one is line-of-sight from an access point to a receiving dish antenna.
One of our remote people is on that (Wyoming). His only problem is when it's windy. The dishes wiggle. Sometimes bad enough he essentially has no internet.
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@dcon my dad has such line of sight antenna. We call it "radio internet" in Poland; it's very popular in sparsely populated areas (mostly because there's no alternative). Usually it's very vulnerable to bad weather, but for my dad, it works better than landline (the transceiver station is next street - about 200m in direct line).
