We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/so-the-internets-about-to-lose-its-net-neutrality

by joseflavio • 13 years ago

554 262 13 years ago

wired.com

alexeisadeski39• 13 years ago

I find it amusing that those in favor of net neutrality consider themselves on the side of freedom.

maaku2• 13 years ago

What makes that amusing?

alexeisadeski39• 13 years ago

Seriously?

Because they're demanding the freedom of the telcos be overridden in favor of our own personal interests.

cheald3• 13 years ago

The sticking point for me is that the market is already regulated such that it makes it very difficult for a competitor to challenge companies who engage in exploitative practices (and for similar reasons, the incentive to collude is extremely high). In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to competitors.

I'm not really okay with the idea of regulating net neutrality from an ideological perspective, but from a practical one, we're kind of stuck with the market we have - effective regional monopolies are granted to a very small number of companies, and there is very little space for counterbalance from competition (which is why Google Fiber is such a Huge Frickin' Deal!). Left unfettered, the end result would likely be that the AT&Ts and Comcasts end up leeching their customers dry on both ends of the pipe, because those customers don't have any alternative.

In my ideal world, there would be no need to regulate net neutrality because I could penalize bad companies by refusing to do business with them, and getting my friends and family to do the same, but we don't have those options - choosing an ISP is a lot like choosing which knee you want to be hit in. In a market where companies have been granted regulatory monopolies, the invisible hand is rather ineffective.

alexeisadeski39• 13 years ago

They may have been monopolies once, but they're not anymore. At least in the US. Most people already have two broadband subscriptions: home cable broadband and HSPA+ or LTE. The home cable broadband is in competition with ADSL throughout much of the nation, and the HSPA+/LTE providers are in fierce competition everywhere.

Furthermore, what makes you say this:

In a free market, net neutrality wouldn't need to be regulated because companies who attempted to enact business plans like the AT&T plan described in the article would rapidly find themselves losing marketshare to competitors.

I certainly would not expect them to lose market share.

djur5• 13 years ago

The telcos are competing over very limited resources (easements necessary to build fiber, etc.). In the absence of a regulatory system you'd have cartels instead.

vacri2• 13 years ago

Why would a free market guarantee net neutrality? All the big players could still prefer to offer products that curtail it. There's no logical step ensuring net neutrality.

An example - in Australia, there is an ISP called Internode, which used to be run by a techie called Hackett. They were very much for user's rights and net neutrality, and were always at the forefront of lobbying the government for users. Their support centers are in-country, and the web tools they offer make techies happy.

But they only have a sliver of the ISP pie, despite the very high quality product - because that shit does not come cheap. They're 50-100% more expensive. Instead the public run towards big brands like Optus - who actively engage in tactics like obscuring the structure of your bill to make it harder to understand, or engage in openly deceptive marketing, and see users as cattle to manipulate. Or they'll go to bargain-basement ISPs with woeful service, then complain about that service and give you a hateful stare when you suggest they pay a little more for good service.

I can see zero evidence to suggest that 'net neutrality' is a killer feature that would be automatically enabled by a free market.

dkasper• 13 years ago

Freedom of telcos to do as they wish with their pipes vs freedom of users to use the pipes that they pay for access to as they see fit.

wyager2• 13 years ago

The telcos don't owe users anything more than is specified in the contract. The telcos are a company; there is no moral reason to force the ISPs to do anything more than they contracted to do.

Instead of having everyone continue to be pissed off at the shitty monopolistic telcos, and having the telcos continue to be pissed off because we keep demanding that the government squash the telcos' rights to provide a shitty service, let's work to change the situation so that telcos don't get exclusive rights to public resources like land and spectrum.

nostromo• 13 years ago

Most rights are a balancing act. In this case, the freedom of the ISP is contrary to the freedom of the subscriber, so whose freedom is supreme?

I could understand opposition to net neutrality if there were competition in the ISP market. However, I have no choice but to use Comcast, so the idea that they can decide what sites I visit and how fast they are is very scary.

alexeisadeski39• 13 years ago

In this case, the freedom of the ISP is contrary to the freedom of the subscriber, so whose freedom is supreme?

No, there is no conflict. This is black and white. I know that HN doesn't want to hear it.

The subscribers freedom is to leave for another provider. The provider's freedom is to charge what it wants for whatever service it wants to provide.

Only one's freedom is being infringed upon here.

wyager2• 13 years ago

Bullshit. The "freedom" of the subscriber is not on the line. The subscriber can do as they wish. I can't go into a hotel and claim I have the "freedom" to use my room as a distillery just because I paid for the room.

The ISP can also regulate bandwidth as they wish. They're a company, not a public organization (depending on where you live). If you don't like it, choose another ISP. If you can't choose another ISP, work to change the situation so you can.

I'd rather get people pissed off enough at the current monopolistic ISP situation to change it rather than keep the situation at just the right place that no one is happy.

pdonis• 13 years ago

It's not just the freedom of the subscriber: it's the freedom of startup founders who need a way for users to reach their sites. Suppose Comcast et al. had been able to decide that, say, Dropbox was "competing" with their own offerings of file space to subscribers, and either blocked or throttled access to dropbox.com, so subscribers couldn't even go there to view the "about" page without a lot of hassle (if at all)?

altcognito• 13 years ago

I find it amusing that those think freedom is only about their ability to pay for things, not to be FREE from paying additional money for things they have already bought.

FrankenPC2• 13 years ago

Where I live, I only have one choice for internet provider (Comcast). One choice. And I should trust them with content censorship? I would be in idiot to believe this is anything but a terrible idea.

super_mario3• 13 years ago

The principle of net neutrality is directly related to freedom (or ability of a corporation to curb it, kill competition they don't like by throttling access to them etc).

How net neutrality is put in practice is entirely a different matter. And for some reason you think if it is the government doing the enforcement, that it is somehow against freedom? I completely disagree. Government not allowing another private entity to abuse me is fine with me.

In some countries net neutrality is the law already by the way.

shmerl3• 13 years ago

Do you consider those who support antitrust regulations to be on the side of freedom? Monopoly is the opposite of freedom and is much closer to dictatorship.

pnut• 13 years ago

The toothpaste is out of the tube already, people know what freedom online tastes like.

Bad news for old money - the Internet has an appetite for rentier blood. This will not be tolerated long term.

zobzu4• 13 years ago

thats generally how that stuff starts to be tolerated. "it wont fly so i don't care". then since there is a HUGE financial interest, they try again, and again and again, and nobody's to block them, it eventually works.

wycx• 13 years ago

The internet has an appetite for replace existing rent seeking with more scalable rent seeking.

wmf4• 13 years ago

I just got an idea for a startup: it's like Uber for bandwidth.

morgante2• 13 years ago

Likely nobody would even realize. It's not like the telcos would block sites. Instead, suddenly Netflix loads a lot slower than Comcast. Blame Netflix and move on.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

That lasts right up until Netflix puts a big banner on their page for Comcast customers that explains the situation.

itistoday2• 13 years ago

This article is over a month old. I'm interested in the current status of NN. Could someone informed fill us in on the latest?

shmageggy• 13 years ago

After some googling, I've concluded that the ruling hasn't happened yet. Every other source on this topic is from around the same time, and some of them mention that the ruling is expected sometime between then and early 2014.

amarv1n6• 13 years ago

yeah, we're still waiting for the ruling. the only other thing that happened is that the current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made a comment that suggested he opposed net neutrality--arguing that Netflix should be allowed to pay carriers for better service. This framing (assuming companies want to pay, not that telcos are angling to get paid) is the framing placed by telcos, etc. Wheeler was once the head lobbyist for the cable industry, then the wireless telco industry, so there's been some concerns, particularly with those comments. some fear he'll do nothing meaningful if/when we lose the court case. See this ars technica article: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/fcc-chair-isps-sh...

wmf4• 13 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669298

pvnick• 13 years ago

I consider everybody here very smart. In many cases smarter than myself. Therefore, could somebody please explain why we would give the government, which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the ability to enforce net neutrality? Seriously, I can't get over the dissonance here. If it's such a shitty idea, let consumers decide. Google Fiber et al will just eat the major telecoms' lunch sooner or later anyway. It may just take a little longer, but we'll avoid the possibility of letting the government crush Internet innovation forever.

dkuntz28• 13 years ago

Who would you have enforce net neutrality?

ewillbefull2• 13 years ago

The only thing that needs to be enforced is anti-trust law. Monopolies are what give ISPs the ability, and perhaps the incentive, to filter and editorialize the Internet. The FTC should be involved in defending consumers against those behaviors.

Net neutrality arises naturally. It didn't need enforcement 30 years ago. In some contexts, like exotic network protocols, it may not even make sense.

I wouldn't care much if it was a limited authority granted to the FCC, but they are claiming an authority which is limitless in scope and using net neutrality as an excuse to exercise it.

aragot2• 13 years ago

Ehm, but Google Fiber doesn't respect net neutrality, see multiple posts on HN about them forbidding servers on the network...

blhack3• 13 years ago

That has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality.

Forbidding servers on their network is a completely rational stance for them to take.

Do you also get upset at "all-you-can-eat" buffets when they don't let you fill a barrel full of food to take home and eat later?

67726e• 13 years ago

That's been cleared up. You can run personal servers from your home.

blhack3• 13 years ago

Because the telcos are currently enjoying a "natural monopoly". The cost of entry to become a telco is so high, that normal competitive forces do not apply.

In situations like this, one role of government is to regulate these natural monopolies to protect citizens.

One such regulation, for instance, is that the power company cannot shut off your power in the middle of winter in Minnesota without fulfilling some pretty stringent criteria.

fleitz• 13 years ago

Telecom isn't a natural monopoly, it's a government sponsored cartel.

jjoonathan10• 13 years ago

Exactly. Competition is the "active ingredient" in the free market, and "freedom" from regulation does not always suffice to guarantee competition. Utilities are the textbook example.

argumentum11• 13 years ago

Not at all "natural". The cost is so high partially due to special agreements between these corporations and governments, from local agreements to lay down fiber, to national agreements regarding the use of the electromagnetic spectrum.

foobarian• 13 years ago

I thought it was the other way around, i.e. the telcos were given a monopoly on the wires, in order to avoid a bunch of different companies all running their own cables and turning the streets into an ugly mess. In exchange there is a bunch of regulation such as they are required to provide service to rural areas at a loss.

shit_parade• 13 years ago

hard to know if the 'cost is too high' or not since regulation makes it impossible for companies to compete. Know what cost is too high? State enforced monopolies.

baddox3• 13 years ago

The problem is that governments forcefully prevent competition and call that "natural monopoly." Personally, I would call that the opposite of a natural monopoly. The term is used very confusingly. Wikipedia gives one definition, which I think is reasonable, which is basically a (theoretical or real) environment in which a single producer maximizes efficiency. But the term used by governments and their supporters is something completely different, where the government forcefully prevents all producers but one from operating.

It's silly to talk about telcos "enjoying" a "natural" monopoly, when the airwaves are one of the most tightly-regulated industries, and in addition to being expensive for a competitor to enter the market, it's generally illegal.

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

Telecom is not a natural monopoly. My little flyover city has three wired telcos, and who knows how many wireless ones. If San Francisco does not have hundreds of telcos, it is because somebody rigged the game.

Another disproof of natural monopolization is the operating costs. If a monopoly could profitably run handmade cables through the air to an office full of operators, then modern buried cables and automated switches can support several competitors in every large market. Again, lack of competition is actually proof that the game is rigged.

Anybody who supports network "neutrality" without trust-busting has AT&T's dick in their mouth.

jimbokun• 13 years ago

If by "natural monopoly" you are implying a monopoly arising without government intervention, I'm pretty sure you are completely wrong on that point.

Telecommunication companies need permission to rip up streets and run wires, or run wires on poles, or exclusive rights over parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, or put satellites into the right geosynchronous orbits to broadcast signals to consumers.

(I'm curious to know if I'm wrong about any of these. For example, did Dish/DirecTV require permission to put their satellites in place? Do they even own the satellites.)

All of these things require specific government enforcement. So every telecommunications company is pretty much created through government regulation.

So the idea that backing the wishes of telecom executives is somehow pro-free-market is completely farcical. Free market activity has had almost nothing to do with the current U.S. telecommunications industry. This is just yet another industry asking for a windfall through government acting in their favor, similar in spirit to the financial industry bail out.

joseflavio2• 13 years ago

The problem is that telecom is already a heavy regulated area (for historical and technical reasons). Besides this, connecting to your competitor network is going to be always a rigged game, just a handful of players will connect between them, that leads to monopoly... So I think it is virtually impossible to setup your own new company... I live in France and it is quite interesting to see the raise of the provider Free.fr, quite impressive how they defied all other big companies... (Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this ISP).

edit: typos.

troebr• 13 years ago

I used to live in France, DSL providers are a joke here. Verizon advertised $30 for single play (no phone, no television). In the end they added "fees" and taxes (what those are not included?), the price was $56 per month. The router is as shitty as it gets too. Now I moved and for $55 I have cable with optimum and it's way better. Still more expensive than Free, and still no tv/phone included.

zobzu4• 13 years ago

Free has traffic shaping for anything going through their peering, but in particular apple and google. Good luck using youtube via free's peering. it's nearly impossible. I don't know many people on free.fr that use youtube at all, because it's too terribly slow (1min load for 3s of video?). It's barely acceptable for things like google play downloads.

Their peering isn't net neutral at all.

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

How's the 'invisible hand' working for healthcare again?

I'm very against government regulation, but something it's necessary.

cheald3• 13 years ago

That's a rather poor example - healthcare is an exceptionally heavily-regulated industry. There's an argument to be made that many of the ills in the industry are a result of over-regulation.

Houshalter4• 13 years ago

You can just cherry pick examples unless you can explain how it's analogous. For example, healthcare suffers from natural monopolies to an extent. Hospitals don't really have to compete with each other, and it's really difficult to build a new hospital. The same principle applies to telecommunications.

On the other hand, healthcare is heavily regulated and hardly a free market, so it's pretty terrible comparison in that aspect.

Patrick_Devine2• 13 years ago

As a Canadian living in the US, I'd have to say it works a lot better than up north. I realize that's probably heresy for a lot of people, however, it's hard to stomach seeing your parents having to wait multiple years to get in to see a doctor. Particularly when they have debilitating health issues.

That said, I'm not sure what the right answer is; I want everyone to have access to good health care. I'm not sure I need to be able to get in to have an MRI in a day or two like I can here, however it would be nice if my mother could have one without waiting for two years.

johndevor2• 13 years ago

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Look at "US Unfunded Liabilities" towards the bottom. The US is drowning in debt, due to promises made... Or promises soon to be broken. It's laughable to suggest the free market is at work in the medical industry.

djur5• 13 years ago

Consumers don't have the flexibility to decide if they're dealing with only a small number of sellers working in collusion. The cost of entry into this market is astronomically high -- even Google, with all its money and all the dark fiber it snapped up, hasn't established a foothold yet.

Setting up telecommunications networks is expensive and legally complex, and the resources involved are extremely limited. The likelihood of a functioning free market in this space is essentially nil. In the absence of a functioning free market, the government is the only entity with the authority to apply regulations for the benefit of the citizenry.

ewillbefull2• 13 years ago

The distinguishing factor should be how the government protects net neutrality. Should the FCC have a limitless authority to regulate the Internet, which they happen to apply to net neutrality for now? Or should the FTC have authority to bring suits against monopolistic ISPs to discourage these behaviors?

hayksaakian4• 13 years ago

Your argument is that the free market will favor ISPs that support/don't oppose net-neutrality.

I argue that most people won't care about their "choice" (air quotes, because most people can't pick from more than 2 ISPs) of ISP until it's too late.

Already you have ISPs throttling access to streaming video sites (netflix, youtube, twitch) with little to no REAL blowback.

With the barriers to entry as high as they are, there's no way for a competitor to succeed in the market solely on the basis of being net-neutral.

Google Fiber, in markets where it's available, has led to competitors reducing prices and offering better service. However, there's no word of change regarding net neutrality.

dippyskoodlez3• 13 years ago

Google Fiber, in markets where it's available, has led to competitors reducing prices and offering better service. However, there's no word of change regarding net neutrality.

As a KC resident, TWC has not yet reduced my internet costs or increased speeds.

Theodores3• 13 years ago

My ISP - Virgin in the UK - has a transparent proxy cache for streaming video sites. If I want to watch an episode of Breaking Bad then it is there, instant. However, that 1992 B-side tack with 200 views 'buffers' for a while. That probably is because it is not cached down the road or further upstream at some Akamai CDN. It probably has to come straight from the heart of the GooglePlex, Sergei's very own hard drive...

Given that most people watch what they are told to watch, i.e. the same stuff as everyone else, and, since almost all of that can be cached by the ISP, why would they throttle? The final mile I pay for, I could buy the basic 'throttled to 5Mbs' service but they kindly let me pay for a sensible level of bandwidth. How is this throttling thing different in the USA?

wpietri3• 13 years ago

Yes. As a person who has been using small ISPs since forever, and who tries to encourage others to do the same, most people just don't have the background or the inclination to really understand this stuff. They just see that the first-year cost for a major telco is twice what the open alternative is and they're done.

I'm lucky I live in the SF area, where there are enough hardcore nerds to support Sonic.net, a great independent ISP. But elsewhere? Not so much.

anonymousab• 13 years ago

Sure. And if industry collusion is such a shitty practice, just let the consumers decide.

kaonashi• 13 years ago

The only entity capable of governing, is government in some form or another.

zobzu4• 13 years ago

i current have 2 choices at my place in the US for internet: comcast cable and comast DSL.

Not sure how i'm getting the choice to use a "net neutrality compliant" ISP if comcast decides i can't reach site Z or Y.

smithzvk• 13 years ago

If it's such a shitty idea, let consumers decide.

If you leave it up to the prisoners, they will both rat each other out resulting in the worst possible outcome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma). Assuming that consumers will decide what is best for the whole of society is simply incorrect. "Internet innovation" is very much one of those big picture goals where I think some community planning (e.g. government intervention) would help the outcome.

FrankenPC2• 13 years ago

Brilliant. If a solution appears over-simplified, it probably is. Like a reverse razor.

rhizome• 13 years ago

You might also look at Braess' Paradox[1], which while often applied to traffic planning, tells us that a network of nodes that choose their options selfishly will not result in improved performance when expanding that network (increase in number of possible choices).

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Consumers don't decide shit. Consumers are people that buy stuff, nothing more. The people that decide are called citizens or "voters".

(Also, Google is probably one of the worst examples imaginable for arguing the market should make such decisions.)

burntsushi3• 13 years ago

Who decided that the automobile would replace the horse and buggy for most modes of personal transportation?

Consumers.

johnpmayer• 13 years ago

Some of us believe that broadband should be considered a public utility, in which case it is appropriate to subject providers to these regulations.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

I consider everybody here very smart. In many cases smarter than myself. Therefore, could somebody please explain why we would give the government, which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the ability to enforce net neutrality?

Because it's not a technology issue, it's a business fairness issue. You know, the same way we let the government handle contracts.

Seriously, I can't get over the dissonance here. If it's such a shitty idea, let consumers decide.

One's the genie is in the corporate box, there will be no turning back. The consumer cannot decide if he is not even provided with an alternative -- or if any alternative is more expensive. Like you couldn't decide about carrier-locked phones all those years.

You either push for fairness to be regulated in law, or let the 4-5 top players divide the pie as they like.

Google Fiber et al will just eat the major telecoms' lunch sooner or later anyway.

And who told you that Google WONT take advantage of crashing net neutrality itself?

baddox3• 13 years ago

Therefore, could somebody please explain why we would give the government, which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the ability to enforce net neutrality?

I think the key is the false assumption that this is how the origins and advancement of political authority works. This net neutrality issue is much easier to explain with a model of political authority that treats it as something the ruling class takes by force.

Social contract theory was just the best thing Enlightenment thinkers could come up with to settle the cognitive dissonance they experienced upon realizing that the existence of governments was a plain violation of their new ideas about natural rights.

wissler• 13 years ago

Because telcos are in bed with government. We don't really have a free market, it is virtually illegal to compete with the telcos. Some cities have tried and have been sued over it.

Yes the free market should decide, but we just don't have one. Net neutrality is an imperfect remedy at best, but letting the telcos run wild with artificial privilege isn't the answer either.

amarv1n6• 13 years ago

We regulate car safety even though there is some competition among car companies. If competition did not lead to net neutrality, then we should still mandate it.

Also, it's true, as others have noted, that competition among ISPs won't be enough to ensure net neutrality because there can't be enough competition (either through regulatory capture or natural monopoly economics).

However, even if there were competition, competing ISPs have the economic incentive to discriminate. The economic modeling is available in the work of Barbara van Schewick (she wrote an amazing, and dense, book on net neutrality). So competition would not necessarily solve the issue, as it does not solve things like car safety (or safe housing). I'm a huge fan of free markets, but there are market failures requiring some government intervention in the form of contract law, property law and its exemptions, and regulation in specific situations.

jwallaceparker• 13 years ago

I'm a huge fan of free markets, but there are market failures requiring some government intervention in the form of contract law, property law and its exemptions, and regulation in specific situations.

I agree that contract and property law need to be enforced - this is a vital component of a free market. But I don't consider that regulation or intervention.

What are the "specific situations" that demand regulation?

wpietri3• 13 years ago

You should go read about the history of the Internet. AT&T was a major barrier to early efforts in creating the Internet. See, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326... In my view, the breakup of the Bell System laid the groundwork for the Internet to thrive.

For that matter, read about the origins of antitrust law. Monopolies and oligopolies neutralize the market's usual power to straighten things out. Giant companies aren't generally interested in innovation; they're interested in dominance. (See The Innovator's Dilemma for more on the economics of why.)

If it makes you feel any better, it's not like the FCC's going to go around kicking down telco doors and inspecting routers. Proof of net neutrality failures will come from us, the nerds. As individuals, measuring our own networks, and as the techies at innovative companies, going public when telcos try to discriminate against them.

sounds• 13 years ago

I plan on doing this. I'm actually excited for the day when I get to nail Verizon for discriminating against my business.

(I wish I were youtube.)

Here's what I plan to do, and please tell me what you would think if you saw this:

"Hi, Verizon customer! We've detected that Verizon is hurting your speeds to reach us, while favoring access to _____ (competitor). Click on this link to see some other internet service providers in your area. If you'd like to file a complaint with the FCC, click here. If you'd like to get a refund, this link has instructions. If you'd like to join a class action suit, a discussion is occuring at this link."

We'll of course not list competitors where there are none.

Proportional to your popularity, it might even be possible to hurt Verizon's bottom line.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-yo... says you may have Net Neutrality issues already if you are subscribed to:

• Verizon

• Comcast

• Time Warner Cable

• Deutsche Telecom, Orange, Telefónica

shmerl3• 13 years ago

why we would give the government, which has shown itself to be terribly incompetent with technology issues, the ability to enforce net neutrality?

Because we have no free market in the ISP business. It's close to a sick monopoly, or to cartels which agree on fixing high prices. If the government won't reign it, who will?

rayiner2• 13 years ago

At least part of it is that tech companies benefit from net neutrality in the fight against the telcos. Its really to the advantage of distributors like Google or Netflix if net connections are dumb commoditized pipes. That allows them to extract a larger share of the revenue from any given customer. Unsurprisingly, distributors don't want telcos to be able to differentiate their services by partnering with distributors.

This is one of the two key dynamics in the tech industry. The other is distributors versus content companies. When Amazon streams you a movie made by NBC/Universal over pipes built by Verizon, Amazon is positioned antagonistically to these other companies in wanting to extract the largest share of the total you're willing to pay for the whole package. Net neutrality helps them do this, and so does weaker copyright protections, among other things.

ericd• 13 years ago

Who does the telcos' "differentiating" their internet services help, other than the shareholders of the telcos? That bit of rent seeking behavior would have large negative impacts on everyone else.

Why should we let telcos begin charging for no commensurate improvement in their end of the bargain after they've been granted local monopolies across the country? Internet service looks like a utility, quacks like a utility, it should be treated like a utility.

Spooky233• 13 years ago

The government isn't completely inept. They execute policy decisions quite well.

IMO, the US government correctly concluded that the Bell Monopoly was initially in the best interest of the nation, as it accelerated universal phone service. Later, with a lot of prodding, they reversed that policy and unleashed the telecom competition that helped bring us the last 30 years of innovation.

The problem is that the telephone companies are essentially rebuilding the old AT&T through merger, and wants to pillage the consumers of telecom services once again. They are doing this by declaring that the FCC can only regulate voice, defined as legacy TDM/POTS lines and related technology. Simultaneously, they are moving in state legislatures and congress to eliminate the requirement to provide universal POTS service.

I've worked in a large enterprise where the network teams became too politically powerful (essentially becoming a troll under the bridge instead of a service provider) and basically put the organization out of business by making it either impossible or too expensive to get anything done. Empowering phone companies without a short, tight leash would be doing the same thing to our nation.

Powerful network owners are the most dangerous people in technology.

mrgriscom• 13 years ago

To me it just seems self-evident that monopoly telcos should be required to treat all traffic equally. That's what it means to be a common carrier. Imagine if you called your favorite pizza place to order a pizza and the phone said 'we'll be connecting you in 30 seconds, or press 1 to be connected to a Verizon Preferred Partner Pizza Parlor immediately...'. It seem ridiculous for the phone company to be allowed to do that, so why would we ever tolerate it for an ISP?

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Net Neutrality is how the internet has operated since its beginning. It's not "giving" the government or anyone else anything new, just preserving a very successful status quo. It's the telco's and the anti-NN crowd that want to change that, not the other way around, despite their dissembling. If you want the internet to remain a level playing field for everyone, as it has been since day 1, from bootstrapped startups to giants like Google and Microsoft, support Net Neutrality.

smsm422• 13 years ago

Well, because obviously if something is wrong in the world, giving a bunch of professional liars selected by people 10% of which disagree on whether it exists and how to fix it and 90% of which do not understand the problem and vote on the looks of the guy and the fact he wears the colors of the team their granddad rooted for - giving such setup maximum power seems like a brilliant idea. If that doesn't fix the problem, what else would?

It's like somebody being wrong on the internet, only you can feel you did something about it. Like empowered somebody who doesn't know how to fix it and has abysmal track record in fixing hundreds of other things, to do whatever it takes to fix it. That can't ever go wrong, can it?

And we can be sure we can totally trust them with this power and they won't think about usurping this and taking it way beyond original purpose and trying to control everything everywhere. It's not like we're living through the wave of revelations showing how far the government can go subverting privacy, undermining security and expanding its powers in very short time. It's not like we have an agency that has an official logo of globe-encompassing octopus on top of the slogan "Nothing is beyond our reach". Calling for more control of the internet for those people would be indeed a bit myopic. But that's not what is going on here, right?

atmosx• 13 years ago

Hm, practically we don't get a choice and by we I mean the tech-community. We're less than 10% of the voting population in ANY country.

mcgwiz• 13 years ago

Amen.

I would argue that it's not even clear how the market would respond to this, and yet the pro-neutrality camp paint a picture of corporate apocalypse. This seems reasonable to me:

Neutrality rules are repealed. Some ISPs begin discriminating against certain publishers that do not pay up, but can use the payments to subsidize reductions in cost of consumer access. The "multitudes" of neutrality proponents begin demanding undiscriminated connections, calling for boycotts, switching to providers that offer such connections. Neutrality activists develop tools to compare and publicize connection rates to different publishers through different ISPs. Small-time providers form associations to raise awareness of the issue as well. Ethical marketing comes into play as some ISPs and some big publishers reject connection rate differentiation. Some ISPs that also own publishing properties are caught or implied to be preferring their own content over competitors, drawing political attention. In some areas, net neutrality laws (not just "rules") are passed, which is a draw for startups. Meanwhile, many who had no home connectivity in the past are now able to afford the "subsidized/sponsored" service level.

What irks me about the middle-class idealogues raising a fuss about this now is that they arbitrarily draw the line of equality around big corporations, with little attention given to the fact that service is tiered at all. If it doesn't make sense for small publishers to be penalized for not ponying up, it should make even less sense for certain individuals in society to be penalized for not being able to afford anything more than dial-up or basic DSL. Going further, it should be more appalling that the most financially under-resourced can't even afford the most basic service level, and live without any internet participation. Instead, they prefer corporations to carry the costs of keeping the level field artificially level, while doing nothing to help those below them have the same level of access they do.

mars• 13 years ago

this article is from april?!

amarv1n6• 13 years ago

it's from nov.

allochthon• 13 years ago

I hate to say it, because I don't consider myself a radical, but the US congress is in the pockets of big business, US law relating to technology is broken, and US intelligence agencies have taken liberties beyond their mandate. The consequences seem fairly straightforward. The Internet will route around the damage to the system. The outcome is predictable and the dysfunction that is leading up to it is regrettable. I don't know what this bodes for US customers. Hopefully a coalition of forward-thinking companies will provide a genuine alternative to the US telcos.

quadrangle2• 13 years ago

What you're saying is: you don't like admitting the truth if it makes you seem radical. I don't respect that attitude, but thanks for doing the right thing here anyway.

jarjoura4• 13 years ago

IMHO, this isn't about Netflix, YouTube, or even Amazon having to pay for higher tiered access to customers. They have the deep pockets and smart lawyers to construct contracts that work out for them in the end. So I see that as the same grumpy story as California and New York forcing Amazon to collect sales tax.

BUT, because this does force deals to be crafted behind closed doors, they will turn out looking a lot like the deals that HBO/Shotime have with Comcast and TWC. Plus, look at what's going on with Facebook already... phones in some countries have "facebook data" only plans. Sure, this is great for emerging markets to have access to family and friends for free, but at the loss of any other social network upstart that wants in on it.

I don't see indie content ever being cut off, but I do see them becoming "premium" subscription level services that require people to pay more to access them. Want to play COD or GOW online? You will need this level access to play with any reasonable speeds. It will happen slowly too, as people become accustom to the idea that opening a Wikipedia page will take 1000 ms then to 5000 ms to fully finish rendering. Someone at Comcast will nudge slowly testing whether people notice or care.

If we don't fight the good fight and force internet providers to remain dumb pipes, we are asking to have the most expensive internet on the planet. As cable TV dies in favor of watching what you want, when you want, they will naturally move to charge you for things you want to do on the internet instead.

edit: autocorrect fail :-P

akadien• 13 years ago

we are asking to have the most expensive internet on the planet

Indeed, it will be unfortunate for the United States when internet services are akin to healthcare and prescription drugs.

Houshalter4• 13 years ago

Is that necessarily a bad thing in all cases? I think it would be great if a company offered, say, really cheap or free access to wikipedia and other basic websites, but charged for actual service. Letting poor people access it or making it available to host cheaper free wifi. I think what people are afraid of is them throttling competitors, or charging more for normal service, but it doesn't have to be that way.

jarjoura4• 13 years ago

Why would Wikipedia be given cheaper than say, dictionary.com or nytimes.com? Or what about this website and all of the links it provides access to? "Poor people" need access to high quality content too ya know :-P.

Unless you want to create a scholarship foundation to provide free unlimited access to everything for these folk? Then a nice lottery can make it so the lucky few get that scholarship.

bandushrew• 13 years ago

why do that instead of just making it so that really poor people got internet access, and then allowing them to decide how they use it?

as much as possible, we should avoid making decisions people can make for themselves.

ampersandy• 13 years ago

but at the loss of any other social network upstart that wants in on it

Who do you think is footing the bill for those Facebook-only plans? Covering the costs of all internet use sounds like an unsustainable business strategy.

Are 'social network upstarts' losing out on users in the USA because people don't want (or can't afford) to pay for a data plan? How is this any different?

jarjoura4• 13 years ago

Well, lower income families in the US are far richer than equivalent families in emerging markets. Either that, or they at LEAST have access to credit to make access possible, just a burden. So that's not really a fair comparison.

Lost_BiomedE• 13 years ago

Still, this is all from the implications of messing with the 1996 telecommunications act, allowing duopoly, preventing cities from offering broadband, and crushing the small guys. Too bad so few spoke up then; the balance of power has been against us ever since.

onedev• 13 years ago

We are getting hustled[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRNGCja9mRo

zmanian• 13 years ago

Any thought on the effect increased programmability in telecom networks is going to be on Network Neutrality? It seems likely to me that regular IP routing is likely to become the "slow lane" on the Internet?

ceph_• 13 years ago

The freedom of the telcos to act as highwaymen? Consumer protections are necessary for basic utilities. Especially either the numerous de facto monopolies that exist in the consumer telco market.

shawnee_• 13 years ago

If net neutrality was truly working, nobody would need to renew their contracts with Verizon or TMobile or anybody else. Contracts would be deprecated and all the telecoms would be forced to compete on something other than lock-in and "whatever the latest trendy device is" promotions. But that's hard to do when you're selling what essentially amounts to a homogeneous product like bandwidth. They don't wanna do that. They like guaranteed income and they especially like it when people go over their contract data allocations.

In 2013 there is absolutely _zero_ rationale for contracts to play a part in either the wireless or the pipeline infrastructure. Telecoms know this and are doing everything they can to drag out the death sentence, making it as painful and expensive as possible for everybody involved.

If we let the telecoms do with fiber what's been done with mobile networks not only is the web going to be less neutral, the bias will naturally lead to the dissemination of news and information as being more easily controlled and piped to the masses in sinister ways.

joncp• 13 years ago

What's to stop everyone from setting up VPNs en masse? The difficulty alone?

amarv1n6• 13 years ago

From what I understand, ISPs might be able to win the cat and mouse game, and uncover at least the type of traffic, whether p2p, streaming video etc. Not sure where the cat and mouse are with today's technology.

Patrick_Devine2• 13 years ago

This might not be very popular, but I'm going to say I'm in favour of the law being struck down. I'm totally on board with ISPs not throttling / extorting money out of web 2.0 companies, however, I'm not sure that trying to enforce a swiss-cheese law is the right way to do it.

That and I'm kind of biased, because I founded a company which is trying to level the playing field and make net neutrality de facto for internet services instead of de jure. Information is like water. Put a barrier in front of it and it will always try to find a way to flow through it.

dotori• 13 years ago

make net neutrality de facto

how so?

h1karu• 13 years ago

Long ago the corporate oligarchy decided to let the Internet tech sector grow to the extent that it has in order to externalize the cost of deploying certain infrastructure and the cost of training the populous to become dependent on that infrastructure. Now that these tasks are complete what reason do they have to delay taking control of this particular DARPA project ?

You have to be willing to show them that reason in order to save your business. You all have to innovate a solution. How are you going to join together with the other businesses in your sector to PIVOT TOGETHER in order to jolt ordinary people out of their careless stupor and educate them about how to force the hand of those corporations who could easily solve the problem ?

Do you really think a black page background and a banner is anything more than a sloppy haphazard attempt to save your industry ?

Aren't you risking shareholder value if your company is not engaging a significant percentage of it's resources towards engineering a plan to resist the takeover of the key infrastructure that your business needs in order to survive ?

How can you justify that kind of risk taking to your board ?

VC's what percentage of your fund's budget is set aside for the task of preserving the Internet that your portfolio will rely on ?

Ordinary people won't care if a page is black or not or if some banner is present or not, but if twitter, instagram, and pintrest for example all go offline at the same time that would send a message. Or what about if all the major social startups started paying attention to HTTP referer headers and they started redirecting inbound visitors to educational splash screens based on their referred header? The splash screens would educate these people about how they should really change their default search engine or delete their Facebook account in order to help save the Internet.

I'm not saying we should pick on Google or Facebook specifically per say, but I do think that if enough "social pressure" was applied Google alone could fix the problem by helping the Internet route around the entities who are engaged in a Denial Of Service attack on key Internet infrastructure. All Google has to do is punish a few corporate websites like they did to rapgenius the other day. That's a good start at least. Does your startup "scene" have a plan to help force google's hand ? If not then why not ?

If all of the major web startups started doing this kind of thinking Google would have to take this stuff more seriously REAL FAST. Think about it! That's how you send a real "social signal".

Why is this industry not trying to defend itself ? Ask yourself this question.. Who controls your company ? Who gets to decide how important preserving a free Internet is to the long term viability of your business? Has your company already sold out ?

Founders, where do you stand ? How willing are you to be public about where you stand and how long are you going to wait ? How long can you afford to wait before you take action with others in order to save your business ? Why aren't you already more organized on this issue ? Why aren't you ready ? Why are you not taking this threat to your business more seriously ? Why do you apparently assume you are powerless ?

alixaxel• 13 years ago

I have a feeling that I've read this before, why is it making it's way back to the front page of HN?

Any new developments on this matter?

Aloha• 13 years ago

The solution in the end is to turn internet access into common carrier services.

bennyg• 13 years ago

What prevents a proxy-net from starting up and flubbing the recipients/senders of the data such that the ISP can't see what site/domain the traffic is coming from and can't enforce their 1s page-load "tax" on them?

srl• 13 years ago

Such a proxy-net would intrinsically increase latency and lower bandwidth. Oops.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Well, first that would itself impose a page-load tax.

Second, ISPs could just impose a page-load tax on data where it couldn't verify that the source was a one not subject to the tax, instead of imposing it on those that they could verify were subject.

shmerl3• 13 years ago

Net neutrality should be extended to the mobile networks, not dropped for the landline ones. ISPs should be regulated like essential dumb data pipes.

lowglow• 13 years ago

It's time for a new net then.

declan3• 13 years ago

Marvin, the author of the Wired.com opinion piece, is a smart fellow. But what he ignores is that Congress never handed the FCC the authority to impose Net neutrality regulations on the Internet. Such legislation actually came up for a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html

Even if you adore the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do. Otherwise you have illegal regulations and bureaucratic turf-grabbing that will not treat the Internet well. Remember Hollywood's successful efforts to lobby the FCC to impose "broadcast flags" on computers by bureaucratic fiat? A federal appeals court correctly struck it down as exceeding the agency's legal authority, as I wrote here in 2005: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html

That same appeals court is currently considering the FCC's Net neutrality regulations. BTW, it's also the same court that slapped down the FCC's first attempt to impose Net neutrality regulations without legal authority in 2010: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html

If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem, there's no shortage of publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold hearings and push legislation forward. Obama will happily sign it. Until then, other government debacles including NSA domestic surveillance and Obamacare should make us wary of federal agencies exceeding their legal authority -- especially after Congress considered and rejected a law that would have given it to them in the first place.

AnthonyMouse5• 13 years ago

Even if you adore the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do.

Congress has already authorized it, the FCC is just trying to have its cake and eat it too. The FCC decides whether to classify last mile internet service as a "telecommunications service" that they have significant statutory authority over or an "information service" that they don't, and they picked the second one but are trying to impose regulations anyway, which is why they keep getting slapped down.

Choosing that classification was so controversial at the time that they got sued over it, and the Supreme Court ultimately said that the FCC was allowed to make that classification, not that they were required to. Now that everything that was once classified as a "telecommunications service" is being offered instead over the top using "internet service" it seems reasonable for them to revisit the classification.

declan3• 13 years ago

If you believe that the FCC clearly unambiguously has the legal authority to advance Net neutrality regulations, then why would Congress have wasted its time drafting (and almost enacting) a law that would have given the FCC the legal authority to advance Net neutrality regulations?

rossjudson• 13 years ago

When ATT and Verizon are allowed to set up their toll booths all over the internet, it's not really the internet any more.

"That'll be $60 for the gas. Oh wait -- where are you going with that gas? Boston? No problem. That's $40 extra if you want to go more than 25 miles an hour."

amarv1n6• 13 years ago

There's a lot I disagree with in Declan's comment.

We disagree on what Congress gave the FCC authority to do. The 1996 Telecom Act clearly classified DSL and dial-up as something called a "telecommunications service" which was subject to a host of rules including nondiscrimination rules. On the other hand, things like Yahoo.com would be "information services," not subject to all those rules.

The FCC, adhering to a deregulatory philosophy, decided not to regulate cable modem service by claiming it was an "information service" through some pretty silly technical analysis. After this decision, the FCC decided that DSL and wireless Internet were also "information services" not automatically subject to the rules set out by Congress. (This is sort of like a financial regulator deciding that mortgage-backed securities are not insurance, even though they look like insurance, just to make sure all the laws applicable to insurance don't apply.)

But... the FCC claimed it could impose net neutrality rules on ISPs even though they were "information services" like Yahoo (or Hacker New or Facebook). A court struck down that attempt and the FCC is on try number 2, and before the same court.

The FCC can properly classify ISP service as a "telecommunications service."

The argument about Congress failing to pass a new statute authorizing net neutrality in 2006 is flawed because courts draw no inference from failed legislation. That's well-known statutory interpretation. Any member could introduce any law and it likely won't get passed; that 1 member's view doesn't have a legal impact.

Finally, the argument that Ed Markey can act whenever there's a NN violation misses the point that the FCC is the enforcement agency that should act. By adopting a law, they are simply setting up that enforcement process for people to file complaints, and the FCC can act. Markey on his own can't enforce anything; he can call hearings, but that's not enforcing an order.

(Also, the commenter is Declan McCulloch of CNET, or his biggest fan, since he links to Declan's articles and is named Declan... I'm Marvin, the author of the Wired.com opinion article. Declan is also quite a "smart fellow" and we get along swell, even if we disagree sometimes and are on opposite coasts.)

mathattack• 13 years ago

Thanks for following up. For what it's worth, you have a flawed view of Mortgage backed securities. By virtue of the mortgage behind it, it's a real product like a bond. It is the Credit Default Swap betting on mortgage (or corporate credit) performance that is insurance Against the mortgage backed security.

This is just nitpicking and doesn't alter your argument.

declan3• 13 years ago

Marvin: No need to guess about my identity! My comment to which you replied said "as I wrote here in 2005" when linking to my CNET article. You did read my comment in full before replying, right? :)

Also I have links to my homepage and Twitter screen name in my HN profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=declan

In terms of the merit of your arguments, nobody claimed that Markey can do anything on his own; the point I made is that if there are actual NN problems -- as opposed to hypothesized handwaving ones -- Markey and others in Congress can and will advance legislation. In terms of the rest of your points, I think you're reaching. I look forward to continuing this conversation after the court rules!

PS: My last name is spelled "McCullagh."

AutoCorrect• 13 years ago

Once they begin prioritizing traffic, does this eliminate their safe-harbor status? Could be a double-edged sword for them.

scoofy• 13 years ago

I highly suggest "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu to this entire thread. There seems to be a bunch of people here who don't understand common carrier services and why they are important.

gtallen1187• 13 years ago

While a well-intentioned article, i believe this author overlooks a few points that should be pointed out.

As a consumer, i would obviously be a proponent of my current ISP giving non-discriminatory access to all sites. However, aside from voicing my opinion in the form of purchasing the services of a specific ISP, i do not believe we should have the power to do much else in dictating how these companies should run their business through the passing of laws. The author points out that the loss of net neutrality would hurt small-scale ventures - yet ignores the fact that these ISPs he wishes to regulate were once the same small start-ups that he wants to protect. Was the success of these businesses the single factor that moves them from protected status to regulatory target?

The size of these dominant ISPs means that a great deal of the population relies on their services - but our "need" for these services does not give us the right to dictate how they should run their business. If enough of us feel that none of the dominant ISPs are adequate, then our need goes unserved, and sooner or later another ISP will arrive to serve these customers.

Again - i am strongly in favor of net neutrality. But if we resort to regulatory means to get what we want, it will lead to vastly negative consequences down the road. Why start a business if this is the reward for success?

vardhanw• 13 years ago

What about all the new technologies like DPI and data analytics coupled with things like SDN and NFV which will easily technically enable any operator to have a very high level of granularity (e.g. application, user, site, device etc.) in controlling access to the network in the name of providing better QOE/S to the customer? These technologies will easily enable operators to enable complex policies which will be difficult to track and can be modified in very flexible manner to adjust to the current workarounds around any NN laws.

wmf4• 13 years ago

Those technologies are expensive and I would hope that it's cheaper for ISPs to add capacity than to use that stuff. Unfortunately this thinking does not apply if ISPs see neutrality as a strategic threat.

fuckpig• 13 years ago

After basically 20 years of commerce dictating the needs of the net, I'd think we've already lost it.

The internet model worked when subsidized by a military and academic community supported by a massive industry.

Now that it's trying to pay for itself, it's looking a lot more like television or those free newspapers that are more ads than articles.

staticelf• 13 years ago

The author seems to think the internet is all about America. We in Europe doesn't give a shit whatever your court decides.

The best case scenario is if the US was disconnected from the rest of the worlds connectivity. Almost all evils that has generated hate from the public has been american corporations.

quadrangle2• 13 years ago

Well, for those of us in the US, that's not the best case! Sheesh! Leave us to rot in our awful insular spoiled rotten hellhole? The best parts of the internet in the US are that we can interact with and engage people and culture from the rest of the world! Sorry about sending our garbage to you as a side-effect…!

excellence24• 13 years ago

The best way we can get the attention of the companies is by causing them to lose profits. This is best done by an organized boycott of their goods and services. It will get their attention very quickly. But currently we don't have a central website to browse and search boycotts and other forms of protest.

In addition to protesting, we should also consider building a free open source network thats protected and run by the community. (It could be run by the government, but until the government is 'for and by the people', we'll crowdsource the maintainance and seek to rapidly automate the work that nobody would volunteer for) We can give ourselves the best, but lets start with free gigabit internet wired and wireless for all of America! What would this 'cost' in terms of money? millions or billions? But the resources are here; just being hoarded until money is traded. Would AT&T build a free network for us? Not if it meant losing money to Verizon. But what if it wasnt about money? The value in having a fully connected country is priceless.

Thankfully we have the government to protect us against trusts and monopoly's. But what if the trust or monopoly was a community one? If AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile colluded to give free gigabit internet to America, they could combine their separately walled gardens and use those resources to further the human race. But this would have to be a guaranttee so that once everyone put all their time and resources into this, some CEO cant just flip a switch and start charging. Once free, always free. So if they did this it would probably mean giving up their pride and names. I mean, would this free network be called Verizon? Why do they get their name on it? So we could crowdsource a new name for our free network so no one can boast. US Telecom, US Net, Free Net, the name can be anything, something we would all be proud to get behind. the most important part is the 'us' and 'US'. All of us in the US have the resources to take care of all of US(just focusing on America now, but eventually we could help the world). These telecom companies will either become part of the solution or they will precipitate out.

Again though, this would be a huge project and there's currently no website we can go to in order to find and take part in these country and perhaps global initiatives. Imagine a mix of Kickstarter and Change.org. First a project or idea is petitioned to the community and if enough people like it and think it would be the best solution, then its opened up to a crowdsourcing page to collect funds and not just money but people can also donate the final resources that are ultimately needed, which is what the money would eventually be traded for anyways....more to come, working on this website...

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

It really seems a lot like CISPA and the Patriot Act. A popular outcry from the citizens of this country can stop it once, twice, three times, but how long can they hold out? Can we spread outrage about CISPA when its being voted on for the 500th time in lieu of any bill that might actually help this country? The fact that the citizens of this country are constantly having to fight their congressmen to actually do what they desire is the most clear example that our country is completely broken.

dzhiurgis4• 13 years ago

How is this different from Google charging bit guys for blackhat SEO, while those who don't pay - are penalised?

orthecreedence• 13 years ago

Because Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. If you don't like the results, don't use Google. However, if you don't like your ISP, generally your only option is to move to a different city/state.

dzhiurgis4• 13 years ago

It's not a monopoly for me, but it is a monopoly for those who want to appear in search.

It's not a monopoly for products, it's a monopoly for clients.

Osiris• 13 years ago

Some countries, like Japan, have addressed this issue by separating infrastructure from service. One company owns the network, several other companies provided the internet access.

This creates a competitive market between service provides (competing on price, service quality, and customer service) while removing the high costs to enter that market.

Infrastructure, as opposed to service, becomes the regulated market.

grizzles• 13 years ago

We are doing a net neutrality IndieGogo campaign http://uplink.aero/project.html http://igg.me/at/aero

But based on our conversion rate, I don't think there is a market for it. Feel free to email us if you have any constructive criticism. contact@uplink.aero

dublinben• 13 years ago

I'm not surprised that your campaign hasn't succeeded. You do a very poor job of explaining how it works, or what the benefits are, and it largely duplicates the efforts of other existing mesh networking projects, and free software/hardware projects like FreedomBox.

elefantindaroom• 13 years ago

Is anybody noticing a pattern here. Every god damn 4 months.. They wont give up.

gasull• 13 years ago

Forget about Net Neutrality. What we need is Open Spectrum so everybody can share the waves and we stop needing the telcos altogether.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum

As long as we have an oligopoly of telcos, they will lobby their way to destroy Net Neutrality.

kenster07• 13 years ago

It would almost be comical if it weren't so sick: rent-seeking through a government-granted monopoly, under the premise that the providers would serve the public good.

We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

Related Stories