FCC chair: An Internet fast lane would be ‘commercially unreasonable’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/20/fcc-chair-an-internet-fast-lane-would-be-commercially-unreasonable/

by Libertatea • 12 years ago

67 57 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

dtdt1• 12 years ago

If internet access regulation can be compared to railway regulation it seems like providing a fast lane service is a fair option from the ISP point of view. The only wrinkle is when the ISP is a monopoly, in which case the definition of the tiers and the pricing in the individual tiers must be regulated.

nitrogen• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, the Internet is very difficult to analogize to anything else. Bandwidth is not an exhaustible resource, so it's not comparable to power or water. Throughput can be increased without modifying the medium just by replacing equipment in a few locations, so it's not like roads or railways.

This makes it difficult to reason about the Internet without direct knowledge of its distinguishing characteristics, thus making it easy for entrenched interests to sway legislators and the public. We need to convince people that the Internet is special, that we need to think carefully about how we run it, and that we can't lazily shove its square peg into the round holes of ill-fitting analogies.

coreymgilmore• 12 years ago

Finally, the FCC is hearing the demands of users/consumers of internet service. The fast-lane idea was terrible for businesses - other than huge companies who can pay the fast lane fees - and for users who already deal with pretty widely terrible experiences with ISPs.

wmf• 12 years ago

Too bad paid prioritization is last year's battle. This year it's intentional congestion.

Istof• 12 years ago

maybe a class action lawsuit could solve intentional congestion (for not meeting contract agreements)

mratzloff2• 12 years ago

I wish they'd stop calling it a "fast lane"--it's the slow lane for anyone who doesn't want to pay up. Somewhere a cable industry Frank Luntz-alike probably focus grouped the term and now everyone in the media is using it.

dattaway• 12 years ago

That's how reading their positions becomes easy. They coin a weasel word term and dance with it. I prefer the langauge EFF is using, which appears fairly reasonable.

ColinDabritz2• 12 years ago

The slow lane/fast lane propaganda is the small fight, they can have it. It's not about the speed, it's about equal access.

The ISP discrimination and censorship lanes are the real problem.

mratzloff2• 12 years ago

Sure. But phraseology shapes the debate, as is evident from "death tax", "health care rationing", "government takeover of health care", etc.

NoMoreNicksLeft16• 12 years ago

The highway was just fine as is, until Netflix decided that it wanted to race.

They insisted (through their proxy, Level 3) that Comcast shoulder the expense of building a new racing lane.

How is that Comcast's problem?

Comcast can't ask its subscribers to pay for that either, the subscribers have already been brainwashed into thinking that such a thing is unwholesome.

randomfool• 12 years ago

If they were to allow fast lanes, would there be any incentive for Comcast to upgrade regular peering connections?

- They'd lose out on fast-lane revenue.

- Increased peering bandwidth would just be increased costs.

- Worse internet video experience supports their Cable TV business.

claudiusd• 12 years ago

YES, and the reason is the whole basis for the argument around Net Neutrality: traffic through Comcast's peering connections is a result of demand by its customers. Comcast's customers pay for bandwidth and expect to get it when they use any site on the internet, even sites that use heavy bandwidth like YouTube and NetFlix.

Any normal business would respond to demand by its customers, but the telecoms have an oligopoly which they can leverage to increase revenues at their customers' expense. If the "fast lane" were allowed, Comcast would have a decent argument for not providing its customers the bandwidth they paid for to high-traffic sites: "we'd love to give you the bandwidth but the Googles and NetFlixes refused to pay for it". That position is totally back-asswards, is a result of their oligopoly, and is not in the best interest of consumers.

Comcast will continue to do just fine without forcing companies to pay for the "fast lane".

NoMoreNicksLeft16• 12 years ago

Peering was created because the two peers wanted to send each other nearly-equal levels of traffic.

If we have a situation where one peer wants to send alot of traffic and not receive anything in turn, this is a problem settlement-free peering cannot handle.

It's absurd to expect Comcast or anyone else to bend over backwards and pay for upgrades so that the other party gets to do this for free.

None of them are obligated to peer.

If we force this issue, we may get something that looks like a victory, temporarily. And then it will backfire on us.

I keep getting downvoted on reddit because I point this out. There are people who claim "but it's still Comcast's fault! Netflix offered them servers to relieve the load"...

Never mind the fact that placing servers in Comcast's own datacenters is something they rightly bill companies for the privilege of.

No one is being sensible about this, or so it seems.

cobookman• 12 years ago

The funny thing is that Google, Viacom,...etc already pay for ISP datacenter access. Why should netflix get a 'free' pass?

Totally agree on the peering aspect, and this is not a new issue. Comcast even posted a video explaining 'free' peering, but sadly took it down (http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/how-internet-pee...).

As I've mentioned before though, imagine if you paid a per GB cost. Then Comcast would want more Netflix traffic, not less. Where-as in the current system Comcast could care less how much of your 300GB cap you use, hence them wanting to be paid to upgrade their peering exchanges.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

This rule is so easy to bypass. All it means is that ISPs can't "offer" fast lanes anymore - as in premium access for certain companies, for which they would charge extra.

However, under this rule, they can still do what they're already doing: slowing down everyone's Internet, and then charging websites money to "get it back to normal". This way they didn't create a "fast lane". It's the same "normal lane" - for which they now charge extra money, unless you want them to slow you down. Like this:

http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious...

Wheeler is either a fool, or playing ignorant, if he doesn't realize this.

asn0• 12 years ago

Or, he's brilliant – by playing along with the cableco's game, he's making the fight public, which also puts the heat on the cableco's, and gives the FCC the political capital to push back on the cableco's.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

However, under this rule, they can still do what they're already doing: slowing down everyone's Internet, and then charging websites money to "get it back to normal".

It would be fairly hard to construct either the actual text of the proposal itself or Wheeler's statements of the FCC's intent in applying it to find any rule under which a "fast lane" would not be "commercially reasonable", but intentionally reducing the quality of service for normal use and paying to bypass that reduction would be "commercially reasonable". In fact, its hard to see how the latter is not exactly the same as the former.

smutticus• 12 years ago

Maybe Wheeler's plan is to keep making confusing nonsensical statements until we get fed up with him and stop paying attention. Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement.

Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. The court in Verizon v. FCC said the FCC had the authority to reclassify. So do it and stop wasting everyone's time with your vague contradictory incomprehensible statements.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement.

The FCC is very clear that they haven't entirely decided what they "plan to implement" in complete detail. They have formally adopted something that is both an outline and a call for public input with specific questions on both the outline itself and alternatives to it (including specific questions related to Title II classification), and on how best to fill in details within the outline.

Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already.

Doing so is a basis for regulation which has its own constraints distinct from those for regulation of information services, and deciding to do that doesn't, in and of itself, resolve the details of how to regulate. The FCCs recent call for comments specifically invites comments on that alternative, and details of how commenters see that alternative compared to the proposed outline (including details of how regulations under that authority should be crafted to acheive the broad policy goals that the FCC's Open Internet work is designed to serve.)

NoMoreNicksLeft16• 12 years ago

I won't defend Wheeler, he's a jackass.

However, no one else anywhere seems to be telling the truth. And we're never going to arrive at a solution that everyone enjoys or thinks fair if we continue to chant internet activist slogans.

In 1997, peering worked because we need a simple solution whereby dozens of private companies could hook their networks together without going through the complicated accounting of who owed who how much. Most networks sent as much as they received, there was little point in nitpicking the slight differences.

In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature.

Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Comcast doesn't offer its customers "Netflix service". Indeed, if it did, people would go crazy screaming net neutrality slogans. Comcast offers internet service, and they don't guarantee access to Netflix especially when Netflix doesn't bother to acquire sufficient network connectivity.

This doesn't mean Netflix is evil. It doesn't mean that Comcast is anything other than evil.

But Comcast does feel cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades, and Netflix feels cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades (even though they are the ones who benefit from this).

This means that peering in general may not work anymore. That is the real problem that no one seems smart enough to address. And if it does not work, what replaces it?

So if you're suggesting Wheeler isn't smart enough to fix it... well, that sort of figures.

Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already.

That wouldn't really fix anything though. It's very likely to have not only unintended consequences, but bad ones.

e28eta• 12 years ago

Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. I'd love to switch to someone else.

Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, and the big ones are some of the most hated companies in the US, and don't seem to care.

BryantD• 12 years ago

I don't think "Netflix feels cheated" is necessarily accurate. It's entirely plausible that Netflix's PR stance is not aligned with the internal understanding of appropriate pricing.

eridius3• 12 years ago

Why does it matter who sends who how many bits? It seems like that would only matter if one peer is sending traffic over another peer's network that's has yet a third peer as the real destination. But if e.g. Level3 is sending bits to Comcast because they're going to Comcast customers, then that seems entirely ok. These aren't bits that Level3 is forcing on Comcast. Comcast asked for these bits. Or rather, Comcast's customers did, but that's the same thing as far as I'm concerned.

If Comcast is asking Level3 for massive amounts of traffic, it makes no sense at all for Comcast to then turn around and accuse Level3 of sending them too much traffic. I suspect the real problem is that Comcast simply didn't expects its customers to actually use all the bandwidth Comcast promised them. They can't very well accuse their own customers of using too much traffic (for legitimate purposes, I'm ignoring BitTorrent here).

Comcast just needs to admit their equipment simply isn't up to the task of servicing their own customers, and they need to upgrade. Trying to charge Netflix for all the traffic is just pure greed.

noxxten• 12 years ago

Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free?

Because of a hundreds of thousands of people paying them already over-priced networking fees? Comcast wouldn't be doing it for free... I'm already capped at 300Gb per month on my Comcast internet... If I choose to spend that 300Gb in a week on streaming netflix, fucking let me; That's why I pay for it. At this point not only are ISPs trying to limit how much of their service I can use, but when, where, and how.

This isn't how free-flowing information works.

hatbert• 12 years ago

In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature.

Oh, you're so right! That awful, no-good, pesky L3 just keeps sending these packets that nobody wants and nobody ever asked for... oh wait. Oh yes. I just remembered. L3 sends those packets because Comcast's customers requested them. People pay Comcast to transfer packets between themselves and the internet services they wish to use. In a free market, Comcast's inability to do that would result in customers leaving in droves. It really shouldn't matter (within the bounds of legal reason) what's in the packets.

Spooky232• 12 years ago

I think you're missing the overall point. This isn't a nerd problem, its a MBA probelm.

From a networking engineering point of view, these problems are very solvable the way they always have been -- more stuff.. You increase bandwidth to the peering points, or find other ways to deliver the traffic (ie. have Netflix use dark fiber to deliver traffic to different regions, etc)

The cost of doing this is negligible, and on the business ISP side, the ISPs are doing an excellent job of solving these problems as enterprises start sending gigabits/sec of data to O365, etc.

The reason they are doing this is that the increased traffic is attacking television distribution. When you are Comcast, a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC, you tend to care about that.

tzs• 12 years ago

Seriously, it seems like the FCC just can't be clear about what it is they actually plan to implement

Briefly, they HAD regulations that were working. These regulations were based on FCC authority under a particular section of law, which I'll call Law X. Verizon and Comcast separately challenged different parts of the regulations and won in court. The court said Law X did not authorize the FCC to do all that had been doing. In particular, the banning of what people are now calling "fast lanes" was not allowed.

There is another law, law Y, that the FCC currently uses to regulate telephone service. This law is strong enough to ban fast lanes, but the consequences of using this more powerful weapon are unknown--for 30+ years data networks have been regulated under law X, not law Y. It is informally called "the nuclear option" because of this.

What Wheeler would like to do is restore the regulations that the court struck down, and would like to avoid having to use the nuclear option for this. For the "fast lanes", he cannot outright ban them without going nuclear, so instead he's proposing regulating them. For example, if an ISP gives a video service it or some related corporate entity owns a "fast lane", it would have to offer similar service on "commercially reasonable terms" to outside video services. Also, demand for "fast lanes" could not be boosted by slowing people down--if your ISP sells you a service they claim is 20 mbit/second, for instance, they will be required to deliver that. They will not be allowed to slow you down to 10 mbit/second to make you complain to, say, Netflix, to encourage Netflix to pay for a "fast lane" on your ISP.

The tech press has done a terrible reporting job on this for the most part (Ars Technica seems to be the most accurate, and has published some accurate stories). They like to report it as Wheeler proposing to allow "fast lanes", in a way that implies "fast lanes" are new. In fact, under the regulations in effect now that the court struck down the earlier regulations, "fast lanes" are allowed, with no restrictions at all. Wheeler's "commercially reasonable terms" proposal is an attempt to put some limits on the "fast lanes".

Wheeler has always said that other options are on the table. That's why the proposal came with a bunch of questions about whether this was the right approach, and whether the nuclear option should be pursued. It is very common for proposed regulations to change significantly as a result of the feedback during the comment period. There is no reason to think that will not happen here.

tom_jones• 12 years ago

Providing broadband connectivity to rural Americans should have priority over giving 'fast lanes' to those who already enjoy broadband service.

FCC chair: An Internet fast lane would be ‘commercially unreasonable’

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