Net Neutrality Explained: What It Means (and Why It Matters)

Fortune ^ | November 23, 2017

[tired&retired]

Everyone agrees that the Internet should be free and open. How it’s achieved? Well, that’s the issue After signaling that it would for months, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday revealed its plan to dismantle regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet, a concept known as “net neutrality.”

The regulations classify broadband access as a telecommunications service, which subjects it to “common carrier” provisions that bar Internet service providers from discriminating against how broadband is used. The regulations were passed in February 2015 by the FCC, then led by chairman Tom Wheeler. Wheeler’s successor Ajit Pai, a vocal critic of that move even while serving under Wheeler, has vowed to revisit the issue.

Pai’s position is that the common carrier provisions used to ensure net neutrality is “last-century, utility-style regulation” that injects uncertainty into a market now dominated by broadband. Pai, who says he supports an “open Internet,” believes that less regulation in this area is more beneficial to market growth.

[chiller]

Default position should be:

KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF THIS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

And the key point is the affect on competition, which would put the bad providers like Comcast out of business, or force them to get their act together.

Think about this: capitalism provides 300m users, testers, evaluators, graders who judge every product and service and let it be known what works and what doesn't. Consumers, innovators will find a better way. Govt. never has, nor ever will.

[jonno]

bookmark

[jaz.357]

I thought it was all about a “KILL SWITCH” that oBummer wanted.

[Skywise]

It wasn’t enforced via policy either.

There was a 2 year grace period on the regulation and Ajit killed the regulation with several months left to spare.

Odd, dontcha think that they’d make a regulation go into force after the election? As if Obama wanted another administration to deal with it?

[taxcontrol]

Starting with the right question often helps.

So, Do you believe in private property rights? Namely, does an owner of a business have the natural right to determine how that property is going to be used? Does the landlord get to determine who and how they will use their “store front” in a mall?

Now consider this - the ISP has paid a LOT of money for internet equipment, for communications lines, for the technical staff to make it work. That is a huge investment. It is also there PROPERTY. So does the private property owner have the right to determine who and how their property is used?

If you say yes, then net neutrality rules is very bad governance because it takes that right away from the property owner. It FORCES the property owner to treat everyone the same by giving them the same bandwidth and the same priority in the traffic queues.

[usconservative]

Default position should be: KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF THIS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

On point, you're exactly correct. This approach works in a greenfield environment perfectly.

That's not what we have however. Government Regulation/Over-Regulation created this mess (and so many more across other industries ...) so simply pulling the Government out of the mess while an attractive solution IMO, is going to create a lot of disruption in the economy. The tentacles of the Government's meddling are just too deep in too many places.

So now what?

I'd love to see Comcrap go under. I'd lose any semblance of high speed internet access myself probably for a long time, but it'd be worth it to send a message to those who insist on being such bad free market participants.

[usconservative]

I thought it was all about a “KILL SWITCH” that oBummer wanted.

That was just ONE PIECE of the Obama Propaganda Puzzle! Dontcha know about the Presidential Alerts you can't block on your phone? That's another piece! Kill the Internet and use everyone's cell phones so Dear Leader could speak to us all directly, just like Kim Jung Un and the big amplified speakers all over North Korea!

[usconservative]

Odd, dontcha think that they’d make a regulation go into force after the election? As if Obama wanted another administration to deal with it?

That A**HOLE Obama left lots of little landmines for President Trump to deal with so color me not surprised.

Can I still say "color me" without being called a racist on here?

[Skywise]

Ah - We needs government regulation for our own good.

Nice to see where you’re coming from.

What IS in your ammo box?

[usconservative]

Ah - We needs government regulation for our own good.

That's not what I said at all. I said the Government's tentacles were so deep in every part of our economy that to simply pull them out is going to cause significant disruption in our economy. That's just a statement of fact.

For the record, my own personal stance is the FedGov has two functions: (1) Provide for the common defense and protect the American People; (2) Get the hell out of the way.

Got it now?

As for my ammo box, it's a wide variety and lots of it. I like .... "diversity" in my ammunition and let's just leave it at that.

[trebb]

Using Chrome and just opened Wikipedia....you might have other issues...

[Wuli]

Google, Facebook et all have their own preferential treatments and charges for various categories of THEIR customers, the internet advertising industry players. Yet they think those supplying the telecom backbones should not have any similar commercial freedom in their businesses; unlike Google et al the telecoms should be treated like a restricted public utility.

I think the facts are the reverse.

Googles near-monopoly MASSIVE dominance in the Internet search industry, and all the internet advertising revenue drawn from it, deserves to be a regulated public utility.

[Terry Mross]

I’m just responding to your post “Obama bowed to the big tech lobbyists”.

[VanDeKoik]

Ahhh. Ok.

I guess what I’m wondering is if this ISP is an AOL type of service aimed at people that really dont want anything special, dont have proper infrastructure to handle (slow lines + unreliable utilities), and are willing (or dumb enough) to pay for something like this.

I dont think ISPs in America would pull this. For them, it makes no sense, when all it will take is for Amazon + Facebook + Elon Musk + Apple to burn some couch cash and plow them into the dirt within a year.

[markomalley]

There are two fundamental flaws in the premise of "net neutrality" from my perspective.

The first flaw is that it assumes that ISPs are intentionally trying to impede the flow of data from certain web services for the purpose of impeding their ability to conduct business. If that happens, it's provable and would be a breach of contract between the ISP and the web service provider that depends upon the ISP.

The second flaw is that it assumes that there is a static amount of bandwidth available, both between the ISP and the host and within the fabric of the Internet itself. That's simply laughable on the surface of it.

There are perfectly justifiable reasons why some packets should be prioritized over others:

• Voice over IP -- VoIP would be utterly unusable with latency (delays in transmitting packets) or jitter (packets arriving at the destination with different delays or arriving out of order).
• Live IPTV -- such as Slingbox, etc. are also sensitive for the same reasons. A service like YouTube or Liveleak that primarily stream on-demand are not quite as sensitive as a larger buffer could be built to insulate them.
• Video teleconferencing is also sensitive for the same reasons.
• And other services

If those who provide those services need to have their packets prioritized, let them pay for the privilege. The ISPs and the Network Service Providers (who provide the Internet fabric) don't simply pocket the money, they use it to increase the capacity of the Internet as a whole.

When I first started messing with what would become the Internet, I used a 300 baud acoustic modem. When 2400 baud, then 9600 baud, the 19.2 kb modems became available for dial-up, I was thrilled to death with each upgrade. But I was envious of those who had the big, whopping, 128kb/s ISDN connection. When I got my first high-speed Internet connection (a whopping 6 MB/S from Comcast), I was absolutely in heaven. I could, now, get a Gigabit-ethernet connection to my house and it would be pretty affordable. I don't bother with it, because I just don't see a need for going over 75/75. But it's available if I wanted.

The same thing with cellular data: 10 years ago, seeing Edge (384 kb/s) service in metropolitan areas and, maybe, GPRS (112 kb/s) service was the norm. Then 3G arrived (3 Mb / S) and became more ubiquitous. Then 4G (up to 42 Mb/S). Now I'm used to seeing LTE data as being the norm (up to 300 Mb/S), unless you're in really, really isolated areas that are far from major arteries. And the cost has gone down and data limits have virtually disappeared (most of the main cell providers have unlimited data plans available).

One thing I've noticed over time, both with dial-up and cable Internet, was that sometimes the ISP oversubscribed their services. You'd end up with busy signals on dial-ups or ISDN connections at certain times of the day. On cable Internet connections, you'd see speeds slow down to a crawl at certain times of the day. They oversubscribed and the infrastructure couldn't keep up with the amount of users who simultaneously wanted to watch YouTube or Netflix.

They eventually caught up.

What caused them to improve their infrastructure was competition. When they could potentially lose part of their subscriber base to a competitor, they had motivation to keep improving their infrastructure (as well as keeping prices under control, but that's a different topic). It worked that way with the phone company, it works that way with ISPs.

Bottom line: net neutrality might be a legitimate concept if there was only one ISP company and that ISP company had their own nefarious goals they were implementing.

• On the server side, if that monopoly ISP said they wouldn't provide access to somebody wanting to put content on the Internet...
• On the client side, if the monopoly ISP said they were going to block access to certain content on the Internet...

That MIGHT be the case for some rural areas that have only one provider available to them. But the majority of people in the country have choices.

So unless nefarious intent across the industry as a whole can be proven, I'd say let the market deal with it and not the government.

[Wuli]

Why should not someone who never does video streaming pay far less for their service than someone who does? Why should not a site that is 100% text and text related pay less, per second, to have its service out there than a site that is all video streaming? Why should those services jamming the pipes most with there data hogging content NOT pay more than others, or, if they don’t want to pay more, have their hog “throttled” so other content gets through? If those needing massive higher throughput service are not paying more than others, where is the revenue for keeping up those service improvements comming from?

OMG some “free service” with high data demands might start charging your more, because they’re getting charged more? OMG! how dare that happen!! /sarc

[klimeckg]

In the end, it’s a political issue. Notice something curious about the statements made by Google and Comcast? They’re remarkably similar. Both companies say they reject blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization for Internet users. Their disagreement is over how to enforce it. Should the FCC regulate broadband Internet, or leave market players to do it? Are existing common carrier provisions the best way forward, or is new and different regulation the answer? It’s as political a battle as it gets.

[Boomer]

This is the best way I've seen it explained and it shows why we should keep NN.

[Yaelle]

Actually, this article does explain the argument very simply and in plain English. The links included also help clarify.

Since today the Internet is an essential part of life, especially in knowledge gathering, as education used to be, I believe it should be as free an access as we can get for everyone. That is constitutional in my opinion.

Since it is as difficult to trust powerful companies as it is to trust a government, I’d like to see net neutrality with checks and balances. I am not smart enough to design what they would be.

[eclecticEel]

NN is a form of crony capitalism that privileges content providers over service providers. You can know that just by looking at the way Google/Yahoo/etc. all line up behind it.