Hacker News Reader

You seem to be making an argument that I have seen a lot, in short (paraphrased): A free open competitive market is ideal therefore you should seek that instead of net neutrality. Don't ask for net neutrality.

I disagree. Net neutrality is not a problem. See [0] for a previous take on the misguided notion that QoS and net neutrality are at odds.

It might be an ideal solution if we could nationalize network infrastructure and guarantee local loop unbundling, as I think you are suggesting. But we are so far away from that possibility in the US that you seem to be advocating against net neutrality in favor of effectively the status quo.

Let's not throw support for net neutrality out the window in favor of a far away pipe dream or for unproved, supposed benefits from getting rid of it. Let's get back net neutrality first, in legislation this time, then see if we still think we need to nationalize the network infrastructure.

If I am misunderstanding your proposal then maybe you could clarify.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8125588

ah, no, I'm not asking for a free and open market. I'm asking for a regulated market steered towards competition.

What the US has now is a free and open market, well the logical conclusion of it. (the carnivorous rats on the island model) The lack of regulation to stop consolidation is a big problem. The need right now is for AT&T to not merge with time warner.

I don't think nationalisation is what is required, I think separation of last mile infrastructure from client ISPs. This means that the Motivation for the infrastructure company is to provide stable reliable last mile connections. Because they are going to be used regardless of who is supplying connectivity, it doesn't affect investment. All of this can be achieved with private companies (indeed thats how it works in most EU countries)

This also lowers the cost of ISP startup drastically.

As for QoS, I love QoS, it means that my ADSL connection can still have low latency stuff (audio, video games) even though I share the same uplink with torrenting arseholes. But, I don't see how, with the weakness that is the FCC, they are going to legally distinguish between QoS to regulate service (ie bulk downloading via torrenting) and bulk downloading of a video on demand service.

Both have the same strain, both are video services, both can be throttled to mask the lack of investment in backhaul infrastructure. both need to be "shaped" to allow customers to use the ISP's "services" evenly.

I'd also like to point out that NN has only been a thing for <2 years.

> I'd also like to point out that NN has only been a thing for <2 years.

This is not true. The most recent law was in place for 2 years. It existed in other forms for a long time before that.

I think you're right that AT&T and Time Warner should not be allowed to merge. What you're proposing WRT the last mile is similar to what I favor, which is banning content/copyright owners/studios from also owning the network infrastructure. There would be some subtleties there but I think it could be ironed out reasonably well. From an economic incentive perspective it just makes sense.

Regarding QoS, why couldn't you as the client choose which packets are to be considered high-priority? Is it that you want to be able to saturate your connection with high priority packets that supercede your neighbor's packets if you're on a video call? Maybe a NN-friendly compromise is that everyone gets a % of their connection that get to be high-priority packets (you choose which) and you can pay more for a bigger pipe. Therefore if you want 1M up at high priority you need a 5M pipe. Your neighbor can keep their 1M pipe but only 200k of their packets can be high priority. (to throw out some numbers). It seems fair and gives you QoS options while not violating NN, which I think is overall more important than QoS anyway.

You seem to be interpreting net neutrality solely as a method to protect the company Netflix.

> You really don't want that, as it means that real time stuff will get hampered by bulk traffic, and bulk traffic knobs (you know the people that are more than willing to spend $25 a month on a torrent box, $500 on local storage each quarter, but not pay for content.) Will get a free pass.

No, I do want this. Just meter your service, stop selling it as unlimited, and either have the capacity to serve the customers that you've acquired, drop customers, or add capacity. Don't discriminate between a $25 torrent box and the company Netflix because that's what you think the people want.

s/netflix/other commercial bulk bandwidth service/

Netflix is the example that works best, as the "man on the Clapham omnibus" can easily understand what it is, and why throttling it is bad for the customer.

Metering doesn't get round this, as that doesn't do anything much to cap peak load, there is still no reason for an ISP to invest in transit, or indeed allowing more edge caching boxes. (the customer isn't going to go away, so why put money into expanding edge footprint)

The only way capacity is going to be built is if there is an incentive (be it legal, cash or other) Why would an ISP drop paying customers _and_ invest in extra infrastructure?

The classic way of leveraging private investment in some kind of capacity-carrying infrastructure for public good is to rule it a common carrier [1]. All of this 'Title II'/'net neutrality' spat of the last few years is about how one regulator, the FCC, interprets various laws (including the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications act of 1996) about where ISPs fall [2], court cases and ruling that have been brought in its wake [3], the FCC's change in approach in response to those court cases [4], and a bunch of complicating factors about whether the FCC or the FTC is the appropriate regulatory body that decides the exact regulatory regime. So, without further lawmaking, that ship has sailed.

So if we can't adopt some rule that would treat privately-owned cables, let's say on the last mile, as common carriers, what are some other options? Deny further vertical mergers affecting telecom infrastructure? This doesn't solve the current entrenchment. Let localities take the issue into their own hands and build out publicly-owned networks that would support open access for providers running on top? This is a sensible idea, that's currently difficult to pursue in almost half of the states [5], and most legislative efforts to make this difficult have come from Republican lawmakers [6][7], despite citizens of all political leanings in favor of localities being allowed to do this [8][9].

[1] https://medium.com/@TebbaVonMathenstien/network-neutrality-a... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Open_Internet_Order_2010 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v.... [4] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/fcc-v... [5] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... [6] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-la... [7] https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/81c82846-... [8] https://muninetworks.org/content/pew-survey-reveals-overwhel... [9] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/10/americans-ha...