9 questions about network neutrality you were too embarrassed to ask

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Vox:

President Barack Obama announced on Monday that he supports taking strong measures to protect network neutrality. The announcement was not terribly surprising — Obama has long been an avowed supporter of network neutrality. But this is the first time Obama has proposed a specific legal strategy for protecting network neutrality. And his comments will raise the profile of what was already the most contentious policy debate in the technology world.


If you’re just tuning in now, it can seem a little overwhelming. What is network neutrality? What’s “reclassification?” And why have people been arguing so angrily for so long? Here’s an explanation that starts from the very beginning.

This is an important issue but sadly one the vast majority of internet users don’t know or don’t care enough about.



11 thoughts on “9 questions about network neutrality you were too embarrassed to ask”

  1. Democrats are only using this issue like they use Abortion and Gay Rights.
    Just to attract young people.
    They have no problem appointing lobbyist as chairman,
    take comcast money or approve the merger of TimeWarner.

    Common Carrier and Utility service is settle law.
    There shouldn’t be any debate about its legality
    and due diligence by FCC.
    Letting Cable companies run wild for 30 years. Where were democrats then. Now that all the young people are cutting the cord.
    Net Neutrality is important.
    Only after republican win the majority so an issue can be falsley debated for two more years.

  2. I have no issue with companies like Netflix paying for a “fast lane” so long as the slow lane is clearly regulated. Along with that ISPs should have to maintain a guaranteed level of service or refund users part of their monthly fee automatically.

    In other words, let’s say that Comcast has two service options. For $40 a month I get up to 10MBps or for $60 a month I get up to 15MBps. If Netflix wants to pay for their service to always go through Comcast on the 15MBps level on my behalf, I’m good with that. What I wouldn’t be okay with is Comcast forcing Netflix to pay or they will push it down to a 5MBps level because that’s under what I should be getting for my monthly fee.

    Going with that Comcast should have to guarantee that even throttled I get at least 50% of the ‘up to’ that I’m paying for with say guaranteed service 90% of every day or they have to give me an automatic refund of part of my service fee. They might get an exemption if it’s an unexpected situation like a tornado but they have to get service back up at level within 24 hours or pay refunds. All of which would be predetermined and set up so I don’t have to call and complain, it just happens.

  3. “Legal frameworks” sound like a good idea, unfortunately they enshrine more government control and entanglement in the Internet.

    Laws sound great when “your” team is steering the ship but as soon as the tiller is handed to a captain you don’t trust then the power gets put in the wrong hands.

    The Internet of today is too important to give to the grasping hands of political jackals.

  5. No, far too important to let the last mile companies screw it up by inspecting and prioritizing each packet based on greed. Our average Internet speeds are two thirds less than the world over.

  6. Fred Wilson may be a blowhard at times, but as a tech venture capitalist he understands NN very well — far better than a professional politician in TX:

    This is about something more simple and more important. It is about making sure that the Internet remains open and free for innovation. It is about recognizing that the last mile of the wired and wireless internet is a natural monopoly/duopoly where scale creates massive advantages, just like the electrical grid and the water system. It is about making sure that the massive companies that operate these last mile monopolies don’t use their market power to extract rents from the entrepreneurs, developers, and companies that must go through those networks to reach their customers.

    This is about keeping the Internet the way it has been operating for the past twenty years. This is a conservative idea. Don’t change something that has worked so well for so long. Don’t allow the telcos to start inspecting each packet and prioritizing some over others.

    http://avc.com/2014/11/internet-freedom-2/

  7. let me paste you a little story about net neutrality:

    Think about Netflix. It has unlimited streaming movies now. Comcast has streaming movies too, at $4 per movie. What if Comcast tells Netflix “unless you pay us the equivalent of $20/user per month we are going to put you in the slow lane and your users won’t be able to stream.” NetFlix’s streaming business will be crushed. Comcast, Verizon and AT&T want Congress to allow them to do exactly that, and this is why net neutrality legislation is so important.

    This isn’t a result of a fertile imagination. This actually happened 100 years ago. Imagine the year is 1900. I run a steel company and you run a railroad. I sell steel for $50 per ton and you ship it for $3 per ton. I have two major competitors. I come to you and offer you $10 per ton for shipping if you agree not to carry steel for the other two. That number will give you far more profit for far less effort so you say yes. You’re happy. My two competitors cannot move steel from Pittsburgh to Kansas any other way (what, by horse and wagon?) so they go out of business, or a least their business is limited to local purchasers.

    Then I raise my steel price from $50 per ton to $75. The steel buyers have to pay because they have no other choice. The competition is gone. I make huge profits. I’m happy. You make huge profits. You’re happy. The consumers and my competitors aren’t happy, but who gives a flying f*** about them?

    This is the history of the railroad business in the late 1800s. This scenario played out again in the 1920s in trucking. Both times Congress mandated that any shipping company must charge identical amounts for all customers, based only on size, weight, and transit time.

    We have 100 years of success with net neutrality. It’s working pretty well.

    …did commercial railcars vanish into antiquity? the trucking industry? nope, both are alive and profitable today.

  8. Funny how you’re blaming only Democrats for appointing lobbyists to federal regulatory agencies.

  9. So if you choose to pay Comcast for a faster connection, you don’t mind if they selectively degrade it?

  10. Way to not read. Fact is they don’t have to degrade anything, service is rarely as good as that ‘up to’ and with the legal monopoly they don’t have to improve it.

    If you had exercised proper reading you would see that I said they should be forced to guarantee a level of service or refund what we pay. And you would see that I said I am not the one paying for the faster service. Netflix etc would be paying it on my behalf for their content. and if they didn’t pay I would be that content under the same guarantees. Which, coming from someone that gets shite service a good 75% of the time, is still a major improvement. After all why should I pay for ‘up to’ 10 and its legal that I get 3 if I’m lucky and in six months I’ve never had higher than 5. Some days I get nothing for as much as 4 hours. But since they gave me a credit months ago they refuse to do it again. And that’s legal

  11. If Netflix (or any other content provider) is made to pay for faster service, then there’s a good chance its customers will somehow get hit with that cost, too.

    Smaller companies that can’t pony up protection money will be less able to compete with existing ones that can pay to shut them out. There’ll be lots fewer opportunities for new business models to disrupt the ones that currently call the shots.

    Making ISPs “maintain a guaranteed level of service” while also allowing a “slow lane” is a contradiction. Your careful qualifications might work for your use case—for a short while—but in the long run this tiering benefits only the powerful.

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