Letting go of an obsession with net neutrality could free technologists to make online services even better.
Two years ago Mung Chiang, a professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, believed he could give customers more control. One simple adjustment would clear the way for lots of mobile-phone users to get as much data as they already did, and in some cases even more, on cheaper terms. Carriers could win, too, by nudging customers to reduce peak-period traffic, making some costly network upgrades unnecessary. “We thought we could increase the benefits for everyone,” Chiang recalls.
Chiang’s plan called for the wireless industry to offer its customers the same types of variable pricing that have brought new efficiencies to transportation and utilities. Rates increase during peak periods, when congestion is at its worst; they decrease during slack periods. In the pre-smartphone era, it would have been impossible to advise users ahead of time about a zig or zag in their connectivity charges. Now, it would be straightforward to vary the price of online access depending on congestion and build an app that let bargain hunters shift their activities to cheaper periods, even on a minute-by-minute basis. When prices were high, consumers could put off non-urgent tasks like downloading Facebook posts to read later. Careful users could save a lot of money.
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531616/the-right-way-to-fix-the-internet/
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Saturday October 18 2014, @12:47AM
This approach is fine for people or businesses that can afford to pay peak prices. But for those who can't they are relegated to off-hour internet usage, at least until the peak hours expand. With so many people moving to internet provided entertainment (TV shows, movies, etc) the later "non-business" hours will still have a chance of hitting peak usage. So the rates will go up for those hours (or the peak peak will go up and the not-used-to-be-peak will become peak, etc).
Net neutrality also provides equality for the content providers and for the consumers.
(Score: 2) by keplr on Saturday October 18 2014, @06:30AM
And it's axiomatic that if we allow the carriers to choose the bandwidth fee schedule, they will arrange the times and prices to charge more than they are now. They'd be committing a criminal act, according to our perverse legal/economic system, not to seize such an opportunity to do so.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jackb_guppy on Saturday October 18 2014, @01:37AM
There is zero competition. Mega companies that are near lock step with each other. There is just high prices and higher prices.
Look to the airlines as an example. Race to bottom for bad service. Charging for everything. Just more profits.
Look to the power companies (even with regulators) Hell, Florida the sunshine state is a "dead zone" to solar panels. All that sunshine, but the power company is crying that no one will pay for their wires to connect the homes to grid. Yes, there is a market - OUTSIDE of FLORIDA! No, the power company trying to kill solar - it hurts their profits.
Just remember the old saying "We are MA bell, we don't care and we don't have to!"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by lentilla on Saturday October 18 2014, @01:51AM
Back in the 1990's I had dial-in access to a Unix machine via a
commercial service. It cost one cent per minute. Now, whilst not
exactly expensive, every single second I was connected I had that
thought present in my mind. The decision making part of my brain was
constantly activated and it certainly altered my behaviour. I found
it stressful.
Mobile phones behaved in a similar fashion for a long time. On each
and every call a part of my brain would be allocated to constantly
re-running that decision matrix - evaluating cost verses value.
I simply like to make decisions once in a while. Put in computing
terms, humans work better in batch-processing mode. Cooperative
multitasking incurs stiff penalties for context switches.
For me, having constant access to a utility is part of what defines
the modern era. Internet, water, electricity. I use it when I want
it. Hunt/gather is not a particularly efficient system which is why
modern humans put a great deal of effort into building something once
and then reaping the benefits over an extended period. Having to
think about a directly attached cost would curb my usage in both peak
and off-peak times - after all, why exactly do I want to consult a
meter every time I decide to do something? Worse still, I have to
keep checking that meter in case the price spikes.
The cynical part of me knows the end-result of deploying such a
system. For end users the overall cost will stay more-or-less stable.
Providers will pocket the savings because they can devote resources
into gaming the system. This will be sold to end users as a way to
save money (which no doubt is possible) but this will not transpire in
reality. The providers will exchange their cost for our time - each
and everyone will need to watch the meter. Computers and technology
were meant to free us from drudgery. I don't like them being co-opted
into working against us.
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Saturday October 18 2014, @02:21AM
Great comment.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:18AM
Insightful +5
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @09:50AM
What's up with the betaesque layout though?
(Score: 2) by everdred on Wednesday October 22 2014, @09:02PM
I've kept a browser tab open for days, waiting until I could finally moderate your comment.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 18 2014, @02:03AM
There's a lot of incentive for greedy corporations to game these kind of pricing models. That's why they won't work. In theory they are better. But in practice any corporation management will try their luck to bastardize the marketplace. In the financial market there's something called "moral hazard" and this has that smell all over.
If users can be forced to pay more. Well expect the "peak load period" to gradually become longer and more expensive. Or caps to become tighter with time.
For a study in greediness and manipulation of the society, have a look at ComCast. Their practices has resulted in that they now have gotten unofficial ugly nicknames. Corporations are useful, but only if the society sets firm rules and consistently punish offenders enough to make bad behavior prohibitive. In all other cases they become psychopathic entities without criminal liability and bodiless.
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:15AM
Enron is a good example of that.
They where gaming the system in California buy power, "pump" it though a low capacity line, cause the system to spike, and then sell back higher cost power in to the market via correct grid... profit on all of Californians' backs. Though in shutting down power plans...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/enron-caused-california-blackouts-traders-say [marketwatch.com]
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/52157:tapes-show-enron-caused-rolling-blackouts-in-california [truth-out.org]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/california/ [pbs.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:25AM
Seems like a lack of proper ruling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @10:24AM
"Letting go of an obsession with net neutrality could free technologists to make online services even better."
After reading the first line I considered the news too stupid to continue reading.-Ignacio Agulló
(Score: 1) by DrkShadow on Saturday October 18 2014, @11:43AM
I read this when it came out. It's unfortunate to see it here. This opinion piece is _not_ about net neutrality.
Consider the poster child of the article: a company that wants to make software so that the cell carriers can implement pricing as per time of day and amount of traffic at the moment.
Great idea! Not discriminating between source and destination of the traffic! Applying rules to _all_ traffic equally. How novel. What a sound way to _support_ net neutrality. In fact, this supports the _utility_ model as it could apply to the internet.
The rest of the article continues on with similar misunderstanding of what Net Neutrality is about, and I was truly hoping this article would just fall into the shadows, given it's calling for one thing, and arguing for... something else? Nothing at all? I'm actually not sure. I almost signed up to post comments ripping into the article at the time, but when I read the comments on this article, every single informed comment was ripping into what was said here. This is not a well-informed opinion-writer.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Saturday October 18 2014, @12:58PM
Firstly, that's not a good start to any plan. To me, it rang the same sort of alarm bells as would:
But after reading the rest, my main concern is people misusing the term 'net neutrality'.
As I understand it, net neutrality is about preventing discrimination based on where the packets are going from/to. It should stop carriers charging twice for the same packets, holding your data to ransom — especially upstream carriers that you have no direct relationship with or choice about.
It is not about your own ISP charging differently for data at different times or different qualities. That's a matter between you and your ISP, and if you don't like their policies/pricing you can change to another. (At least in principle. I hear that in the USA you don't always have that option, but that's more a problem with your so-called 'free market' than with net neutrality or lack thereof.)
So the suggestions in this article don't worry me anywhere near as much as the submitter clearly thinks they should.
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