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from the would-you-like-YouTube^WNetflix^WFacebook^WAmazon-with-that? dept.
Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times writes about Portugal's Internet which shows us a world without net neutrality, and it's ugly. Basically, tiered services get in there through a loophole for zero-rating.
After paying a fee for basic service, subscribers can add any of five further options for about $6 per month, allowing an additional 10GB data allotment for the apps within the options: a "messaging" tier, which covers such services as instant messaging, Apple FaceTime, and Skype; "social," with liberal access to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on; "video" (youTube, Netflix, etc.); "email and cloud" (Gmail, Apple's iCloud); or "music" (Spotify, Pandora).
Portugal isn't the only country allowing tiering of internet services. In Britain, the internet service provider Vodaphone charges about $33 a month for basic service but offers several "passes" allowing unlimited video or music streaming, social media usage, or chat, at additional tariffs of up to $9.30 per month. [Ed's Note: This is not entirely accurate - Vodaphone's ISP home broadband offering (17Mbps) is £24/month unlimited usage, the additional figures quoted are for faster fiber connections (38 and 76 Mbps) where available. How you use your connection is irrelevant. This is the same for many European ISPs. Smart phone costs are entirely separate.]
Although both countries are part of the European Union, which has an explicit commitment to network neutrality, these arrangements are allowed under provisions giving national regulators some flexibility. These regulators can open loopholes permitting "zero-rating," through which ISPs can exclude certain services from data caps. That's what the Portuguese and British ISPs essentially are doing.
If the vote on the 14th of December repeals Net Neutrality then consumer options will be greatly reduced while increasing greatly in prices as we can see from Portugal's example.
(Score: 5, Informative) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @05:21PM (13 children)
Netflix shouldn't have to put an appliance on anybody's internal wire. They already paid for their bandwidth. The fact that they are now pressured into special deals with the ISP to carry their traffic is a consequence of ISP practice of deliberately shunting Netflix traffic into the same overworked hardware, rather than building up their infrastructure. If internet service were really a free market, an upstart ISP could build a better infrastructure for customers that didn't do this. As it is, however, there is almost never an incentive for the ISP to fix their bottlenecks. They didn't do it before the net neutrality rules, so it's insane to think they would do it now.
I wish this were the case, but the web has changed. These days you are likely to use much less bandwidth on online gaming (which downloads small data packets continuously) than on even basic web browsing (which regularly downloads hundreds of 200kb - 5mb JavaScript packages for every page view, and if ad block is not in use, streams multiple video ads per page as well). Streaming music and video of course is very bandwidth intensive, as well as torrents and job-related traffic to and from a corporate network. But these activities set the standard now, and as bandwidth improves, web developers will continue to have less incentive to keep bandwidth requirements low for what should be very cheap static text-based content.
Again, this problem existed before net neutrality rules, and repealing those rules is not going to fix it. Probably won't have any impact at all, really.
Are you seriously suggesting that those of us in America should pay 3rd world prices for internet traffic that doesn't go over expensive international links? You're welcome to move to Uganda if you want to live like that. The rest of us blessed to live in America will stay here with our "1st world" amenities like (relatively) fast internet, (relatively) stable government, and (relatively) safe investment opportunities. You dictator-worshiper types can go live in the bush where you'll be happy and stop trying to drag the liberal democratic world down to your pre-industrial standards.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday November 28 2017, @05:41PM (7 children)
Yea! And nobody should use Akami either, CDNs are a total scam, ISPs should simply build sufficient infrastructure that every website can be hosted in one single location! Netflix is a huge chunk of the internet's traffic needs. Putting local caches of the most viewed content at every major provider is what has allowed them to exist. Google also spreads their servers around the world, Amazon does, etc. If nothing else, putting local copies on every continent saves a lot of load on undersea cables. You are an idiot who has no clue how the Internet works right now. The threat of being charged is what caused Netflix to become so aggressive in offering "Netflix in a box" appliances to every major ISP but CDNs are a routine and required part of Internet infrastructure and have been for twenty years.
True but not important to my point. Realtime traffic isn't about bandwidth, it is about maintaining acceptable latency.
No, I'm saying Cisco and Juniper are not in the habit of discounting their gear based on where you are installing it. Same for all the other physical infrastructure bits. Their bandwidth costs to get traffic to popular U.S. destinations is higher, even if much of the bulk content is delivered from a local CDN. But third world customers can't and won't pay first world prices so an ISP operating there is operating on thinner margins. So they have huge incentives to experiment with their pricing models.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:00PM (6 children)
Having decentralized data centers is not the same as buying space in the ISP's data centers. And the market forces that have caused major Internet service providers like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix to decentralize are mostly orthogonal to net neutrality.
Local caches are becoming untenable for licensing and security reasons. You can't universally cache Netflix's DRMed streams, and you can't universally cache SSL resources. CDNs are on the way out too because of CommonJS / ES6 development practices, which are only made possible by the increased bandwidth available for streaming. Since that's the direction the internet is going, ISPs are going to need to be prepared anyway. If their solution doesn't work within net neutrality rules, you can bet that it involves throttling, bandwidth caps, and/or tiered pricing structures a la cable TV. Most people would really prefer the cable TV way of doing business to die, not infect our internet service.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:29PM (2 children)
Free speech activists say this is just another vector to shut down freedom of expression on the internet. I follow progressive politics, and already Twitter and YouTube have been banning and demonotising content and accounts either silently or using "Russia, Russia, Russia" hysteria. Hell, they've attacked Wikileaks with the Russia thing so much people are actuallly starting to believe it... repetition (repetition, repetition, repetition) is the oldest form of mind control after all. (BTW, Jimmy Dore does a great job debunking the mainstream narrative : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9U6nKHJmk [youtube.com] ). If deprioritising political voices into oblivion becomes possible it WILL happen. Disagree with a companies interests? Piss off a government entity and the company has headquarters in its juristiction? If this becomes legal it WILL be used for censorship.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:21PM (1 child)
I can't tell what you're responding to. Did you put this in the wrong place?
Do I interpret you correctly that fast laning / zero rating / bundles will be "another vector to shut down freedom of expression on the internet"? It's an interesting point. However, "Twitter and YouTube" didn't obtain the power to censor their users for progressive purposes. They gain it for free by virtue of their decentralized infrastructure, unless they go out of their way to give us end-to-end encryption like Apple and Google sometimes do. And in YouTube's case, they have long used that capability to serve the MPAA/RIAA mafia.
If they are censoring unpopular speech, it's because that's what the market wants them to do with their power. But the fundamental problem is that they have that power to begin with. It's arguably worse if they never use their censorship powers the way they are now, because then the sheeple wouldn't know that they were capable of censorship at all. As it stands, censoring Russian propaganda etc. only makes it easier to make exactly the argument you are making.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:29AM
The argument I was making is if censorship became so bad on mainstream platforms that people tried moving to eg. Diaspora (federated Facebook replacement), Mastodon (federated Twitter replacement) etc... then these could (and probably would) be made to perform so badly as to be unusable (because Netflix!). You're right that the market wants mainstream platforms to censor speech... viewers aren't the customers, they're the product after all (the customers being companies often owned by oligarchs with a certain political views).
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday November 29 2017, @01:05PM (2 children)
Aren't they already doing that?
https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-with-isps-around-the-globe-to-deliver-a-great-viewing-experience [netflix.com]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:01PM (1 child)
Netflix Open Connect is not a universal cache. It works specifically with Netflix streams. If these streams were universally cacheable, Open Connect would not exist. But Netflix streams never could be universally cacheable, because that would require them to be universally copyable. The owners that license content to Netflix do not want that content to be universally copyable. Therefore, Netflix needed to develop a domain-specific cache that keeps copies under Netflix's direct control.
The internet was designed for universally copyable content. That's what insecure HTTP is supposed to be - GET a URI, and any server between here and there can deliver its cached copy depending on the cache settings returned by the server (or in their absence, a predefined set of default settings). It only works when those servers are capable of owning a copy of that resource.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:06AM
Oh, right. I figured you meant 'universal' as in 'all of the Netflix content'.
Indeed. It's the same reason there are so many mutually incompatible Internet media-playing services: Spotify/iTunes/Google Play Music/Amazon music, or Netflix/Amazon video/Google Play video/iTunes video/Hulu/Now TV/Vimeo/Rakuten/Playstation Store/Microsoft Store/BBC iPlayer/the many different TV catchup services. It's the same idea each time, but they're always going to be incompatible because of the questions of DRM and control (and perhaps marketing and 'customer ownership').
I think you mean the web.
Indeed, and that sort of openness is at odds with the requirements of Netflix et al, and you say.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NewNic on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:06PM (1 child)
Netflix offered to install Open Connect boxes inside Comcast's network, eliminating most of the peering traffic, and Comcast refused, at least initially, until Netflix was convinced to pay Comcast.
A likely end result of the loss of net neutrality in the USA is not a menu of options as in the linked article, but rather that video and other services will cost more. Netflix and other subscription rates will increase.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 4, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:49PM
A result that I'm sure will have nothing to do with Comcast's competing video distribution service with zero-rated streaming.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:22PM (2 children)
I mostly agree with your points, but you seem fairly oblivious to the realities of ISP finance. There's a lot of misconceptions about why bandwidth costs what it does.
You can't just waive a magic wand and have bandwidth at your house. Building an ISP is a MASSIVE infrastructure investment. Keeping up with the last mile improvements required to deliver any sort of decent service is an insane treadmill, and people just don't understand why.
Last mile infrastructure investment is expensive. Really, mind bogglingly expensive, with relatively small return, and long amortization (more than 10 years), That assumes the ISP owns the physical plant. If not, they have to pay some sort of rent, and they're at the mercy of whoever does own the plant (Usually a incumbent competitor ISP!). That assumes there isn't any wireless in the mix, which implies issues of spectrum crowding, signal quality, and licensing that are out of the ISPs control.
The backbone infrastructure is the low-hanging fruit here. If there's a backbone capacity issue, that's the easy one to justify fixing, since it's relatively inexpensive (per customer). The problem is the last mile, which is hugely expensive on a per-customer basis.
The implication that ISPs are sitting on piles of cash and are holding back from easy capacity upgrades is, in most cases, a fallacy. Anywhere where there is more than one ISP available, they're going to be working hard to get more data to you faster.
These issues exist regardless of what sort of market you're in. Simply saying "an upstart ISP could do better" in a free market is ridiculous, the infrastructure costs are HUGE, and the per customer returns are relatively tiny.
You're right that more competition makes for better and faster services, but the real culprit for the headaches here is customer density. There's a reason why areas with extreme population density (Areas in Europe and Asia) have internet that's so much better, and that's because their per-customer infrastructure costs are so much lower.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:28PM
I understand perfectly well that ISP infrastructure is massively expensive. It's the main argument for why internet should be considered a public utility like electricity, because the rollout costs create a similar market problem.
Last-mile infrastructure isn't going to be affected by net neutrality, though. If it made sense to throttle certain traffic at that level, you would see more consumer-oriented products to do just that, because it would only impact the one customer. The argument here is about overloaded backbone infrastructure.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:09AM
Established, monopolistic ISPs are sitting on piles of cash, though. Their profit margins at this point are insane. Not so for new players, of course. And they also receive massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies, which they usually receive, waste, and then don't suffer any consequences for doing so. Force the ISPs to rent out their infrastructure so we can see some actual competition.