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Net Neutrality: A Guy in the Trenches
My son had a little discussion with one of his millennial friends on Facebook about Net Neutrality. I took the liberty of writing direct responses to his friends’ points, which I publish here for your review and comment. (Their points are in block quotes.)
Jodie says I can’t just cast aspersions, I should educate you young people. So here goes. But first, my bona fides. I’ve worked in IT for nearly 30 years, longer than you guys have been alive. I currently work directly in the telecom industry and interact with all of the major carriers, and many of the minor ones. I am responsible for bandwidth provision throughout the country, as well as some locations internationally, and I have a deep, expert understanding of how the industry works. My opinion isn’t based on what I read on Facebook. It’s based on experience and understanding.
The reality of this is entirely opposite of how he’s explaining it.
No, it is exactly how he is explaining it. [Ben] Shapiro obviously doesn’t fully understand the issue, most people don’t because they aren’t experts in the field (which I am). But he has the basics exactly right.
Netflix was already basically forced to pay to have their internet traffic kept up to speed (right around the time that ISP/Cable companies suffered (if I remember correctly) one of their biggest drops in cable TV subscriptions. Netflix was once small, and thanks to a no-favoritism internet, was able to thrive and succeed the way it is today.
Nonsense. Netflix is a $9B corporation. The rules that were repealed yesterday went in to effect in June 2015. Netflix was a $5.5B corporation in FY2014 and had experienced 25% YoY growth. The notion that Netflix was “able to thrive” because of “no-favoritism” internet is unsupported by the facts. That said, of course, a $9B corporation wants the government to regulate some of its costs away. How else to keep the little guy from becoming a competitor? Further, in 2015, the year net neutrality rules went in to place, Netflix was consuming close to 40% of the overall bandwidth, and making cold, hard cash doing it. Of course, they should kick in some do-re-mi to fund the infrastructure. Of course, they should.
Now imagine you’re trying to start a web service; be it an online store (Amazon-esque), social network, or even a webpage for your own small business. Net neutrality would’ve given your small website as much of an opportunity to be loaded at high speed than any other website out there. Without Net Neutrality, Comcast now has the power to tell you to pay “$x” monthly (on top of your monthly plan/package, domain rental, etc.) or we’ll throttle your traffic down to bare minimum (just like they did with Netflix).
Also nonsense. First, Comcast already throttles you at the source, based on the class of service you purchase. But even so, you think the bandwidth in use by your aunt’s little jewelry business is even a drop in the bucket? It’s chicken scratch by comparison to the bandwidth in use by the bigs. In actual fact, the opposite of what your friend is saying is true. Comcast isn’t going to charge you because your use is small. They are going to make Netflix pay because they put the most strain on the infrastructure.
Now consider this from a consumer standpoint. Do you enjoy social media? GREAT NEWS! Our new social media package lets you browse all your social media websites at full speed, only $5.00 more per month! How about Netflix? Streaming package, $10 per month! Do you play video games online? You do?! How about the video game package, another $10 per month! Rinse and repeat for any number of categories/prices.
First, this isn’t going to happen, because #Capitalism; but if it did, great! That’s actually great news! Pay for play. Why should gramma who reads e-mail and plays solitaire on her tablet fund “the internet?” You know who should be paying top dollar? Us. We use the crap out of the Internet. So an a la carte option for bandwidth consumption is actually a good thing for consumers.
The internet is one of the most, if not THE MOST pivotal piece of modern technology. It is monumentally important in global infrastructure, and they (3/5 people, who the public never voted for, they were appointed) just voted to give control over traffic to an oligopoly.
There is some truth to this, though I won’t say “the internet” I’ll say “bandwidth.” Bandwidth is to the current century what container shipping was to the last. (n/t @roblong) But guess what? Bandwidth costs money. Real money. And a lot of it. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure, which is constantly under strain, and constantly being upgraded. Constantly.
Now, basic economics lesson: who pays? Someone has to pay. Because a Cisco CMTS costs a boatload of cash (we bought an “end-of-life” CMTS for our lab, used, for $150k, to give you a sense of what one costs). So who pays? The consumer. Always. Always. Always. You are going to pay for it one way or another. And that’s the end of it.
I realize the progs want something for nothing, make the rich pay for it, whatever. That just ain’t the way the world works. Anyone who says different is ignorant of basic economics. Now, as far as the 3-2 vote, keep in mind that the rules put in place were voted for on the same split, by a similar group of unelected bureaucrats. As long as we are trying to save representative democracy while we are arguing for nonsense, let’s remember that.
And let’s remember that Congress spent 10 years trying to pass laws in various forms, but because our system is so broken, and we are so divided, it never happened. Let’s also remember that Tom Wheeler’s FCC, on the same day they voted in the Net Neutrality rules, voted in rules overriding individual states’ ability to regulate within their own states. Another blow to federalism. So if we are going to wring our hands, let’s wring our hands for real. Let’s not pick and choose.
This doesn’t just effect the US either, this effects the world. Anybody, no matter their location, trying to access information/a website hosted in the US will be at the mercy of the ISPs/whether the host paid for priority traffic. That opens an entirely different can of worms.
Strawman argument. For all the reasons above this is a bogus argument. Plus, it happens now, anyway. Try looking at the BBC UK version of their website. You can’t. Because #GovernmentRegulation. And you can get around it, anyway, using VPN technologies. So, nope, ain’t buyin’ it.
While a lot of this is kind of “guessing games” as to what ISPs will actually do now that they have the power to do it. They have already shown exactly what they intend to do when they bullied Netflix into paying big bucks to keep their traffic up to speed. If Netflix has to pay, then so will you, in subscription costs (expect a higher Netflix cost and a higher internet bill). This benefits nobody but the ISPs, and they’ll try and twist it any way they can to come off as the nice guy.
They’ve always had the “ability to do it” and only haven’t for the last couple of years. So this is another strawman argument. Plus, I love how people hate the corporations when it suits them, but they don’t when it doesn’t. “If Netflix has to pay, then so will you!” That is a basic truth of economics, see above. I wish you guys would adopt this sort of attitude when you are calling for taxes and regulations on these companies. But you seem to forget it most of the time.
My final point: this industry is changing, and it is changing fast. Net Neutrality rules are backward looking. And they stifle innovation. We don’t know where the industry is going to end up, but those of us who are in it have a pretty good idea. And it is going to get better and better for the consumers of bandwidth. The very last thing we should be doing is regulating bandwidth providers as if they were a phone company. It’s just backward thinking.
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Well, Google has a lot of hardware, too.
So what did your son’s friends think of your response?
The reality is in a year they won’t even remember this was a thing and it will be evident that nothing happened to their internet. Hopefully they will take a lesson that most of the time, end-of-the-world prognostications are just a lot of noise to try to stir up voters.
Glad to be of service.
Just remember, it’s a “k,” not a “t.” That’s something else entirely….
Apparently nothing. No replies thus far.
Gross.
Do tell.
Prog: “The internet is one of the most, if not THE MOST pivotal piece of modern technology. It is monumentally important in global infrastructure…”
Yes, and it got that way by being completely and utterly unregulated…until a scant 2 years ago. It was already “THE MOST pivotal piece of modern technology” and “monumentally important in global infrastructure” on February 25, 2015, the day before the FCC voted to implement NN.
Why can’t the demented progs get that fundamental fact, that inconvenient truth, through their thick skulls? (I think I answered my own question. Twice.)
So Tom Woods of the Tom Woods show is looking to host a Net Neutrality debate and is looking for people to be on the No NN side. You interested?
I believe that we’ll see a split between content providers (think NBC / Comcast, Netflix, Amazon, etc.) and bandwidth providers. Companies like Comcast will become strictly bandwidth providers. I think they may keep what we’ve known as “broadcast television” (NBC, CBS, ABC) for a time, but I think those companies will have to change or die. More and more, they put out garbage, people will quit watching them. So content creators such as AMC, Netflix, HBO will do what they do, and the companies that own the infrastructure will do what they do. That alone renders the arguments in favor of Net Neutrality to be moot. I for one give no time or money to those big broadcast companies. But I do pay AMC (via Xbox) for The Walking Dead. I do pay HGTV for some show my wife watches, the name of which is escaping me. Now maybe Comcast gets smart and starts selling it that way. But I am not sure about that at this point.
Further, I think that we are on the cusp of big changes in bandwidth provision. We can see it already, really. We’ve talked for a long time about fiber to the home, and that is becoming a reality. But another thing that is a real contender is neighborhood WiFi, and cellular. Cellular bandwidth is getting cheaper, and faster, and I don’t think we are too far away from it being a real competitor to the hard line broadband providers. I mean, I already support folks whose sole internet connection is a Verizon hotspot. Now, that doesn’t work for my family, because we consume a terabyte of data every month. But it can work for a lot of people.
So bottom line? I see more competition down the line, more options.
Not really. I have a life. ;-)
I thought this was so great I went over and posted it on the original conversation.
They in fact are doing that, as well as dedicated L3 and/or physical infrastructure either to (or through) provider CoLo and into the public cloud offerings – see Azure Express Route.
It’s pretty cool technology, but right now costs an arm and a leg. However working with several Enterprise customers they are willing to pay for the guaranteed low latency connections. It allows them to host transactional infrastructure (think databases or analytics) in the cloud where they can scale on demand and access it with near LAN speeds and latency.
For everyone else who doesn’t want to pay for that we can use a VPN…higher latencies, but we run over (mostly) the same pipes.
But the opposite is actually happening. Comcast acquired NBC Universal (from GE) not so long ago, and AT&T is trying to acquire Time Warner.
Not necessarily too bring on their part, IMO, the perceived synergies may well wind up being outweighed by the negative synergies, but telcos have a long-standing desire to be something other than what they are, despite lack of evidence that they’re very good at it.
I’m not in the industry, and I barely understand a minimal part, but it still seems to me, as @spin puts it in comment #40 that more competition will come in because consumers (users) are a demanding lot. If someone provides an option we prefer, we will go to it.
Consumer demand is the component that often is missing from the “Net Neutrality” debate, as though our wants have no bearing on what service providers provide.
Here’s a good explanation of some of the detail behind the Netflix/Verizon spat. Notice that another carrier, Level 3, was also involved.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/21/5922793/verizon-level-3-netflix-peering-transit-congestion
A useful analogy for understanding the Internet is the US freight railroad system. Railcars can be transported between origins and designations anywhere in the country even though they are on different railroads with different ownership. This is accomplished by handing the cars off at identified interchange points.
There are also interchange points for different Internet providers…but, whereas in railroading there are long-standing tariff agreements for how interline billing works, the Internet evolved primarily via ‘peering’ relationships in which carriers agree to interchange traffic, without charge, for their mutual benefit.
Changes in traffic patterns can make a peering agreement that *was* mutually-beneficial cease to be so.
Well done, Spin.
On the local news last night they reported that 80% of people are opposed to rescinding Net Neutrality. My wife and I both snorted at that and asked each other what percentage of people even know what NN is? But it’s got some people riled up. One of my co-workers saw antifa-looking demonstrators with pro-Net Neutrality signs this morning, in Fargo.
Everyone I know who works in IT says “Net Neutrality” is bad. I’ll take their opinions before those of some 20-something pajama-boy who works for Vox.
Sure, but Time Warner is also a telecom. I’m saying that it’s going to change, I think. And that happens when we stop watching their programming all together. But our old people have to die first, not to be morbid.
I know some folks in IT that support NN. But they are young and foolish. ;-)
Totally using…
do we need to let them in on the secret.
Sharing as widely as possible in my little world. I’ve had to unfollow people on FB because of the hyperbole and hyperventilation over this issue.
It seems that many people have forgotten that companies that abuse their customers run out of customers and die.
Also, this is what most people are imagining.
Yes. Lefties seem to see consumers as victims of greed but not to see over-regulated citizens as victims of power lust. I wonder if it has something to do with the first few years of life, after all.
For the last week, my high school seniors were coming into my class talking about Net Neutrality; they’d been studying it in Gov’t class & their take was bad ISPs (although some didn’t know what an ISP is or what the acronym stands for) vs Netflix & their personal, low/no-cost ability to stream content. “How can 3 unelected people make this kind of a decision?”
“Yes”, I replied, “this is a problem with governmental agencies.”
Yesterday, students came in, “Mrs. S, Net Neutrality is Dead!!!”.
”Good,” I replied. “There is no reason for heavy consumers of bandwidth, the content providers, not to pay what it costs the ISP to upgrade the infrastructure to provide increased bandwidth. And, it doesn’t matter if there is Net Neutrality or not; we, the consumers, are going to pay. We’re either going to pay higher rates to the ISP or to Netflix or Amazon.”
”But Netflix is going to charge me $2.99 every time I want to watch a movie.”
“Netflix already knows that if it raises rates too high it will lose subscribers. It’s happened to them before. They’re trying to scare you.”
Discussion went on to speculating about the return of video rental stores.
Another students says, “Here comes 2005.”
Honestly, it seems I was the only adult at school who mentioned the costs to the ISPs. It’s discouraging that they couldn’t even learn about both sides of the issue in their class.
And if video stores come back because the value they provide is greater than the the value Netflix provides, the winners will be the consumers, i. e. them.
The coversation did go on a bit longer to include recounting fond memories of going to Blockbuster with their parents to choose movies.
I only wish I had thought of making the point that if paying more for movies made them watch fewer movies, they’d have more time for homework.
Final exams are next week.
Ain’t that the truth. I was in the room when the then CEO of Bell Atlantic (heard from them lately?) was explaining to a bunch of IBMer and Apple folks how he was going to eat Blockbuster’s lunch. In 1993, with circuit provisioned DSL. Hah! Bell heads keep kidding themselves, the shareholders are the ones who get to cry.
This isn’t a bad idea, selling undifferentiated highly regulated capital intensive services, is not the way to make money or heck avoid bankruptcy. We definitely don’t want to turn ISPs into airlines.