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 The rules that were repealed yesterday went in to effect in June 2015.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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  1. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Spin: 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.

    I didn’t remember that because I didn’t know it.  Have these rules now been undone, I hope?

    Good article, btw.

    • #1
  2. DWard Coolidge
    DWard
    @DWard

    Thanks.  Awesome post.  There’s so much misinformation going around, it’s good to see one person’s attempt to rebut it.

    • #2
  3. danok1 Member
    danok1
    @danok1

    Brilliant fisking, @spin!

    My kids are coming home from college this weekend; I expect I’ll be referring them to this article when they start bitchin’ and moanin’ about the greedy ISPs.

    • #3
  4. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    I still think it’s hilarious that they want to give control of the internet to an administration they hate. (Not just the internet, but with practically every aspect of their lives.)

    • #4
  5. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    danok1 (View Comment):
    Brilliant fisking, @spin!

    My kids are coming home from college this weekend; I expect I’ll be referring them to this article when they start bitchin’ and moanin’ about the greedy ISPs.

    Feel free to send me any questions or comments if you need help.

    • #5
  6. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    danok1 (View Comment):
    Brilliant fisking

    I learned a new term today!

    • #6
  7. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Here’s another thing I was thinking.  Proponents of NN tend to be progressives.  These are the same people that want to ration healthcare, water, electricity, etc. etc. etc. as a way to foster responsible stewardship of resources.  That’s a noble goal, I’d say, even if the method is wrong.

    But when it comes to the Internet, they want the tap full on, all the time, and they don’t want anyone to have to pay for it.

    • #7
  8. Typical Anomaly Inactive
    Typical Anomaly
    @TypicalAnomaly

    For those struggling with the concepts in the OP, there is a workable, but not perfect analogy: highways.

    Novelty: Was there an internet in 1964? No.  Were there interstate highways in 1949? No. Both are new enough that lots of folks remember life before either.

    Early competition:  Was there national overnight or two-day service from the post office in 1975?  No, they couldn’t be sure how long it would take a truck to get from A to B.  So there was the USPS, UPS and lots of small delivery services, no guarantees. Did practically every business have a website in 1996? No, for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the small number of homes with internet access.

    Competition grows: We now have UPS, FedEx, smaller competitors and the USPS offering premium delivery services. Think about the impact of Amazon’s Prime, they have the USPS delivering on Sundays now. Do you think maybe there’s been some innovation? Did Grandpa ever dream he could call to place an order and have it in hand the next day? Mind-boggling in its day.

    Likewise, today we can verbally ask for a product and it shows up the next day and our phones pull down rich content almost anywhere. I can unlock my house from an Uber four states away. Mind boggling, maybe?

    Access: Any restrictions to anyone taking a vehicle on the highway whether it’s a trip to the store or a delivery of a modular home? Anything stopping you from using the internet for business or pleasure?

    Paying the bills: The highway system has numerous sources of income, but what about the excise taxes on things that prove you’re likely using the highway (fuel and tires)? Who buys more tires, a local florist or FedEx? The heavier user pays a higher price. So if bandwidth costs money in electricity, copper cable, fiber, network devices, multiplexors, transmission lines and satellite gear (kind of like asphalt, viaducts, bridges, and snow clearing on highways), don’t we need the Netflix, HBO and Amazons of the planet to pony up if they get money from your use of the internet?

    Conclusion: We must have a disproportionate sharing of costs since there is a terribly disproportionate sharing of resources, or the cost to the consumer is so high the market evaporates.We could always go back to dirt roads and dial-up, if you don’t like innovation.

    • #8
  9. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Spin: “While a lot of this is kind of “guessing games” as to what ISP’s 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 ISP’s, and they’ll try and twist it any way they can to come off as the nice guy.”

    There is no known demonstration that Netflix was ever throttled.  Its been asserted, but it has never been established.

     

     

    • #9
  10. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    There is no known demonstration that Netflix was ever throttled.

    Of course not.  But if they were, so be it.

    Do you have any articles you can throw my way, though, that indicate this?

    • #10
  11. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Spin (View Comment):

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    There is no known demonstration that Netflix was ever throttled.

    Of course not. But if they were, so be it.

    Do you have any articles you can throw my way, though, that indicate this?

    The washington post article is in the video provided.

     

    Everything that I have ever read on teh subject have been one of 2 flavors.

    • There is switch capacity at the peering point but L3 and I believe verizon couldn’t come to terms into increase the connections between their switches.
    • or, I used a VPN and got a different experience

    Failure to upgrade isn’t a throttle.

    and

    Routing is a thing.

    Upon that flimsy base is the perceived threat to all democracy.

     

    So you manage an IT organization, you know what happened.  Its like the FBI yelling at the electrician in Die Hard.  They are yelling about how to bill, or upgrade, or whatever, and the engineer is like “dude guys I can just create a couple of queues across the peering point and solve the quality issue for most people.  I’ll be done in like 2 hours.”  You know who that guy is on the conference call.

    • #11
  12. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    We know what a QoS enabled internet looks like, because it already exists.  VoiP and Video Conferencing (and probably wall streets transactions), will get prioritization, and certain things like torrents may get deprioritized.  But the vast majority of users will never notice except that where quality of experience is noticeable it will get better.

    I mean come on.  Nobody is going to block your website.  And netflix is never going to pay for priority queuing of buffered TCP traffic.  Lets get real.

    What is going to happen is that small and medium (and some large) sized businesses will demand it to improve the performance of their cloud services as an alternative to expensive MPLS networks.

    I think some people are already providing QoS on internet traffic that doesn’t leave the providers network, I head that somewhere.

    • #12
  13. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Further,

    When all this started I decided to put on my MBA hat and looked over a number of financial statements from various publically traded network providers.

    Comcast was the winner with their 9% margin.  (a great big whoopity doo)

    Buried in a footnote in verizon’s statements was a note that seperated out the operating income statements of their various lines of business nad the operating margin of verizon wireline services (everything in the ground including fios) was 0.9%.  This is probably why they are selling their networks in various markets.

    So greed isn’t really a thing.

     

    • #13
  14. Jager Coolidge
    Jager
    @Jager

    My daughter came home from school and they had been talking about Net Neutrality being repealed and how it was going to make everything bad and expensive and ruin their use of the internet.

    I am not an expert on this so thanks @spin for this article.

    What I did tell her is that these rules were first put in place in the middle of 2015, so the terrible outcome is that we go back to the way the internet worked in early 2015, when everything was just fine. That made her think and laugh about how upset everyone in her class had been.

    • #14
  15. Nerina Bellinger Inactive
    Nerina Bellinger
    @NerinaBellinger

    Thanks for this, Spin.  Very timely indeed.  My high school-aged daughter came home saying kids were practically in tears yesterday over Net Neutrality.  One of her friends said something like, “this is what happens when you have late-stage Capitalism (whatever THAT means) – corporations screwing the little guy.”  There is so much work to do with these young brains.  Now I can point my daughter to your explanation.

    • #15
  16. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    It’s nice to think that the threat of net neutrality is over, but it isn’t. The next Democrat adminstration might resurrect it. So it’s good to educate whomever you can.

    • #16
  17. Nerina Bellinger Inactive
    Nerina Bellinger
    @NerinaBellinger

    Jager (View Comment):
    My daughter came home from school and they had been talking about Net Neutrality being repealed and how it was going to make everything bad and expensive and ruin their use of the internet.

    I am not an expert on this so thanks @spin for this article.

    What I did tell her is that these rules were first put in place in the middle of 2015, so the terrible outcome is that we go back to the way the internet worked in early 2015, when everything was just fine. That made her think and laugh about how upset everyone in her class had been.

    Me too, Jager.  That’s exactly what I said to my daughter too and I got a similar reaction.  I didn’t know much more than that at the time which make me very grateful for Spin’s post.

    • #17
  18. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Aaron Miller (View Comment):
    It’s nice to think that the threat of net neutrality is over, but it isn’t. The next Democrat adminstration might resurrect it. So it’s good to educate whomever you can.

    Ain’t that the truth.

    I think the industry is changing in ways that make NN moot.  But I fear that NN will delay those changes.

    • #18
  19. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Nerina Bellinger (View Comment):
    this is what happens when you have late-stage Capitalism (whatever THAT means) – corporations screwing the little guy.

    What is so frustrating is that it’s so called net neutrality that screws the little guy.

    • #19
  20. SirZog Member
    SirZog
    @

    Guruforhire (View Comment):

    I mean come on. Nobody is going to block your website. And netflix is never going to pay for priority queuing of buffered TCP traffic. Lets get real.

    While Netflix doesn’t get “charged” in the way that most people think (as you said), they do pay a cost for their bandwidth usage expressed as the Netflix OpenConnect program.  This program places cache devices locally at the ISP at no charge to the ISP (no hardware costs except for operating costs which are still born by the ISP).  My local ISP “guy” (I’m rural so literally know the owner of the ISP) is just short of the volume required to get these installed but would install one in a heartbeat as it has the potential to free up a non-trivial portion of their upstream traffic.

    So Netflix’s bandwidth usage is not “charged” – but they are under pressure to provide a good user experience and having these remote caches for the most popular content are one way to do it and reduce load on the ISPs.

    Yeah, and nobody is going to block your website.

     

    • #20
  21. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Thanks to the author and other posters for lifting the veil on this stuff.  As is often the case today, words matter and progressives set the tone through the choice of words–“net neutrality” is more a marketing term than an accurate descriptions of the regs that were just junked.   And for others beset by hysteria on the home front,  I also found this helpful.

    • #21
  22. Typical Anomaly Inactive
    Typical Anomaly
    @TypicalAnomaly

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    I think some people are already providing QoS on internet traffic that doesn’t leave the providers network, I head that somewhere.

    Yes, that’s true. Mostly because the internet is not a public utility, it’s a public service running on cooperating private utilities. So if a tier 1 provider can be sure the traffic will stay on its network, it can use an arbitrary QoS marking in the traffic which will be respected by the next device in line. They can groom the traffic more efficiently and reduce the number of under-utilized  links (efficiency directly affects profitability).

    As soon as marked traffic crosses over to another provider, who knows what the QoS marking means? They have little choice but to discard QoS info received from a foreign network. Bye-bye priority.

    • #22
  23. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):
    I still think it’s hilarious that they want to give control of the internet to an administration they hate. (Not just the internet, but with practically every aspect of their lives.)

    The administration belongs to the Deep State, except for a few places where Trump has made inroads. They’ll get them back one way or another.

    • #23
  24. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    Nobody is going to block your website.

    Yes, they will. It happens in China. There is shadowbanning here in the U.S. Certain hosts will not allow politically loathsome websites.  So, yes, they will block your website.

    • #24
  25. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    As I recently pointed out this argument is one group of companies using the force of government to screw over another group of companies, and I should thank the first group and call them heroes for doing so.

     

    A point made is that what prevents groups like Netflix and one cable company signing sweetheart deals with each other and strangling out the competitors?

     

    Also what about Portugal? They do not have Net Neutrality so they say, how do they stack up?

     

    Personal opinion. NN is about as important a debate as giving away the Panama canal to the Panamanians was.  A great hullybaloo about nothing.

    • #25
  26. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Government schools are child abuse. No wonder so many of our children are so unhappy.

    • #26
  27. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Very good conversation, information and logic @spin.

    The other soundbite for the tykes is … “what were the problems with the internet before Obama imposed the so-called “Net Neutrality” rules originally in 2015?” Answer none. They are losing their minds over nothing. Senator Ted Cruz has rightly called these stupid archaic imposed rules as “Obamacare for the Internet”. These rules “apply utility-style regulation originally written for telephone companies to both land-based and wireless Internet services.”

    Lastly, these stupid archaic rules almost were declared un-Constitutional. While they were narrowly upheld by the DC Court of Appeals in June, 2016, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Century Link, along with cable, wireless and telecom trade groups, filed a lawsuit to overturn the order. From the filing:

    AT&T immediately announced it would appeal the ruling, saying it’s always expected the issue to be decided by the Supreme Court. Several industry trade groups are expected to join the effort.

     

     

    • #27
  28. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Thanks Spin, being old I really had no idea what this was all about. Just another leftist lie like the affordable care act. It’s anything but affordable. Net neutrality anything but neutral.

    • #28
  29. GFHandle Member
    GFHandle
    @GFHandle

    BEST thing I have read on the subject.

    Besides, if a mega corp is for it and another mega corp is against it, why should we let either get its way?

    And if I am forced to choose between the Googles etc. and AT&Ts etc. I go with the guys with the hardware.

     

    • #29
  30. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Hear hear!  Well said!

    • #30
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