Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP Network Neutrality

Mon May 12 13:44:33 UTC 2014

Google Fiber and various other FTTH services disprove the "omg it costs a
lot" theory.  This is purely a money grab by a monopoly, sanctioned by the
FCC because.. the people doing the money grab own the FCC.  It helps to
keep in mind that several of the parties involved in this grab *HAVE
ALREADY BEEN PAID TO EXPAND THEIR NETWORKS BY THE PUBLIC, AND HAVE FAILED
TO DO SO*.  I'm not really sure how anyone could view this whole thing as
fair, honest or even legal.  I also fully expect the FCC to sign off on it
as the receipt says "Paid by Verizon."
Nick

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:

> On 10/05/2014 22:34, Randy Bush wrote:
> > imiho think vi hart has it down simply and understandable by a lay
> > person.  <http://vihart.com/net-neutrality-in-the-us-now-what/>.  my
> > friends in last mile providers disagree.  i take that as a good sign.
>
> Vi's analogy is wrong on a subtle but important point.  In the analogy, the
> delivery company needs to get a bunch of new trucks to handle the delivery
> but as the customer is paying for each delivery instances, the delivery
> company's costs are covered by increased end-user charges.
>
> In the net neutrality debate, the last mile service providers are in a
> position where they need to upgrade their access networks, but the end-user
> pricing is not necessarily keeping pace.
>
> There are lot of ways to argue this point, depending on whether you're the
> user, the access provider or the content provider.
>
> From a financial point of view, the content providers will say that access
> providers need to charge their end users in a way which reflects their
> usage requirements because let's face it, it's the users that are pulling
> the traffic - they're not sending traffic to arbitrary IP addresses just
> for the fun of it.  The end users will say that they're only going to pay
> market rate for their services, and they won't care whether this covers
> their costs or not.  The access providers will say that they're only
> upgrading to deal with the additional requirements of the larger content
> providers, particularly the CDNs and the video streaming services, and that
> the going market rate doesn't allow them to charge the end users more.
> Besides, it's a whole pile easier to chase a small number of companies for
> a large amount of money than it is to chase a large number of customer for
> a small amount of money.  Even better, if you chase the the content sources
> for cash, you can do this without increasing customer prices which means
> you can stay more competitive in the sales market.  So from a business
> perspective it makes lots of sense to deprioritise the large companies that
> don't pay in favour of the ones that do.  Those who pay get better service
> for their customers;  seems fair, right?
>
> From the proverbial helicopter viewpoint, we are walking towards a
> situation where the short-term business actions of the individual companies
> involved in the industry is going to lead towards customers being hurt and
> this means that the likely long-term outcome is more regulation and
> legislative control imposed on the industry.  It is another tragedy of the
> commons.
>
> Nick
>
>
>