FCC Unveils Plan To Repeal Net Neutrality Rules

[2FA]

25 minutes ago, deadpaww said:

You're saying that while we have NN though...so that isn't something that NN is fixing.

It's only been in place since 2015 (Title II), that's not long enough to have an impact. Also refer to my previous post where ISPs admitted their network investments weren't impacted.

[Maxxtraxx]

30 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Can you put text not written by yourself into quotations so it's clearer what are your opinions, and what are opinions of the person you are quoting?

 

As for his argument, I'd argue that we should look at how Europe is doing, internet wise. Many of them are heavy on regulations, but still have massive investment and are getting speeds that make the US look sad.

Fixed my quoting for clarification.

 

Are you sure Europe is doing that much better?

According to information Here

 

It doesn't look terribly impressive, Sweden being the top performer at 19Mbps. I am at 25 Mbps myself(I rarely need anywhere near that speed, but it is useful for downloading big steam games. I have to confess that I do really like the Xfinity hotspots that are popping up seemingly everywhere now and allows me to avoid using my project fi data.) I could easily go to over 300 Mbps if I Really wanted to now that docsis 3.1 is active.

 

 None of my friends or family that have 5-10Mbps(because they choose to have cheaper service) have ever complained to me about speed, my parents have gone to antenna TV and streaming vs cable TV, I myself noticed zero difference in performance with normal usage when I went from 10 to 25 other than with large download times.

[Taf the Ghost]

I haven't gotten into this as there really isn't much to talk about. There's Google's Propaganda position and there is Comcast's Propaganda position. Google's just plays on Leftist sensibilities so they feel "good" about the situation, while ignoring it that this is wholly about Google protecting its own economic interests. 

 

But there is one thing that keeps coming up: non-Americans don't realize just how many municipalities exist in the USA and that many have taken very different approaches to infrastructure development. All that is happening between the FCC & FTC is regulatory regimes that the companies have to deal with in regards to the Federal level. With the exception of Military bases & FedGov property, everything is approved at the Local & State level.

 

It's almost as if the whole "Americans don't understand us!" is a lie to cover up that it's impossible to know a lot about every important topic.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Maxxtraxx said:

Are you sure Europe is doing that much better?

According to information Here

That is one of the dangers of statistics and averages. Another key metric to also look at is what is available and where to then understand the difference on offer and also why the averages are the way they are.

 

If you look at NZ the average for that source (2015, Q1 2017 Akami reports our peak average as 70.8 Mbit/s) is 9.3Mbps for us however every major city and large town has 1Gbps plans available with free installation and costs a very reasonable amount per month, even when you compare it to the cost of much slower ADSL or VDSL that smaller towns and rural areas only have available.

 

Basically in those reports also look at the peak average figures and you'll notice US is very much slower than most other developed nations in the world.

https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf

 

The internet technologies that utilize existing copper phone lines are greatly effected by distance from node and being in a country where a significant proportion of people live in those areas the average speed over the country is low.

 

2 hours ago, Maxxtraxx said:

The biggest difference that we all seem to have is exactly how much input the governing authorities in the US specifically should have. My observations are that the majority of this forum is left leaning in their outlook and values which almost inherently means greater government intrusion and regulation where as most dissenting voices(myself included) perfer a hands off approach as much as possible, believing that the entire system as a whole can do much better by promoting a free market as much as possible.

I'm certainly not saying more regulation, not specifically, however what I am saying is regulation is required. There isn't a realistic option for none which is what some have being trying to propose.

 

Sweden and NZ are actually different in how the fibre network was deployed. Sweden is government owned where as NZ it is not government owned however it was government funded and designed. Each area in the country fibre installers put bids in for the contracts to deploy the infrastructure so there was equal opportunity and multiple different companies were awarded contracts. So we ended up with privately owned fibre network with government regulations on how that network is operated, ISPs resell access to this network to customers at regulated pricing but that does not mean every ISP plan is the same price or has the same terms to it.

[Guest]

If they repeal NN, when Google Fiber becomes more widespread the big ISPs are going to realize how terribly they screwed up (assuming Google doesn't betray us as well, but I'm hoping they won't).

[TheCherryKing]

23 minutes ago, NWhite4720 said:

If they repeal NN, when Google Fiber becomes more widespread the big ISPs are going to realize how terribly they screwed up (assuming Google doesn't betray us as well, but I'm hoping they won't).

Google Fiber will not become widespread due to local politics of various areas. Net neutrality has nothing to do with the physical internet infrastructure so repealing it won't make a difference in that way.

[TheCherryKing]

It's all speculation. There is no proof that the internet will be throttled more when net neutrality is repealed. It is also extremely ignorant to say that those that support removing net neutrality are Russians, bots, or ISP's. There are genuinely people out there that oppose net neutrality and for good reasons. Most Americans don't even know what net neutrality is!

[Mike Soda]

Please watch this & share it if you haven't already, plus encourage anyone who can CBA to contact whoever. If you disagree I can't say I understand, but I will always respect the varying opinions of others. If this has been posted on the forums already I'm sorry & would appreciate a forum mod deleting it if necessary.

 

[Uzume]

When NN goes - it means that ISPs will also be able to abuse their monopolies just like how other software tech companies do every day.

 

It won't be the end of the world, it will just be another sh_t strawberry on top of an already overflowing sh_t sundae.

Edited December 1, 2017 by zzrhardy
grammer

[mr moose]

13 hours ago, Spenser1337 said:

What's the alternative? Heavy government influence? Lol.

 

I think his reference to capitalism was by the virtue of it being used as an excuse to further an oligopoly.  Because the US is slowly leaving a capitalist system and heading into an oligopoly, where any large corporation can just throw money at the government and have laws changed/ignored.

[vanished]

-notice-

 

While this seems to be a very politically charged topic and thus would normally be shut down, it was decided a while back to allow this discussion since it's such an important tech issue.  However, because of the popularity, it has caused a sprouting of many, many topics all over the forum.  While it is generally easier to just lock these additional threads, especially when they've gotten off to a terrible start, I have done my best to merge all remaining ones in here so we can keep the discussion organized and get as many people as possible on it at once rather than fragmenting across the forum.  It should also help to avoid people having to restate opinions over and over.  Lastly, I hope it will be obvious to anyone reading this thread that, as always, all opinions are welcome provided they do not insult others or break the rules in some other manner.  If we really wanted to make this one sided, it would be very easy to make a pinned post of "facts" and just silence any opposition, but we have no interest in doing that.  We will however, as always, remove any discussion of moderation as that is not relevant or appropriate.

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, CUDA_Cores said:

If Comcast or whoever starts doing this, in a few years some California startup will come up with gigabit internet beamed everywhere with satellites or something. Comcast will then change their policies, or die. 

There are a number of issue with this however. Long range multi-gigabit wireless already exists, I myself used to have a 100Mbps wireless connection because my neighbors would not sign consent for work on the shared drive way. Anyway that was an excellent service but lacks the ability to service dense population, certainly a viable option though.

 

Satellite internet access has horrible latency so if you want to do anything other than stream Netflix you're going to have much lower quality of service.

 

The last option and the most viable is 4G/5G internet services which we already have here in NZ, it's actually really good (up to 70Mbps). Again this does suffer from density issues but you can deploy more 4G/5G towers and implement smart controls to steer clients to less busy towers etc.

 

But there is still a problem, back-haul/peering/transit connectivity to an infrastructure provider. It's not hard to start a business and become an ISP along with acquiring your own IP space to control but you still need to provide your clients access to the wider internet either through a peer exchange agreement or reselling another ISP's actual service. Very easy to say another company can come along and add competition but that is not the reality of the matter, the reality is the US has only a few tier 1 ISPs and nothing happens without their say so and some of them are in the consumer/residential business as well so good luck trying to compete with that when you have to sign a peer exchange agreement with your direct competitor.

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

The last option and the most viable is 4G/5G internet services which we already have here in NZ, it's actually really good (up to 70Mbps). Again this does suffer from density issues but you can deploy more 4G/5G towers and implement smart controls to steer clients to less busy towers etc.

4G wireless broadband for rural areas without DSL or fiber are limited by data caps. Making them true unlimited data like wired internet is not a lucrative business model but also very difficult as wireless spectrum can only transmit as much data. Frequencies below 1GHz have very good coverage and building penetration but easily suffers from congestion since they carry less data. Frequencies above 1 GHz carry a lot of data but have shorter coverage and can’t penetrate buildings well. 

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

4G wireless broadband for rural areas without DSL or fiber are limited by data caps. Making them true unlimited data like wired internet is not a lucrative business model but also very difficult as wireless spectrum can only transmit as much data. Frequencies below 1GHz have very good coverage and building penetration but easily suffers from congestion since they carry less data. Frequencies above 1 GHz carry a lot of data but have shorter coverage and can’t penetrate buildings well. 

Yep that's exactly what we use it for, rural broadband using the restricted 700Mhz frequency band to alleviate interference and the lower frequency also assists with range/obstacles. I know someone who is about 15k-25k from the tower getting around 30Mbps, great service and certainly much better than the unusable ADSL alternative.

 

Edit:

700Mhz is reserved only for rural broadband here, nothing else is allowed to use that which is how it is able to give such a good service.

[captain_to_fire]

39 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yep that's exactly what we use it for, rural broadband using the restricted 700Mhz frequency band to alleviate interference and the lower frequency also assists with range/obstacles.

Does NZ’s wireless carriers like Vodafone and Spark share the same frequencies? 

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Does NZ’s wireless carriers like Vodafone and Spark share the same frequencies? 

Yes

 

Quote

Spark, 2Degrees and Vodafone all operate 4G networks in LTE band 3 and LTE band 28, with band 3 coverage mostly in cities and towns; band 28 available predominantly across rural towns, countryside, highways and coastal areas. Both Spark and Vodafone have licences to provide LTE band 7 services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_New_Zealand_Mobile#Competitors

[Bit_Guardian]

7 hours ago, TheCherryKing said:

It's all speculation. There is no proof that the internet will be throttled more when net neutrality is repealed. It is also extremely ignorant to say that those that support removing net neutrality are Russians, bots, or ISP's. There are genuinely people out there that oppose net neutrality and for good reasons. Most Americans don't even know what net neutrality is!

There is plenty of proof. Netflix, Amazon, and Google have all presented evidence before Congress and the FCC on how they were bent over with throttling by Comcast and Time Warner before NN, and they've publicly presented how that behavior changes post-NN.

[leadeater]

On 11/30/2017 at 6:48 AM, gabrielcarvfer said:

Even big companies hire third parties to install and maintain networks on specific places. Small cities that decided to build their own network did exactly the same.

 

On 11/30/2017 at 7:03 AM, Sauron said:

Again, this has nothing to do with the internet... they make LOCAL networks, they still get internet access from one of the major ISPs. If their ISP for whatever reason locks access to their website, they are screwed, period.

 

On 11/30/2017 at 7:09 AM, Eduard the weeb said:

3- Yeah but big companies use these things called contracts so you only work with them

 

 

This I can actually give some direct experience on for how it works for us since we are the example being talked about in a general sense.

 

I work for a university that has 3 campuses in 3 different cites around the country, we have two public /16 IPv4 address spaces (we also have IPv6) that we directly control. We have dual fibre feeds for each campus and provide our own equipment, the network provider we peer with is REANNZ and we do this with BGP. We are essentially our own ISP and if you do a speedtest the listed ISP will be our university name.

 

REANNZ is a special case and is a government funded network for education and research, however the physical fibre cables being used is the same for general internet. Much of this network is provided by Vocus who is the largest infrastructure ISP in NZ, if your using the internet your traffic will go through Vocus at some point. Anyway without REANNZ we would be making contracts directly with Vocus and CityLink but other than that there would be no difference.

 

https://reannz.co.nz/services/networking/network/

 

We are an ISP, we have a public AS number, we have control over our address space, we have our own ISP networking equipment infrastructure yet we are still at the mercy of an upstream infrastructure provider.

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

The same is valid for my university: we're linked to the RNP (national research network), that connects all campuses of all major universities plus a bunch of education/research government agencies and ministry. The difference is that we have multiple providers linking that network to other countries (Embratel, Level 3, Terramark, RedClara, Telefónica/Vivo, to name a few) and local ISPs (mainly from public traffic exchange points in all major cities).

We have the same, in fact REANNZ is linked to RNP and we have two 40Gbps connections to the US.

 

 

https://reannz.co.nz/about/what-we-do/

[WkdPaul]

6 hours ago, Bit_Guardian said:

There is plenty of proof. Netflix, Amazon, and Google have all presented evidence before Congress and the FCC on how they were bent over with throttling by Comcast and Time Warner before NN, and they've publicly presented how that behavior changes post-NN.

Please, let's not use facts to blind our opinions ... wait ...

Edited December 1, 2017 by wkdpaul
typos

[TheCherryKing]

2 hours ago, Bit_Guardian said:

There is plenty of proof. Netflix, Amazon, and Google have all presented evidence before Congress and the FCC on how they were bent over with throttling by Comcast and Time Warner before NN, and they've publicly presented how that behavior changes post-NN.

Prove it! 

 

[Bit_Guardian]

14 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

Prove it! 

 

I already have. It's public record. Netflix's own executives testified as such under oath.

 

You also have Verizon admitting it. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/16010766/verizon-netflix-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii

You have Charter and others trying to escape the lawsuits by arguing NN is dead anyway. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/charter-points-fccs-net-neutrality-repeal-lawsuit-alleging-netflix-throttling-1062035

 

There's also this little number: https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/

 

You're out of your league or you're a shill. Either way, you're toast.

[TheCherryKing]

Just now, Bit_Guardian said:

I already have. It's public record. Netflix's own executives testified as such under oath.

 

You also have Verizon admitting it. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/16010766/verizon-netflix-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii

You have Charter and others trying to escape the lawsuits by arguing NN is dead anyway. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/charter-points-fccs-net-neutrality-repeal-lawsuit-alleging-netflix-throttling-1062035

 

There's also this little number: https://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/

First off the word "Alleging" means claiming not proving. Secondly you should pick unbiased sources that don't favor either side.

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

First off the word "Alleging" means claiming not proving. Secondly you should pick unbiased sources that don't favor either side.

Did you even read the links? The source is literally Verizon themselves saying it. 

 

By "unbiased" do you by any chance mean "a source that doesn't disagree with me"? Because that would be a source that's factually wrong.

 

You might as well be asking for sources that water is wet, and only sources which has not made their mind up on the subject are allowed. 

 

By the way, you still haven't answered my questions. 

[WkdPaul]

9 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

First off the word "Alleging" means claiming not proving. Secondly you should pick unbiased sources that don't favor either side.

I would recommend that you read read the articles instead of dismissing them because of their title or sources. Those articles contain informations and actual facts, verifiable facts don't change, regardless of the news organisation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯