I think we are toast.

Last time during the title 2 classification we the people had the Online Oligarch on our side. Not because Google,netflix , and amazon cared about the people, but because out of their own survival. Had net neutrality principles been killed then Google, netflix, and Amazon would have been at the mercy of the customers ISP.

What worries me now is that I don't see the same level of efforts by the Big online Oligarch, this time around. Heck, even google has slowed their google fiber business.

I think we are seeing the creation of one of the biggest Oligarch alliance in the making.

I wonder if the ISP oligarch and the online Oligarch have come to an agreement where they will not compete with each other.

In other words Comcast won't go into the streaming business, search business , social media business, merchant business as long as Netflix,google,facebook,twitter, and Amazon pay them a percentage.In return comcast will throttle the existing Online Oligarchs competition.

Its a win for both the ISP and now the Online Oligarch. the end result doesn't change the consumers get Fd and now will be at the mercy of both the ISP oligarch and the Online Oligarch.

I think one of the scariest effects will be the new entrenched power of the existing major sites.

Building a new Facebook, Google, Amazon, or Twitter after this will be more than a technical and social challenge. There will be literal gatekeepers charging a fee to compete in the same decent pipes.

Last time we saw the big sites speak up. This time it's only the users. It looks as if the big site operators are just preparing to pay to cement their position, damning the small businesses and independent creators.

This clearly benefits nobody except a small select few.

This might be my misunderstanding, but isn't that pretty much the definition of collusion?

I would say yes and agree with you but not if you have the money and lobbying influence to say its not.

That collusion would be no different than what is occurring today among the ISP. They have non written agreements to not compete with each other in certain areas , hence the lack of competition. This is how they can stay in business despite being rated the most hated companies in the US year after year by their own customers. Only way that can happen is if you are the only game in town (monolopy)

This is only branching out their arrangement to now include the existing Online Oligarch as well.

What separates collusion from a business agreement?

I would say transparency and a formal written statement between business, versus an agreement that is so unethical or illegal that nobody wants to put their name on it or officially declare it to the public.

A business agreement to mutually not enter one another's competitive domains is a conspiracy against the consumer. Similar examples include price fixing, anti-employee "poaching" agreements.

Permissable business agreements include joint ventures, plans to supply one another when creating or entering a new marketplace, etc.

Nothing.

Collusion is functionally an illegal (and informal) business agreement.

They’ll need all the power they can get. Decentralization is coming for them. If they’re not all terrified they should be.

I would love to believe this, but I'm not so optimistic.

I'm assuming you are referring to mesh type networks, in which case the hurdle is not technological but rather legal and political.

Once a mesh network becomes a valid competitor , they will create and enforce laws to hold people responsible for traffic going through their devices (ie kiddie P0rn and other illegal activities) .

They will also create and enforce anti encryption laws to prevent that as a loophole.

The challenge for mesh or decentralized networks will not be technical, it will legal and political which doesn't end well for the consumer.

Politics will be too slow to handle the rate of technological change. Already is to some degree. And Orwellian precincts will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Having lived in countries that separate access/transport from bits, this is the way to do it (UK, Japan, etc.) Transport is like water or electricity - it should be provided like a public utility. Internet services should be competitive with different options or packages, etc. This allows for real competition whereas the US has quasi/defacto monopolies for Internet in most markets.

I just don't see how the US would get from where they are now, to a future where access to the Internet is a utility and services are the competitive layer.

The fact is ISPs are just a gateway, they shouldn't have any say where the bits come from or end up. They're just the middleman looking to extract more money for zero benefit to consumers.

How is the UK considered good? (Serious question)

It's not perfect, but I (in the UK) have the choice of around 10 ISPs where I am right now, and two of those use totally separate infrastructure from the others.

I'm on 200Gbps with no data cap for £45. Seems overwhelmingly better that what the US customer has right now.

> 200Gbps

I take it you meant 200Mbps. Otherwiae you have better home internet than everyone in the world and not juat the US.

Yes, sorry I did.

200Gbps would be quite a feat haha.

It is too late to edit now.

It depends. Mobile data is far, far cheaper in the UK and France. I can’t speak for cable/DSL internet pricing but wouldn’t doubt that it’s also a better deal. Australia has insane internet pricing.

I think the point was the zeal that the UK government has in blocking and controlling website access. I'm sure we'll see that here as well - Comcast and Verizon will be glad to block whatever the Trump administration wants in return for even less regulatory oversight (as if it could get any less).

Comcast is currently promoting a "we promise not to take advantage of the new rules we spent millions lobbying for" tweet: https://twitter.com/comcast/status/933394263689351175

Yeah, sure. They won't throttle, but they will conveniently not notice saturated links until someone offers to pay them money to upgrade. Kinda like how Verizon did a few years ago with Fios and Netflix.

>If Comcast starts sucking, 5G and other competitors are going to eat their lunch.

That's the thing: T-Mobile already have "unlimited" streaming at reduced resolution (480p) for the major streaming providers. As someone who has no TV much less an HD one and only watches streaming on mobile devices anyway this could easily be a tipping point for me to ditch Comcast, switch back off of Project Fi for T-Mobile and call it a day.

All I see is $100+/mo savings between cancellation of Comcast and YouTube TV which is a bust anyway. OMG. So many commercials, so little interesting content. I remember why I cancelled cable TV in the first place: it's garbage.

Making the net non-neutral is going to similarly be revenue non-neutral but maybe not in the way these ISPs hope.

https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html

Actually you'd think Google, Amazon, et al would have skin in the game this time around too: I'm already reconsidering my purchase of Nest cameras my wife wants and frankly I'll be giving away the free Google minis as well if/when I cancel Comcast / Xfinity. There is zero reason to invest in IOT devices if you cancel the I.

There's just too much potential downside to the rent-seeking behavior of these ISPs to invest in IOT if I can't rely on an unfiltered, unmolested, unthrottled experience.

If Comcast starts sucking, 5G and other competitors are going to eat their lunch. If users hate throttling and uneven networks, someone will swoop in with a better product. Example: T-mobile and Sprint forcing companies like Verizon to start offering unlimited plans again.

I suspect not. Building a network is a huge investment and there will only ever be a limited number of these access points and its likely they will be profit focused. Also we are seeing increased corporate consolidation so if anything the internet companies will hover up more access point for a greater oligopoly.

I suspect this will more be a limited window of profit taking until another election cycle (or several) where a new president/party brings back net neutrality. I cant see this being forgotten as an issue in our generations and its an easy piece to legislate on if the motivation is there.

not likely or it would have already happened. Comcast and other ISP have consistently rated among the top of most hated companies by its customer base. I would love to tell comcast to F off but I have no choice to keep them as they are the ONLY ISP that offer Fast Internet in my area like much of the rest of the country.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/350979/comcast-is-americas-most-h... BTW sprint is also listed among the most hated.

5G is going to solve this. You’ll affix a transmitter/receiver to a window of your house and you can bypass your cable company.

The point still stands, if a company is introducing fast lanes and slow lanes and it is making enough customers angry enough, a competitor will swoop in and take their business.

Take an extreme example of Comcast only allowing HD streaming of Comcast owned programming and throttling the rest. That would be so bad that folks would cancel Comcast, which would provide an opportunity for a non atrocious company to displace them.

As things currently stand, Comcast is good enough that a competitor can’t “out customer service” them to displace them.

Wonder how quickly they end up deleting that tweet...

considering that it's a promoted tweet and it's been showing up for weeks now, i think it'll be around for a while.

Don’t give into defeatism or learned helplessness. Fight back by calling representatives and hounding the FCC. This is just the beginning and requires perpetual vigilance.

I can't be perpetually vigilant about all the things that need perpetual vigilance.

If only you had a representative in the federal government. Someone whose full time job is to represent your interests...

oh shit.

That'd be great. I keep voting for the least awful ones (when there's an actual choice), but I keep getting wealthy anti-science technophobes.

They represent the interests of whoever pays them the most money.

I still hope this will somehow increase competition. If AT&T, Spectrum, etc start charging more to view youtube, then perhaps this will get the Google fiber train rolling again. Perhaps...

If I recall correctly Google started winding down their google fiber efforts after the title 2 classification. If they continue to slow it down, then you will absolutely know we are Fd and some alliance between the Online Oligarch and ISP has been formed.

Its not looking good

My understanding was that the big ISPs we're making if unprofitable for Google to continue with the fiber rollout. There were stalling tactics and general bullshittery around giving Google access to poles, conduits, etc.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-...

http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/11/22/judge-rules...

And so on and so forth.

I would switch to Google fiber in an instance if available. They just data mine. I don't think They throttle. We have time warner and AT&T. That is it. How is that for competition. At least in 4 years this president will be voted out and the new one will probably get rid of this.

I would switch to Google fiber in a second too. Not just because they are better and offer more for less, but because I cant wait till the day comes that I can tell Comcast to F off for good.

Just have to count on SpaceX to put the telecoms out of business over the coming years.

Kinda sucks for near term, but this is going to create economic pressure and consumer demand for a Comcast killer.

One possibility is a wireless ISP via satellite or city-wide mesh.

I've actually gotten really interested in city-wide wifi mesh projects since all of this NN news is coming out. Kinda makes me want to share my 1G symmetric connection and build a mesh network with my neighbors somehow. I used to be really interested in mesh a long time ago but I have trouble finding what the best protocols are for building such a thing.

People keep forgetting that telecom is not a typical B2C market. Telecom is not like a lemonade stand - low barriers to entry, low cost of goods, no moats, etc. etc.

There is Huge capex, land rights, spectrum rights, compliance and more that have to be handled.

Just getting into it will not be possible - because any solution will require access to some limited transmission medium.

If it weren't for that single limit imposed by reality, this would be a different market.

The limitations you described are true for a wired approach to last mile internet delivery to every user.

You can get around these problems as a wireless ISP using spectrum in the public domain. Idea is that you beam connectivity to a router in each subscriber's home. You'll need to install nodes that connect a wireless network to fiber optic cables, but these connections are much more accessible than wiring up every building in a city.

Isn't that basically Google Fi? See post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15769192 above for some examples of entrenched landline ISPs like AT&T interfering with this approach...

Im strongly in favor of net neutrality. But let's just play devil's advocate here a bit to temper the end-of-the-world view on all this: what if there is good that comes out of this "Internet Freedom Act"... One potential outcome is increased fragmentation, competition and choice via multiple smaller ISPs. Potentially a good thing?

Maybe we will see alternative protocols or network technologies that can bypass typical network controls - further strengthening the Internet's resiliency.

How would getting rid of net neutrality lead to this?

Free Markets... a shift away from control by a few big players to a more distributed and even playing field - where we aren't at the mercy of oligopolies. Instead of net neutrality imposed by the government - we vote for it with our decision of ISP and with our dollars.

You didn't answer the question. How does getting rid of a policy made in 2015 in response to ISPs abusing their overwhelming control of the market lead to this future? ISPs have only consolidated their power further since then. Most people have no choice in ISP.

The 2015 policy was not made in response to anything but fear - the same sort of fear mongering heralded in countless articles across the web. Since those rules were implemented investment in infrastructure has fallen, not risen, due to increased uncertainty about the regulatory situation.

Repealing these rules won't help matters, and it won't result in the horror stories almost everyone here seems to think it will. The recent tendency of the Executive to legislate creates a regulatory climate that shifts on the whims of whichever administration happens to be in power. Why would Verizon or Sprint go through the hassle of building their Evil Empire when the Warren administration will just tear it down and imprison their execs when she wins the presidency in 3 years? They won't. Smart business will allocate their resources conservatively and pander to the party most likely to place restrictions on them.

Some of what you're saying is false. Investment has increased since 2015, not fallen. And these policy changes were made in response to real - not imagined - abuses, such as specific ISPs blocking VoIP, AT&T blocking Skype on iPhones, and Verizon blocking Google Wallet.

This article has some good context on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutra...

I don't see how this will change the game when physical infrastructure is the control point. Anything that happens in the application space would be subject to the control of whitelists of IPs. Even 3rd party proxies would be powerless.

My condolences. Its a very unfair match when only one side gets to make the rules.

The more I read about this, the more I think this will be held up in the courts for a while.

Not sure there’s a ton of hope here. The rule being rolled back was simply an executive action, not a law. This is why we need our legislatures to get to work providing _laws_ that protect our privacy and not leave us at the whim of the executive office.

Federal agencies can't just reverse existing rules by fiat, though. They have to provide an explanation for changing conditions based on real hard data, which has to stand up in court.

I found this article to have a good explanation of how difficult it may be to push through these changes without a legal defeat: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutra...

Which legislature would that be?

My preference is all of them: municipal, state, and federal.

I believe there was a directive included that states and municipalities can't implement their own net neutrality laws :/