Limiting bandwidth is one thing. My local Cable company is proish-NN (they have publicly stated that they have no plans to implement prioritization even if the FCC passed this vote), they still impose data caps and network management practices on consumer plans. While I hate these practices (hence paying extra for a business connection), that's not what the NN issue is about.

Comcast refused to upgrade their peering connections to the networks used by Netflix (Level3 I believe was one of them?) to extort money from them. Netflix doesn't get service from Comcast, yet Comcast decided it could charge them to get access to their customers.

The internet is built upon no-fee exchanges between Tier 1 providers, but since Comcast (and some others like CenturyLink, Verizon, AT&T) is both a consumer ISP AND a major transit provider they try to make arguments like "you're sending us more traffic than we send you, this isn't fair" even though their customers are the ones requesting the data. It's total bullshit, and they will milk this for everything it's worth.

Comcast isn't a Tier 1 provider. Cogent, the netflix ISP at issue, claims to be, but that is very debatable. The internet isn't built on two T2 or T3 providers doing no-fee exchanges.

Net Neutrality doesn't prevent peering disputes.

Comcast is by all intents a tier 1 provider. They have a huge national backbone they own and operate, have settlement-free interconnects with many other providers, etc. Just because a majority of their revenue (as far as data transit is concerned) comes from consumer services doesn't change anything.

You're right NN doesn't necessarily solve peering disputes, but one could argue extortion like this falls right in line with it (under a proper regulatory framework crap like this wouldn't fly, "no we aren't throttling netflix, we're in a peering dispute" would be seen through by the courts pretty quickly when documentation of them demanding money from netflix is submitted).

Major CDNs don't use Tier 1 providers to reach major eyeball networks in the United States. There are no ISPs who have sufficient capacity to the other networks. I'll cover why later.

Netflix is what... 37% of Internet traffic? They aren't sending anything to Comcast other than Comcast traffic, guaranteed. Same with Verizon, AT&T, Cox, etc.

Also, Comcast's backbone isn't large enough for someone like Netflix to inefficiently deliver data. Netflix is delivering the data locally, not using Comcast's national backbone.

So sure... Comcast might offer "Tier 1" internet services, but they don't have enough connectivity to other ISPs to matter to major CDNs.

Why?

Because the other major eyeball networks in the US employ the same tactics as Comcast! They all want to force major CDNs to connect directly, for different reasons. Some ISPs do it to avoid paying "tier 1" internet providers, allowing CDNs to peer settlement free. Others do it to extort CDNs.

As with any other system where a product is delivered over someone else's product, a negotiation will take place, money will change hands, and business will resume. That's normal.

Google and Netflix wanted to implement rules prohibiting a perfectly normal transaction in business because it would cost them money, and framed it as the public good. I'm entirely okay with the two giants having to pay more, it provides Google and Netflix's competitors additional room to breathe and innovate.

>As with any other system where a product is delivered over someone else's product, a negotiation will take place, money will change hands, and business will resume.

I don't think this is always true, is it? The price of a phone call isn't contingent on the contents of the call. Regarding the internet, though, I'd feel better if there was any guarantee at all that these "negotiations" would be on a level playing field. If you're a startup that wants to complete with some Comcast streaming service, the Comcast ISP side of things can kill you day one. There's no negotiation possible when one party has all the power. Maybe that's the system working as intended, but if that's the case, then the system creeps me out.

If there was one company that was making 30%+ of calls at peak times, you bet there would be negotiations.

That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way.

LOL that's not what's going to happen here.

You're right Google and Netflix et al will cut a deal with the major US ISPs to get their traffic delivered, they have the money to do so.

But innovation... the next up and coming netflix (or any other data heavy service) isn't going to have a good time. Start-ups can't afford to pay for the same as rich incumbants, so they have no chance.

Why would a US ISP agree to carry a data heavy service without recompense now, when they can charge incumbants with deep pockets for the same bandwidth.

This seems very likely to hurt innovation , not help it.

The mistaken concept that startups would have to pay "for the same" seems to hinge on not understanding that bandwidth cost is relative to bandwidth use. Nobody else even sits on the same order of magnitude as Google and Netflix: These are the only two companies who will need to pay extra. (Combined, Google and Netflix together account for up to 70-80% of all US Internet traffic.) If anyone else was ever to be charged extra, comparatively, it would be ridiculously minimal in comparison.

You are working on an assumption that any charges would be based off of usage in a logical manner.

In reality Netflix might offer to pay a little more to comcast if comcast is willing to up the costs on their competitors, or other such arrangement. The problem with removing NN is that we're inviting oli/monolopy forming to occur, which the free market cannot deal with.

Title II actually exempts telecoms from FTC regulation. Rather than pushing for special-cased laws to mandate how the Internet is operated (which bans a lot of things I don't think are justifiable to actually ban), we should be pushing for a reawakening of antitrust enforcement. Anticompetitive behavior is already illegal, and the tools already exist, in law, to deal with it. Let's get the FTC back in the business of busting up monopolies and fining anticompetitive behavior, regardless of what industry they are.

Anticompetitive behavior is a problem that exists well beyond just telecoms, and getting back into trustbusting would do wonders across the board for consumers.

Google, one of net neutrality's principal backers, obviously is not fond of this approach.

Nope that's not a mistaken understanding on my part at all.

Obviously you pay for what you use. but say a start-up starts blowing up and in the way of things isn't making money yet (as many early stage start-ups don't)

If their niche happens to be a bandwidth heavy one the ISPs can and probably will start levying charges on them as they grow, which the start-up will be in a poor position to pay.

and that doesn't even touch on the possibly anti-competitive aspect.

Say an ISP has a competing service, do you really think they won't try to throttle start-ups in that area using bandwidth charging? Given that US ISPs already have a record of doing exactly that.

First of all, Google and Netflix together are around 80% of all bandwidth use. The amount of cost on them is so insurmountably higher, by the time anyone could ever rival their bills, they would be in a better position to pay it.

And it doesn't have to touch on the anti-competitive aspect: The FCC is not an antitrust regulator. The FTC is. And revoking Title II places ISPs back under the FTC's purview. Anticompetitive behavior should be addressed by the agency charged with ensuring competition.

You appear to be overlooking that the ISP's customers already pay the ISP for bandwidth.

I pay Comcast for 1 TB/month. Why should Comcast be allowed to say that I cannot use some of my 1 TB/month on Netflix and Google unless Netflix and Google (who are NOT customers of Comcast) pay Comcast?

Isn't this kind of arbitrary? You frame it as "paying twice". What about the framing that you're normally "paying half"? If Comcast had Google's margins, we could argue that they're pricing unfairly. But Alphabet has 2-3x Comcast's profit margins. I feel about this argument the way I feel about militancy over airline baggage handling fees. Sure: it's obnoxious. But the airlines used to bake that directly into the fare.

I'm not saying Comcast should hold other video services for ransom; I'm just pointing out an oddity of the argument you're using.

Does it really cost Comcast more if I use my 1 TB to watch YouTube videos or Netflix videos than it does if I use it to watch, say PornHub videos, or instructional chess videos at chess.com?

If it actually does cost them more, then shouldn't they be trying to bill their own customers for what it costs? (I don't believe Pai for a second when his document claims that ISPs cannot figure out how to bill users for bandwidth).

What will they do if Netflix tells its customers on Comcast that their bill is going up unless they switch to accessing Netflix via a VPN? Will Comcast then start blocking VPNs? So then I cannot work at home? (My office went 100% work from home a couple months ago, so that would be very irksome).

How is their cost basis on specific part of their business relevant? We're obviously not entitled to any one price point, much as HN threads seem to believe we are. Comcast's margins hover around 10-12%. If they need to keep them there, they can raise their consumer prices, or find alternative revenue streams. Why is it better that they raise prices for consumers?

My beef is that they sold me what purports to be internet service, not some kind of CompuServe or Prodigy or GEnie like service.

Finding alternate revenue streams is fine...but I don't see why they should be allowed to stop me from using the service they sold me in order to try to convince some entity, which they have no relationship with other than that they and that entity have mutual customers, to pay them something.

I'm fine with it if my ISP wants to find alternative revenue by establishing some kind of relationship with outside sites and selling them something, just as long as the ISP continues to provide the service they sold me, on the terms they sold it to me.

For example, something like AT&T's "sponsored data" is fine. That lets sites pay AT&T to not count data AT&T users exchange with those sites against those user's AT&T plan data limits.

That's fine because AT&T's customers get the service they paid for. If a site buys "sponsored data" some AT&T customers get more than they paid for. If a site does not buy "sponsored data", those AT&T users that use the site still get what they paid for.

The EFF and other leading net neutrality proponents would probably disagree with me on "sponsored data". This is the kind of thing I was thinking of in another comment when I talked about trying to shove things into net neutrality that do not belong there. Yes, "sponsored data" favors bigger, established content providers, so could harm competition. We've got antitrust law to deal with that.

I'd argue Netflix has a more clear impact on their business. As 30% or more of their traffic, any given business decision by Netflix can have a significant impact on an ISP's business. A change by Netflix (like switching to 4K) could have huge impact on Comcast's need to rapidly upgrade lines to handle it. Whereas a smaller provider wouldn't affect them or their priorities as much.

When an airline charges you extra to check bags, they are charging you for a service they provide. This is annoying, but we as a society agree that people generally have the right to do this and it is in society's interest that they have that right.

When an ISP charges a service provider to get access to their customers, they are leveraging their monopoly on those customers to extract rents from other service providers. What is the social value of this behavior?

The main problem with this line of argument is that is can be applied to anything an ISP does, because there is of course no functioning market for last-mile connectivity in most areas. A real fix would be unbundling or something else that split allowed there to be a functioning market over shared infrastructure. That doesn't mean we can't stop them from rent-seeking from other firms in the "short" term. Doing so is in line with Republicans' claimed pro-business stance.

I'm certainly not 'overlooking' it. I just don't find it particularly compelling of an argument. A business can certainly charge on both the downstream and upstream ends of their own network if they so choose. As long as they aren't operating in an anticompetitive fashion, of course.

And while Google is much less public about their special peering agreements and CDN setups, Netflix is pretty public, so let's talk about Netflix Open Connect. Netflix Open Connect boxes are hosted "at no charge to the ISP" at various ISPs, as if it's a charitable offering. https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

But essentially, Open Connect boxes are colocated. If anyone but Netflix were to ask for free colocation, they'd get laughed right out of the room. A startup trying to compete with Netflix could never get what Netflix gets for free. Net neutrality effectively removes Comcast's negotiating power to demand Netflix pays for the service, because things like throttling their peering traffic isn't allowed. The irony is, in this instance, net neutrality is actually granting Netflix an exclusive advantage (by the nature of their size and customer demand for them) that smaller players can't hope to match.

Once again, net neutrality regulations help big monopolies and hurt smaller players.

Actually the competitors would have trouble competing with Google and Netflix in this scenario due to the fact that they would be harder for them to beat out what Google and Netflix would pay.

This also ignores the fact that consumers have paid the ISP for general internet access, no where did it stipulate some services you want to access should pay extra for us to carry their data to you.

> Title II is not a great solution to Net Neutrality. The only thing I disklike is there isn't a better option already in place.

Sure. But it was an attainable solution, which is much better than no solution at all. It's not like Pai is going to find some other way to protect NN.

I think Title II is a fine solution (why shouldn't internet be a utility?). There are a ridiculous amount of people in these comments that are trying to thread the needle between "I support NN," but saying "it is fine that they reversed Title-II classification" (which I guess is their cool contrarian point of view, but functionally tripe)

Title II is an 80 year old telephone rule that was stretched and deformed to fit the internet. Congress needs to pass real legislation that's specific to the needs of the internet.

The 4th amendment is a 270 year old rule that is "stretched and deformed" to fit personal electronic devices too. In either case, we don't need a specific law for each use-case as technology evolves.

Yes. Congress-critters try to have their cake and eat it too by punting to the regulators and claiming to the voters it is out of their hands. Dereliction of duty.

(Not that I would necessarily like to see the horse-cum-camel design-by-committee solution these grifters would negotiate their way too...)

I think there is a decent argument for regulating ISPs. But Title II is a telephone regulation. It's not narrowly targeted at ISPs.

The fact that the FCC had to suspend most regulations under Title II sort of proves it.

Why do you think such views are 'trying to thread a needle', 'contrarian', and 'functionally tripe'?

You are exhibiting a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that there are (god forbid!) dissenting views from your own.

Title II is a loooot more than being classified as a "utility"

Theres a lot of reports and other tasks that the ISP would have to do, but was put of 2 to 3 years since 2015.

Because when it's a utility you can't treat different traffic types differently and QoS suffers, especially in domains like satellite internet

"Unpopular opinion: Title II is not a great solution to Net Neutrality."

Do you have a compelling reason why? Tittle II worked fantastically for phone calls. I see zero reason why it wouldn't work for internet as well.

I wasn't convinced by that article when it first came out, due to it's using several arguments in bad faith, and simply mischaracterizing many things (you can check back to the HN thread when that article was released for examples). I'm less inclined to believe it now.

Access to information like you describe would be very useful in a free market, but the ISP market is not.

If I get a report from my ISP outlining how they throttled me, how am I supposed to act on that information?

You'll get the "vote with your wallet" speech. Which for most people, and like myself, your only other option in order to do just that is to buy an LTE wifi or get satellite internet.

Exactly. It's damn near impossible to vote with your wallet when your choices are Comcast or nothing.

How would that help? What are you going to do if you don't like what the report says?

Also, why not leave the Title II designation in place until a better solution is agreed upon and finalized?