Re:Net neutrality gives “free” Internet to Netflix and Googl...
by toast0 on Saturday September 15, 2018 @01:29PM
(#17995145)
Looking at the bill, it does prohibit:
>Requiring consideration, monetary or otherwise, from an edge provider, including, but not limited to, in exchange for any of the following:
>(A) Delivering Internet traffic to, and carrying Internet traffic from, the Internet service provider’s end users.
It's not clear to me if that prohibits charging an interconnection fee (often charged at a per port rate), or just prohibits charging based on bandwidth used. It doesn't appear to require offering interconnection to edge providers either. It may be unlawful to discontinue existing edge provider interconnects, but it doesn't seem unlawful to simply never upgrade anything.
Generally speaking, ISPs tend to have congestion in two places -- at or near the last mile, and where they connect to other networks (transit, peering, etc). Interconnections with edge providers helps with congestion to other networks, but depending on the size of the ISPs and the traffic flows, ISPs may have been charging someone for that flow, or using that flow to justify settlement free peering with a larger network. Historic norms are that when data flows are unbalanced by a significant amount, the sending network pays for the bandwidth; but also historically, most ISPs were using some amount of paid transit to receive some of this traffic. Early content networks were able to negotiate settlement free peering by reducing the amount of paid transit the ISPs used. As residential ISPs consolidated, they have become vendors of paid transit themselves, so it's gotten pretty weird.
Anyway, not being able to charge edge providers for bandwidth, is certainly a negative for ISPs; and to the extent that they were raising revenue through that activity, I'm sure they'll pass along those revenue drops to customers in the form of higher bills or reduced capacity through limiting network upgrades, including interconnections to other networks. I don't think this is necessarily non-Netflix users subsidizing bandwidth, more it's that currently any revenue generated from Netflix bandwidth fees are subsidizing the rest of the network. Unfortunately, network neutrality does nothing to increase competition; and without competition, there's not much incentive to upgrade networks. The only positive in my book is increased transparency -- one can hope that because there are a few markets where ISPs compete, the transparency requirements will encourage them to operate in all of their markets with the same levels of service they provide to competitive markets.
>Requiring consideration, monetary or otherwise, from an edge provider, including, but not limited to, in exchange for any of the following:
>(A) Delivering Internet traffic to, and carrying Internet traffic from, the Internet service provider’s end users.
It's not clear to me if that prohibits charging an interconnection fee (often charged at a per port rate), or just prohibits charging based on bandwidth used. It doesn't appear to require offering interconnection to edge providers either. It may be unlawful to discontinue existing edge provider interconnects, but it doesn't seem unlawful to simply never upgrade anything.
Generally speaking, ISPs tend to have congestion in two places -- at or near the last mile, and where they connect to other networks (transit, peering, etc). Interconnections with edge providers helps with congestion to other networks, but depending on the size of the ISPs and the traffic flows, ISPs may have been charging someone for that flow, or using that flow to justify settlement free peering with a larger network. Historic norms are that when data flows are unbalanced by a significant amount, the sending network pays for the bandwidth; but also historically, most ISPs were using some amount of paid transit to receive some of this traffic. Early content networks were able to negotiate settlement free peering by reducing the amount of paid transit the ISPs used. As residential ISPs consolidated, they have become vendors of paid transit themselves, so it's gotten pretty weird.
Anyway, not being able to charge edge providers for bandwidth, is certainly a negative for ISPs; and to the extent that they were raising revenue through that activity, I'm sure they'll pass along those revenue drops to customers in the form of higher bills or reduced capacity through limiting network upgrades, including interconnections to other networks. I don't think this is necessarily non-Netflix users subsidizing bandwidth, more it's that currently any revenue generated from Netflix bandwidth fees are subsidizing the rest of the network. Unfortunately, network neutrality does nothing to increase competition; and without competition, there's not much incentive to upgrade networks. The only positive in my book is increased transparency -- one can hope that because there are a few markets where ISPs compete, the transparency requirements will encourage them to operate in all of their markets with the same levels of service they provide to competitive markets.