shrapnel_indie :
<Sigh> THIS is an editorial more than a real NEWS story. (TH has the right to have them as much as news.)
With that said.... It's the responsibility of content providers, such as NetFlix, HBO, ShowTime, CBS, etc., to have the bandwidth necessary for the loads they will encounter. Users pay for bandwidth too. It's called tiered access... 5Mb, 10 Mb, 20Mb, 25Mb, 40Mb, 50Mb, 100Mb, etc. of speed or data (GB instead of Mb) per month. Net Neutrality itself doesn't stop that. It doesn't really stop hitting a limit and getting throttled to a slower speed or hit with a surcharge.
Net Neutrality is as stated: You don't pay anything extra beyond the speed/allowed data limits you pay for to get a service. You don't pay extra, outside of what HBO charges you for their service, to stream HBO Go to you desktop or device. You don't get to watch it without it using your data, while your neighbor has to use data to watch. Everyone has equal access to delivery and providers have equal access to deliver. Everyone is responsible for the cost for the amount of data they push or pull. If HBO doesn't pay enough to have the bandwidth to deliver (servers, connections) It don't matter how fast, how low latency, or if you have REAL unlimited data if HBO chokes because they didn't pay out enough for their usage requirements.
The problem, the "you pay for enough bandwidth and netflix pays for enough bandwidth and everything works out fine" is oversimplified, and that is not how it worked out in practice -> which is why regulation is absolutely essential. I won't address bandwidth caps, because the recent throttling data -quantity- have been implemented to directly circumvent the regulations preventing ISPs from throttling data -speed-. Four years ago, data caps on landline service in America was unheard of.
Here is how things worked out when ISPs were secretly throttling Netflix back in 2014, which set off the chain of events that led to the FCC reclassifying the internet in 2015. As a reminder, the FCC Open internet act of 2010 had been heavily contested in court and in 2014 it was officially overturned. Before 2010, broadband access was far less common and internet streaming services were not a very big issue like they are today. Also, up until when the FCC lost that order, ISPs had believed that the FCC at least had the potential to regulate the internet. Even as early as 2005 the FCC was uncontested when they fined a small ISP for blocking voip services. The point is that in 2014 it was the first time that it was definitively proven that the FCC had no power whatsoever to impose or enforce any regulation on broadband providers. It was America's first taste of what happens when even the threat of regulation was removed, and it was bad.
First, Netflix would pay it's Internet Service Provider for enough bandwidth to serve their content. Yes Netflix uses a lot of bandwidth, but they were absolutely paying for every last bit that they were using.
Second, you were paying your own ISP for a fast-enough data connection to receive netflix in your home. This is a different ISP than the one Netflix uses.
Netflix's ISP has a contract with the various other ISPs that it directly connects with in order send it's data over those other networks to the end-user. Sometimes data would need to be routed over lines owned by multiple major service providers in order to reach you. A portion of what Netflix pays to its ISP is used by that ISP to pay for all these interconnects, and those companies are contractually obligated to provide agreed-upon bandwidth, which is once again enough to cover Netflix.
Everything should then work out. Sure the ISPs are double dipping by charging on both ends, but that should just mean double-good services since they are being double-payed, right? The ISP interconnect contracts mean they get paid more as usage goes up, so they should be in love with netflix.
But in real-life, that isn't what happened.
ISPs like Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon FiOS (none of whom are directly Netflix's ISP) also happen to be in competition with netflix, and they were noticing a drop in their lucrative television service business. So they quietly began to throttle Netflix's traffic at interconnect points before it traveled through their network.
The throttling ISP would then go back to Netflix's ISP as well as Netflix itself and blamed "old equipment" for the bottle-neck, and demanded more money, just to restore the already-agreed-upon service. When Netflix began paying these fees, the service would magically be restored immediately. There is no evidence that even a single piece of networking equipment was ever upgraded as a result of Netflix paying these additional "interconnect" fees.
Netflix did indeed pay these fees. A mere four months after net neutrality was overturned (April 2014) Netflix restructured their streaming services and raised prices for the first time by 25%. This really happened, It's not some hyperbolic exaggeration or doomsday theory. Netflix is not the only example of this happening, they are just the most well publicized.
Even at the time, throttling in this way was believed to be illegal- but difficult to prove in court. Toothless FTC regulation at the time was a complete joke, a company making millions in extra profit simply doesn't care about the threat of a 5 figure fine. This is important because "The FTC will regulate it instead" was one of the arguments used to overturn net neutrality in 2014, and is once again being used as justification by Ajit Pai to overturn it this time around.
Data gathered by netflix's speed test tool during this time period was one of many points of data used to push the FCC to reclassify the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
Title II, in itself, is not net neutrality. It simply gives the FCC the power to regulate it, as needed.
The biggest problem with the FCC's upcoming vote to repeal, which not may people are talking about, is its permanence. When the FCC repeals a previous administration's action in this way,
it also prevents all future administrations from reinstating it again. When the FCC loses it's power to regulate the internet, that power will essentially be lost forever. The oligopoly of ISPs will no longer have to control themselves under the threat of receiving harsher regulation. There will be no governing body capable of protecting what is arguably America's most important resource (just look at a list of the most valuable companies in the country). This is the first time that has ever happened, and the potential risk of one of these major ISPs to
legally cause catastrophic economic harm is indescribably huge.
Yes, that risk could be mitigated if America's internet service was provided by an open an competitive market (another one of Ajit Pai's absurd arguments). This is laughable because America does not have an open market in this space, at all. There hasn't been competition in the telecom space since the very beginning of the telephone. The lack of competition is the reason the Communications Act of
1934 was passed in the first place. Cable companies are disallowed from competing with each other. The lack of competition, coincidentally, the real reason there is so little investment in network improvement. The upcoming repeal does exactly nothing to breakup guaranteed regional monopolies or otherwise restore competition to the market.
That in itself is a difficult enough proposition, since these private companies typically need to bury lines on public land (once again, a problem that will only get worse by repealing net neutrality).
If this vote passes, the only thing that will be able to restore accountability to this essential utility is an act of congress, signed by the president. Congress, unfortunately is comprised of a lot of 80-something-year-olds, possibly with alzheimer's.. at least one of which literally has brain cancer. And the current president is the one responsible for handing control of the FCC over to an obviously corrupt Verizon lobbyist in the first place.
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