FCC Begins Investigating Comcast And Verizon Making Netflix Pay To Avoid Congestion
from the but-still-won't-call-it-net-neutrality dept
Throughout the most recent version of the net neutrality fight, Tom Wheeler and the FCC has worked hard to keep interconnection issues a separate debate, even though interconnection is likely where the real fight has moved. In short, if you haven't been following this closely, net neutrality has historically been about discrimination on the last mile -- from your broadband access provider to your home -- but over the past couple of years, the big broadband companies (mainly Comcast) have realized they can get the same basic result (getting big internet companies like Netflix to double pay for your bandwidth) by clogging up the transit, and getting Netflix to pay up to interconnect directly. However, in the minds of most people, it's the same thing. Even while the congestion is happening on the network, the end result for everyone is effectively the same: Netflix has to pay to get a quality stream to you, your connection sucks if they don't pay, and Comcast collects all the money. So, when John Oliver did his piece on net neutrality, he actually illustrated it with the interconnection battle. And that's because it's really the same thing.Well, it's really the same thing to just about everyone... except the FCC. The FCC's request for comments explicitly tries to avoid delving into the interconnection fights, but thanks to things like John Oliver's coverage, many of the comments the FCC has been receiving have been about those issues anyway. Apparently realizing that he can't avoid the issue, FCC boss Tom Wheeler has announced that he's now "gathering information" on these interconnection fights and has specifically asked Comcast, Verizon and Netflix to hand over the details of their arrangement. Wheeler even quotes one of the comments that the FCC has received during the NPRM comments that talks about the interconnection battle, and notes that there are many more like that.
In reading the emails I receive, I thought this one from George pretty well sums up public concern:That sounds good, but we'll see what actually comes of it. The fact that Wheeler has tried hard to separate interconnection from net neutrality hasn't been particularly encouraging. The personable "I've experienced these problems myself" is nice, but it means little if the FCC doesn't actually realize what's going on here. Also, the quote at the end about transparency also sounds good, but we'll have to see if the FCC actually lives up to it and shares the details or keeps the whole process secret.Netflix versus Verizon: Is Verizon abusing Net Neutrality and causing Netflix picture quality to be degraded by “throttling” transmission speeds? Who is at fault here? The consumer is the one suffering! What can you do?We don’t know the answers and we are not suggesting that any company is at fault. But George has gone to the heart of the matter: what is going on and what can the FCC do on behalf of consumers? Consumers pay their ISP and they pay content providers like Hulu, Netflix or Amazon. Then when they don’t get good service they wonder what is going on. I have experienced these problems myself and know how exasperating it can be.
Consumers must get what they pay for. As the consumer’s representative we need to know what is going on. I have therefore directed the Commission staff to obtain the information we need to understand precisely what is happening in order to understand whether consumers are being harmed. Recently, at my direction, Commission staff has begun requesting information from ISPs and content providers. We have received the agreements between Comcast and Netflix and Verizon and Netflix. We are currently in the process of asking for others.
To be clear, what we are doing right now is collecting information, not regulating. We are looking under the hood. Consumers want transparency. They want answers. And so do I.
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Filed Under: congestion, deals, fcc, interconnection, net neutrality, tom wheeler
Companies: comcast, netflix, verizon
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It's not fine, because in the end fast lanes hurt residential customers. If companies such as Netflix are charged for fast lane access over the last mile, they're going to end up passing those costs onto their customers.
That means higher subscription costs for Netflix customers, all thanks to fast lane price gouging.
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freeloading bandwidth hogs
Is it fair that a person who uses the internet only for email and occasional light browsing should have to pay the same price as a large household, with multiple computers, who watch numerous hours of Netflix daily?
The additional price charged to bandwidth hogs (in whatever form) can help pay for the capital improvements needed so they can keep being bandwidth hogs.
No matter how costs are distributed among customers, some people will always think it's unfair to them. But I think the fairest way would be to charge according to bandwidth used. (having throttled tiers can be a major pain, though) But rather than logging every customer's bandwidth usage and billing accordingly, a less privacy-invasive way to achieve the same goal is to charge the major bandwidth-hogging companies like Netflix directly.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
And you know what else can help pay for capital improvements? the tax breaks and benefits that ISPs are given for the purpose of improvements that they don't actually do, or the already massively inflated prices we already pay, or not risking being fined for fraud or deceptive practices.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
This is quite similar to changes for your phone or cell phone...
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
It's more like the idea of taxing tobacco companies or gun manufacturers to pay for health care costs ... caused directly by their products.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Bandwidth is the amount of information that can pass threw a connection at any one instant. Bytes downloaded is a count across a set amount of time. Counting bytes is not going to fix the imagined bandwidth issue, it's just going to shift where the problem is.
I pay for bandwidth, not bytes downloaded. If you think you pay too much for your bytes downloaded, maybe you shouldn't have agreed to pay for bandwidth.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
The whole idea of justifying caps with the "huge" cost for the data that is transferred is ludicrous.
The issue here is, that the ISP's are unwilling to set up the network to cope with the concurrent bandwidth that is used, because they prefer overselling their network multiple times over. They promise bandwidth (not transfer volume) to their customers that their network can't reliably supply, because they refused to update said network.
That they now turn around and complain that the customers actually want to use what they pay for is disingenuous at best. "Poweruser X is hogging bandwith" is a cheap excuse, because user x PAID for it. Demanding payment from services the customer accesses with HIS bandwith that HE paid for is akin to blackmail (nice business you have here, wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it...)
Let me put it bluntly, the ISP's are at fault and if they are unwilling to actually provide what they sell, I can only see this as fraud.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
You pay for a set package. That's what you give the money for an internet connection. You can not exceed that speed or amount. You are regulated to what you pay for. If you are not getting what you pay for, it isn't because of someone else taking what you are supposed to be getting; they can't.
It's because the ISP has over sold its resources and has not put the money into upgrading.
Put the blame where it really lays.
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
What the ISP's want here is getting paid twice for the same service.
Considering your analogy, I will not even comment on this, since I can't imagine any reality where this would be even in the ballpark of being comparable.
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Re: In other news...
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Why should all that money end up with the cable company as if Netflix provides nothing of value and the only thing that matters is the transmission of data. The data's just as valuable as the wire it's carried on.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Cable TV is a huge ripoff. There's no option to pay for what you actually consume -- it's either all or nothing. I hate the idea of having to pay for channels (and shows) that I not only don't watch, but would gladly go out of my way to keep my money out of their slimy pockets. It's no less than disgraceful what passes for "entertainment" these days. And sadly, "news" as well.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Cable TV is a huge ripoff. There's no option to pay for what you actually consume -- it's either all or nothing. I hate the idea of having to pay for channels (and shows) that I not only don't watch, but would gladly go out of my way to keep my money out of their slimy pockets. It's no less than disgraceful what passes for "entertainment" these days. And sadly, "news" as well."
So to use this as an allegory for "Bandwidth hogs" - thats like selling the customer "200 channels! Pay one price!" and then when the customer actually watches most or all of those channels, the Cable Co. comes along and says "hey now, you are watching WAY too much of the channels available to you! Why are you being unfair to others who only want to watch a few channels? Don't you know there is a limit on how many channels can be watched at any one time? Those channels take resources to broadcast! If you insist on HOGGING all the channels, we will have to either charge you more, or limit how many channels you can watch in a day/month. It's only fair."
In other words, they advertise and sell you on the BANDWIDTH (speed) of your internet connection, then turn around and try to limit you on the DATA you transfer using the bandwidth THEY promoted the package to you with. It's a bait-and-switch, and they have the entire Congress, FCC, and most of the seriously ignorant and uninformed public going right along with them that this is all somehow "unfair" and people are "hogging" the very connection they pay for and was sold to them as "unlimited" at a certain speed.
SPEED != (thats not-equal for you luddite-types) DATA TRANSFER.
Please, people, try to understand how this works. Also see the post a couple above me that shows the cost (which is PENNIES PER TERRABYTE) they pay to then resell you at 1000x markup, then set you against your neighbor and fellow man when they OVERSELL their lines and, instead of investing the 75 BILLION they want to buy Time Warner with into, you know, actually IMPROVING their capacity, they instead spend it on lobbying Congress and pay their CEO and executives fat bonuses (in the double-digit MILLIONS of dollars... PER YEAR.)
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Key quote
" I have experienced these problems myself and know how exasperating it can be. "
This will be the driving force more than anything, if he decides to follow through.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
According to Google (I will just use its estimates) there are
2.62974e6 seconds in one month
(just Google Seconds in a month).
So I am paying for (2.62974e6 seconds/month) * (20 Mb/sec) = 52,594,800 Mb/month = 6,574,350 MB/month
So if the ISP wants to set the cap at ~6.6 TB/month for a 20 Mb/sec connection I'm perfectly fine with that. Anything else is false advertising. For them to set a cap at 600Gb/month would not deliver me an (average) bandwidth of 20Mb/sec but, instead, would deliver a much much smaller average bandwidth (~0.23 MB/sec) which is a whole lot less than what I'm paying for.
Imagine if the ISP gave me 20Mb/sec but limited my bandwidth usage to 100 MB/day. Except instead of doing that they're setting the caps on a per month basis. To me, as a consumer, if I'm paying for 20Mb/sec I want a reliable 20m/sec (which is not what the ISP is offering me). If I decide to pay for more bandwidth than I use that's my problem.
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Why should anyone be limited to only 20 megabit speeds? That's another thing I dislike about today's broadband internet: tiered speed-caps. Although I rarely download anything, when I do, I hate waiting for it. So should I pay for the fast tier that I'd rarely ever use, or the slow tier that occasionally has me pulling my hair out waiting? I would lose either way. Personally, I'd rather have truly unlimited speed with a fairly low monthly cap (and ideally 'rollover' gigs) Or just pay per gigabyte (in addition to a low monthly service charge). That's what I love about Usenet and VPN 'block' accounts -- I only pay for what I actually use (and for the months when I use nothing, I pay nothing)
There are many different types of ways that costs can be divided up between the various users on this shared resource we call 'the internet' - but one thing I would especially like to see is anything that contributes to more people getting into having internet service that would not otherwise, because to them it's just not worth the high monthly price -- a price that is certainly not helped by the segment that consumes bandwidth voraciously.
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
The real cost comes in laying cables, of course. Once the considerable cost of infrastructure is paid for, all bandwidth is essentially free.
But judging by the prices charged by ISPs in truly competitive markets, it would seem that bandwidth may go for considerably more than 10˘/TB.
Note the prices in Utah's Utopia, municipal network that connects to eight different ISPs.
http://www.utopianet.org/pricelist/
Although a relative bargain, gigabit broadband, the top tier, still costs considerably more than the lowest tier. And I'm going to assume that gigabit customers, on average, don't use anywhere near their full potential.
It is, of course, quite annoying that these kind of multi-ISP situations are so rare. This should be the standard of service, not the rare exception, and it's such a disgrace that an important utility as broadband internet has turned out to be a single-company (unregulated) monopoly (or at best, duopoly) for the vast majority -- with all the inherent problems that lack-of-competition predictably brings.
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
That is the elephant in the room, cable companies wish to keep selling their program packages, and Netflix,Hulu and Amazon etc. are encouraging cord cutting by providing a better service. It seems to me that the cable providers are trying to replace lost revenue by charging the companies that are doing a better job competing for TV viewers.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Say you are a heavy UPS user, ordering and selling a lot and using them as your preferred shipping and delivery method. What ISPs are doing would be the samething as UPS charging you more for the inconvenience in gas for the excess shipping and delivery. They arent the same, they are polar opposites of one another, ISPs charge you once and then the other side too. UPS cuts the pricing when you do more bushiness with them. The more business you bring to an ISP, the heavier the cost is going to be.
Now think of it this way, bandwidth is bandwidth. What you dont get is ISPs are throttling netflix, because more people use it, not because any single person uses it more than another. It is because more of their consumers use it. Now take a 10gb game and a 10gb netflix movie. They will throttle the netflix movie and not the game, regardless of them being both 10gb. How is that right at all? It isnt, it is supposedly illegal but cant be enforced.
If you think a single movie a night from netflix isnt bad you are right, but ISPs dont see it that way. If you are capped at 300gb as Comcast supposedly is, you would only be barely be able to watch a movie a night for an entire month. Why? Because the bandwidth allocated to netflix for 30 movies would be 300gb. Then you have no room for youtube, email, facebook, gaming, etc.
Bandwidth is not an issue at all, we arent running out of it. If we are it is the ISPs fault for not using their record profits for the upgrades supposedly needed.
Bandwidth refers to two different things: the speed you are allocated (50mb/s down and 5mb/s up) and the amount you are aloud to use on a monthly basis (300gb cap). Most people I know get their speed throttled and are capped even though they might go through that cap in a weeks time. Especially if you are in a heavy internet household.
One final thing. Why doesn't comcast throttle Amazon On Demand (same exact thing as netflix)? It is because not as many people use it, but a 10gb video from AOD is apparently different than a 10gb one for netflix. Data is data, it should not be segregated. I thought we left segregation behind in the 60s.
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Google is another example of this. Offer gigabit lines for a fraction (about half) of the top tiered broadband lines (~$200). They are able to offer a shit ton faster speed for 75ish and arent claiming bandwidth issues.
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Nothing to See Here
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Re:
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Cable TV != Internet
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Wow. Are you actually that ignorant or just spewing bullshit?
"in truly competitive markets, it would seem that bandwidth may go for considerably more than 10˘/TB."
Please explain the relevance of comparing the cost of infrastructure to potential market prices.
"broadband internet has turned out to be a single-company (unregulated) monopoly "
In that case it should be regulated like a utility, (not that such regulation achieves anything).
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
- Internet is a communication device. You are capable of both sending and receiving.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
The end user here is initiating the movie. This is not a broadcast from Netflix to a wide range of people clogging the internet.
ISP's happened to sell "unlimited" connections to users. These users are trying to use the connection.
If the ISPs are unhappy with their current income from their users then they need to make changes on that area. To go behind the scenes and try to get money from Netflix is a from of extortion.
Really this is less than a FCC issue and more of an FTC issue on the part of the ISP services.
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Source please. I think you missed a few zeros in there.
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Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
This describes the corporate speak definition of how they bill you for your internet connection. It is not however, a correct technical definition of the word "bandwidth".
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The comparison is actually quite simple here.
What we have here is the market (users) deciding which direction they want to go in order to get the content they want and the ISPs throwing tizzy fits over it, whilst trying to strongarm those said alternate content providers. Ultimately the consumer loses.
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Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering#How_peering_works
Typically, when equal traffic is peered there is no settlement.
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Net Neutrality in a Nutshell...
No redirects, no throttling, no interceptions, no mangling, no changing of data (aside from what naturally occurs in the network stack, ie NAT'ing, PAT'ing).
QOS is fine, as long as it's only traffic "type" based. No source or destination rules allowed, ever.
Any backbone provider or ISP caught modifying error codes, redirecting DNS traffic, traffic shaping, illegal QOS rules, traffic copying to the NSA/CIA/FBI/local police, log storing, etc will immediately suffer the following consequences.
100% of their infrastructure shall immediately become common carrier.
All patents belonging to the infringing entity will immediately expire and become public domain, with absolutely NO recourse available whatsoever. Any lawyer / executive for said company attempting to intercede will be summarily executed.
All copyrights belonging to the infringing entity will immediately expire and become public domain, with absolutely NO recourse available whatsoever. Any lawyer / executive for said company attempting to intercede will be summarily executed.
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Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
Nobody is a bandwidth hog, people pay for a specific package and use it , why would they be called bandwidth hogs. if i want to watch three different netflix shows in my house and my internet is capable of doing so then am i a bandwidth hog or using the internet as it was meant to be used and as i have paid for.
Maybe if the FCC sees how Verizon and Comcast have been abusing their customers by not upgrading when signing up millions of new subscribers, maybe then we will get to the bottom of the problem.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
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Wheeler: Hey can you guys give me all the details for that deal you made with Netflix?
Verizon/Comcast: No.
Wheeler: Well I tried, guess there isn't anything I can do. Hey you guys have any openings for a high position where I don't have to do anything?
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Re: Re: Re: freeloading bandwidth hogs
First problem: There is no such thing as unlimited speed. We are restricted to how fast the electrons (or photons if you're on fiber) can travel at the very least. In reality, it's slower because whenever the data needs to be routed, a computer has to do the routing, which slows it down. So, we can't have unlimited speed, which leads us into the second problem...
Since we can't have an unlimited speed, perhaps we have a really really high speed, say 100GB/s for sake of a simple number. (I don't really know what the actual speed is.) This is the speed of the entire network at once. To simplify, we can assume any one end-user could get this speed to another end-user at any time. (Because remember, if you're downloading the data, someone else is uploading the data. It doesn't just come out of a water main somewhere.) Now say two people queue up a download at the same time. Who gets the 100GB/s connection? The ISP's answer is to divide the connection; each person gets 50GB/s of bandwidth allocated to their connection. But we have way more than two people... Lets say we have 100,000 people. If we were to divide this evenly, each person would have a DEDICATED 1MB/s bandwidth they could use whenever they wanted. And now we've finally gotten to the reason why this whole setup doesn't work at all the way you want it to, and never will...
The network would never dedicate any strict amount to any subscriber, because no subscriber uses exactly the same amount at all the time. So instead, they pretend to allocate 10MB/s to each person, even though that's 10x the capacity of their network. The trick is that as long as not everyone tries to use their full capacity at once, no one notices. This is known as the Banker's Algorithm, because banks do it, too.
TL;DR: Actually there's not a good way to condense it further. Go take a Networking 101 course at a community college for more info.
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Interconnection Vs Net Neutrality
That part really confuses me. It seems like everyone dances around this topic, but no one really clearly explains the difference and why there is so much outrage when they are thought of as two separate issues and the likes of Netflix are asked to pay ISPs for a better connection.
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