FCC Quickly Shoots Down The First (Incredibly Stupid) Net Neutrality Complaint

from the chicken-little-was-wrong dept

Back in June we noted how the very first net neutrality complaint had been filed and that it was notably stupid, but important. Basically, a small San Diego company by the name of Commercial Network Services (CNS) tried to complain that Time Warner Cable was abusing its monopoly power by refusing to give the company free peering. CNS operates a series of webcams in the San Diego area which, when visited, inform users that the reason they can't access the "ultra-HD" version of the cameras is because their ISP isn't a peering partner with CNS: In its informal FCC complaint, CNS tried to claim that Time Warner Cable's refusal to offer free peering violates the "no paid prioritization" and "no throttling" sections of the new net neutrality rules. Basically, CNS has been trying to claim that net neutrality somehow means it deserves free peering from bigger ISPs, even though that's never been how things work for smaller companies, and the new net neutrality rules don't change that. So it was the first net neutrality complaint, but it was also the first example of a company trying to use the rules to weasel out a business advantage, something mega-ISPs tried to claim would be a huge, unmanageable problem.

But the FCC has apparently seen this complaint for what it is and acted accordingly, basically informing the company politely in a letter that it needs to shut up and go away:

"In this instance we regret that you were not satisfied with attempts by FCC staff to facilitate a more satisfactory resolution of the underlying issue. At this point, you might want to contact the company directly to see if you and the company can arrive at a resolution that is more acceptable to you. You will receive no further status on your complaint from FCC staff."

While the net neutrality rules don't specifically cover interconnection, they do give the authority for the FCC to resolve complaints on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the FCC clearly found nothing wrong. And that's a good thing; one narrative of incumbent mega ISPs before the rules were passed was that the FCC would run amok, competitors would abuse the rules, and we'd be wandering a minefield of unintended consequences and protracted legal battles, decimating the telecom landscape as we know it. Yet here, the FCC quickly saw a stupid complaint and shot it down with minimal fuss.

Obviously that's only one complaint, and we'll need to watch the FCC closely to see just what trips the agency's definition of anti-competitive behavior. But so far so good, and none of it has required "heavy handed regulation." Simply having rules in place has already helped on the interconnection front, with companies like Netflix, Cogent, Level 3 and the mega ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon) getting along famously simply due to the threat that a regulator might just do its job.

CNS, meanwhile, insists it's going to proceed and file a formal net neutrality complaint, for whatever that winds up being worth (and it won't be much).

Filed Under: fcc, free peering, interconnection, net neutrality, peering, webcams
Companies: commercial network services, time warner cable

Charter Hires Leading Net Neutrality Advocate To Write Its Net Neutrality Commitments, Promises To Go Further Than FCC Rules

from the who-are-you-and-what-have-you-done-with-the-cable-company? dept

By and large, the mega-ISP version of net neutrality has unsurprisingly been a far cry from the consumer and small business definition of net neutrality. At the moment, most ISPs argue that net neutrality only means they won't throttle or outright block competing content. It's this vague, incomplete definition (in that it doesn't cover issues like usage caps, interconnection or zero rating) the incumbent carriers have used when they've told regulators they "promise to adhere to net neutrality" if the latest merger-du-jour is allowed to go through. That's why, when Comcast promised it would adhere to "net neutrality" if it was allowed to buy NBC (and more recently Time Warner Cable), it meant -- to use a highly-scientific term -- jack shit.

So it's interesting to see Charter Communications -- which is trying to gobble up Time Warner Cable after Comcast's failed merger attempt -- suddenly promising to adhere to real net neutrality to get their deal done. The company is apparently dedicated enough to the idea that they've hired leading net neutrality and consumer advocate Marvin Ammori to help hash out a meaningful commitment that would appeal to a more consumer-focused FCC. Ammori, if you're unaware, was basically the key player in making sure the FCC passed good rules instead of the original terrible rules.

According to a piece by Ammori over at Wired, he actually wound up writing Charter's commitment:

"Charter hired me—which, to be honest, took some humility on its part since I have helped lead public campaigns against cable companies like Charter—to advise it in crafting its commitment to network neutrality. After our negotiation, I can say Charter is offering the strongest network neutrality commitments ever offered—in any merger or, to my knowledge, in any nation. In fact, in the end, I personally wrote the commitments."

That in and of itself is pretty impressive; I've covered the broadband industry for the better part of a lifetime, and the vast, vast majority of ISP merger conditions are promises that are utterly, mind-bendingly meaningless. They're almost always fluff and nonsense, political show ponies written by ISP lawyers to sound good to the clueless, even if they accomplish less than nothing. So for a cable company to bring on board a fierce neutrality critic to pen their commitment to neutrality is unprecedented. What's more, while the FCC has so far turned a blind eye to more clever types of neutrality violations (like usage caps and zero rating, pretty much ground zero of the current neutrality debate), Marvin managed to get those included in Charter's commitment as well:

"Since zero rating favors some sites over others based on the broadband provider’s preferences (not the users’), my allies and I urged the FCC to ban zero rating in all forms, but the FCC didn’t go that far. Charter necessarily will. In fact, it will commit to no data cap at all–and no usage-based billing–therefore it will be unable to exempt any applications from those practices."

That Charter -- a company that's flirted with usage caps on and off for years -- has agreed to avoid not only zero rating but usage caps entirely is a pretty big deal. Most cable operators are aggressively eyeing usage caps to jack up consumer broadband bills, well aware that inevitably users will chose to cut the TV and cable VoIP cord in exchange for over the top data services. Though only catch here, as Ammori notes, is that the restrictions only apply to Charter for a three year span, after which (especially if the FCC's neutrality rules are killed by the courts) all gloves are off and the fight begins anew. It's also important to remember that while Charter's busy making these promises, it's actively engaged in suing the FCC to destroy the net neutrality rules as a member in the NCTA.

Still, that Charter's willing to go this far is night and day from Comcast's merger approach, which was to dazzle everyone with an endless parade of utter bullshit and hope that nobody was smart enough to see truth, buried as it was under a junk yard of meaningless promises.

Filed Under: commitments, conditions, data caps, marvin ammori, merger, net neutrality, open internet, zero rating
Companies: charter communications, time warner cable

No, We Still Can't Definitively Prove Your ISP Is Slowing Netflix Traffic To Make An Extra Buck

from the network-shenanigans dept

While filing a net neutrality complaint is now easier than ever, actually identifying violations may not be. In the new age of interconnection, usage caps, overages, and pay-to-play zero rating deals, less technical users simply may not understand when they're being screwed by their ISP, as these violations aren't nearly as ham-fistedly obvious as outright blocking or throttling of services. That's why the Open Technology Institute’s MLAB recently introduced the Internet health test, which runs user connections through a bevy of speed and performance tests to determine whether or not ISPs are engaged in any shenanigans.

Last October, MLAB released a study (pdf) that strongly supported Netflix, Level3 and Cogent's claims that ISPs were intentionally letting peering points to transit operators saturate to try and force companies like Netflix to begin paying for direct interconnection. In short, neutrality advocates believe ISPs had moved net neutrality to the edge of the network, using interconnection to grab the pound of flesh from content companies they've long stated was their end goal.

The problem is both sides of the equation (whether that's Netflix or AT&T) keep most of their data on interconnection (and the deals they strike) private for competitive reasons, meaning that while signs (and thirty years of history) pointed to ISP skulduggery, actually proving it is difficult. It's apparently becoming less difficult with the new consumer connection data being collected by MLAB, which the Guardian this week claimed proves big ISPs are intentionally degrading network performance across some networks:

"The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US...In Atlanta, for example, Comcast provided hourly median download speeds over a CDN called GTT of 21.4 megabits per second at 7pm throughout the month of May. AT&T provided speeds over the same network of ⅕ of a megabit per second. When a network sends more than twice the traffic it receives, that network is required by AT&T to pay for the privilege."

This is, consumer advocate group Free Press claims, proof positive that ISPs are up to no good:

"For too long, internet access providers and their lobbyists have characterized net neutrality protections as a solution in search of a problem,” said Karr. “Data compiled using the Internet Health Test show us otherwise – that there is widespread and systemic abuse across the network. The irony is that this trove of evidence is becoming public just as many in Congress are trying to strip away the open internet protections that would prevent such bad behavior."

The problem? While the Guardian report references a "new study," no study has actually been released that I could find (MLAB apparently just shared some selective data with The Guardian). That brings us back to the fact that the biggest problem here continues to be a lack of transparency on the part of all the players involved. But it's pretty hard to claim a "study" proves much of anything when there's no actual study, suggesting some over-eagerness on the parts of consumer advocates here.

Shortly after the Guardian piece MLABS did post a blog entry that sheds a little more light on the data they're collecting, but it's worth noting that while MLAB engineers are confident in saying these slowdowns are due to business choices and not network capacity, they're not yet willing to definitively state why some transit routes suffer more than others:

"It is important to note that while we are able to observe and record these episodes of performance degradation, nothing in the data allows us to draw conclusions about who is responsible for the performance degradation. We leave determining the underlying cause of the degradation to others, and focus solely on the data, which tells us about consumer conditions irrespective of cause."

If you're interested, all the data MLAB is collecting has been released publicly and is available through the telescope program, which can be used to pull down and analyze subsets of the data.

Still, despite some of the breathless rhetoric in the Guardian piece neutrality advocates still haven't obtained the AT&T lawyer proof silver bullet that indisputably proves large ISPs have been up to no good. I'm not entirely sure this can even be accomplished without access to raw, confidential ISP data and internal correspondence that may or may not even exist (how do you "prove" Verizon intentionally isn't upgrading a port?). Sure, most people can study AT&T and Verizon's behavior over the last thirty years and conclude that yes, this sort of thing would certainly be in their jackassery wheelhouse, but proving it is kind of important if you want these kinds of claims to be taken seriously.

Still, the fact that people are crunching and closely analyzing the data, combined with the new and novel threat of a regulator that's not asleep at the wheel, appears to have many of these companies magically and suddenly getting along famously. This suggests, contrary to broadband industry doomsday prognostications, that the net neutrality rules are having a positive impact on consumers, business interests, and the Internet at large.

Filed Under: broadband, interconnection, isps, net neutrality, studies, throttling, transparency
Companies: at&t, cogent, comcast, level3, m-lab, netflix, time warner cable, verizon

The First Net Neutrality Complaint Has Been Filed, And It's Stupid (But Important)

from the regulatory-fisticuffs dept

For much of the last year, transit ISPs like Level3 and Cogent have been complaining that the residential megaISPs have basically been trying to shake down Netflix and transit operators for additional money. To hear these companies tell it, ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, have been doing this by intentionally letting network interconnection points get congested, then using that congestion to justify an end to settlement-free peering, and for new direct Netflix interconnection payments.

Basically, the accusation goes, the big ISPs have been breaking the Internet, then demanding steep new payments should companies like Netflix want it to work properly. While the FCC's new net neutrality rules don't specifically cover interconnection feuds of this type, they do allow companies to file grievances the FCC will examine on a case-by-case basis for anti-competitive behavior. However, once the FCC's new rules were passed, the mere threat of regulatory enforcement magically put the kibosh on many of these complaints. As a result many (but not all) transit and last mile ISPs are now getting along beautifully, showing that the rules are already working.

However, we did see the very first net neutrality complaint filed this week, and by all indications it's rather stupid. A company by the name of Commercial Network Services (CNS) has been complaining to the press for a few weeks that Time Warner Cable has been abusing its monopoly power by refusing to give the company free peering. CNS operates a series of webcams in the San Diego area which, when visited, will likely tell you you can't access the "ultra-HD" version of the cameras because your ISP isn't a peering partner with CNS:
In the informal complaint (pdf) CNS filed with the FCC, the company proclaims that Time Warner Cable's refusal to offer free peering constitutes a violation of the FCC's throttling and paid prioritization neutrality rules:

"I am writing to initiate an informal complaint against Time Warner Cable (TWC) for violating the “No Paid Prioritization” and “No Throttling” sections of the new net neutrality rules for failure to fulfill their obligations to their BIAS consumers by opting to exchange Internet traffic over higher latency (and often more congested) transit routes instead of directly to the edge provider over lower latency peering routes freely available to them through their presence on public Internet exchanges, unless a payment is made to TWC by the edge provider."

Except Time Warner Cable is doing nothing of the sort, and CNS either doesn't understand how interconnection works, or understands it perfectly well and is hoping to abuse the new rules for its own financial benefit. There's nothing that obligates Time Warner Cable to provide free peering to anybody who asks, and refusing CNS' demands on that front has absolutely nothing to do with paid prioritization, throttling, or net neutrality. Settlement-free peering sometimes occurs when ISPs and transit operators agree to offload huge-swaths of relatively similar sized traffic allotments, but as Harold Feld correctly points out, CNS simply doesn't qualify:

"Basically, CNS wants settlement free peering (aka free interconnection) with with Time Warner Cable (TWC). According to CNS’ complaint, they have exchange points where TWC also has a point of presence. They want TWC to exchange traffic with them for free, and allege it is unjust and unreasonable for TWC to offer them the standard deal for entities of their size, i.e. a paid transit agreement.

Entities like CNS haven’t gotten free peering as a matter of course with major carriers since the first great upheaval in the peering market in the mid/late-1990s. CNS does not provide any evidence that it has been treated any differently from any other comparable entity of its size and function. TWC considered their request for settlement free peering under its standard procedures and found that CNS did not qualify."

If CNS is genuinely confused about what the rules do, it wouldn't be surprising, given the amount of nonsense that has been spouted about the rules from neutrality opponents in Congress and by folks like FCC Commissioner (and former Verizon lawyer) Ajit Pai. Of course ISPs and assorted broadband industry flacks will be quick to argue that this kind of frivolous complaint is the perfect example of how neutrality rules create "onerous new hurdles for ISPs." Except there's no hurdle here; the FCC will ignore this complaint because it's stupid, in the process showing the agency only intends to step in when there's clear, document-able proof of anti-competitive behavior.

So far, the net neutrality rules have been good for business, Internet health and consumers alike, despite the endless claims by the mega-ISPs that the rules would most certainly cause the Internet to implode.

Filed Under: cdn, complaints, fcc, net neutrality, peering, webcam
Companies: cns, commercial network services, time warner cable

Eight Years Later, New York City Officials Wake Up To Verizon's Fiber Broadband Bluff

from the fine-print dept

Like Silicon Valley, New York City purports to be a bastion for emerging technology, yet, just like Silicon Valley, it suffers from a pitiful lack of broadband options and competition. In New York, Time Warner Cable enjoys notable market dominance, with either spotty Verizon FiOS or DSL coverage providing the barest semblance of real market competition for the cable giant. It wasn't supposed to be this way: in 2008 Verizon struck a closed-door franchise agreement with then NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, one which Verizon strongly implied would result in 100% FiOS coverage for all five boroughs of the city by the end of 2014.

The agreement, both Bloomberg and Verizon tried to proclaim at the time, would mean uniform fiber for the whole city, putting an end to the broadband "cherry picking" that plagued franchise agreements of years past:

"Our investment in the City is historic, which is reflected in the citywide nature of our plan," (Verizon's Monica) Azare said. "When our fiber deployment project is completed it will reach to each and every borough, neighborhood, boulevard, avenue and street, without regard to the demographics of a particular area. More importantly, City residents will be able to take advantage of the power of fiber optics delivered straight to their doors."

2014 has of course come and gone, and most estimates peg New York City FiOS penetration at somewhere between 45 and 55%, with most of the city's least affluent areas left in the broadband dark. Despite plenty of warning signs from reporters at the time, and the fact that city lawyers could have read the agreement at any time, New York City officials are only just starting to realize that the deal allowed Verizon ample room to wiggle around and under most of the uniform deployment obligations.

A new city report (pdf) released last week has found, shockingly, that Verizon went right ahead and used these loopholes to cherry pick only select neighborhoods, just as the company had intended. The biggest trick Verizon used to bluff its way past obligations was by bringing fiber somewhere close to many residences (as in buried in the street one block over), then declaring that these users could get fiber. Of course when the city began to look, they found Verizon refused to finish the job:

"As 2014 progressed, and Verizon’s (supposed) build-out approached 100 percent, DoITT began to receive anecdotal evidence, largely in the form of consumer complaints, suggesting that Verizon was simultaneously taking credit for “passing” households and declining to accept orders for nonstandard service installations from those households. The anecdotal evidence, in combination with discussions of the particular households involved with Verizon personnel, led DoITT to be concerned that these anecdotes did not reflect occasional irregularities, but possibly broader failures by Verizon to fulfill the obligations it undertook in the 2008 franchise agreement."

Possibly! Again, this was all pretty much spelled out in the franchise agreement Bloomberg's office signed with Verizon years earlier. As we've often covered, Verizon also has a long, proud, history of similar shenanigans in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, getting significant tax breaks and subsidies in exchange for fiber optic service that never winds up getting deployed. Verizon, as you might expect, denies that it in any way failed the city, and blames difficult city landlords for its failure to deliver promised fiber to roughly half the city:

"We indeed have met the requirement to install fiber optics through all five boroughs," a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. "Our $3.5 billion investment and the 15,000 miles of fiber we have built have given New Yorkers added choices and a robust set of advanced, reliable, and resilient services. The challenge we have is gaining access to properties which of course would expand availability. We look forward to working with the City to seek solutions to this issue."

Verizon had been trying to blame crotchety landlords for these expected FiOS coverage gaps for some time, and while there certainly are some difficult building managers, reporters have found in many of these instances that Verizon incompetence was actually to blame. In some instances, Verizon was accused of telling building owners that it would only actually connect buildings to the FiOS network if every resident in the building was required to get service through Verizon and nobody else.

So, the better part of a decade later New York City officials are annoyed at the sweetheart deal their predecessors signed, and insist that they'll be holding Verizon's feet to the fire:

"Through a thorough and comprehensive audit, we have determined that Verizon substantially failed to meet its commitment to the people of New York City,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio..."What the audit reveals is an alarming failure on the part of Verizon to deliver on its franchise agreement with the City,” said Counsel to the Mayor Maya Wiley. “Verizon must make good on its commitment and do so with transparency, accountability and better service delivery going forward. New Yorkers deserve no less."

The agreement says the city "may "seek and/or pursue money damages" if Verizon fails to live up to its side of the agreement, but the loophole-filled wording of the contract will likely make that impossible. If Verizon's business history is any indication, what will actually happen is the company's lawyers will keep the bureaucratic wheels spinning indefinitely, while the city spends another decade paying lip service to the transformative power of broadband. That New York City is at least making a stink about it is at least marginally promising; Pennsylvania and New Jersey officials threw billions of dollars at the company, let it off the hook for any and all obligations, and then just hoped nobody would notice.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fiber, fios, new york city, promises
Companies: time warner cable, verizon