> Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II.
If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal that's better for both of them and for the consumer. For instance, consider a CDN on the ISP's network. Consumers get content faster with lower latency; the content provider reduces their bandwidth costs by sending only one copy of $POPULAR_CONTENT rather than one per customer; the ISP has lower costs and makes its customers happier.
Network neutrality would ban that, too. So this isn't the kind of thing that can be settled with simple blanket statements like "carriers should not make deals with content providers" or "all content should be treated identically".
> For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters.
I'm always impressed when people can say with a straight face that politicians listen to voters. Voters don't care about issues like these, unless you can divide the issue across party lines and successfully make it one of the very small number of visible issues in a political campaign.
I'd be more interested in seeing proposed solutions to the "effective monopoly" problem than to network neutrality. Solve the monopoly and issues like network neutrality will disappear along with it.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Care to explain your CDN/ISP hypothetical further? Wouldn't the content providers who are capable of paying have an advantage over those who aren't?
I'm not clear on how money changes hands in your case, but undoubtedly this arrangement would favor the ISP. As far as peering goes, it's a bit more complicated... server locations are more mobile than consumer locations, so there is less concern about an effective geographic monopoly for backbone providers. Without fully thinking through the economics of peering, my initial thought is that there should probably be a regulated amount that ISP's can charge to peer with backbone providers. Maybe cost plus a maintenance fee based on traffic volume.
Regarding voting, I just feel it's the better of two imperfect solutions.
> Thanks for the thoughtful response. Care to explain your CDN/ISP hypothetical further? Wouldn't the content providers who are capable of paying have an advantage over those who aren't?
Of course, just as Amazon has an advantage over smaller retailers, and Netflix has an advantage over new steaming services. Incumbents always have certain advantages, and business deals always favor those involved in them over those not involved in them. Money makes things easier. But "an advantage" isn't "an insurmountable advantage", and HN is full of startups coming up with innovative ways to circumvent incumbent advantages.
> I'm not clear on how money changes hands in your case, but undoubtedly this arrangement would favor the ISP.
Not necessarily. This doesn't need to be a win/lose zero-sum scenario; it's entirely possible, in the scenario I described, for all three of the customer, the ISP, and the content provider to come out ahead.
> As far as peering goes, it's a bit more complicated... server locations are more mobile than consumer locations, so there is less concern about an effective geographic monopoly for backbone providers.
That's certainly true. And in general, I think it's much more critical to find a solution to the ISP monopoly problem than to the network neutrality problem, because ISP monopolies lead to quite a few other issues as well.
> Without fully thinking through the economics of peering, my initial thought is that there should probably be a regulated amount that ISP's can charge to peer with backbone providers. Maybe cost plus a maintenance fee based on traffic volume.
I can understand where that idea would come from, but ick; there are so many things wrong with that idea.
Perhaps it would make sense to legally separate the "last-mile" provider from the large-scale bandwidth provider, with the former providing only connectivity to a local meet-me room. I don't particularly like that idea, but it seems far less awful than alternatives.
If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal that's better for both of them and for the consumer. For instance, consider a CDN on the ISP's network. Consumers get content faster with lower latency; the content provider reduces their bandwidth costs by sending only one copy of $POPULAR_CONTENT rather than one per customer; the ISP has lower costs and makes its customers happier.
Network neutrality would ban that, too. So this isn't the kind of thing that can be settled with simple blanket statements like "carriers should not make deals with content providers" or "all content should be treated identically".
> For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters.
I'm always impressed when people can say with a straight face that politicians listen to voters. Voters don't care about issues like these, unless you can divide the issue across party lines and successfully make it one of the very small number of visible issues in a political campaign.
I'd be more interested in seeing proposed solutions to the "effective monopoly" problem than to network neutrality. Solve the monopoly and issues like network neutrality will disappear along with it.