[Lawtan]

The internet is going to get more costly to users, it seems. While it will be a gradual change, these two recent events, in my opinion, may hurt the internet crowd.
Essentially, the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) determined to set floor rates and regulations on broadband internet, and several other companies took them to court over this...and have failed (*coughs* Federal *coughs)

In light of some of the outrage and issues caused, the FCC has stated that they will not start these rates and regulations until 2015, and that they will try to increase the rates at a lower increment.

Court Case

FCC Phases in Floor Rates


This, to me, is disconcerting...
Thoughts?

[Tiva]

Ummm I actually don't see the problem with this? This involves the upping of basic phone service prices, which while annoying is actually for a good reasoning behind it. They are trying to remove slower speed internet that service providers are still using, by creating a minimum standard that they accept to be allowed for attachments and the rates for any attachments. I have had the problem in Rural areas, and the service itself is crappy. People that have dial up speeds, because the service provider they use had their wires done back in 2000 and haven't bothered updating them since so no matter how much data they pay for access to the speed will not increase as the wires coming to their house will not support it. They are charged the same amount as a customer with brand new and better capable wires.
This is upping the quality of the minimum service provided, much like upping the minimum wage would.

[Espy]

...I'm a bit confused here, since you mentioned the Internet getting more costly, while the two links had to do with phone service. I know the two are related , but, uh....??

Granted, I've been very much out of the loop for the past couple weeks and thought this was going to be a thread on net neutrality :P

[Lawtan]

Honestly, part of me is confused myself on the topic. I had understood from the person who told me to look it up that the rates would extend from phone broadband to covering the internet - acting as an additional tax or control on the internet (in specific, a new pay per use rate on high-speed internet). That is what disturbed me - both that I could not find more/anything closer to it and the idea of making the internet less accessible when it has served as a lifeline/resource for several.

I was sort of hoping someone knew more about it...

[Coda]

Here's what you're really missing: It has nothing to do with the price to users.

Here's the way I understand it. I could be wrong.

In a fair scenario, with net neutrality, every backbone carrier will deliver traffic from every other backbone carrier. They won't throttle it, they won't inspect it, they'll just pass it through and send it on to its destination. If you make a service, you pay one company -- an ISP. If you use up too much bandwidth, your ISP charges you accordingly. If your ISP uses up too much bandwidth with the backbone carrier, the backbone will charge the ISP accordingly (and by extension your ISP will pass the buck to you -- this is a good thing, it means the party responsible for the traffic pays for it). If the backbone carriers start having problems with the amount of traffic they have to carry, they adjust their rates accordingly, and again, the price hike bubbles back to the source of the problem.

Without net neutrality, backbone carriers can decide that not all incoming traffic is created equal. They can see where it's coming from and INTENTIONALLY SLOW IT DOWN. And then they contact the source of the traffic directly and say "hey, if you want to go fast again, pay us money." As a result, some customers of the service get different quality of service than others, and the customers CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. They could theoretically switch to a different ISP, but there may not be a choice available. They can't pay their ISP more to get better performance -- sure, you get more bandwidth, but the service you care about is still throttled. And what's more, the customer's ISP may not even be in a position to improve things anyway, because the throttling could be somewhere else on the backbone.

That's why net neutrality is a big deal -- it allows backbone providers to discriminate against services, even if those services ARE CUSTOMERS OF ANOTHER CARRIER.

[Espy]

There you go, that's what I was thinking about ^

[Coda]

Oops. Heh. I misread the thread myself. Tiva's right. ^^()

[The Kawaii Cosplayer]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooo

[Tiva]

Kawaii Cosplayer Trisphee has a 2 word minimum, preferably 3 words. Anything lower is considered spam, and please contribute to the conversation not just post the word 'no'.

[Witchchylde]

I guess I should be grateful our current internet access is via a cell tower hot spot instead of broadband or phone lines? Even though we're barely in the zone and sometimes lose service based on like, cloud cover and the like. I wish we could get broadband, but here we are in the rural spot I hadn't expected to be moving to. Oh well. Things change when we change them, so I guess it's all on me to get my life where I want it. Which is NOT down a country road!

[dragoness129]

We pay for Charter Internet. It is costly and not always super reliable, but it is fairly fast. I LOVE having Intenet so it is definitely worth it!

[Yeladim]

What this conversation so far has missed is not the speed component, but the imposition to control free enterprise. This is all a control issue. If you are with Verizon and don't like their speed, you can move to AT&T. Time Warner too slow, move to satellite. What is happening is everyone will be regulated so you no longer have a choice which provide to pick because they will all be the same crappy service since it will be mandated.

Catalogue this under Federal Overreach along with the IRS, INS and all the other Federal agencies that are being subverted.

[Coda]

With all due respect, you've been misinformed. That isn't what it's about at all.

Competition for so-called "last-mile" connectivity is almost entirely unaffected. There's no policy in place or proposed to say that residential providers have to provide the same service to everyone, and it will continue to be the case to say that ISPs can charge customers more money to get better service.

The net neutrality discussion is all about how backbone providers interact with each other and with traffic that does not originate on their own network. Net neutrality means that if you run a website, you only have to pay for your website's connection to its service provider. You wouldn't have to pay for access to other networks that your service provider connects to.

So suppose you've got two competing sites, Bob's Videos and Joe's Movies. They offer exactly the same content. They charge their customers exactly the same amount of money. Both sites have equally good video players, equally good quality, and equally good search and recommendation functions. You'd think they should be equal, then. But under the current scheme, if Bob pays Verizon extra money, then Verizon customers will see that Joe's Movies is slower than Bob's Videos. But AT&T customers will see the two sites performing the same, and if Joe got annoyed at Bob and decided to go pay Comcast some extra money, then Comcast customers will get better performance from Joe's Movies.

In other words, the customers -- the end users, you and me -- have the quality of their Internet experience controlled not by what they pay for their own connection, and not by what services they choose to use, but by what companies they have no connection to or influence with do behind the scenes.

[Yeladim]

Thank you for clearing that up for me. I appreciate the extra information.

[Madame-Aiko]

A majority of my life time I am on the internet, browsing art, selling my own, researching things for my courses I take, and to socialize.
So this sort of thing bothers me since...
1. My only source of income right now is through art commissions.
2. I don't talk much IRL, more online with friends since we don't see each other much.
3. When I don't understand something I go to the internet and find the ways to work it out or better understand it.
We use Windstream at our house since we live so far out of the city. Our internet is still incredibly slow and when people (multiple) are on it it makes it worse. I have trouble opening webpages like Google email and settings since our bandwidth seems to only be able to take so much. And in a house with five people using the internet, it's hard to get much done online.

[Coda]

Given that your limiting factor is your last-mile connection, it actually doesn't affect you much at all. You're going to be slow no matter what happens with net neutrality.