[opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld

From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 09:40:37 -0500

On Jan 21, 2016, at 9:53 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

I might add that the Sling MVPD bundle is NOT all you can eat. It is
limited to one stream.

Really Craig? I think not.

http://www.cnet.com/news/sling-tv-everything-you-need-to-know/
Can I watch Sling TV on more than one TV (or other device) at the same time?

No. Unless you create more than one account, you cannot watch Sling TV on
more than one device -- TV or mobile -- at the same time. The service is
restricted to one stream at a time.

You can have more than one device registered to the same account, but if
you're watching one and then begin streaming on another, the service makes
you choose which single device to continue streaming.

In the old way, you fill up the pipe with a very, very vast amount of content
the user doesn't want, and let the user filter out what he does want at his
end. A limited approach, obviously, but cheap when there isn't too much
content involved.

And you have access to all of this content on multiple devices at the point of
service. There are some limits relative to the need for set top boxes to decode
some services. The main reason the cable industry has maintained the analog
tier is that almost all existing TVs have cable ready tuners; thus it is
possible to connect multiple TVs throughout a home. Now many cable systems are
offering many digital channels in the clear, which can be decoded by newer TVs
with QAM tuners.

The point here is that for homes with multiple residents there is no limit on
the number of TVs, each of which can tune to a different program. And now, with
TV Everywhere, multiple IP devices can access streaming content simultaneously.

With Sling TV you can only access one stream at a time.

This cheap approach cannot work with something that has as much choice as the
telephone network or the Internet. So in this more flexible paradigm, where
flooding each user with all the possible sources is impossible, you have to
switch content upstream, even very far upstream sometimes, in the network
(circuit switching or packet switching, that detail is not important for this
discussion).

Totally irrelevant to this discussion.

Internet broadband is hardly limited to just one stream. Come now.

Obviously. But Sling TV is limited to just one stream per subscriber account.

It's purely a matter of design. I already explained one fairly
straightforward solution for TV-type of content. ISPs have been managing
congestion remarkably well over time, as users demand more.

Exactly. And they will continue to upgrade their infrastructure as needed. At
some point in the future the need for data caps will likely disappear for
wired/FIOS broadband service. Competitive overbuilds like Google Fiber will
accelerate the response from the legacy services.

The more broadband speed they want, the more they have to pay, already now.
So it's not like the ISP isn't getting paid.

It's not just the speed of the service. I can support multiple HD streams with
my 50 Mbps broadband today. It is the total amount of bits I consume that
matters as well, when I share bandwidth with my neighbors. If we all started
using 200 GB a month, the our node would become too congested and everyone
would suffer. Data caps help allocate the scarce resource.

No, Craig. If the MVPD/ISP places very low monthly Internet caps, it clearly
"advantages" his own MVPD linear streams. Hence, it becomes a neutrality
issue. It's pretty simple. Caps can be used as another tool to thwart
neutrality, in effect.

So who is placing very low data caps on their service Bert?

Comcast has allowed 300 GB/mo since 2012; additional data is $10 for 50 GB.
They also offer unlimited data plans for about $30/mo on top of the standard
broadband service rate.

My Cox broadband has a 350 GB cap. Cox offers several service levels above mine
that feature higher speeds and correspondingly higher caps. The Gigablast
service they are now rolling out features gigabit speed and a 2000 GB cap.

These numbers do not add up to a net neutrality violation, nor do they
advantage the traditional MVPD service.

True enough, but the LARGEST amounts have been attributed to Netflix. And
strange coincidence, that's the one that didn't work on certain ISP nets,
until surprise, they were made to pay more. That instantly corrected the
problem.

Yes Netflix is the biggest user of "prime time" bandwidth. But the congestion
issues were based on interconnection issues, not limitations of the "last mile"
ISP service. And yes, when proper provisioning of the interconnects was
addressed the congestion issues went away.

The point you are missing is that Internet bandwidth is NOT FREE. Netflix was
already paying CDNs to deliver their bits to ISPs. The ISPs rightfully objected
to the shift from symmetrical peering to the asymmetry caused by Netflix;
somebody had to pay for the traffic.

In the end, Netflix chose to deal with Comcast and pay for direct access to
their subscribers. This was NEVER a net neutrality issue.

Tom Wheeler is an appointee, not a politician, and has been quite reasonable.

He is a regulator, and changed his position when his "boss," President Obama
told him to push the Title II decision.

So was Michael Powell some years back. What they say usually makes a lot of
sense. You should learn from that, Craig.

What's your point? What should be obvious is that the Courts overturned all of
the previous attempts for the FCC to regulate the Internet. The early decision
to treat broadband as an information service was not challenged. It allowed the
industry to grow rapidly without regulation. It was only after the. FCC tried
to impose Net Neutrality regulations that the industry challenged the decision,
and won. We are now in the midst of another round of legal challenges based on
the reclassification under Title II.

The courts have NOT decided if the FCC exceeded its authority...again.

And Congress has every right to address all of this, and overturn the
reclassification under Title II, should the courts approve the latest attempt
by the FCC to regulate the Internet.

That's hardly the FCC's fault. The rates increase because old tech, the tech
you consistently champion, the one you want everyone to become totally
dependent on, cannot provide adequate competition.

What a fantasy...

The rates increased because of a loophole - the unintended consequence - of the
legislation. The legislation allows rates to increase when more channels are
added to the bundles. The FCC was powerless to enforce rates; but the realty
was that both Congress and the FCC did nothing.

Thus we are forced to assume that the legislation was not really designed to
regulate cable rates, but rather, the retrans consent provision was an intended
consequence that not only fueled continuous rate increases, but ALSO created a
new content oligopoly, thereby ending the competitive threat from the new
content services developed by the cable industry that challenged the broadcast
oligopoly.

One may also look at what happened with the 1995 Communications Act, which
authorized the FCC to open up the market for MVPD STBs. Here they had clear
legal authority to regulate but did nothing...

And the FCC **does not**, and never has, set rates for MVPDs. Perhaps the FCC
should be forced to regulate rates, rather than leaving that up to local
franchising authorities, or nothing at all? Okay. I'll buy that.

They were granted the authority to regulate cable rates by the 1992 Cable Act.
In this case the letter of the law was followed by both the FCC and local
franchise authorities. The truth is the 1992 cable act was never intended to
regulate cable rates; that was just the storyline to get the bill passed, which
by the way, required an override of the veto by President Bush.

Hardly made your point. I was getting well in excess of 10 unwanted calls per
day, sometimes well in excess, before the do not call list. Now I get maybe
1/3 or 1/4 of that. You are the libertarian here, Craig. Your idea would be
to let the greedy ones make as many calls as they like. Extreme political
positions have a way of being consistently wrong.

You did make my point. For a period of time things did get better. Then the
more aggressive telemarketers simply ignored the law, which was is not being
enforced. And for good reason; its full of loopholes, like the exemption for
political candidates.

You continue to make no sense. Until the network infrastructure can become
TRULY competitive, with a large number of optional choices for consumers,
regulation is needed.

We disagree. Consumers DO have choices. The only thing that regulation will
accomplish is to slow the development of choices.

Once again: we became accustomed to a neutral Internet **only because** it
was first available over strictly regulated, for over 100 years, neutral,
telephone dialup. That should be a hint to you, Craig. It did not happen as
you claim it happened. Move on, Craig. Donâ€™t just cycle back to your old
truisms.

Give it up Bert. Yes modems did allow early, but slow, access to the Internet.
And yes, since the telcos ARE regulated under Title II, the FCC used its
authority to require the telcos to allow the use of modems. But that was just a
interim step.

The development of broadband networks was driven by consumer demand and private
investment. The LACK of regulation under the information services
classification helped to accelerate the development of this new infrastructure.

There still is no legislative authority to classify broadband as a Title II
telecommunications service. The courts are likely to point this out to the FCC.
If they do not overturn this reclassification, it is very likely that the next
Congress will. Much will depend on the outcome of next falls elections.

You were wrong the first time. Repeating that proclamation does not make you
less wrong. Data caps CAN BECOME a violation of neutrality, depending how
draconian they are. It CAN BE another tool in that tool chest.

I was not wrong. You continue to promote a false premise.

MVPD service has nothing to do with broadband, other than the "coincidence"
that some broadband services travel over the same wires as MVPD services. No
system is advantaging any IP service over another. Even if data caps do a
advantage MVPD service over Internet video streaming, it cannot be considered a
net neutrality violation - the MVPD service is not an Internet service. The
only potential net neutrality issue relates to the provisioning of "fast lanes"
that would advantage one Internet service over another.

But this has not happened. It may in the future if MVPD services are delivered
as IP network services, but even here, the network owners are protected, as
they have every right to use their networks to deliver MVPD services that are
only accessible to subscribers connected to that network or DBS dish.

Second, there is no way streaming Netflix is going to cost an
extra $75 a month beyond the cost of an MVPD bundle.

That's absurd. It is hardly difficult to set up such a scheme, Craig. I'm not
saying it has been done, but it sure doesn't take any amount of genius to
achieve this. "There's no way," you claim? I must be a genius, Craig. Because
I find it quite easy to do!

You are correct: it does not require a genius to create such a disparity in
pricing...

It would take an IDIOT!

These companies are in business to make a profit. They know their future is as
a broadband service provider, and they are moving rapidly to support the
growing demand for broadband packages that support OTT streaming.

The issue is not data caps. You can buy unlimited broadband service today. But
you cannot buy most of the content in the MVPD bundles at any price; unless you
subscribe to a MVPD service. Your buddy Les says that someday this may change,
but for now...

Again, you donâ€™t seem to get the technologies involved here.

Give it up Bert. They are not listening to you.

But as of now, people are becoming MORE interested in Internet broadband than
in traditional old-style TV watching. Hence, continuing to waste so much
capacity with broadcast becomes more of a scheme to make the commodity more
precious.

The facts do not support your distorted view of reality.

As always, you say this with absolutely no justification. As always, I
donâ€™t buy your vague and varying proclamations. Repeating a vague
generality, even after we've gone way past this point *many* times, just
makes it sound like you aren't keeping up.

Just the facts sir. The capacity does not yet exist. Yes you could repurpose
the spectrum used for MVPD services that do the heavy lifting today. But that
is not going to happen. These people ARE NOT idiots.

Certainly not. You choose to use an antiquated service that does
not share bandwidth with your neighbors...

And even that's wrong. Amazing, Craig, how you just refuse to check your
facts. ADSL service provides relatively narrow pipes to individual homes.
These pipes join up upstream, at the CO. They join up at something called a
DSLAM (look it up). That's an aggregation point, and the faster the DSL
service, the closer that aggregation point becomes to each home.

Yup. And it is quite easy to provision the DSLAM to handle the traffic. The
telcos have been doing this for decades, long before DSL even existed. This is
no different than the cable head end - you provision the system with enough WAN
bandwidth to handle customer requirements, and now, you may collocate servers
to reduce the traffic on the WANs.

We are already seeing some data caps being lifted on wireless
data services as a tool to attract subscribers.

Excellent. When this becomes ubiquitous, we can start talking about adequate
competition for broadband. We donâ€™t have it now. In fact, at home, I
donâ€™t get enough 4G signal strength to send or receive large files.

Wireless data is a different subject. You have access to TWO wired/FIOS
broadband providers that you choose not to use.

I would simply point to history. The Internet we enjoy today is
the result of competitive forces,

Is the result of strictly regulated and neutral telephone lines

Wrong. Only the laggards still use acoustic modems. You are talking about a
brief period of history - the only acoustic modems in use today are old fax
machines, and perhaps a few folks out in the boonies that only have access to a
very long twisted pair phone line.

And now you choose to be a laggard, using DSL when you have much better, albeit
more expensive, options.

. That's all. Take those away, and everything would have been different.

We disagree.

Once again: the public insisted on a neutral Internet. And the courts
informed the FCC that they could not regulate neutrality with broadband
service classified as an information service.

Yes the public insists on net neutrality. And they have more than enough
economic muscle to assure it without regulation. It's called competition.

The courts have informed the FCC that they cannot regulate the Internet - they
have no legislative authority to do so except for some interstate networks.

The courts will soon decide if they have the authority under Title II. And if
the courts do not overturn the reclassification, there is a good chance
Congress will.

The reality is that without regulations that ended up becoming Title II, the
telephone network was becoming islands of sometimes disconnected small local
nets, and a large monopoly able to ask whatever rates they pleased, to
interconnect.

Yup. And we paid through the nose for telephone service. In the '80s and early
'90s I paid hundreds of dollars a month for a business line and long distance
charges. With competition interconnect fees and metered long distance have
virtually disappeared.

That's the reality, Craig. How the rates increase for MVPD old-style service
are another example of this effect: inadequate competition, sometimes
unavoidable by physical constraints of the infrastructure.

Bull. We have inadequate competition because Congress created today's content
oligopoly; under the guise of regulation. There are multiple MVPD services in
every market - there is no competition because they all have to pay the content
owners oligopoly ayes for he same programming. The Internet has the potential
to add more services, even real competition. But the content owners refuse to
license their Crown Jewels to new Internet services, and they still require the
licensing of bundles of channels people do not watch on the MVPD services.

Where are the regulators in this $300 billion industry?

On the take.

THINK, Craig. "The regime" was "as an information service." Just as the FCC
cannot impose neutrality on MVPD service. The courts made that abundantly
clear, Craig. They DID NOT say that the FCC could not impose a neutrality
mandate. They said, as I quoted, as long as the FCC continued to classify
broadband as an information service.

Yup. Soon we will learn if the FCC has ANY legal authority to regulate the
Internet.

Absurd again, right? Until Netflix, HBO was not in decline.

Wrong. When the economy collapsed Netflix was in the DVD by mail business and
HBO subscriptions declined from about 30% to 27% of U.S. Homes.

After Netflix, HBO subscriptions decline.

Wrong again. HBO subscriptions have remained steady at 28 million homes.

There was some evidence of a decline in subscribers for all of the premium
services (HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc.) between 2012 and 2014, that may parallel
the decline in MVPD subscribers over the same time frame. But the studies
provide no means of determining correlation with Netflix. It could have been
economics, lack of interest, or to some degree conversion.

That's correlation, Craig. Competition is the mechanism that creates this
correlation effect. If the trend has not reversed itself yet, and it hasn't,
you can't blame the economy back in 2008.

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/as-netflix-rises-more-people-are-canceling-hbo-and-showtime-1201065399/
As Netflix Rises, Subscriptions to HBO, Showtime and Other Premium Nets
Shrink as Percentage of U.S. Households: Report
Is Netflix putting a dent in premium cable subscriptions? A new study
suggests that a growing number of consumers are opting to pay for standalone
Internet video services instead of subscribing to channels like HBO or
Showtime — although the data does not prove there’s a trend.

...

One big caveat to this report: The data does not demonstrate cause and
effect. NPD did not ask consumers if they dropped premium cable TV services
because they were switching to Netflix or other SVOD options. Meanwhile,
other studies have found that Netflix is additive to the pay-TV bundle in
general, and not a replacement. For example, a TiVo Research and Analytics
study released in July 2013 found there was no significant difference in the
amount of traditional TV viewing between Netflix and non-Netflix households
(at least among TiVo DVR owners).

Furthermore, Showtime says it actually grew subscribers in the past year — to
hit 23 million at the start of 2014, up from 22 million a year ago. HBO’s
subscriber count in the U.S. has been flat at around 28 million, but the Time
Warner-owned cabler says it, too, boosted sub numbers last year (though a rep
declined to release specifics). Starz, for its part, said it added a net 1.2
million subs for the 12 months ended September 2013, to hit 22 million.

Bert again:

Really, Craig? I'll use your own technique. Does AT&T ofer you 20 or 50 or
whatever Mb/s broadband service? And you really think that two choices is
adequate competition?

Do you have access to 20 or 50 or whatever's Mb/s broadband service?

Yes. But you choose not to pay for it.

Based on earlier posts it sounds like you have at least three
broadband options.

Two. Verizon and Cox. That's two. Verizon now only offers FiOS to new
subscribers, no more ADSL. Either way, it's still Verizon.

And it's still competition.

Regards
Craig

References:
- [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld
  - From: Manfredi, Albert E

[opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld

Other related posts: