[opendtv] Re: The video here explains net neutrality perfectly
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 09:41:07 -0400
On May 11, 2014, at 8:37 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Not necessarily. Like I said already, originally there was a lot of
> competition for ISP service. That was only possible because of the neutral,
> Title II telephone lines, which could not discriminate against specific
> content. Of course, those phone lines themselves are expensive, loaded with
> taxes to pay for what politicians think is important, which is the drawback.
> But the ISP service per se was not expensive.
>
> The same could be made to apply today, to last mile broadband links. You'd
> end up paying more for the link itself, but then you wouldn't have to put up
> with the shenanigans of service providers with conflicting interests. The
> service layered on top of that infrastructure would most likely cost less.
>
> Natural monopolies exist. You need to get over that, Craig. The only way to
> reduce the impact of this simple fact is to separate out the "natural
> monopoly" aspect from the "service provider" aspect of the utility. Hence,
> make the physical plants deployed in neighborhoods, or even long distance,
> neutral and heavily regulated, because they can't credibly compete. The rest
> of the services that make use of these infrastructures can compete.
>
> Ideally, this would not be necessary, of course.
I found a very interesting analysis of all of this, but it is very long, so I
will just post the link, and a few excerpts.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-the-internet-competitive
The author makes the case that the break-up of AT&T was an important
prerequisite to the creation of the Internet, and makes the point that Bert
makes, that the breakup and Title II regulation allowed the competitive market
for dial-up modems to exist and grow. But that’s where the good news ends.
Industry consolidation and the 1996 updates to the Telecommunications Act have
allowed a duopoly to form again in the telecommunications industry, with cable
and the telcos now free to compete in the markets for voice, video and
broadband.
This portion of the article describing the effect of the 1996 telecom law is
especially important as it relates to Berts’ contention that Title II
regulation could be a positive:
> The new approach had two prongs. First, policymakers relaxed restrictions on
> vertical integration to encourage the various phone and cable incumbents to
> enter each other's markets and thereby to make both sets of markets more
> competitive. Second, policymakers tried to promote the entry of new firms
> into telecommunications markets with an "unbundling" regime under which
> incumbents would be forced to lease parts of their networks to competitors at
> regulated rates.
>
> The first prong of this strategy was somewhat successful. Cable companies
> began offering phone service, phone incumbents entered the video business,
> and Verizon and AT&T now compete with each other in the wireless market.
> Consumers have benefited from this increase in competition.
>
> But the second prong proved a complete failure. Consider, for instance, the
> case of broadband internet. The Baby Bells were required to unbundle the
> "local loop" — the copper cable that physically connects a subscriber's home
> to the incumbent's telephone network — and lease it to third parties at
> regulated rates. Congress hoped this would allow many new firms to offer
> high-speed internet access without building expensive and redundant
> infrastructure; in the 1990s, several firms did just that. But the law also
> allowed the Baby Bells themselves to offer residential internet access, which
> created a conflict of interest. Just as it had in the 1970s, the effort to
> regulate the conduct of incumbents sparked a decade of acrimony and
> litigation. Independent ISPs accused the incumbent phone companies of
> sabotaging them with foot-dragging and frivolous litigation. The incumbents
> countered that they were being forced to lease their networks at prices below
> their costs. The Baby Bells eventually won the battle and drove most of the
> independent ISPs out of the residential market.
This is the kind of behavior that I was talking about; It is easy for a
regulated industry that owns very expensive infrastructure to use that
investment to influence regulators (and the courts) and limit new competition.
This is especially important in the case of creating new infrastructure. The
article relates:
> Comcast is now the nation's leading internet service provider, with more than
> 20% of all residential broadband subscriptions. And its dominance is likely
> to grow in the coming years. In 2011, Comcast completed an upgrade of its
> network that will allow it to offer 100 Mbps broadband service, which is an
> order of magnitude faster than the typical DSL connection provided by phone
> companies today. For technical reasons, Comcast can squeeze much more
> bandwidth out of the coaxial cables that make up its existing cable network
> than can be squeezed from the twisted-pair cables of traditional telephone
> networks.
> FiOS is Verizon's attempt to solve this problem by replacing its slow
> telephone cables with fiber-optic connections capable of offering speed that
> can compete with Comcast's. But in 2010, Verizon announced that it was
> winding down its FiOS installation efforts. Verizon plans for the network to
> reach around 18 million households, but not in some major metropolitan areas,
> including a few (like Boston) at the heart of its service area. News reports
> cited the high costs of the project as a reason why it was not being extended
> to all homes in Verizon's territory. Meanwhile, AT&T's project to partially
> replace its copper network with fiber, "U-Verse," is also being hampered by
> high costs. U-Verse service is faster than a traditional DSL line, but it is
> significantly slower than Verizon's and Comcast's high-speed networks, and it
> will not reach all households in AT&T's service territory. This might explain
> why, in the third quarter of 2011, Comcast added more than twice as many
> subscribers as did the seven largest telephone incumbents combined.
The reality is that the cost of tearing up streets and building riser cabinets
in peoples front yards is very high. This is a natural barrier to competition,
which is the basis for the natural monopoly approach to regulating utilities.
>
>> But if everyone in my neighborhood decided to stream HD during prime
>> time, we would all be screwed - the last mile infrastructure is not
>> in place to support this volume of traffic.
>
> Bunk. Look, this is the way these networks always evolve, including wireless
> cellular. As bandwidth demands go up, gradually the network core and edges
> are improved. If more people want to stream TV, initially the ISP can charge
> more for high bandwidth, the ISP increases the speed of the network core, the
> ISP or content sources deploy edge servers, and so on. All of this happens
> constantly, to keep up with demand. And eventually, as the network
> infrastructure is improved, these competing ISPs will create flat rates, to
> draw customers their way. That's the way it works, Craig.
Sorry Bert, but the network core is not the problem. The problem is the last
mile. Yes, in time the infrastructure upgrades happen - the cable industry has
been through many of them, from 30 channel analog systems to todays gigahertz
systems with hundreds of channels and high speed broadband. Even now, however,
the cable plant is not ready for everyone to move to IPTV. This article from
our local paper talks about the problem:
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20140416/ARTICLES/140419748
> And to make life even easier, streaming protocols self-adjust, according to
> network congestion. So if people ask for HD but the network is too congested
> right now, they make do with SD.
Bunk on you. My statement was absolutely correct - there is not sufficient
bandwidth in my neighborhood to allow everyone to stream HD at the same time.
And it will be years before the infrastructure is ready.
>
>> If some folks in my neighborhood decide to pay more for higher data
>> rates, isn't that similar to paying for a fast lane for high data rate
>> streaming services?
>
> No. If a customer wants and pays for greater capacity, it's HIS decision. If
> the network takes it upon itself to charge more to certain content sources,
> then there's a much greater potential for the network blocking certain
> sources of content, or making the sources of content they dislike a lot more
> expensive for customers to use, ergo becoming non-neutral.
You are assuming that the service provider using the fast lane will pay. This
may well be the case. If Apple is able to offer a streaming service that I am
willing to pay for, I am CERTAIN that any money Apple would pay Comcast (or Cox
in my case) would be included in the cost of the service I am buying.
> FYI, most of my issues with streaming are not caused by bandwidth at all.
> Most of them are caused by incompatibilities which crop up as either the
> browser, the player, or the individual TV network plugins, are updated. In
> short: LACK OF DISCIPLINE. This is something Craig never quite seemed to get,
> during the development of ATSC. It takes DISCIPLINE to make a network work
> consistently, and for the time being, Internet TV is still amateur-land. It
> might take months to resolve an incompatibility, which no way would ATSC ever
> put up with.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Comparing the disaster
that the ATSC standard has been, with the evolution of the Internet
infrastructure, is hilarious. The only discipline involved with ATSC was paying
off the politicians and getting them to mandate the standard so the owners of
the patents could realize a steady revenue stream. The ATSC system was outdated
before it was ever used and the feeble attempts to add capabilities have been
complete marketplace non-started…can you say Mobile Handheld TV reception?
We have pervasive mobile handheld devices and services today - thanks to the
Internet.
They even work reliably.
My son pointed out to me that I was wrong about Fox and my iPad. While Fox.com
still uses the Flash video codec, the Fox Now app works just fine on both my
iPad and my iPhone.
Regards
Craig
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