[opendtv] Re: Verizon to start throttling all smartphone videos to 480p or 720p

From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2017 08:29:21 -0400

On Aug 31, 2017, at 9:37 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

Nobody is crowding out anyone Bert. If I as a consumer choose to
pay for a service that prioritizes or zero rates bits, I am
making that decision, not the ISP.

Perhaps Craig is finally coming around. Covered that many times. Assuming
this kind of plan is available, where the consumer gets to choose which
Internet sources he wants to get zero rated, then I believe the FCC shouldn't
object. It's not violating net neutrality, because the consumer can choose
his own plan, and all options are available. It becomes an issue if the ISP
does NOT allow the consumer to choose, but only offers one, or a select few,
zero rated options.

I think you are stretching my comments beyond what I intended.

Zero Rating options are created by an agreement between the content/service
owner and the ISP. They service is agreeing to pay for the bits for the people
who use the service (both ad supported and subscription).

Once the agreement is in place the service and the ISP use this agreement to
attract subscribers. The consumer never chooses which service is Zero Rated,
but they may decide to subscribe to a service BECAUSE it is Zero Rated.

My situation is instructive. I was already an AT&T cellular subscriber when I
decided to switch from Cox to a VMVPD. I was looking at both Hulu Live and
DirecTV Now. The fact that the bits from DirecTV Now are Zero Rated played a
significant role in my decision.

As I indicated previously in this thread, the only net Neutrality issue with
Zero Rating is that an ISP should offer any content owner/service the ability
to have their bits Zero Rated at the same Fair and Reasonable rate as any other
provider.

Here's another way to look at this. You choose to watch "free" ad supported
streaming services, rather than paying for subscription bundles. The ads are
paying for your "Zero Rated" TV service. Clearly the "free" service has an
advantage over those that require you to pay, whether their bits are zero rated
or not.

We also expect that the companies we obtain our service from to
be competitive and to offer incentives for us to use their
service.

Empty words, when you're dealing with local monopolies. They'll just tell
you, "this I what we offer."

That's bull. I see ads all the time from the DBS systems trying to get people
to switch from Cable. I get special offers from Cox all the time. And Cox is
discounting its services to retain subscribers. It's called competition.

As I said, the ISP should offer co-location on a FRAND basis; so we
seem to agree on this point. But the reality is that some Internet
services have the resources to do this, while others do not.

True. The more popular, bigger Internet companies will be the ones that can
afford the multiple distributed servers, but they are usually also the ones
that most need them, for their traffic volume. This could also work much like
OTA DTV subchannels. Smaller networks can piggy-back on the servers of larger
networks, with negotiated agreements.

An interesting idea. I think Amazon is already in that business with AWS.

But I would not call it piggy-backing. It's just another CDN. Likewise, the
agreement between Netflix and Comcast included the decision to use the Comcast
CDN service along with co-location for the most popular programs.

But the FCC rules do not make this distinction. They simply say no
paid prioritization. Perhaps they would deal with this on a case by
case basis.

I think that the FCC could be convinced, if the users are doing the paying,
and if the ISP offers a fully flexible plan.

Ultimately consumers pay for everything Bert.

As I indicated above, the Zero Rating agreements have nothing to do with the
consumer choosing what to Zero Rate. If you take that approach, then EVERY
service offered by every ISP must be Zero Rated. The net result is that there
is no longer any reason for Zero Rating, as the ISP will simply raise the price
of the broadband service to cover the cost of the bits you choose to Zero Rate.

The reality is that we do not see Zero Rating on fixed broadband services with
large data caps. They are unnecessary.

Where we see Zero Rating is in cellular data services with limited data caps.
This is likely to become a non issue in a few years, when the cellular systems
invest in 5G to improve capacity, and they realize the economic benefits of
deploying MIMO and related energy saving technologies.

The perennial stumbling block being that the ISP could be enticed to play
favorites, by the special interests, as always happens on MVPD networks (with
bundling and so on).

This is way overblown.

Once upon a time a new way to deliver content to consumers was invented - It
was called Cable TV, and it started to compete with the content consumers were
watching via their broadcast antennas. Then these new competitors had the
audacity to offer their own original content.

The content congloms that owned the broadcast networks did exactly what you
fear. They went to the politicians and demanded that they be compensated for
what they were giving away for free. Then they used the power given to them by
Congress to take control of the content delivered by this new competitor. There
was NOTHING neutral about this.

And now they are using their control of the content we watch to bypass the very
companies that you fear will become non-neutral as they evolve into ISPs rather
than cable systems. If somebody is going to pay for fast lanes or Zero Rating,
it by definition must be the content owner/service providers, not the ISP -
they already deliver MVPD services over the "fast lanes" they have spent
billions for over the past three decades.

Another more tricky option, tricky because it would be harder to verify, is
if the ISP does accept "bribes" from the content sources, to zero rate their
packets, **but** it is willing to accept the same bribes from any Internet
source, to zero rate its packets. Playing no favorites. It's easier to verify
plans offered to consumers than it is to ferret out the underhanded deals
between special interests, though. What could happen is Internet company A
saying to the ISP, "I'll pay you this much to zero rate my streams, but only
if you don't make this zero rating available to any other Internet company."

Bert finally gets what I am saying. Neutrality is NOT creating rules that
prevent everyone from offering consumers some kind of benefit; it is being
neutral with respect to ALL competing services that may want to offer these
benefits.

This is where the Title II approach went into the ditch, as it immediately
treated different services in a NON-NEUTRAL manner.

No Bert, it has everything to do with the contracts CBS has to
distribute it's content in each international market.

Let me put it this way to you, Craig. When CBS decided to set up CBS All
Access here in the US, there was precious little any of the MVPDs or even the
local OTA affiliates could do about it.

Yes and no.

First, MVPDs have no say in this. They pay the content owners for the content,
and the local affiliates as well. But they pay only for the rights to offer
this content on their in-band systems, not via the ISP service that may also
use the same infrastructure. It really does not matter, as no MVPD subscriber
is likely to pay for CBS All Access, which was designed to appeal to cord
cutters.

Second, without the agreement of the local station, CBS All Access cannot offer
the live streams to consumers. In essence you subscribe to a CBS SVOD service.

The reason CBS could offer this service was that it owns the stations that
reach 40% of U.S. homes. But it is wrong that there was little the affiliates
could do about it. CBS has used it's affiliates organization to develop
compensation plans that are allowing affiliates to be carried by CBS All Access.

I'm pretty sure that the content owner can decide other ways to make its
content available, e.g. DVD sets, without having to go hat in hand to any of
the cable companies.

They have only been doing this for three decades Bert.

Internet distribution is just such a different medium. And with net
neutrality, the ISP part of the MVPD companies had to agree to carry this
material.

No agreement necessary. They are providing a broadband service to access the
NEUTRAL Internet. Actual examples of blocking and throttling have been rare to
non-existent; they have primarily involve "pirate services," and violations of
peering agreements.

It is very important to take into consideration the evolution of the Internet.
The entire debate about Net Neutrality became relevant only after it became
apparent that the Internet could scale up to deliver streaming entertainment.
Nobody was concerned about the blocking of sites that required limited
bandwidth. The only blocking issues were related to pirate sites and users who
downloaded gigabytes of stolen content.

The entire argument that these rules are needed is based in an assumption -
that MVPDs will behave badly and collude to block competitors, or to advantage
one over another by taking bribes.

But this has not happened, so we are arguing about preempting behavior, not
dealing with actual rule violations.

It's not different overseas. The content owner holds the cards. If CBS wants
to start distributing its All Access service in countries with net neutrality
guarantees, CBS holds the cards.

No they do not. They are bound by existing agreements with the companies they
have been selling content to for decades. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with
this, and in some cases the "local version" of Net Neutrality may actually
block CBS from offering a service that competes with local content
distributors. Its called politics.

The content owner ultimately decides what contracts it will let expire, if it
even comes to that. Or whether to simply offer its content in multiple ways.
You're making a mountain of a molehill.

Yes, clearly this is an evolving story. New contracts are far more explicit
with regards to distribution rights and competition between various channels of
distribution. This is EXACTLY why CBS can only launch CBS All Access in only
two countries at this time.

The simple fact is, WITHOUT net neutrality, then all of this will easily be a
non-starter. WITH net neutrality, it's virtually impossible to prevent the
content owner from trying the new service. And by the way, my bet is, in many
counties, there would be a very healthy demand for even un-dubbed CBS or
other US TV content online.

Ya think. Ever hear of Netflix?

It's a SVOD service, much like CBS All Access, that delivers CBS content to
tens of millions of subscribers outside the U.S.

Regards
Craig

Bert

----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.

[opendtv] Re: Verizon to start throttling all smartphone videos to 480p or 720p

Other related posts: