Competitors Ally With Comcast In FCC P2P Filings 220
crocoduck writes "Right before the deadline passed for filing comments in the FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic-management practices, telecoms and other cable companies submitted a slew of comments defending Comcast's actions to the FCC. 'Just about every big phone company has filed a statement challenging the FCC's authority to deal with this problem. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest all submitted lengthy remarks on February 13th, the last day for comments on the proceeding (parties can still reply to comments through the 28th). "The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades — costs that would ultimately be passed through to end users, raise broadband prices across the board, and force ordinary broadband consumers to subsidize the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few."' P2P fans have also weighed in."
Needless? (Score:5, Interesting)
The telcos can eat a bag of dicks.
Watershed Moment (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a step towards unrestricted bandwidth, build a new economy based on the innovative development of new business models using this bandwidth as a utility.
Or
Allow the telecommunications oligopoly to produce a network ghetto, stove-piped and metered, and watch the US economy stagnate, and fall behind the rest of the developed world.
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Or put in a less inflammatory way, how preventing or slowing some P2P operations or otherwise using some QoS methods is going to cause any disastrous effect. Part of the problem I have in seeing it is I don't see the importance of the people having very high speed broadband.
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Re:Watershed Moment (Score:5, Insightful)
As the Internet becomes the delivery agent for more entertainment venues and other uses that have yet to be foreseen, implementing QoS becomes more questionable. Let's say a similar device to the AppleTV is created and released by a competitor to Apple. Let us also assume that Comcast is permitted to enforce QoS for various services. Comcast could then give preferential treatment for QoS to one content provider over another which puts Comcast in the position to either extort one or both companies or lock competitors out of the market (for Comcast subscribers).
By allowing ISPs to implement QoS to limit some types of use, we are allowing ISPs to dictate how data services are used. Depending on how draconian they are about QoS, this could reduce innovation for data services which will then cause this part of the economy to stagnate.
Right now we are mostly talking about movies, however in the future (maybe as little as 3-4 years) we may be talking about something a little more dear to you personally. Allowing them to do this to something you don't care about will set a precedence that will make it easier for them to do the same to something you hold dear later.
Here are a few example uses that I see today that could be impacted:
Rights and privileges lost are not easily obtained again.
Re:Watershed Moment (Score:5, Funny)
This has already happened =(
=Smidge=
THERE'S A SIMPLE SOLUTION - used by interstates (Score:2, Interesting)
(a) Customers can choose to be "capped" during high-traffic times (6-9am/3-6pm) and thus be slowed down to only 10 miles per hour.
(b) Customers can choose to enter the Express Lane and get 65 mph travel, but at a cost of approximately $5 per day.
How does this apply to ISPs?
Simple - amend the contracts
(it's allow
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Re:THERE'S A SIMPLE SOLUTION - used by interstates (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, but the reality is exactly the opposite of that!
Here's reality:
Non-broadband options, such as satellite and dialup, are entirely irrelevant -- unless, of course, you get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that our situation is slightly better than some rural, 4th-world Hellhole where they've only recently decided that not shitting in the drinking water was a good idea. I, for one, think we ought to hold ourselves to higher standards than that!
Besides, not even cable and DSL count as real broadband! Real broadband, like they have in Europe and (especially) Asia, is in the tens or even hundreds of Mbps range. What we've got here is lies and excuses caused by insufficient regulation of a decidedly non-free market!
In reality, there are two solutions:
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The phone and electric companies make all of these terms available up front. Would I expect to pay the same amount for electricity that the big box store down the street does? Of course not
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oh and it sure as hell shouldn't be advertized as "Unlimited" i don't give a shit what the fine print says..
if they want to follow up on these comments.. they need to p
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Right, change the advertising and charge for usage.
Re:Watershed Moment (Score:5, Insightful)
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And I'm suggesting that they change their advertising and charge the heavy users more. Why you gotta be so defensive?
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In Australia its slightly different.
They cant cut you off (illegal over here) but every major ISP uses shaping which everyone understands.
Also the limits are very well defined.
Maybe the US just needs some consumer protection laws?
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When I pay for a service that claims 'unlimited' internet access, I'd say I've payed quite enough. Don't give me shit because *gasp* Comcast doesn't (or can't) give me what I payed for.
To me, it seems like one of the roots of the problem is that Comcast et al are using false advertising. If there are caps, they should say so up front, before you pay anything. If they're blocking some services, they should say so up front, before you pay anything.
... Hmm, I can't think of anything right now t
The other problem is that the FCC seem to be a terrible regulator. A bigger display of craven grovelling in the general direction of those that are supposed to be regulated I've not seen since, well,
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How is this the "root" of the problem? Would you be any less upset about being capped or charged more if it was stated in the contract? I doubt it. You simply wouldn't have any reason to bitch and whine on sites like Slashdot about it.
The "root"
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No, the root of the problem is that telcos were given taxpayer subsidies to improve the infrastructure, failed to do it, and aren't being forced to make good on their promise. And on top of that, the right-of-way monopolies they got as part of the deal are the only bits of regulation that are
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And I'm saying the solution is to not advertise unlimited and charge the bandwidth hogs more. Would that make you feel better? Either way, you're not going to get unlimited usage for a flat rate.
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Alright then, let me ask you this: then what the fuck have we been subsidizing them for (with taxpayer money and exclusive right-of-way agreements) over the past few decades?! They were supposed to be building out the fucking infrastructure to prevent this very problem!
Now, you're about to spout some whiny bullshit about "but America is rural." Fine; I'm not saying
Needless capacity upgrades? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shut up, cut your salaries for a couple quarters, and invest in the goddamn infrastructure.
Re:Needless capacity upgrades? (Score:5, Informative)
The United States has been falling behind on the capacity game for a long time now, so it only makes sense that the ISPs and telcos there are crying the blues about the need for upgrades. Had they been upgrading all the way along as other countries have, they wouldn't have the capacity shortfall that they do now.
I deal with SaskTel as my ISP. We actually get the full use of the provisioned bandwidth as promised, with no filtering, traffic shaping, or other artificial impediments. The downside? My internet connection costs $45/month instead of $22 for the basic "DSL Lite" subscription.
Re:Needless capacity upgrades? (Score:5, Informative)
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Gee, sounds just like the utility companies.
1) Neglect maintenance on national power grid in the name of short term profits.
2) Grid begins to fail in dangerous ways.
3) Request government bail-out to
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that "DSL lite" package is 256k/128k (not really broadband IMO, but it's just fine for my aunt) and costs $23. the 1.5m/384k package is $34.95. another $10 gets you 5m/640k, and another $10 above that ($54) gives you 10m/640k. it's not cheap, but no caps, no shaping, no blocked ports, no restrictions on servers, etc.
also, none of this "14,000 feet" nonsense. if you can get a phone line in town, you can get DSL.
only issues i have is that the gateway they use (2wire 2700) is a
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Yep (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, it was no secret as to what Comcast was jumping into when they decided to get into the internet business. In fact it seems pretty obvious that they were quite clear on the fact that bandwidth would keep increasing to the point that people would just get their video directly from the source, instead of paying them to be a gatekeeper middleman. What they were hoping for was that they could use their monopoly power to stifle the internet so that their monopoly would not crumble in face of actual competition. So far they have been successful. Now that people are starting to cry foul, they are trying to pretend that they are the victims.
It always amazes me how many people will defend someone who is clearly trying to screw them.
It goes further (Score:2)
First he noticed the gigs/month "hidden cap"... and realized he can't download his server backup (~2 gig once a month) over it without risking hitting that.
Then, for curiosity, he started up a 1-day track on his bandwidth usage, fired up just the basics (2 hours of WoW, plus ICQ/AIM left on, plus a
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The same could be said about all those jerks that want graphics sent across their internet connections. Really what needs to be done is to get us back to only sending green screen updates. All that wasteful html traffic has just caused needless upgrades. If you need to consume more than a what a 1200 baud modem can offer, perhaps what you need is a dedicated line. Not a consumer internet connection.
That's ridiculous. About 10 years ago you could as an average person get at best a dial-up connection that might (theoretically) be able to download at up to 56kbps (actually 53). If you wanted a little better you could pay for ISDN. If you wanted better than that you could pay for a T1.
Today you can get a cable modem or DSL for not much more than you'd have paid for dial-up and probably less if you had a second phone line dedicated to your internet access. Technology advanced. The providers improv
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
That's ridiculous. About 10 years ago you could as an average person get at best a dial-up connection that might (theoretically) be able to download at up to 56kbps (actually 53). If you wanted a little better you could pay for ISDN. If you wanted better than that you could pay for a T1.
I know for a fact they were making a profit. Same old copper lines that had been in the ground since 1962, and I had to pay $100 for the connection!
Today you can get a cable modem or DSL for not much more than you'd have paid for dial-up and probably less if you had a second phone line dedicated to your internet access. Technology advanced. The providers improved their infrastructure. Costs came down.
No - this is bullshit. More bandwidth, sure. But it's more expensive, too, and we paid for it in myriad ways (check out the $200 Billion Ripoff [pbs.org] for example). I could get dial up for $10 a month (yea, plus phone line). Now I pay like $55/month, and it would be $15 more if I also didn't buy their "cable TV" service.
The sad fact is that what we have now is more or less what we can collectively afford. It's easy to point to more socialized states and say that a handful of them have faster internet connections. What you seem to fail to consider is that those faster connections were paid for. Most likely it costs the average person in one of those states a lot more for their internet connection, they just don't see it as a separate internet bill. If they do get an internet bill it's not really reflecting the true cost of providing the service.
Comcast alone makes about $1.2 Billion dollars in profit a year. Billion with a "B". Not revenue - *PROFIT*. I think they're doing just fine - maybe they should invest in a little more infrastructure instead of bitching about having to keep up with demand.
I'm no socialist - but Internet infrastructure needs to be either regulated or state supported. It's too critical to be left to these corporations that just want to slow everybody down!! If there was real competition, it might work to motivate these guys to make their customers happy. But there's not, so it doesn't.
If you can live with forcing everyone to pay several times what they're paying now for internet access we can do this too. But don't sit there and spout that we could do better without pointing out that it does actually cost more to do so. I personally find that my cable modem is fast enough and I don't want to pay more than I do per month. I especially don't want to have the money effectively hidden in a bunch of federal budget documents.
As if... Look - this is critical infrastructure we are talking about. Everybody says that when they talk about "security measures" to make sure anybody that tries to cut a trunk line will get put under the ground for the rest of their lives. But we have these clowns running it that think it's okay to just put the brakes on innovation and new business models and growth of the economy so they can squeeze more profit out of the infrastructure that really needs constant upgrades.
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I tend to agree with you, but that 200 xtra-large was pretty much all you had to mention. They have the funds, or did (I'd very much like to know where they went, that's a metric fuckton of money), they just don't want to spend them on us. Of course, that's pretty much what you get with the likes of Brian "You can squeeze blood from a stone!" Robertson and Edward J. "Those are my pipes!" Whitacr
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That's exactly the reason you have affordable
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"I think this problem is indeed about the few people trying to max out their "unlimited" connections, and the rest of us paying for it."
If they don't want people to think the connection is unlimited, maybe they should tell people about it up front. If they think that killing P2P connections during peak usage is a good idea for most people, maybe they should boldly tell their customers about this great feature instead of lying about it until confronted with evidence. They have shown themselves to be unwo
Fools and their money? (Score:2)
I view this situation in the same light as the iPhone early abopter whining. If someone is a dumbass that doesn't understand how marketing and hype works, there's nothing (legally) wrong with plucking him clean.
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Legally they cover their ass pretty well and could serve us up with 56 kbps cable if they chose to, and it's not their fault that a sucker is born every day.
My point is that the consumers should read the fine print next time and/or vote with their dollar: if you don't like it, go buy your connection elsewhere.
Why Did They Wait Until The Last Day? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe the FCC needs the equivalent of an anti-sniping feature on their comment period.
Re:Why Did They Wait Until The Last Day? (Score:5, Informative)
But... but...
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The longer you leave bullshit sitting on the kitchen table, the more chance for someone to notice the stench and loudly blame the guilty party for having the gall to bring it to the breakfast table.
-
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"Mr Dubany, we have your new heart, but we're not going to do the transplant until your current one actually craps out, so... don't go anywhere, ok?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Western countries' telecoms seem crotchety (Score:5, Informative)
You're right, and it's not funny, it's sad.
The US is falling more and more behind, while the telecoms have the gall to say things like:
"The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades".
This is what happens when 'free market' monopolies are allowed to continue unchecked by a corrupt FCC.
The money goes straight into shareholder's pockets [cnn.com], and almost nothing goes back into the network.
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I don't understand the quotes around free-market... It is a free market. Free markets are bad in the case of utilities however (see California, early 2000's).
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Which is why the price of electricity spiked as it crossed the California border from Oregon, even though Oregon had all it could use? Face it, that tired excuse has never been true. The price controls were ridiculously high.
Yeah. But that's a GoodThing(tm).
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i've said it before and i'll say it again... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or continue to advertise high speeds and put something in the contract that says you will pay for what you use. Really, I don't know why this solution isn't as obvious to everyone else as it is to me.
-matthew
Lies, lies, lies. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if they were *just* throttling the connection, there wouldn't be a problem. They were basically "disconnecting" the file transfer. This is analogous to a telephone operator listening to your phone conversation & cutting you off if she doesn't like what you're talking about.
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No. They were literally forging TCP packets.
A better analogy would be intercepting both sides of the call and having a fake voice that sounds just like the person you were talking to say they were through talking to you, goodbye.
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I do have two, but:
ADSL is: more expensive, MUCH slower (about 1/8th the nominal speed)
Cable is: optimum online, less expensive, faster, but throttle your bandwidth to almost nil if you upload at a continuous 11kBps for more than 24 hours (and to get it back to normal, you have to spend time in customer service hell - and if it happens too often, they drop you as a customer).
Two blocks away the cable provider is Time Warner. Two. Fucking. Blocks. The only reason we ar
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Can't stop the signal, Mal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not exactly. A simple DOS attack is a matter of using your fatter pipe to swamp someone else's not-so-fat pipe. A DDOS is, as you say, using multiple machines to take down a target. Comcast was doing neither. What they were doing is essentially a Man in the Middle attack (and you can bet it was distributed
I don't think that word means what you think it... (Score:3, Insightful)
People aren't going to stop transfering data over the internet just because the telecoms say so. The trend is towards larger files, faster downloads, and more data. We NEED more bandwidth. Just because you don't want to be bothered with upgrades, doesn't make the upgrades unnecessary.
Re:I don't think that word means what you think it (Score:2)
People aren't going to stop transfering data over the internet just because the telecoms say so.
They might if they charge enough, per bit. I'm really surprised they haven't pushed harder for a consumer per bit billing scheme.
But I agree with you, the tel-co arguments are just ridiculous. If they are having bandwidth shortages, then increases in capacity are necessary. It's not like they haven't been on the receiving end of a significant amount of tax payer money to do just that.
-Rick
Expensive and Needless? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if they advertised lower peak speeds and limited their customers to those speeds and charged a premium for higher speeds, we wouldn't have this problem.
Re:Expensive and Needless? (Score:4, Funny)
Only thing AT&T left out of their statement (Score:2)
Duh (Score:2, Insightful)
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It's not strange at all. It gave them time to grease the right cogs in the machine, polish their arguments and get the "last word". It doesn't really matter how many comments the FCC got from other sources early on, it's the last comments that they will remember the most, whether they want to or not. It's just the nature of memory, and decision making, actually. The most recent information generally has the most impact on decision making unless it
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The fact that the industry claims that
If I wanted AT&T's opinion... (Score:5, Funny)
Unlimited comments (Score:5, Insightful)
After the comment period ended, they should have announced that certain comments were rejected because they were too long (beyond an arbitrary amount determined after the comment period) or contained too much legalese, since they didn't want to have make the other commenters "subsidize the [resource]-hogging activities of a few."
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Politeness (Score:2)
Comments on the matter (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't agree with bandwidth shaping by isp's. I feel that I am paying them my hard earned money for my 10/1 connection and I should be able to receive that bandwidth when I want/need it. However having worked for a web hosting company I do realize how much bandwidth cost and how difficult it can be to get the proper peering where and when you need it. I can see why
Its like this son... (Score:5, Funny)
A Bunch of Bull (Score:3, Insightful)
Another car ananolgy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's outrageous that they can say that with a straight face! This seems like a perfectly obvious sign that their infrastructure is in a serious need of an upgrade in order to maintain competition with the up-and-coming technologies that are being, or are already, released. This has me fuming.
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Then again, I would be perfectly happy paying $100 a month for a 2/2 connection with no limitations. It would be much better than the $60/month I pay for a 5/512k with a 50GB cap($3/GB afte
Re:Another car ananolgy (Score:4, Interesting)
Selective throttling == CENSORSHIP (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast unilaterally decides that some content is good and some bad - and that should just plain be illegal.
I know many are opposed, but I don't mind the actual *throttling* itself, if it were just protocol-neutral. I cannot accept, however, that Comcast gets to decide that I can't use the rated capacity of my line (you know, the number they tout in their PR) to download Ubuntu with a bittorrent client, while my neighbor can max out his identical connection downloading movies over HTTP or FTP.
(And, no, the actual *content* shouldn't matter either, of course, that's just a feeble attempt at highlighting the inherent stupidity of the method).
Requiring an ISP to have enough capacity to enable ALL its customers to max out their connections would be monumentally wasteful, no question. However...
What Comcast, and any other ISP should do, is actually tell you what you are buying, up front, so that it's possible to make an informed purchasing decision. E.g.:
6Mbps down, 1Mbps up. Rated bandwidth available at least 90% of the time. Minimum bandwidth of1Mbps down, 256kbps up (except in case of equipment failure).
The ISP can then throttle users with this connection in times of peak load, but still protocol (and content) neutral!
If they wanted to get really advanced, they could give their users the ability to use some kind of QoS feature, so that e.g. a user could choose to prioritize http and ftp over, say, bittorrent. Or to prioritize whatever port #s the user's favorite multiplayer game uses, so that using the internet connection for other stuff introduces a minimum of lag on gaming.
In any event, there's just no justification for saying that my downloading Ubuntu or whatever should be throttled in favor of some idiot streaming porn over HTTP. (OK, maybe if it's porn... bad example... you get my drift, though)
Let's be clear (Score:2)
How soon before VoIP users are inconsiderate bandwidth hogs? Planning on buying an Apple TV for that nifty HD download? How about Netflix? How about iTMS? Amazon? Magnatune.com? Internet radio?
Somebody want to tell me that P2P torrents aren't used for _fundamentally the same_ content (with exception of VoIP... maybe), with fundamentally the same bandwidth r
P2P isn't just file sharing (Score:2)
Greedy toughing ... again! (Score:2, Insightful)
I give you the precedent: "let them eat cake".
Amazing (Score:3, Interesting)
Some Peer-to-Peer protocols (i.e., BitTorrent) were developed in order to take the burden of content distribution _away_ from the "dedicated server" (do reduce demand on bandwidth) and push it more on the users engaged in retrieving.
Comcast and ilk seem to be arguing in favor of the _exact opposite_ of this point.
Time to write some letters (Score:2, Informative)
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TimeWarner and Optimum Online/CableVision coverage is exclusive.
FiOS may be exclusive to verizon where they're rolling it out, but it overlaps with the exclusive cable providers.
I don't know how it is in Manhattan, but that's how it is in the boroughs.
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My cable isn't throttled if I watch TV all day.
For your sentiment and clear thinking, I say, right on!
OTOH... if you have digital cable, you do know that your TV signal is often significantly compressed (with visible quality loss) to allow them to deliver content on their infrastructure. I'm just wondering if that appears in any digital non-OTA TV provider's TOS....
You're right - they don't charge more for hours viewed, i.e., bandwidth. Cable charges more if you have more channels. They charge more if you have premium channels.
This is exactly where
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