Google-Verizon deal and what it means

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Krisken

Krisken

Welcome to the tiered internet which people said would never happen.

Verizon-Google Legislative Framework Proposal

Within the three pages Verizon and Google have put together are passages such as...

NETWORK MANAGEMENT
Broadband service providers are permitted to engage in reasonable network management. Reasonable network management includes any technically sound practice; to reduce or mitigate the effects of congestion on its network; to assure network security or integrity; to address traffic that is unwanted by or harmful to its users, the providers network, or the Internet; to ensure service quality to a subscriber; to provide service or capabilities consistent with a consumers choices; that is consistent with the technical requirements, standards, or best practices adopted by an independent, widely recognized Internet community governance initiative or standard setting organization; to prioritize general classes or types of internet traffic, based on latency; or otherwise to manage daily operation of their network.

I'm bolding the parts which basically mean "We are going to create a tiered internet and regulate traffic how we see fit".

Fuck Google. Fuck Verizon.
 
David

David

Here's the thing: I'm reasonably OKAY with the idea of tiered internet. I wont go into some kind of revolt if it is implemented. If you have to pay more for internet because you're uploading torrents at full speed 24/7 verses somebody who maybe uses the internet to check their emails every other day or so, I'm okay with that.

What I'm not okay with is an absurdly low monthly cap, such as like 5GB. I don't want to receive a $2000 bill because I watched one too many YouTube clips.

If they can implement this so it's a fair price structure, I'm okay with it.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
David said:
Here's the thing: I'm reasonably OKAY with the idea of tiered internet. I wont go into some kind of revolt if it is implemented. If you have to pay more for internet because you're uploading torrents at full speed 24/7 verses somebody who maybe uses the internet to check their emails every other day or so, I'm okay with that.

What I'm not okay with is an absurdly low monthly cap, such as like 5GB. I don't want to receive a $2000 bill because I watched one too many YouTube clips.
Click to expand...
What if you could watch all the YouTube you want, but if you wanted to watch Blip.tv you'd have to pay extra? The issue of net neutrality isn't simply about having to pay more the more bandwidth you use, it's about having to pay for certain types of bandwidth (or not having reasonable speeds for them at all).

If crap like this is really happening, and is allowed by the goverment, it's going to get bad rapidly.
- Want to use Skype to make phone calls? Sorry, your ISP wants you to be using their telephony service. All your Skype calls will be throttled to stop competition.
- Want to watch Hulu or Netflix? Sorry, your ISP wants you to use their video-on-demand service. Your Hulu streams won't get enough bandwidth to play a 288p resolution video smoothly. (Unless Hulu wants to pay your ISP in order to ensure service.)
- Want to visit The Consumerist blog? Sorry, that site doesn't exist. Really, it doesn't. Sites that say bad things about your ISP aren't on the internet... not anymore, at least.
- Want to play games with less than 400 ping? Sorry, despite the fact that playing a game doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, your ISP has decided gamers are a market willing to pay extra for horse armor. To get priority handling of gaming data, subscribe to the gamer package for $5 a month extra. (Don't forget, downloads from the EA store will be fast because your ISP made a partnership with them, but downloads from Steam will be slow as molasses because they put too many games on sale and that's bad for business.)
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Honestly, I suspect this is the early rumblings of Google buying out Verizon and starting their own internet service... which WON'T have the tiered levels their competitors do. Because really, that's what is going to happen: Some providers will go tiered while others don't... and the ones that don't will be more successful subscriber-wise than the others unless the tiered service is significantly cheaper (Or you live in an area that is tightly controlled by one company).

In any case, your not going to see this happen over night. As much as the companies WANT to do this, they know they are going to have a hard time forcing it onto their customers and whoever tries it first is almost guaranteed to go under.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
In any case, your not going to see this happen over night. As much as the companies WANT to do this, they know they are going to have a hard time forcing it onto their customers and whoever tries it first is almost guaranteed to go under.
Click to expand...
That's why they'll start with the customers they want to lose, or who are desperate for any sort of internet access. They'll start with the big downloaders (legal or illegal) because they're realtively few and use more rescources. They'll also target specific markets where they dominate (i.e. suburbs/towns that only have one cable provider, like where I live) to test market things. People will grumble and complain, but if you've only got one option for broadband, where are you going to go? Dial-up?

Once people are used to the idea they'll start to whittle away at what's left. They'll target less popular services first. They won't hit YouTube, they'll hit Daily Motion or Game Trailers. If people notice that site is slow, they won't complain to their ISP, they'll complain to the site. Who will either have to pay up to the ISP, or hope to inform their users about what's going on. If the ISPs choose their fights, users will slowly fade from sites that don't pay up, and the ISP will never see any impact because too few people will change ISPs for one site. So, slowly, one site and one service at a time, the internet will cease to be neutral.
 
Krisken

Krisken

figmetPez has the tactic exactly right. You start with the people who either don't know better or who have no other choice. After that you work your way to the rest of the herd. Eventually you'll be paying premiums to access half the sites on the web or be forced into a bundle like with cable t.v.
 
J

Jiarn

Hm, not sure where I stand on this. I mean, I already pay more than the average consumer for faster internet service....
 
C

Chibibar

figmentPez;425577][QUOTE=David said:
Here's the thing: I'm reasonably OKAY with the idea of tiered internet. I wont go into some kind of revolt if it is implemented. If you have to pay more for internet because you're uploading torrents at full speed 24/7 verses somebody who maybe uses the internet to check their emails every other day or so, I'm okay with that.

What I'm not okay with is an absurdly low monthly cap, such as like 5GB. I don't want to receive a $2000 bill because I watched one too many YouTube clips.
Click to expand...
What if you could watch all the YouTube you want, but if you wanted to watch Blip.tv you'd have to pay extra? The issue of net neutrality isn't simply about having to pay more the more bandwidth you use, it's about having to pay for certain types of bandwidth (or not having reasonable speeds for them at all).

If crap like this is really happening, and is allowed by the goverment, it's going to get bad rapidly.
- Want to use Skype to make phone calls? Sorry, your ISP wants you to be using their telephony service. All your Skype calls will be throttled to stop competition.
- Want to watch Hulu or Netflix? Sorry, your ISP wants you to use their video-on-demand service. Your Hulu streams won't get enough bandwidth to play a 288p resolution video smoothly. (Unless Hulu wants to pay your ISP in order to ensure service.)
- Want to visit The Consumerist blog? Sorry, that site doesn't exist. Really, it doesn't. Sites that say bad things about your ISP aren't on the internet... not anymore, at least.
- Want to play games with less than 400 ping? Sorry, despite the fact that playing a game doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, your ISP has decided gamers are a market willing to pay extra for horse armor. To get priority handling of gaming data, subscribe to the gamer package for $5 a month extra. (Don't forget, downloads from the EA store will be fast because your ISP made a partnership with them, but downloads from Steam will be slow as molasses because they put too many games on sale and that's bad for business.)[/QUOTE]

This is what I worry about. Limiting per month usage and/or throttle speed for certain services.
 
KCWM

KCWM

What worries is me how it would impact Netflix Instant. My wife and I use our internet for either Xbox Live/Netflix Instant more than we do anything else . We also occasionally play Hasbro Family Night or whatever the game is called online. I can surf a good number of sites from my phone (and have little desire to upgrade to an iPhone 4 at the moment), but really only surf to a handful when I'm free to go wherever I want.

I'll be watching this with earnest. I'm hoping Time Warner, one of the greediest of the greedy and worst at customer service, doesn't go this way.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

KCWM said:
I'll be watching this with earnest. I'm hoping Time Warner, one of the greediest of the greedy and worst at customer service, doesn't go this way.
Click to expand...
I've actually had rather good service from Time Warner, using their Road Runner service, at least as far as the internet goes. Their cable on the other hand...
 
Hylian

Hylian

















This whole thing scares the crap out of me. I don;t want the internet ruined by a bunch of money hungry companies who can't see past their own wallets. Even if they just issue a size restriction or size pricing it will hurt me cause I don;t pay for cable TV. I only watch Netflix,Hulu,Youtube,Crackle,etc for my shows so i would hit the limit quite quickly and that pisses me off.
 
Covar

Covar

but Google does no evil remember? Stupid Google fanboys. I'd love to see their reactions on this now. It was funny enough watching them squirm to reconcile the China fiasco.
 
Krisken

Krisken

Once anonymity is gone, so is any possibility of privacy. In this case, he's trying to sell fear of anonymity to push for restrictions.

That we have survived with the internet as it is for how many years says volumes about the bullshit being peddled.
 
Azurephoenix

Azurephoenix

GasBandit said:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that sometime soon in the future, governments will demand a verified name service for people using the internet with the hopes of ending online anonymity.
Click to expand...
So basically the average person gets screwed and people who know their way around the system get to continue doing whatever they are doing with impunity... except now with the added bonus of having bad things tagged to our online identity that we never took part in? SOUNDS COOL! ;)
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

The Internet can not function without anonymity. It might survive without net neutrality (to some degree anyway) but without the ability to browse and purchase things without fear of repercussions from the government... without the ability for communities of highly controversial subjects to meet without fear of being found, entire markets and communities are going to collapse. I mean seriously... if the government isn't allowed to see what I've checked out of the library, why the fuck should they be allowed to see what I look at online?
 
J

Jiarn

I know how tin-foil hat this is about to sound like but:

Anon won't let it come to that.

I comfort myself with that knowledge.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Jiarn said:
I know how tin-foil hat this is about to sound like but:

Anon won't let it come to that.

I comfort myself with that knowledge.
Click to expand...
True... they may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy... but they are OUR wretched hive of scum and villainy.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
SpecialKO said:
Engadget has a pretty thorough breakdown on the ups and downs of the proposal.

Google and Verizon's net neutrality proposal explained -- Engadget
Click to expand...
No no no no no.....Keo damnit! This is far to reasonable of an analysis! Where is the talk of the brain police and the end of the internet as we know it? The Oracle Prince has already forseen this doom.

Seriously though, this is a fantastic article, which calmly and clearly points at the different provisions of the policy. From where I stand this policy is a huge improvement on the current system (or lack thereof.) In my case I could care less about wireless net neutrality as there is enough competition to give people choice (which land lines lack). Still though, would be nice to see the FCC get it's teeth back.
 
KCWM

KCWM

That article is a great breakdown of what's going on. I especially like the whole transparency thing, if I understood it correctly. If my ISP is going to block or throttle my connection because I exceed a certain bandwidth per month, I'd love to know upfront. Here's why...

What I've occasionally run into is slow internet connection speeds for bandwidth heavy sites/programs after heavy internet usage. For example, when I was playing WoW the heaviest, I noticed that my latency would go from about 50-75 to the mid 300s-400s, any YouTube video I watched would be extremely slow, and streaming in general across a number of sites was significantly reduced. This was all rather sudden. We'd had connection spikes in the past, but they'd never lasted more than a few hours.

I let it go for about two week and then placed a call to tech support. When I called regarding it (and escalated the call in a genial way), I was told that "TWC does not, in any way, throttle bandwidth from it's heavier users." I was also told that my modem and/or router might be malfunctioning. However, within approximately 30 minutes of the call, my speed returned to normal...same modem and router. It's happened a couple of times in the past year and when I call about it, it seems to magically fix itself shortly after that call.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

GasBandit;426151][QUOTE=mr_thehun said:
... we found a net bar full of buddhist monks playing Counter Strike... I think it was the coolest net bar I've ever been to...
Click to expand...
Damn, I'd say so.[/QUOTE]

...It wasn't enough that us old fogies (anyone over 20) had to contend with 13 year-olds with too much free time, now we have to deal with ZEN FUCKING MONKS who are taking a frag break in between prayers designed to focus their calm and hone the efficiency of their breathing?!!




EDIT: The thing that people need to remember about the proposal is that there is no way in hell that whatever gets passed would be as short as the proposal. All the vagueness in there that folks are (justifiably) not comfortable with? Now is the time to instruct our reps on how to get specific.

I'm on the side of net neutrality, but I'm keenly aware that it doesn't actually exist in writing. What this proposal wants, in writing, is for ISPs to not be allowed to prioritize based on content. So that "$5 to access Amazon" would be made illegal.

I've of two minds about the wireless networks thing. Wireless networks have to deal with thousands of people travelling in and out of area of individual broadcast towers at a time, and actually are hampered by overall network bandwidth, unlike wired networks, where it really is about paying for access. Some level of traffic prioritization may be necessary to improve service without spending excessively on infrastructure upgrades. Obviously, we don't want individual content to be prioritized, but video versus email versus database applications (and so on and so forth) might not be a bad idea at this point (just for wireless, anyways).

The part that concerns me the most is actually not the broadband access part, but that paragraph about "additional services" not covered by "broadband access to the Internet". Traffic prioritization could kill colo providers because they have to go directly to the Telecoms for their data lines.
 
Shakey

Shakey

Incoming rant.

I know most of you probably don't care about the wireless part, since wireless is usually a secondary connection for you. The problem is, in rural and unserved areas it's a big problem. Telcos have given up serving rural areas with high speed internet, and I can understand why. It's expensive to put out equipment that may only be able to serve 10-20 people. They will never get their money back. Wireless can solve this problem, but it won't when people are hit with low bandwidth caps and have certain services throttled. What's the point when you can't use it? Satellite service would also be included in it. You can say these people should just move to more populated areas, but that's not going to happen.

The gap in education is just going to get worse in rural areas. How would anyone be able to take an online class on dialup? For many of these places the nearest college is well over an hour away. What about children doing any type of research for school papers? Imagine trying to conduct any type of business on a crappy connection like that. I would like to see anyone try to spend a week on dialup and tell me it's a viable option in the world we live in now.

Having the Universal Service Fund go towards broadband deployment, good. They better put requirements on new rollouts and minimum service. Right now the most you can get on DSL in town is 15meg down and 756 KBPS up. That's on a business connection. We cannot afford the $800+ dollars a month a straight data connection from them will cost. We have one provider for phone and internet, and they can do whatever they want and still receive government funding to do it.

We need competition, and wireless service can provide that in these rural areas. If restrictions on bandwidth and services we can access over wireless are allowed, it will do absolutely nothing, and all our tax dollars that go towards it will be wasted.

I have this crazy belief that if we as tax payers have our money given to these giant companies to provide us with service, we need to make damn sure they provide us with that service at a reasonable price. There has been no oversight to any of this in the past, and this does nothing to correct that. This may help the majority to download torrents and stream music as they please, but all I'm looking for is a basic connection at a competitive price.
 
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