Post-Net Neutrality?

[suarezguy]

Back in December 2017 the FCC voted to repeal its policy, previously implemented in February 2015, classifying Internet service providers as common carriers and subject to the regulations and standards applying to common carriers. The repeal, widely described as repealing Net Neutrality, an end to the open Internet, went into effect in June 2018.

In the many months since the repeal has your use of the Internet been impaired, has content been restricted by increased prices or other criteria or has service otherwise declined, by service providers not being subject to the common carriers regulatory requirements?

 

[DimesDan]

Nope.

 

[Butters]

Not that I’ve noticed.

 

[Kor]

Streaming video doesn't seem to perform as well, but I didn't make the connection until you asked. This is another reason why I'm glad I have my favorite shows and movies on physical media.

Kor

 

[Butters]

I did notice that my streaming content got rubbish around that time. Went from happily streaming HD video on four devices to struggling on one. I did report it as a fault, and it seemed to get worse whenever an upgrade was being offered.

 

[Gen. Jack O'Neill]

Streaming videos buffer more. High graphics pages load slower, more throttled back download speeds. But my biggest complaint is the way our provider has gone bat shit crazy jacking up fees and creating tiers of service. They have a monopoly in the area. I had the "unlimited" download package with boost for 140 a month only to find out that "unlimited" meant 1500 GB a month (Which with Dish and various streaming services in the house, We'd burn through in a week) and then 50 bucks for every additional 10 GB of data. In order to get TRUE unlimited, I had to fork over another 100 a month for their "super boost unlimited data" plan. State attorney general has already filed a lawsuit against the company for their BS business practices.

 

[STR]

Back in December 2017 the FCC voted to repeal its policy, previously implemented in February 2015, classifying Internet service providers as common carriers and subject to the regulations and standards applying to common carriers. The repeal, widely described as repealing Net Neutrality, an end to the open Internet, went into effect in June 2018.

In the many months since the repeal has your use of the Internet been impaired, has content been restricted by increased prices or other criteria or has service otherwise declined, by service providers not being subject to the common carriers regulatory requirements?

Not much has happened on this front, because the telcos aren't sure NN will stay dead and there's no point in spending $100 million in new networking equipment to enforce paid prioritization when there's good odds NN will be reintroduced.

What action there has been will be behind the scenes. Deals between ISP's. Contract terms changes, prices go up by a couple pennies. Not much to you if you're paying for a Netflix sub (it's in your bill, but they have bigger costs), but very important to AT&T who's now taking in millions more in unearned profits.

It's all about taking a few pennies from everyone. The scale of the effort makes it wildly profitable without being obvious to any one entity.

 

[MacLeod]

Nope not really, besides under EU law ISP's based in the EI have to treat all traffic equally.

 

[Pondwater]

Just a lot more of clicking “accept”. Other than that, I don’t notice a thing different.

 

[MacLeod]

Just a lot more of clicking “accept”. Other than that, I don’t notice a thing different.

If you're in the EU that might have more to do with the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)

 

[Teelie]

Like STR said, they aren't about to start pulling stunts like this because despite the repeal, the fight is not over. It is far from over and currently working it's way through the courts.

More than likely the next administration is going to reintroduce NN as a stronger regulation or even law and prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Something that's happened twice this month so far.

I'm out somewhere in the city with bad reception, just hanging out browsing the Internet. Suddenly, no sites will load. The server doesn't even respond. Except for Facebook, which loads perfectly.

 

[STR]

Something that's happened twice this month so far.

I'm out somewhere in the city with bad reception, just hanging out browsing the Internet. Suddenly, no sites will load. The server doesn't even respond. Except for Facebook, which loads perfectly.

If it's bad signal, it's probably due to FB optimizing their site for situations exactly like that. Their big push, globally, is signing up a billion users in the developing world. Cellular signal in developing economies can often be slow with a lot of dropped packets. No reason why they couldn't port those optimizations back to the US site.

Paid prioritization means FB loads faster not that it's the only site that will load.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'm a little skeptical on that explanation. Facebook optimizes to be able to have the site run smoothly on a small amount of data, but I'm not sure what they could do to optimize the initial handshake that every other site on the internet fails to figure out.

I would think it's the other way around, if it were just Facebook is designed well, other sites would respond the handshake then completely fail to load the content.