[NNagain] On "Throttling" behaviors

[Dave Cohen]

I agree fulsomely with 95% of this point - the persistence of local
monopolies is the proximal cause of this debate. I don't, however, believe
that eliminating a local monopoly structure inherently precludes the need
to consider the "actual issues". For one thing, we've all borne witness to
cycles of expansion and consolidation in the ISP/telco space - there's no
reason to expect that after a cycle of competitive expansion, additional
consolidation leads us right back to a similar issue of competitive
imbalance some years later. For another, I think answering some of the more
philosophical questions in this debate remains relevant regardless - not
the least of which because it seems inevitable that those who desire to
maintain regulatory oversight of these things will maintain regulatory
oversight of these things.

On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 4:34 PM Colin_Higbie via Nnagain <
nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> While product and service innovation often originates from pure R&D or
> work performed in academic labs, in virtually all cases, converting that
> into commercially viable products and services is the result of profit
> incentives. A company won’t invest in doing something new with attendant
> risks unless they can expect a return on that investment greater than the
> alternatives (or they believe it will provide strategic support to some
> other product or service). For that reason, we want to be extremely careful
> about regulating how companies can implement innovations, including the use
> of potentially distasteful business practices. None of us who want to see
> the Internet become better over time and more accessible should want
> anything resembling NN regulation.
>
>
>
> The regulatory side of this is largely not a technical discussion because
> future innovation, by definition, may exceed technical considerations we
> can conceive of today.
>
>
>
> It's easy to conceive of examples where an ISP wants to prioritize or
> penalize certain kinds of traffic. And while that may seem superficially
> bad, it’s an important part of the very competition that drives innovation
> and cost reductions over time. E.g., recall when Google Fiber had been
> willing to install Gbps fiber in places at a time when most of the rest of
> the country was struggling to get 20Mbps connections. If Google had wanted
> to limit that to Google services, that still might have been a boon to
> those customers. Further, it could have shown the uses and values of what
> was then considered limitless bandwidth for a home or small business user.
> Even though this would clearly have been in violation of the tenets of NN,
> it would have provided important data that might have spawned significant
> investment by others and advanced the state of connectivity across the
> board.
>
>
>
> I know the counter argument to this is that local ISP monopolies already
> break innovation, and those companies, especially the big cable companies,
> therefore have no incentive to provide a good service. I largely agree with
> that (there is still some small incentive, in that if they are too
> terrible, customer outcry will turn to voter outcry and demand breaking
> those monopolies, and they don’t want to risk that).
>
>
>
> Therefore, the legal issue to address is NOT how they treat or prioritize
> data, whether by content or protocol – which they should be allowed to do,
> EVEN WHEN IT’S BAD FOR CUSTOMERS – but, at least referring to the U.S.
> specifically with our federal/state system, to put federal limits on
> durations of regional monopoly durations. I believe this is within the
> scope of what FCC can mandate (some would debate this and it may take the
> courts to sort it out). These need not be purely # of years, they can be a
> function of time to recoup deployment costs. If a company negotiated a
> local monopoly as part of covering their deployment costs, I would
> personally say that they should be given an opportunity to recoup those,
> but then after that, they need to open up their lines for use by competing
> firms, similar to what happened with the RBOCs and the old telephone lines.
>
>
>
> This is also the legal logic behind patents: give a company a 20 year
> monopoly on the invention in exchange for making it public to everyone and
> showing them how to do it (the patent must provide clear instructions). We
> deem the temporary monopoly worthwhile to incent the innovation, provided
> the inventor makes it public. This is the right philosophy to consider for
> something like bandwidth innovation, investment, and access.
>
>
>
> In short, with ISP’s the open-ended government protected monopolies are
> the problem, not the providers’ ability to overcharge customers or
> prioritize some data over others. Competition will fix that over time, as
> long as competition is allowed to occur. And while it may be faster to
> force it through regulation, that has dangerous long-term consequences with
> respect to future innovation.
>
>
>
> Starlink is one example of innovation. FTTH is another. Cellular-based
> Internet is another. Simply buying bulk access on existing lines and
> repackaging it under different terms could be yet another. Those all seem
> obvious, because they’re the ones we know. The real danger in unforeseen
> consequences is the dampening effect NN-style regulations have on
> yet-to-be-seen innovations, the innovations that never come to fruition
> because of the regulations.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Colin Higbie
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
>


-- 
- Dave Cohen
craetdave at gmail.com
@dCoSays
www.venicesunlight.com
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