Jimmy Kimmel Joins John Oliver In Explaining Net Neutrality
from the fast-lanes-and-slow-lanes dept
A few months ago, John Oliver did an amazing job making net neutrality into a mainstream issue, by reducing it to its core element: that it’s all about “preventing broadband provider fuckery.” That was a great segment that truly went viral. But, still, the TV folks have remained pretty quiet on the issue. However, it appears that another late night comedian has jumped into the game as well, with Jimmy Kimmel doing a segment last week trying to explain the fast lane/slow lane issue in rather graphic form:
Filed Under: broadband, fast lane, jimmy kimmel, net neutrality, slow lane
Comments on “Jimmy Kimmel Joins John Oliver In Explaining Net Neutrality”
Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a misrepresentation. ISPs would have little incentive to intentionally slow websites down, that would lead to consumer complaints and certainly ripen the market for competition.
It’s much more like “current lane” and “faster lane”, and the current lane would have less traffic in it. Imagine how much better Comcast will be when Netflix is no long hogging 50% of their peering during prime time.
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Why should ISPs listen to consumer complaints? It’s not like they can cancel their service and give another ISP their business since there’s no competition, and starting a new ISP is nigh impossible.
It’s been proven that a lot of networks are artificially throttled by ISPs these days and there are no technical problems keeping the United States’ internet infrastructure as one of the worst in the modern world. As soon as a business like Google Fiber threatens to move in, they suddenly open up their channels and try to provide the better service that they should have been offering all along.
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This is true, cable can easily get to speeds up to well, I don’t know, my ISP’s biggest plan is 300mbps down/150mbps up for 220 bucks a month (they’re insane, small isp’s have better plans than that but not much publicity). I don’t know what’s coaxial’s cable theoretical fastest speed.
The same with DSL by the way, there’s a small ISP here, if the signal is good to your house, that can deliver for 30 bucks a month (gotta buy the modem though), 175mbps down/30up with dry loop dsl and don’t tell me this is affecting other users. Back before the MyFaces and shit, around the time all major irc networks were being ddos’d (all happened the same year….surely just a coincidence), i’m speaking of 2006 btw, Undernet and Efnet were barely possible to connect to when DA SOCIAL MEDIAZ arrived. Goes with the excuse my ISP turned off (it’s very efficient at downloading binaries) usenet server, remember when everyone had a newsgroup address and they most didnt know what it was so they just ignored it? Like actual email programs? When everyone flocked to hotmail to have their mail kept by MS forever…, i’m guilty of the crimes of getting those web mail services but they are fed directly to Thunderbird on my desktop. Anyway it wouldn’t bother anyone in my neighborhood if I was given that “crazy” 300mbps/150mbps connection at the same price as as my 55, no 65$ because I pay 10 bucks for unlimited (at some point they lost me to a small ISP too because of the caps)a month for 30/10, I surely couldn’t slow down Candy Crush and Farmville and chat which is what 99% of internet users do now since the Second Eternal September (it happened right when I moved to a student housing for a new semester).
Now those IRC networks are back but mostly useless and filled with idiots and or soup agents and pedophiles. I miss the ftp and f-serve announces etc. but yeah, in THAT world, where lay people used the internet to buy crap on ebay only, we would have stepped on each other’s toes, not anymore even if you give this 300/150mbps to my whole neighborhood.
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Forgot to say, I’m Canadian, this factors in a lot.
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ISPs would have little incentive to intentionally slow websites down, that would lead to consumer complaints and certainly ripen the market for competition.
Yes, of course, because as everyone knows, the reason there’s no competition in the market now is because everyone absolutely loves their ISP’s. Clearly if people starting getting tired of their current ISP they’d just jump to another, competing service, which of course are all over the place, so if ISP’s want to keep their customers, they also need to keep their customers happy.
/s
As for Netflix ‘hogging the bandwidth’, if the network can’t handle the traffic that the customer paid for, that’s the fault of the ISP for overselling their service, not Netflix for delivering what their customers are paying for.
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Crazy how I have access to about 10 ISP’s in my province. Most are small and have bad customer service, this is for all of them, but they don’t get much publicity. You almost gotta hang around on a regional irc channel like say #toronto and wait for people to come up and see their hosts.
Or there’s ways to have a list of all the isp’s in the province. I’ve went with small ISP’s before, it’s nice how they can use the big telcos wires/phone lines. It’s how the country managed to keep things competitive. I went back to moderately big telco, because they are the only cable modem company I can deal with that provides HD TV….I need it again now that I have a kid. But you can be sure i’m not an 80’s parent, leaving the kid to watch whatever it wants, locked it down to channels where she can either learn or laugh. No teen sitcoms and that BS at my house.
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Same with the internet btw, no tumblr, no facebook contacts I do not approve of, no youtube, if she wants to listen to music I have a gigantic mp3 collection and it’s fun how a little girl who’s 7 will get into hardcore punk from the 80’s and 90’s if she has Bieber filtered out.
She goes to a public school but this is a good neighborhood, anyway, enough parenting tips, and thank god it’s a girl so I don’t have to install NetNanny or something like that to filter the porn a boy over 8 would get to see even if I didn’t. See that’s how you raise your kids, Cameron (not british), but it’s easy to block access to what you want for your children, leave adults watch what fully developed brains can comprehend without hassle.
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Netflix isn’t hogging half of their peering, the ISP customers are using what they have paid for. Or are you saying I am not supposed to use what I have paid for?
Or is Netflix just uploading stuff to the net in the hopes of getting it somewhere, anywhere? Tell me, how I can get Netflix into my home without purchasing an internet plan?
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wow. you are either totally naive, or the most obvious troll in history.
-ISPs incentive to slow websites down would be that they could then go charge you an extra premium to speed them back up. “ok, thanks for choosing comcast. would you also like to buy the social media bundle? for only $15/month you can load facebook, linkedin, myspace, and tumblr at the same lightning fast speed we advertised when we sold you the account.”
-“lead to consumer complaints and certainly ripen the market for competition. ” because currently comcast and time warner and at&t care SO much about customer complaints. and there is no competition. to start a competing company you would need to run a metric shit-ton of cables/fibre yourself to connect your market to the nearest backbone. I have no sources for this, but i think i read once that it costs something like $1million per mile. Also, to use the telephone poles you would need special permission from the city that owns them, and they’re already given permission to Comcast with an exclusivity clause, so you’re SoL.
-So, your opinion is that instead of just degrading traffic to a lower default state, then charging to get back to average- ISPs are going to keep what we have now (aka, among the worst speeds in the first world) and THEN install faster capabilities for a premium (aka, massively expensive and what they’ve avoided doing all along, even though they were given BILLIONS in tax credits to do exactly that)?
Seriously, what fantasy world do you live in? and/or which bridge do you live under?
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-ISPs incentive to slow websites down would be that they could then go charge you an extra premium to speed them back up. “ok, thanks for choosing comcast. would you also like to buy the social media bundle? for only $15/month you can load facebook, linkedin, myspace, and tumblr at the same lightning fast speed we advertised when we sold you the account.”
Right there it would fail, because it would prove they could fix it themselves. They aren’t going to do that, they would get their asses sued into non-existence – and the customers would be out the door in a flash.
ISPs are going to keep what we have now
No, ISP are going to keep AT LEAST what they have now, with fewer huge bandwidth hogs on it.
As for connection speed, that is a different problem. All the interconnect and peering won’t change the basic fact that too many people live way too far from the central office and still expect big speeds.
Seriously, what fantasy world do you live in?
No fantasy, I just don’t live in the boonies and expect miracle connections. All the “billions” isn’t going to change the simple fact that too many Americans live in denial on so many levels when it comes to living rural, low rise, low density housing. They bitch about their ISP, they bitch about traffic, they bitch about how much it costs to mow the law, how far it is for the kids to go to school… and never once consider (unsurprisingly) that perhaps they are their own worst enemies.
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the customers would be out the door in a flash.
To go where???
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they would get their asses sued into non-existence
Sued for what? Without NN (or the current threat of it) they would immediately start selling bundles like this and unavailable, regular, and fast options for services that others supply.
ISP are going to keep AT LEAST what they have now
Nope. They will be happy to let parts of their networks degrade and see performance drop on the lower tiers. AT&T already does this. In areas where they roll out U-Verse, they stop maintaining their DSL services and they slow to a crawl – this happened to me and their CS even told me that is what was happening.
too many Americans live in denial on so many levels when it comes to living rural, low rise, low density housing
http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q114.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q114
The top 10 countries for global average connection speeds include Latvia and the Netherlands – not to mention is topped by South Korea. Now I know we have a large sprawling country, but if it was really a rural vs. city issue, why are Washington and Utah 6th and 8th for state speeds?
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I’m not sure I understand why whenever a dozen people debunk you, you only respond to one of them. It’s not like a single response is going to help your argument at all when you clearly need to scrap all your logic, do more research, and start over.
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I think it’s because he’s philosophically opposed to NN, therefore any argument in favor of it or in defense of it is incorrect by definition.
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By responding to a single person he gets to whine about how that person is singling him out. See PaulT.
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Whatever is the new Techdirt troll. Arguing is futile. Just ignore.
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The initial investment needed for ISPs would be a high risk if they also have to compete. Besides, the slow down could give some years of saving money, which is a thing. Relying on competition as a deterrent is a bit jejeune, given the current state of broadband.
If you look at the “optimisation” certain providers have suggested in the past, it is a zero-sum game, making “current lanes” having to slow down to service the “faster lane”. If we are talking about separate “faster lanes”, the incentive structure would dictate a double dipping from the ISP and in a way that would be extremely difficult to regulate unless fast lanes would be both free for users and the sites.
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Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a misrepresentation. ISPs would have little incentive to intentionally slow websites down, that would lead to consumer complaints and certainly ripen the market for competition.
Except, that’s exactly what Comcast, AT&T and Verizon did to Netflix. And it led to customer complaints, and not more competition, but Netflix finally agreeing to pay the toll keeper to get the ISPs to connect up a few more ports.
So, reality says you’re wrong.
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This has to be one of your worst comments ever, and that is saying a lot.
ISPs would have little incentive to intentionally slow websites down, that would lead to consumer complaints and certainly ripen the market for competition.
How exactly do customer complaints lead to competition? What is the mechanism for that? Can you name a single time in the history of the US that customer complaints about ISPs led to greater competition?
It’s much more like “current lane” and “faster lane”, and the current lane would have less traffic in it.
I’m not one to accuse people of shilling, but this really sounds like you’re reading from the ISP talking points.
This is no misrepresentation. Your ISP would have EVERY reason to slow down the SLOW Lane which would bring in MORE revenue! Otherwise, why would anyone pay for it? The ISP’s new business shake down model would now work when their next extortion client cannot easily reach the ISP’s hostages (aka customers). For a STRONG ARM agreement fee, they will PRIORITIZE your traffic over all others. Worked well for Comcast with Netflix this last February! And customers did complain, but they aim their anger at the website they pay for OUTSIDE of their ISP contact because they have no way of understanding that Comcast was responsible for letting their “last mile on ramp” degrade to the point that combat was losing customers! A typical extortion shake down.
And “estimates” of Netflix traffic are that they PEAK at 30% during prime time viewing – 7 pm to 9 pm. Outside of those 2 hours, their traffic drops below even that estimate.
“ISPs would have little incentive to intentionally slow websites down”
Maybe that sort of drivel sells along the beltway, but not IRL.
One has to wonder what a faster data stream would do to the nsa’s collection capabilities , could they keep up if say all providers all of a sudden offered gigabit services.
I’m still not a Dingo!
Net Neutrality comments viewer
I wanted to actually be able to browse some of the millions of comments submitted to the FCC so I built this site https://ntrlty.net
Rural Areas Get Faster Cable Internet Speeds
Generally cable modem Internet speeds go up as population density goes down. The only reason rural customers suffer at all is when services are not available in their area. So if you live where all you can get is dial-up, then yes your speed will be slower. If you get “standard” cable Internet, then it will be faster where there are fewer customers to use up the bandwidth.
Right now, some urban areas are experiencing increases because competition from fiber is instigating the cable ISPs to improve their speeds, and fiber isn’t really starting to be available in smaller communities.
So yes, you can get the benefits of new faster technologies first in an urban area, but once you have the same service in both rural and urban areas, the rural areas will generally provide a faster experience.