Comcast is destroying the principle that makes a competitive internet possible

[ksen]

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/6/5678080/voxsplaining-telecom

Over the last four years, Comcast has engaged in a campaign to undermine the bill-and-keep system. The effort first came to public attention in 2010. Level 3 had just signed a contract to host Netflix content, and Level 3 asked Comcast to upgrade a connection between them to accommodate the higher traffic. Level 3 expected this to be an easy sell since Comcast had previously paid Level 3 for transit service. But instead, Comcast demanded that Level 3 pay it for the costs of the upgrade.

Since then, Comcast has evidently begun demanding that other transit and content providers pay it for faster connections too. "Every day I have someone come up to me and say 'Comcast came up to us asking for money,'" says Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term "network neutrality."

Comcast itself has been silent on the details of these agreements, but the company's defenders take it for granted that transit providers should be paying Comcast, not the other way around. For example, Dan Rayburn has argued that "the reason for the poor [Netflix] quality streaming is that Cogent refuses to pay Comcast to add more capacity." This, of course, is begging the question. Why should Cogent pay Comcast to deliver content that Comcast customers requested in the first place?

I think this is a pretty good article that explains what's at stake if the Comcast/Time Warner merger is allowed to go through.

It's a horrible idea, but unfortunately like most horrible ideas that benefit a large business it will probably happen.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Why is anyone still paying Comcast for service. I get mine at about 1/3 the price.

 

[KeepTalking]

Why is anyone still paying Comcast for service. I get mine at about 1/3 the price.

Some people in some places have little to no choice. I have the option between Charter and AT&T Uverse for internet. We were mostly happy with Charter, but there were issues with our service dropping for just a few seconds, several times every day. A normal user would never notice the issue, but my wife works from home through a VPN, and uses a soft phone for work that requires uninterrupted service. She would lose connection to the VPN every time the service dropped for a second, sometimes cutting her off in the middle of a call with a customer. Despite numerous techs working on our issue over a six month period, Charter was never able to fix it. We were forced to switch to AT&T Uverse. Her connection never drops now, but we have shitty Netflix performance now because AT&T is doing the same thing as Comcast, refusing to upgrade the transit connection unless they get paid.

What I wouldn't do to have the option for Google fiber... well, I wouldn't move to Kansas City, that's for sure.

 

[NobleSavage]

This is a good description of what is going on.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/06/comcast-internet-service-criticism-twc-cablevision-level-3/

 

[coloradoatheist]

We'll see what happens in the next few years on this. I think the winners will actually be the phone companies and there are more opportunities for things like Google fiber. Level 3 should also start looking into providing service to homes.

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

 

[ksen]

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

 

[coloradoatheist]

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

Except when that isn't the service they are providing you. The service provided is a much harder one to answer because the ISP don't guarantee bandwidth to a certain site. They guarantee bandwidth to their Central office with the size of the pipe to your specific drop. Does their service contract say that they will provide links to other providers with no packet drops?

 

[ksen]

Um, their goal should be providing service with as few packet drops as possible. That would be a very large part of providing good customer service. But Comcast is routinely at the bottom of customer service rankings so they probably don't give a shit as long as your checks don't bounce.

I don't use Comcast, but I do use another large ISP provider. And while I'm sure the language of the service contract doesn't promise no packet drops I'm pretty sure it also says nothing about intentionally providing service that results in more packet loss should I try to access the site of someone they consider a competitor.

 

[ksen]

Congress should give the USPS the authority to provide ISP services.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Congress should give the USPS the authority to provide ISP services.

Is your goal to make customer service even worse than it? The USPS is way way way behind in terms of creating their own network.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We'll see what happens in the next few years on this. I think the winners will actually be the phone companies and there are more opportunities for things like Google fiber. Level 3 should also start looking into providing service to homes.

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

Level III isn't a competitor. They put down the fiber backbone that all of this internet traffic runs across. It is odd how the backbone is doing just fine, and rather it is end points where traffic is the trouble. Level III isn't asking Comcast to improvement Level III lines running across the nation, just the connections to Comcast's infrastructure. Comcast says, "Why should we pay to improve infrastructure that would benefit our customers?"

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

Except when that isn't the service they are providing you. The service provided is a much harder one to answer because the ISP don't guarantee bandwidth to a certain site. They guarantee bandwidth to their Central office with the size of the pipe to your specific drop. Does their service contract say that they will provide links to other providers with no packet drops?

Odd, because they advertise that I need that 15 Mbps connection to stream video online (like Netflix)! But then they purposefully choke the lines.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Level III isn't a competitor. They put down the fiber backbone that all of this internet traffic runs across. It is odd how the backbone is doing just fine, and rather it is end points where traffic is the trouble. Level III isn't asking Comcast to improvement Level III lines running across the nation, just the connections to Comcast's infrastructure. Comcast says, "Why should we pay to improve infrastructure that would benefit our customers?"

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

Except when that isn't the service they are providing you. The service provided is a much harder one to answer because the ISP don't guarantee bandwidth to a certain site. They guarantee bandwidth to their Central office with the size of the pipe to your specific drop. Does their service contract say that they will provide links to other providers with no packet drops?

Odd, because they advertise that I need that 15 Mbps connection to stream video online (like Netflix)! But then they purposefully choke the lines.

I was talking about Netflix in this case. Netflix is a competitor to Comcast and Netflix has to rely on its competitor to provide its service. If Netflix wants to improve the speeds to its customers, it could go out and build it's own network.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Level III isn't a competitor. They put down the fiber backbone that all of this internet traffic runs across. It is odd how the backbone is doing just fine, and rather it is end points where traffic is the trouble. Level III isn't asking Comcast to improvement Level III lines running across the nation, just the connections to Comcast's infrastructure. Comcast says, "Why should we pay to improve infrastructure that would benefit our customers?"

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

Except when that isn't the service they are providing you. The service provided is a much harder one to answer because the ISP don't guarantee bandwidth to a certain site. They guarantee bandwidth to their Central office with the size of the pipe to your specific drop. Does their service contract say that they will provide links to other providers with no packet drops?

Odd, because they advertise that I need that 15 Mbps connection to stream video online (like Netflix)! But then they purposefully choke the lines.

I was talking about Netflix in this case. Netflix is a competitor to Comcast and Netflix has to rely on its competitor to provide its service. If Netflix wants to improve the speeds to its customers, it could go out and build it's own network.

Comcast is advertising/selling a product they have little interest in providing.

 

[ksen]

Congress should give the USPS the authority to provide ISP services.

Is your goal to make customer service even worse than it? The USPS is way way way behind in terms of creating their own network.

I've always been satisfied with the USPS customer service. I pay for my postage and my package gets to where it needs to go. I don't see the USPS demanding that the person I'm sending my package too also have to pay an additional fee in order to get the package I'm sending them without any "interruptions".

 

[coloradoatheist]

Congress should give the USPS the authority to provide ISP services.

Is your goal to make customer service even worse than it? The USPS is way way way behind in terms of creating their own network.

I've always been satisfied with the USPS customer service. I pay for my postage and my package gets to where it needs to go. I don't see the USPS demanding that the person I'm sending my package too also have to pay an additional fee in order to get the package I'm sending them without any "interruptions".

The problem we get into is a hard one with saying that X company has better customer service than Y. I can give you my story of which one I believe is better. It's interesting that with the post office you do pay to have different levels of service though and you have no guarantee that your package gets their. If it's lost, the USPS can say, "we might have tried"

- - - Updated - - -

Level III isn't a competitor. They put down the fiber backbone that all of this internet traffic runs across. It is odd how the backbone is doing just fine, and rather it is end points where traffic is the trouble. Level III isn't asking Comcast to improvement Level III lines running across the nation, just the connections to Comcast's infrastructure. Comcast says, "Why should we pay to improve infrastructure that would benefit our customers?"

But the Internet has made it a strange model with relying on your competitors to deliver your product.

It's not all that strange. I pay my ISP to deliver broadband access to my home. If they artificially throttle my access because I'm attempting to access a different product, i.e. stream movies, that they also offer then they are violating our agreement. I'm paying for a certain level of bandwidth. I'm not paying for a certain level of bandwidth unless I'm trying to access a service they might also offer in an attempt to get me to buy it from them. In the latter case my contract with them is being violated.

But I don't have billions to spend to enforce my contract so I'm basically screwed.

They are offering a service. It's up to them to do whatever it takes to provide the service they are selling me.

Right now Comcast is no better than a mafia family charging protection money. "Hey, that's some nice bandwidth you got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

Except when that isn't the service they are providing you. The service provided is a much harder one to answer because the ISP don't guarantee bandwidth to a certain site. They guarantee bandwidth to their Central office with the size of the pipe to your specific drop. Does their service contract say that they will provide links to other providers with no packet drops?

Odd, because they advertise that I need that 15 Mbps connection to stream video online (like Netflix)! But then they purposefully choke the lines.

I was talking about Netflix in this case. Netflix is a competitor to Comcast and Netflix has to rely on its competitor to provide its service. If Netflix wants to improve the speeds to its customers, it could go out and build it's own network.

Comcast is advertising/selling a product they have little interest in providing.

They have an interest, but like all companies they aren't going to make it easier for their competitors. Go with DSL if you care.

 

[ksen]

I've always been satisfied with the USPS customer service. I pay for my postage and my package gets to where it needs to go. I don't see the USPS demanding that the person I'm sending my package too also have to pay an additional fee in order to get the package I'm sending them without any "interruptions".

The problem we get into is a hard one with saying that X company has better customer service than Y. I can give you my story of which one I believe is better. It's interesting that with the post office you do pay to have different levels of service though and you have no guarantee that your package gets their. If it's lost, the USPS can say, "we might have tried"

No one's complaining about having different levels of service, or bandwidth offerings. What's being complained about is the intentional throttling that limits the bandwidth Comcast agreed to sell you $X.

Comcast is basically acting like Gov. Christie, or his people depending upon whose story you believe, and intentionally shutting down lanes of traffic for not getting what they want. And what they want is for the customer to pay and for the backbone company to pay. Which is equivalent to the post office wanting a fee from the sender of mail and from the receiver of mail in order to keep all lanes open.

It should be illegal. But with the regulation capture Comcast has it never will be.

 

[Zeluvia]

http://bgr.com/2014/05/06/comcast-internet-service-criticism-twc-cablevision-level-3/

And from Level 3

“They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers,” Taylor wrote. “They are not allowing us to fulfil the requests their customers make for content.”

Which six ISPs are we talking about here? Taylor stops short of naming them, but he still manages to shame them.

“Five of those congested peers are in the United States and one is in Europe,” he said. “There are none in any other part of the world. All six are large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market. In countries or markets where consumers have multiple Broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers.”

Taylor also noted that the ISPs in question “happen to rank dead last in customer satisfaction across all industries in the U.S.,” and he linked to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which regularly ranks ISPs including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter, Cox, Verizon and Cablevision at the bottom of customer satisfaction surveys.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Declare the internet a utility.

Allow municipalities to provide it at cost.

And be done with this nonsense.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Declare the internet a utility.

Allow municipalities to provide it at cost.

And be done with this nonsense.

You mean that infrastructure we are supposedly getting a D in, with how badly our roads and bridges are, or how we need to spend trillions of dollars on it? It might be okay for a short period of time. Remember the Internet started as a government project and it really wasn't going anywhere.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Comcast is advertising/selling a product they have little interest in providing.

They have an interest, but like all companies they aren't going to make it easier for their competitors.

Isn't this when we get into the Anti-Trust issue?

Go with DSL if you care.

I care to get what I paid for! I am paying AT&T for use of the Internet at a certain range of broadband speeds. There is no listing from them as to which sites they will or will not allow unrestricted access.

They are being paid pretty well for this access.