What services? I don't think you understand what extortion is. They lowered people's streaming to almost nothing to force Netflix to pay them millions. If that's not extortion....
..... yes they did. There's plenty of proof on the web of people getting throttled when they streamed Netflix. Talk about not getting your money for services rendered.
Well I suppose they could have beefed up their bandwidth capacity to give the required service to everyone. If they had done that all for free, providing the road with no toll for Netficks, you would be pleased. But I can see why the choose to ask for payment, then force payment and I see Netflicks paid. All is good.
There is no such proof. http://consumerist.com/2014/02/23/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-end-slowdown/ Much like Netflix’s ongoing standoff with Verizon FiOS, the drop in speeds wasn’t an issue of the ISP throttling or blocking service to Netflix. Rather, the ISPs were allowing for Netflix traffic to bottleneck at what’s known as “peering ports,” the connection between Netflix’s bandwidth provider and the ISPs. Until recently, if peering ports became congested with downstream traffic, it was common practice for an ISP to temporarily open up new ports to maintain the flow of data. This was not a business arrangement; just something that had been done as a courtesy. ISPs would expect the bandwidth companies to do the same if there was a spike in upstream traffic. However, there is virtually no upstream traffic with Netflix, so the Comcasts and Verizons of the world claimed they were being taken advantage of.
So Slate.com posts an article accusing Verizon of throttling Netflix. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...ix_on_fios_keeps_verizon_from_throttling.html See? People don't have a clue.
Why is it a courtesy? They are paid by their customers for bandwidth already, they just want to double dip - charge the consumers for "fast internet". but deny the service by blocking what the customers obviously want, charging the content providers (which in turn, really go ahead and charge the customers more money, otherwise they will not make money). If a consumer pays for a service level of internet communication, why does the ISP have the right to regulate what content they consume as long as it is within the service they purchased? The ISPs, being a location monopoly, double charge their direct consumers, they just use a sneaky way to seem as if the extra charge is collect by the content providers. I also find it amusing that the ISPs are so against being labeled a utility where they are often claiming to be one when it serves their purposes. http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5...-verizon-is-playing-the-fcc-and-its-customers
They're not blocking anything. They never did. As far as common carrier claims, at issue is criminal law only. Is Verizon a criminal party to drug deals arranged via emails that traverse their network or the accounts hosted on their servers. Common carrier means no they aren't. EDIT: I want to clarify something. Verizon is a phone company and an ISP. The voice/phone side of the company is already subject to the FCC Act of 1934. The data side is what I was referring to above. They're still not blocking anything and never did. The only case of an ISP selectively blocking specific traffic is Comcast at one point blocked torrent traffic because it was burying their network (and most of that was for illegal things like piracy).
What is Obamas game here? Any ideas? I'd say just typical politics playing both sides of the fence but he kind of set himself up to fail here...just window dressing maybe?
Trying to be relevant since he's not relevant about much else. That's actually meant to be a reasonable answer. He seems to be intent on doing things he can without congressional action.
Well, when Congress won't work with the executive branch one iota, nor compromise at all, then it deserves to be ignored. Bravo to Obama for supporting Net neutrality. I'm surprised you are not in favor of it Denny - it helps smaller websites like yours and mine.
So obama is supporting net neutrality, after hand picking a cable lobbyist to run the department tasked with deciding on it. wtf
Stevenson, I've negotiated numerous peering and transit deals. I get how the connections work. Net Neutrality is just utter bullshit feel good nonsense. I say that from a position of direct knowledge. No ISP in their right mind is going to filter traffic to extort money from 99.99999999999% of sites out there. Their only real issues are with managing their own networks' usage. This whole brouhaha has to be one of the silliest and dangerous things anyone can get behind, if you like the Internet. The Internet has become what it is, under lax regulation. They didn't tax transactions on the WWW for years and we got Amazon and countless other ecommerce sites that grew and thrived because of it. My internet speed in 1994 was 14.4K baud modem for $30. Today for $30 on comcast you get 6mbits/sec, or a 240x increase. Broadband is available to 93% of homes in the nation, without any "electrification" type government effort. What helps sites like mine and yours is Netflix stopping their one-way dumping of massive amounts of data across peering points (by buying connections or hosting). Those peering points on comcast and wherever else Netflix buys its one way peering are now hugely open for fast access to sites like yours and mine. No "bravo" to Obama for sticking is nose where he hasn't a clue and where his influence can do far more harm than good.
Here is a fun site to play with. http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ The US is 27th in average internet download speed, numbers that have been helped considerably by Kansas City and google. NY one of our best non google cities is less than half of even the worst South Korea city. In cities where google pops up, comcast suddenly discovers new bandwidth that they offer their customers. The technology that is already out there is being suppressed for profits.