Friday is the last day to submit your views on Net Neutrality with the Federal Communications Commission. Although there may be some future opportunities to comment, it’s important to make your voice heard with the FCC today. Almost 650,000 Americans have done so to date, and we need to see this number rise even higher to combat the influence and power of Big Telecom companies looking to turn the Internet into a corporate toll booth.

If you recall, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is promoting a scheme where big ISPs like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast can divide up the Internet and introduce toll lanes allowing preferred paid traffic to travel on the Internet at faster speeds, usually at the expense of unpaid traffic that will get relegated to an Internet slow lane. It’s pay to play, and customers of these ISPs are already getting a preview of the new corporate road map for the net. Netflix viewers on ISPs that don’t have a paid agreement to handle video traffic suffer from rebuffering and lower quality video. But ISPs collecting tolls from Netflix don’t subject their customers to a degraded online video experience. Of course, before ISPs realized they could make money selling fast lanes, Netflix worked fine on virtually all of these providers.

Wheeler’s proposal would extend the two-tiered Internet to other websites and service providers, allowing big telecom companies to hand-pick winners and losers and discriminate in favor of their own Internet traffic. Comcast does that today with online video on certain game consoles. If that video comes from Comcast, it doesn’t count against any usage caps. If it doesn’t, it could get rough sticking to Comcast’s arbitrary usage allowance.

The FCC is in way over its head, unaware of the creative ways ISPs can find loopholes large enough to drive through any well-intentioned consumer protections. There is only once certain way to keep ISPs honest — reclassify them as what they should have been all along – a telecommunications service subject to common carrier rules. That would guarantee ISPs could not meddle with your Internet service for financial gain, could not artificially slow down “non-preferred” traffic to make room for paid traffic, and would guarantee that Internet applications of the future will succeed or fail on their merits, not on how much money they are willing to spend.

Since the FCC website is jammed today, we recommend e-mailing the Commission by this Friday at: [email protected]

Our friends at Free Press have published some sample comments they are getting, which may help you formulate yours. Here is ours as well:

Dear Chairman Wheeler,

Although we believe your intentions are good, your proposed Net Neutrality rules simply do not afford enough protection to preserve a free and open Internet. Troubling signs are already clear as providers test how much they can get away with meddling with Internet traffic. The wireless experience is replete with examples of selective speed throttling, usage caps, and traffic discrimination that allows some content to escape the usage meter and throttle while competitors cannot.

The Internet is a transformative experience for many Americans because for the first time in a long time, entrepreneurs can build online businesses that are judged on their merit, not on how much money they have to spend to achieve and maintain prominence. Anything that allows an ISP to collect additional funds for a “preferred” traffic lane will come at the detriment of others who have to share the same broadband pipe. This is especially evident in the wireless world, which escaped even the light touch regulatory framework of your predecessor. Providers promptly began creating new schemes to further monetize growing data traffic, bandwidth shortage or not. Almost none of these changes really benefit customers — they are simply new revenue-making schemes.

A foreshadowing of what is likely to happen under your proposal is also apparent with Comcast and Netflix. For several years subscribers had no trouble accessing online video. But when the issue of traffic compensation was reintroduced by Internet Service Providers, the upgrades to manage natural Internet growth largely stopped and the Netflix viewing experience on these ISPs deteriorated. Verizon, AT&T and Comcast all argue that a paid traffic deal would adequately compensate them to enhance the viewing experience customers already pay good money to receive with or without a paid peering arrangement with Netflix.

Money drives these debates. If an ISP properly managed their broadband infrastructure, there would be no incentive for any company to contract for a better online experience on a so-called “fast lane” because existing service would perform more than adequately. When a company cuts back on those upgrades, a market for paid prioritization appears. Customers will ultimately pay the price, primarily to ISPs that already enjoy an enormous margin selling broadband service at inflated prices.

A rising tide floats all boats, so your focus should not be as short-sighted as allowing ISPs to divide up the limited broadband highway. The FCC should instead focus on setting the conditions to hasten new competition and force existing providers to upgrade and maintain their networks for the benefit of all subscribers and content producers. The FCC must also move swiftly to cancel state bans on community broadband networks, eliminate regulations that deter broadband start-ups, and maintain enough oversight to guarantee a level playing field on which all can compete.

There is only one way to effectively accomplish all that. Reclassify broadband service the way it should have been classified all along: as a telecommunications service subject to common carrier regulations. Canada has been very successful requiring ISPs to open their last mile networks to competitors, which have allowed people to avoid compulsory usage caps. Customers have a choice of multiple providers from their local phone or cable company, giving rise to much-needed competition.

With strong Net Neutrality, consumers can reach the websites they want without interference. Ignore nonsense suggesting Net Neutrality is a government takeover or censors the Internet — two provably false assertions. In fact, Net Neutrality is the opposite.

I urge you to move with all speed towards reclassification, if only to prevent the inevitable legal challenges to any future policies built on the shakier ground of the current framework, which has not held up well under court scrutiny. I hope the voices of more than a half-million Americans contacting you on this issue will be more than enough to overcome industry objections. We are not asking for 1950s-style telephone regulations. We just want a legally affirmed platform that allows the Internet of today to continue being successful tomorrow.

Yours very truly,

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Netflix Slowdown Who is to Blame 6-6-14.flv[/flv]

CNN explores who is responsible for Netflix’s streaming problems on Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse. While one industry analyst seems keen to blame Netflix, his other articles on the subject show an increasing bias towards big ISPs like Verizon and AT&T. (2:54)

Netflix’s May speed rankings confirm Verizon FiOS customers are likely to find a degraded video streaming experience while using the otherwise speedy fiber to the home service. Netflix performance on Verizon FiOS dropped considerably last month — so much so that Frontier and Windstream DSL customers now get better Netflix performance than any Verizon customer receives. AT&T U-verse customers fared even worse with streaming performance below that offered by Mediacom — America’s bottom-rated cable company and CenturyLink DSL. In fact AT&T U-verse customers receive only marginally better service than Hughes satellite and Clearwire wireless customers. Verizon’s DSL came in dead last.

Coincidentally, both Verizon and AT&T, following Comcast’s lead, have been in negotiations with Netflix to receive payment from the streaming video provider to better handle its traffic. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said he’s confident about getting payments from Netflix, and he turned out to be correct — Verizon and Netflix reached an agreement in late April that is still being implemented. AT&T also says it is negotiating with Netflix. Verizon’s streaming video partnership with Redbox has not been affected by the sudden deterioration in online video streaming on Verizon’s network.

The problems with Netflix on some ISP’s have gone all the way to the top.

“My wife and I like to lay in bed and watch Netflix,” Tom Wheeler, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, said in January. The two companies serving Wheeler’s neighborhood are Comcast and Verizon. When enough customers launch streams on Netflix, saturating the inbound connection to either ISP, the video stops. When it does, Wheeler’s wife joins the parade of irritated customers.

“You’re chairman of the FCC,” she says to him. “Why is this happening?”

Last week, Netflix decided to answer that question with a more informative error message appearing when available bandwidth is insufficient to support a high quality stream.

“The Verizon network is crowded right now,” the message says. Netflix then attempts to restore the stream by serving up a degraded, lower quality/bit rate version to the paying customer.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Netflix-Verizon War of Words 6-6-14.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg interviews Todd O’Boyle from Common Cause. He places the blame for this debacle solely on the shoulders of Verizon and other ISPs. (5:39)

The inability to successfully maintain a stable stream of Netflix content that ranges from 256kbps to 5.8Mbps seems odd on ISPs that offer customers connections far faster than that. The average Netflix stream is 2Mbps, slow enough to be comfortably supported on even a 3Mbps DSL connection. Netflix’s problems with Comcast evaporated after agreeing to pay the cable company to maintain a better connection between its customers and Netflix’s content delivery network. The same cannot be said for perfomance on AT&T’s U-verse platform. Although Verizon signed an agreement with Netflix, it has clearly not been implemented as of yet.

“We started a small-scale test in early May that lets consumers know, while they’re watching Netflix, that their experience is degraded due to a lack of capacity into their broadband provider’s network,” said Netflix’s Joris Evers. “We are testing this across the U.S. wherever there is significant and persistent network congestion.”

The companies with the biggest drops in Netflix performance are the same ones strongly advocating special paid “fast lanes” on the Internet for preferred traffic to resolve exactly these kinds of performance problems.

“Some large US ISPs are erecting toll booths, providing sufficient capacity for services requested by their subscribers to flow through only when those services pay the toll,” said Evers. “In this way, ISPs are double-dipping by getting both their subscribers and Internet content providers to pay for access to each other. We believe these ISP tolls are wrong because they raise costs, stifle innovation and harm consumers. ISPs should provide sufficient capacity into their network to provide consumers the broadband experience for which they pay.”

The error message fingering Verizon as the culprit for a poorer Netflix experience brought an angry response from Verizon on its blog:

Reports from this morning have suggested that Netflix is engaging in a PR stunt in an attempt to shift blame to ISPs for the buffering that some of its customers may be experiencing. According to one journalist’s tweet from last night, Netflix is displaying a message on the screen for users who experience buffering which says: “The Verizon network is crowded right now.”

This claim is not only inaccurate, it is deliberately misleading.

The source of the problem is almost certainly NOT congestion in Verizon’s network. Instead, the problem is most likely congestion on the connection that Netflix has chosen to use to reach Verizon’s network. Of course, Netflix is solely responsible for choosing how their traffic is routed into any ISP’s network.

[…] It is sad that Netflix is willing to deliberately mislead its customers so they can be used as pawns in business negotiations and regulatory proceedings.

It would be more accurate for Netflix’s message screen to say: “The path that we have chosen to reach Verizon’s network is crowded right now.”

However, that would highlight their responsibility for the problem.

Milch

That was quickly followed by a cease and desist letter from Verizon demanding Netflix remove error messages that blame Verizon for the problem. It also demanded a list of Verizon customers that received the Netflix notification.

“Failure to provide this information may lead us to pursue legal remedies,” wrote Verizon general counsel Randal Milch in a letter to Netflix general counsel David Hyman.

“This is about consumers not getting what they paid for from their broadband provider,” Netflix spokesman Jonathan Friedland said. “We are trying to provide more transparency, just like we do with the ISP Speed Index, and Verizon is trying to shut down that discussion.”

“Verizon’s unwillingness to augment its access ports to major Internet backbone providers is squarely Verizon’s fault,” Netflix general counsel David Hyman wrote.

“Netflix does not purposely select congested routes,” added Evers. “We pay some of the world’s largest transit networks to deliver Netflix video right to the front door of an ISP. Where the problem occurs is at that door — the interconnection point — when the broadband provider hasn’t provided enough capacity to accommodate the traffic their customer requested.”

Despite all that, Netflix also admitted it plans to drop the error messages after the “small-scale test” ends on June 16.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Buffering Blame Game 6-6-14.flv[/flv]

CNBC explains how Netflix content gets to end viewers over a complicated series of Internet connections between Netflix and your ISP. (1:31)

CenturyLink does not believe it will face much of a competitive threat from AT&T and Verizon’s plans to decommission rural landline service in favor of fixed wireless broadband because the two companies’ offers are too expensive, overly usage-capped and too slow.

Both AT&T and Verizon have proposed mothballing traditional landline service in rural areas because both companies claim wireline financial returns are too low and ongoing maintenance costs are too high. In its place, both companies are developing rural fixed wireless solutions for voice and broadband service that will rely on 4G LTE networks.

CenturyLink does not traditionally compete against either AT&T or Verizon because their landline service areas do not overlap. But as both AT&T and Verizon Wireless continue to emphasize their nationwide wireless networks, independent phone companies are likely to face increased competition from wireless phone and broadband services.

CenturyLink isn’t worried.

“About two-thirds of our customers can get access to 10Mbps or higher [from us and] that continues to increase year by year,” CenturyLink chief financial officer Stewart Ewing told attendees at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s 2014 Global Telecom & Media Conference. “Our belief is that with the increasing demands customers have for bandwidth — the Netflix bandwidth requirement — just the increasing amount of video that customers are watching and downloading over their Internet pipes, we believe will drive customers to using a provider that basically has a wire in their home because we believe you will get generally higher bandwidth and a much better experience at lower cost.”

Ewing

CenturyLink customers consume an average of slightly less than 50GB of Internet usage per month, and that number is growing. Ewing said that CenturyLink has long believed that as bandwidth demand increases, wireless becomes less and less capable of providing a good customer experience.

“At this point, we don’t really have any concerns because people on the margin — the folks that don’t use much bandwidth — probably use a wireless connection today to download,” Ewing said. “But as the bandwidth demands grow, the wireless connection becomes more and more expensive and that could tend to drive people our way. So as long as we have 10Mbps or better to the customers, we don’t really think there is that much exposure.”

CenturyLink does not measure the difference in Internet usage between urban and rural residential customers, but the company suspects rural customers might naturally use more because alternative outlets are fewer in number outside of urban America.

“Folks in rural areas might actually can use Internet more for buying things that they can’t source [easily], but it’s hard to really count,” said Ewing. “I think our customers in the rural areas probably are not that much different from folks in urban areas.”

Prism is CenturyLink’s fiber to the neighborhood service, similar to AT&T U-verse. It is getting only a modest expansion in 2014.

CenturyLink’s largest competitor remains Comcast, which co-exists in about 40% of CenturyLink’s markets. The merger with Time Warner Cable won’t have much impact on CenturyLink, increasing Comcast’s footprint in CenturyLink territory by only about only 6-7%. CenturyLink believes most of any new competition will come in the small business market segment. Comcast’s residential pricing is unlikely to attract current CenturyLink customers in Time Warner Cable territory to consider a switch to Comcast if the merger is approved.

Ewing also shared his thinking about several other CenturyLink initiatives that customers might see sometime this year:

• Don’t expect CenturyLink to expand Wi-Fi hotspot networks. The company found they are difficult to monetize and is unlikely to expand them further;
• Any change in the FCC’s definition of minimum broadband speed to qualify for federal broadband expansion funds would slow rural broadband expansion. Ewing admitted a 10Mbps speed minimum is considerably more difficult to achieve over DSL than a 4 or 6Mbps minimum;
• Don’t expect any more merger/acquisition activity from CenturyLink in the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier business. CenturyLink shows no sign of pursuing Frontier, Windstream, FairPoint, or other independent phone companies. It is focused on expanding business services, where 60% of CenturyLink’s revenue now comes;
• CenturyLink fiber expansion will primarily be focused on reaching business offices and commercial customers in 2014;
• CenturyLink will only modestly expand PrismTV, its fiber-to-the-neighborhood service, to an additional 300,000 homes this year. The company now offers the service to two million of its customers, with 200,000 signed up nationwide. Last year, CenturyLink expanded PrismTV availability to 800,000 homes.

Phillip “How far will $20 get me in your office?” Dampier

Congress is famous for obfuscation when it comes to introducing legislation that promises one thing and delivers something quite different. Take the 2003 “Clear Skies Initiative,” which would have allowed the energy industry to increase polluting emissions, or “The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act,” which allows frackers to keep secret the ingredients of millions of gallons of chemicals pumped into the ground to displace natural gas, and potentially your potable drinking water.

So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) wants to “protect” the open and free Internet by introducing a new bill that opens and frees the telecom companies that steadfastly support his campaign coffers to install paid Internet toll booths. Like many pieces of legislation coming from some House Republicans these days, “freedom” only extends to corporate interests, not to you or I (unless we want to start a corporation of our own.)

Reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act is the Holy Grail for Net Neutrality supporters. It offers clear oversight authority that would make future lawsuits from Comcast, Verizon and other telecom companies untenable. Earlier court decisions have laid a foundation for broadband oversight under Title II, but the FCC itself must take advantage of that opportunity, and so far it has not.

Congressman Latta has introduced legislation to make sure the FCC can never take that step. His bill would specifically prohibit the FCC from reclassifying broadband Internet access as anything beyond an unregulated “information service.”

According to Latta, only with his legislation can America be assured the Internet will stay “open and free.” — “Open and free” for the picking by companies who dream of new revenue monetizing Internet traffic. Not satisfied charging some of the world’s highest prices for Internet access, many of the largest cable and phone companies in the country now want the right to “double-dip” — charging consumers to reach Internet content and content producers for delivering it. It would be like paying postage to mail a letter and having it arrive postage due or letting the phone company charge both the caller and the person called for a long distance telephone call.

“The legislation comes after the FCC released a proposal to reclassify broadband Internet access under Title II as a telecommunications service rather than an information service,” says a press release from Latta’s office.

Would I lie to you? Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio)

That is patently false. In fact, FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler has twisted himself into a human pretzel with clever language and a clear determination not to reclassify broadband under Title II. Wheeler prefers sticking to the rickety Section 706 faux-authority for Net Neutrality — the same section that keeps handing FCC lawyers loss after loss in federal court. After Wheeler announced his intention to propose allowing Internet companies to build paid fast lanes for Internet traffic, the resulting backlash from content companies and the public made him grudgingly offer a “discussion” about utilizing Title II.

That kind of “discussion” will be familiar to every 16-year old teenage girl who is told “we’ll talk about it” after asking mom and dad if she can take her new 22-year old boyfriend on vacation and stay in their own hotel room.

Ironically, detractors like Latta are the ones that usually accuse Net Neutrality of solving a problem that doesn’t exist. But that didn’t stop Congressman Latta from introducing legislation to stop the current ex-telecom lobbyist chairman of the FCC from going all Elizabeth Warren on us, suddenly imposing draconian pro-consumer regulations against those job creators at the cable companies Wheeler used to represent. But on the bright side, when Wheeler doesn’t do what Latta’s bill wouldn’t let him do, Latta can still declare victory against “big government.” If you live in Latta’s district, you can read all about it in the forthcoming government-subsidized, no-postage-needed “newsletter” he and other members of Congress will pelt your mailbox with right before election time.

“In light of the FCC initiating yet another attempt to regulate the Internet, upending long-standing precedent and imposing monopoly-era telephone rules and obligations on the 21^st Century broadband marketplace, Congress must take action to put an end to this misguided regulatory proposal,” said Latta. “The Internet has remained open and continues to be a powerful engine fueling private enterprise, economic growth and innovation absent government interference and obstruction. My legislation will provide all participants in the Internet ecosystem the certainty they need to continue investing in broadband networks and services that have been fundamental for job creation, productivity and consumer choice.”

Consumers not included. Maybe he just forgot.

“At a time when the Internet economy is thriving and driving robust productivity and economic growth, it is reckless to suggest, let alone adopt, policies that threaten its success. Reclassification would heap 80 years of regulatory baggage on broadband providers, restricting their flexibility to innovate and placing them at the mercy of a government agency. These businesses thrive on dynamism and the ability to evolve quickly to shifting market and consumer forces. Subjecting them to bureaucratic red tape won’t promote innovation, consumer welfare or the economy, and I encourage my House colleagues to support this legislation, so we can foster continued innovation and investment within the broadband marketplace.”

Guess not. The Internet should only be about business in Latta’s mind. Consumers that support Net Neutrality are nothing more than parasites sucking away valuable potential profits from the dynamic, flexible and innovative world of traffic shaping, usage caps, and double-dipping.

Latta isn’t interested that your provider is turning your weekend Netflix binge into an exercise of maddening rebuffering futility as your cable/phone company waits for protection racket proceeds a paid peering agreement with Netflix. That is because he doesn’t represent you. He represents AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and CenturyLink.

Latta can afford to travel through the Internet toll booth when one considers who his top contributors keeping his campaign flush with cash are:

• More than $32,000 in contributions from AT&T and its executives;
• $29,500 from Tom Wheeler’s old haunt — the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (Big Cable lobby);
• $15,000 from the American Cable Association (Small Cable lobby);
• $21,000 from Time Warner Cable and its executives;
• $16,000 from Verizon and its executives;
• $11,400 from CenturyLink;
• $11,000 from Comcast (they are ditching Ohio customers to Charter after merging with Time Warner Cable so why throw good money after bad).

Latta’s close friendship with Big Telecom is so obvious, it has made co-sponsoring his fact-free bill about as popular as Justin Bieber at an NAACP convention. Even his like-minded Congressional colleagues are staying away. But his industry friends sure appreciate his efforts on their behalf.

One wonders why his constituents return him to office when he would be obviously much more comfortable in his next job — lobbying for AT&T or Comcast. Before our Internet connections slow, let’s hope his constituents hasten a much-needed turbo-speed departure for the congressman, already a shadow employee of AT&T.

227194356 05 28 14 LATTA Broadband Bill (Text)
 

Oliver points out President Obama is very close to Comcast’s top lobbyist (and Democratic fundraiser) David Cohen.

John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” took nearly 15 minutes out of his show last night to present a detailed and unusually apt explanation of why Net Neutrality should matter to Americans.

Using a timely chart depicting Comcast’s Al Capone-like Internet protection racket, Oliver showed how Netflix performance rapidly deteriorated for Comcast customers until Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for a direct connection in February. Within days, performance rebounded to new highs.

In essence, Oliver explains, Net Neutrality is about the controversy of allowing Internet toll lanes.

Oliver shows an industry mouthpiece defending the concept as a “fast lane for everybody and a hyper speed lane for others,” to which Oliver responds, “Bullsh*t!”

“If we let cable companies offer two speeds of service, they won’t be [Jamaican sprinter] Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motor bike,” Oliver warns. “They’ll be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolted to an anchor.”

Oliver added he was concerned most Americans were not paying attention to the issue, proclaiming it “boring.”

“And that’s the problem. The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America: if you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring,” he said. “Advocates should not be talking about protecting Net Neutrality. They shouldn’t even use that phrase. They should call it preventing cable company fuc*ery. Because that is what it is.”

Comcast’s Internet protection racket. Netflix watched customer streaming performance degrade on Comcast’s network until it signed a paid peering agreement with the cable company in February.

Oliver’s prescription for change is somewhat more dubious, however. He wants Internet trolls to overwhelm the FCC’s Net Neutrality comment mailbox:

I would like to address the Internet commenters out there directly. Good evening monsters, this may be the moment you spent your whole lives training for.

You’ve been out there ferociously commenting on dance videos of adorable 3-years-olds, saying things like, “Every child could dance like this little loser after one week of practice.” Or you’d be polluting Frozen’s Let It Go with comments like, “Ice Castle would give her hypothermia and she dead in an hour.” Or, and I know you’ve done this one commenting on this show: “F*ck this a**hole anchor […] ur just friends with terrorists xD.”

This is the moment you were made for commenters. Like Ralph Macchio, you’ve been honing your skills waxing cars and painting fences, well guess what? Now it’s time to do some f*king karate.

For once in your life we need you to channel that anger.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Net Neutrality 6-1-14.flv[/flv]

John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight addresses Net Neutrality to viewers who probably don’t understand a thing about it. Warning: Strong language.  (13:17)