DarthSkywalker0
The Insane Jedi Master
Well Robtard it is nice to see some substance let's look deeper into this.
2005 – North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked VoIP service Vonage.
There was a fact check done on this so I will quote their findings.
The facts: Madison River was a small, rural telco with 40K DSL customers and a massive debt load of some $500 million. Following an upgrade of its infrastructure to support DSL, it did on fact block access to Vonage and other competing telephone services in order to ensure the cash flow to pay for the upgrade. So yes, this happened.The impact: A similar tactic was employed by Korea Telecom in 2006 when it upgraded its copper infrastructure to fiber. Korea Telecom’s action was perfectly legal as it was permitted by legislation to block foreign VoIP services that didn’t comply with its telecommunications law.
In the US, this would be equivalent to blocking services like Skype that don’t pay into the Universal Service Fund, support 911, or comply with other conditions that apply to telephone services of other kinds. Hence, this is more a question of regulatory compliance with the terms and conditions of telecom service than of Internet freedom.
Is it worthwhile to block VoIP to pay for DSL? How about fiber? Perhaps it is, at least for a time. But this is a policy question we’re not allowed to consider when net neutrality is the law.
The resolution: The FCC forced Madison River to sign a consent decree, pay a $15K fine, and permit Vonage to operate on its network. This result took place before the US had any formal net neutrality regulations, but it could have been achieved under either of the two Open Internet Orders or under conditions for USF subsidy payments. The FCC had Madison River over a barrel because the company lacked the funds to mount a meaningful legal defense. The company is now owned by CenturyLink, a carrier that complies with net neutrality as a matter of policy.
2005 – Comcast blocked or severely delayed traffic using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. (The company even had the guts to deny this for months until evidence was presented by the Associated Press.)
I think this is hilarious as it does not mention that Comcast was actually doing a good job at preventing privacy. Users of piracy networks are limited to downloading no more data than they upload. It’s necessary for them to earn download credits by making files available to others by seeding (uploading files to others). Legitimate uses of BitTorrent – such as making Linux available – do not typically have a download credit system. Overall, the practice had more impact on unlawful users than on legitimate ones, but it did shift the upload burden to other ISPs. Due to the backlash, Comcast discontinued the practice without any problems. There was a positive result of the dispute,
Following the FCC controversy, BitTorrent designed and implemented LEDBAT, a means of self-limiting its bandwidth when other applications are active. And for a time, Comcast implemented a “Fair Share” system that enabled it to limit heavy usage during periods of congestion in a protocol-agnostic way. The details of LEDBAT and Fair Share were published in Internet RFCs.So the problem was congestion caused by BitTorrent on a DOCSIS 1.1 network. It was resolved by DOCSIS 3.0 and dialog between BitTorrent and the ISPs in the Internet Engineering Task Force forum
2007 – AT&T censored Pearl Jam because lead singer criticized President Bush.
This doesn't mention that immediately after said action at&t discontinued the practice and lost profits due to reputation damages.
2007 to 2009 – AT&T forced Apple to block Skype because it didn’t like the competition. At the time, the carrier had exclusive rights to sell the iPhone and even then the net neutrality advocates were pushing the government to protect online consumers, over 5 years before these rules were actually passed..
This allegation is unproven and not corroborated by Apple's own statements. Apple told the FCC that their actions were completely independent. The FCC has no power over the app store so net neutrality would not affect this. In addition, it is perfectly fair to assume that Apple's change in policy was related to quality rather than collusion.
2009 – Google Voice app faced similar issues from ISPs, including AT&T on iPhone.
This claim can be disregarded due to the same concerns brought up with the last one.
2010 – Windstream Communications, a DSL provider, started hijacking search results made using Google toolbar. It consistently redirected users to Windstream’s own search engine and results.
To quote the article,
Free Press portrays this incident as “hijacking user-search queries”, at best a misleading description. Windstream actually intercepted failed DNS lookups for a brief period, redirecting error pages rather than searches. Windstream says error page redirection was caused by misconfigured software and was not deliberate.The impact: None, when domain names are typed correctly. Minor, when URIs were mistyped.
Customers complained and the problem was fixed in less than a week.
2011 – MetroPCS, one of the top-five wireless carriers at the time, announced plans to block streaming services over its 4G network from everyone except YouTube.
MetroPCS did this for reasons unrelated to net neutrality. Essentially, they had 22 Mhz of spectrum in its average urban market, and minimal allocations in rural areas. To maximize this allocation, they made a deal with youtube to provide highly compressed video streams to its customers. BTW this was one of the reasons that LTE was invented.
2011 to 2013 – AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon blocked Google Wallet in favor of Isis, a mobile payment system in which all three had shares. Verizon even asked Google to not include its payment app in its Nexus devices.
This is another misleading example. What this forgets to note is that this prioritization was due to the shitty security design of Google Wallet. It took control of the phone’s security element, blocked out other apps, and collected personal information. Users were unable to use Google Wallet until Apple was happy with its security.
2012 – AT&T blocked FaceTime; again because the company didn’t like the competition.
What this forgets to note is that AT&T did implement FaceTime, it just did it in phases. It first began on WiFi and on the mobile network for users with tiered data plans. Then after a few months, it was enabled on all LTE phones.
2012 – Verizon started blocking people from using tethering apps on their phones that enabled consumers to avoid the company’s $20 tethering fee..
Verizon charged users 20 dollars a month for a mobile hotspot service, this was expressly mentioned in their TOS. Verizon customers who wanted to tether their laptops to the Internet through their phones had to pay extra for the privilege. The FCC sued Verizon for 1.25 million dollars and made them stop.
The FCC had the power to do this because Verizon won 700 MHz C Block spectrum at auction that carried specific “open access” conditions barring any blocking of any app at any time. This spectrum was less expensive than unencumbered spectrum, so Verizon had to honor conditions of sale. So this was less a matter of Open Internet Order rules than of auction conditions.
2014 – AT&T announced a new “sponsored data” scheme, offering content creators a way to buy their way around the data caps that AT&T imposes on its subscribers.
Why is this a problem?
2014 – Netflix started paying Verizon and Comcast to “improve streaming service for consumers.”
This increased Netflix's internet speed and had nothing but a positive effect on the consumer.
2014 – T-Mobile was accused of using data caps to manipulate online competition.
This is unverified. Well Robtard, I appreciate the effort.