FCC slams banhammer on 5G fast lanes with final net neutrality text
- Reference: 1715279414
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/09/fcc_slams_banhammer_on_5g/
- Source link:
America's telecoms regulator [1]voted last month to adopt an order to reinstate net neutrality rules overturned by the Trump administration. These reclassify internet access as a "common carrier" service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, requiring service providers to treat all traffic equally.
Yet there had been [2]concerns raised that new technology introduced with 5G networks would allow the creation of what had been labelled "fast lanes" for some applications, for which the carrier would be able to charge a premium.
[3]
In other words, while telcos would be banned from throttling user connections, they might achieve the same effect by offering a paid-for boost instead.
[4]
[5]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made exactly [6]this point following the FCC's release of the draft rules.
"The FCC seems to think that it's not okay to favor certain sites or services by slowing down other traffic, but it might be okay to favor them by giving them access to so-called fast lanes such as 5G network slices," it said at the time. "Whether your access to Spotify is faster than your access to Bandcamp because Spotify is sped up or because Bandcamp is slowed down doesn't matter, because the end result is the same."
[7]
The [8]final version of the order now contains text that says: "We clarify that a BIAS (Broadband Internet Access Service) provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment."
The technology that sparked those concerns is [9]network slicing , a feature of 5G enabled with the rollout of full 5G Standalone (5G SA) networks. This can be likened to virtualization for networks, allowing multiple logical networks, each with different characteristics, to operate over the same infrastructure.
Some experts expressed doubts that network slicing was really going to be used by telcos in the way net neutrality advocates feared, but the final text appears to have reassured some that this has now been avoided.
[10]
"That means an ISP can't provide preferential treatment to select apps or categories of apps such as providing more bandwidth, reducing delay, or guaranteeing quality of service," said Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick, referring to the new wording.
[11]AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile US fined $200M for selling off people's location info
[12]FCC votes 3-2 to bring net neutrality back from the dead
[13]America may end up with paid-for 5G fast lanes under net neutrality anyway
[14]China orders its telcos to rip and replace US chips with homegrown silicon by 2027
The clarification replaced a vague, case-by-case standard for speeding up in the draft order, Van Schewick claims, one that would have inevitably led to protracted, drawn out fights at the FCC over what kinds of 5G fast lanes would have been okay, and which would have made it difficult for smaller customers to bring complaints.
"There was no way to predict which kinds of fast lanes the FCC might ultimately find to violate the no-throttling rule. This would have given ISPs cover to flood the market with various fast-lane offerings, arguing that their version does not violate the no-throttling rule and daring the FCC to enforce its rule," she commented.
ISPs remain free to offer network slices to enterprise customers, the professor stated, citing as an example autonomous carmakers that might use the technology for mobile services to receive telemetry.
"The new order has brightline rules that prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, and it ensures that ISPs can’t use new tech capabilities to create unfair fast lanes that favor particular apps or kinds of apps," Van Schewick said, adding: "This is a win for competition, innovation, and free speech." ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/net_neutrality_rules/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/net_neutrality_traffic/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zj1HfbZ@8a0EFENClF99YwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zj1HfbZ@8a0EFENClF99YwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zj1HfbZ@8a0EFENClF99YwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/fcc-must-clarify-its-rules-prevent-loopholes-will-swallow-net-neutrality-whole
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zj1HfbZ@8a0EFENClF99YwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-restores-net-neutrality-0
[9] https://www.ericsson.com/en/network-slicing
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zj1HfbZ@8a0EFENClF99YwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/fcc_telecom_fines/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/net_neutrality_rules/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/net_neutrality_traffic/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/13/china_telco_chips/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Agree with most of your comment. The "press" doesn't write about how things really work
because most of the press doesn't understand any more than what the suppliers PR is telling them.
And most of the public won't understand/care about the technicalities. It's sort of like how we buy cars (as an example). If it looks pretty and sharp and I can afford it today, then let's go! A year or so down the road it is crap - restart the process.
Re: There Never Were Any "Fast Lanes"
Yes if anything, it COSTS MORE to throttle everyone's connections... but the throttled service is what providers mean to offer as the discounted tier.
And a word about how major networks bill and credit each other for data crossing to each other's networks; obviously they don't bill bandwidth at the actual cost of providing it. They bill it at a price that is sufficient to KEEP OTHER PLAYERS from joining! These people are just inventing new kinds of monopoly which skirt the legal definition of it (if it's even illegal in their area).
For example, Provider-A and Provider-B tend to exchange around the same amount of data with each other. So if they bill and credit each other $100 per Megabyte, they come out about even. Provider-C would like some backbone access please, but they're a last-mile provider (who also ban their customers from hosting servers) so most of their data travels inbound. This is the "expensive bandwidth" which your residential ISP frets about. They have to pass this arbitrary cost on to end customers.
And I have to point out that the actual cost of maintaining an idle network is the same as maintaining a busy one. The miniscule impulses of energy carying the data are trivial compared with rent, utilities, maintenance, licenses and advertising. So data itself shouldn't even be measured! Networking isn't storage. People should only be billed by the capacity of their firehose over a given billing period.
Re: There Never Were Any "Fast Lanes"
But providers/ISPs want to be in a position to bill people in speed and quantity tiers, when they sometimes can't even physically provide the contracted service. I had ATT DSL once and they weren't interested in throughput issues unless we could prove to them we were getting less than 50% of our "as high as" speed.
And we all know "as high as" catagorically means they don't have to actually provide that full speed. The word "overprovisioned" surfaces more and more often now, which describes most of these ISPs. They accept and bill more high-speed customers than they can actually serve, and if there's even another ISP to go to, they're playing the same game.
Providers/ISPs don't want to be in a position of having to upgrade their network to support all those high-speed tier customers, so they maintain an ARTIFICIAL SHORTAGE and jack their prices up in a wholly-manipulated market system.
Re: There Never Were Any "Fast Lanes"
How many countries have this problem? Is it only one?
There Never Were Any "Fast Lanes"
Most people figured out by now that there never were any "fast lanes"! "Fast lanes" are nothing but providers applying resources (network management!) to slow down everyone, unless they pay a premium to NOT be throttled. This is no less than fraud! Gatekeeping. Tolling.
After decades of technology providing miniturization of network equipment and exponential increase in bandwidth speeds, the providers kept whimpering about "rising cost of business" FORCING them to jack up their prices!
Obviously, when a single rack now replaces a data center full of older equpment, while handling a million times the former bandwidth, it is far cheaper to run. Less energy to run and cool. Less staff to hover about addressing issues. Obviously, with 66% of deployed fiber remaining dark, and ALL of it capable of 1000x faster speeds now than their designers anticipated, there is NO SHORTAGE of connections. With their profit margins exceeding 95% in some markets like NYC, It's like printing money, friends.
I would like to know why the press still hasn't written an article exposing how things really work, instead of continuing to politely use the vocabulary and logic of the carriers themselves, even when mildly hand-wringing about the poor customers.