I have the same question. No one will know for sure until the rules are released, but my guess is it potentially covers more than people may initially think. For example, I would guess many ³transit² networks will be covered since they also provide in many cases retail access to schools, hospitals, government, business, etc. It¹s not much of a stretch to see how CDNs, hosters, and others may be covered by at least parts of this, such as transparency/policy disclosure, maybe measurement. Blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization could also apply in some critical ways, especially given the % of Internet traffic that uses CDNs for example. Again, the key may be that there will be ambiguity that may only be sorted out as case law develops around each of these areas. But IANAL so I¹m just guessing like the rest of us for now! ;-) - Jason On 2/27/15, 3:44 PM, "Adam Rothschild" <asr@latency.net> wrote:
I interpreted the FCC press release[*] to apply these provisions to "broadband access" providers only -- that is to say, not hosters, nor CDNs. It will indeed be interesting to see how this works once the full documentation is released.
FWIW, -a
[*] http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0226/DOC-33 2260A1.pdf
On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 2:49 PM, McElearney, Kevin <Kevin_McElearney@cable.comcast.com> wrote:
[Sorry for top-posting]
I actually think you are both right and partially wrong. It IS the ISPs responsibility to provide you with the broadband that was advertised and you paid for. This is also measured today by the FCC through Measuring Broadband America.
http://data.fcc.gov/download/measuring-broadband-america/2014/2014-Fixed- Me asuring-Broadband-America-Report.pdf
That said, your ISP is NOT ³the Internet² and can¹t guarantee ³access the Internet sites of my choice at X megabits per second." While ISPs do take the phone call for all Internet problems (sometimes not very well), they certainly don¹t control all levels of the QoE. ASPs may have server/site issues internally, CDNs may purposely throttle downloads (content owners contract commits), not all transit ISPs are created equal, TCP distance limitations, etc.
What would be interesting is if all these rules/principals and transparency requirements were to be applied to all involved in the consumer QoE.
- Kevin
On 2/27/15, 1:34 PM, "Mel Beckman" <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
Bill,
This is not feasible. ISPs work by oversubscription, so it's never possible for all (or even 10% of all) customers to simultaneously demand their full bandwidth. If ISPs had to reserve the full bandwidth sold to each customer in order to "do everything reasonably within your power to make sure I can access the Internet sites of my choice at X megabits per second", then broadband connections would cost thousands of dollars per month.
Anyone who doesn't understand this fundamental fact of Internet distribution will be unable to engage in reasonable discussion about ISP practices.
On Feb 27, 2015, at 9:56 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us<mailto:bill@herrin.us>> wrote:
Deceit is Bad Behavior. If you sell me an X megabit per second Internet access service, you should do everything reasonably within your power to make sure I can access the Internet sites of my choice at X megabits per second.