“Apple, according to [Re/code‘s Peter] Kafka, seems to be trying to start an ‘over the top’ pay-TV service like Dish’s Sling TV product, or the one Sony is getting ready to launch,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“What makes the timing so interesting is that Kafka’s story broke the same day the chairman of the FCC issued controversial net neutrality rules that would prohibit, among other things, ‘paid prioritization’ on the Internet,” P.E.D. reports. “You might think that a ban on fast lanes would make it harder for companies with heavy content to deliver — streaming video being among the heaviest — to make special arrangements with Internet service providers to ensure that their content flowed smoothly to our homes, without hiccups, stutters or spinning beach balls. But you would be wrong.”
P.E.D. reports, “The FCC’s proposal specifically exempts so-called CDNs — content delivery networks — from the paid prioritization rules.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple in talks with TV programmers about its own over-the-top Web TV service, sources say – February 4, 2015
FCC chairman proposes to regulate ISP’s under Title II – February 4, 2015
What Apple’s new content delivery network means for so-called ‘net neutrality’ – and for you – August 19, 2014
Apple’s content delivery network now live; paid interconnect deals with ISPs, massive capacity in place – August 1, 2014
To be fair, overwhelming majority of people support banning the likes of Comcast setting arbitrary prices for arbitrary speeds for people to access certain types of sites but not the others.
There is not a lot of controversial in FCC’s decision, except for Comcast/Verizon/TimeWarner lobbyists.
Internet has to be free, and oppression of freedom of speech and expression, as well as tampering with innovation within Internet via forcing every start-up site to pay money for even half decent access to their content, is unacceptable.
This time around lobbyists for giant venture capital funds and the likes of Facebook and Google have more money than telecom industry, hence Obama all of sudden ceased to hesitate and even forces telecom industry puppet Thomas Weeler to surrender on this. Bigger money always win — people are lucky this time.
Right now if you would want to start a site/service/media on Internet, the likes of Comcast are not allowed to demand money from you so that their consumers would be able to access your content at bearable speed — otherwise threatening to slow you down to the point where your whole business/site/media is useless.
If Comcast-supported plan to murder net-neutrality would win, it would be an ultimate end of Internet we know. Thankfully, they have lost. They maybe over-bribed Republicans on this, but they still have less money than the opposite side.
Not so fast! It’s not over yet! We’re still only hearing jabber from FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler. We know full well that FCC commissioner (R) Michael O’Rielly wants to kill actual net neutrality deader than dirt in total favor of the ISP/Media oligarchy. At the moment, he’s trying to halt Wheeler’s proposal while the lunatic US Congress attempts to make an incomprehensible mess of things:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/22/fcc_commissioner_argues_for_delaying_net_neutrality_ruling/
When is someone going to go after these a__holes for their pricing and billing practices.
Trying to get a bill fixed is a nightmare, the services are way overpriced, and they seem to be able to get away with upping a bill whenever they like.
My Charter internet doubled in 13 months. And naturally you can never get a straight answer out of the clowns on the phone.
Trying to get a bill fixed — complain to the consumer protection bureau maybe?
“Way overpriced”? Don’t buy it. It’s not a necessity, they should be able to charge whatever they want for it. It’s called supply and demand.
Cable companies are government – allowed monopolies. As such, they cannot charge as much as they want.
The rules that the FCC wants to apply to ISPs do in fact cover pricing, though the FCC says that they would not enforce that part of them, but telecom lobbyists say “yet”.
cuding: There are a lot of people (such as myself) who have gone after the likes of Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Comcast, ad nauseam. I’ve personally written two detailed exposés of vile deeds by TWC. I like to think that I contributed to TWC being rated LAST for customer support quality. The press has recently had several field days exposing outrageous acts of hatred and abuse toward several customers. Plenty of similar abuse has been reported about nasty Verizon.
The problem is getting the honorable-elected-official-morons to spit out these company’s money and actually perform the jobs for which they were elected: Protecting and defending We The People. I never miss an opportunity to let the ‘honorables’ know my personal wishes for truth, justice and the American way. Please join in! 😀
BTW: A happy, smiling, shiny rumor: The Comcast – Time Warner Cable merger is supposed to be on-the-rocks. Let’s hope so. That would be a marriage made in hell.
This article was published yesterday:
Why the Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Is Dead
😀 👏👏👏
Having been a victim of both Time Warner Cable and CONcast, I can assure you they are both awful with Comcast evil and TWC evil and inept.
My ISP, CONcast, is one of the systems swapped from TWC to CONcast back when these companies carved up Adelphia Cable. TWC wanted NYC and Los Angeles, so they traded whole regions of the company to CONcast. CONcast now has the bulk of the Southeast US under it’s thumb.
I keep forgetting how inept TWC really is as I typically solve problems myself. I had a friend recently decide to avoid being gouged by their doubled cable modem rental fees, deciding to get his own. So he asked their support about the cable layout required to support phone, Internet and TV together. They completely botched their advice, telling him to get a three-way splitter. They offered him no reference as to WHICH three-way splitter to get, which is outrageous. He doesn’t need a three-way splitter in the first place! Total dumdum dickheads over at TWC. I’m setting it up for him myself.
Apple! Buy the NFL!
This is not about your Netflix throttling.
I wasn’t aware of Apple having its own T.V. service. However, I’m aware of Sling T.V. , though the Apple T.V. probably won’t have an app for that.
We’ll see what we actually GET from the FCC eventually. But if this is true…
“The FCC’s proposal specifically exempts so-called CDNs — content delivery networks — from the paid prioritization rules.”
…It would NOT be actual net neutrality. It would be FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler screwing over We The People in favor of his one-time bosses, the ISP/Media oligarchy. That would also be incredibly sad. We shall see.
Word of the day: Corporatocracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy
…a term used as an economic and political system controlled by corporations and/or corporate interests.
The 2 big things to watch are these:
1- Court challenges- the lawyers are running scales right now preparing for oral arguments.
2- The G.O.P. CONgress who is in the pocket of the TelCos, the Cable Cartel and has not met a corporate interest they did not prefer over consumer interests. John Boehner famously handed out Tobacco Lobby checks on the House floor in direct violation of House rules- it does not get more brazen than that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05herbert.html?_r=0
Boehner and McCONnell both take TelCo money.
Hey PED, re the “mystery” of Apple rolling out a CDN last summer:
Possibly it was so 40 million people could simultaneously download iOS 8 and/or OSX Yosemite without it bringing down the internet.
As for those problems with the 9/9 Flint Center video stream, I have no idea what exactly that was, but I don’t think it was pipe capacity.