AT&T insists it's not blocking Tutanota after secure email biz cries foul, cites loss of net neutrality as cause Encrypted email service Tutanota on Thursday accused US mega-telco AT&T of blocking its service in some parts of America, and cited the service interruption, ongoing for more than two weeks, as evidence for the need for net neutrality. "Starting on January 25th 2020, we have had constant complaints from AT&T mobile users who …
"we are reaching out publicly in the hope of getting the attention of the right people at AT&T."
Reminds me of the early noughties where we had AOL filtering their customers outbound emails, Plusnet putting daily data caps on P2P transfers using Junipers*, and NTL who filtered out any traffic from their customers, if it originated from a device with Linksys’s MAC address range.
“The Right People™” were the ones that had made the decision to do that very thing.
*or it could have been Ellacoya. The memory of the visit to Sheffield on one of their “Meet the staff” days is fading now.
Which is why Google was neutral on the issue before its engineers forced its hand. There have been a couple of really good articles here on it.
Without net neutrality, the whip is in the hands of the ISPs. This is super bad if you don't have effective competition (like most of the US). Even the cell services have a *ahem* thumb on the scales.
With net neutrality, the "content" providers hold the whip. Which isn't so great over the long run if you want continuously improving infrastructure.
The really big "content" providers run their own networks out to all but the last mile. For them, the fight really is about contract negotiations for that last mile.
"When elephant mate, the grass gets trampled."
I slightly prefer net neutrality, because it makes new technologies easier to get a foothold.
Slightly.
As for what is going on with the Feds, Wheeler was just as bad as the current joker for violating process. This really is a matter for Congress. Of course, they are too busy pissing in each others' cereal to care about things like, well, just about anything else.
I'd agree on your "slightly" preferring Net Neutrality. It's the original intent of the internet, although I could see particularly egregious abusers of the system having to chip in a little more to compensate (but just *how* to determine that is the next problem).
Biggest problem I've had with NN is that it can readily be used by any administration in power (or even your typical petty bureaucrat) as a weapon to punish any company that dares to oppose some particular political/social agenda. I prefer to see as few weapons as possible in the bureaucratic arsenal. Add to that the government administrators who can't tell the difference between technical issues vs wilful blocking (not saying AT&T wasn't blocking, just that there actually *might* have been technical issues), or some abuser of the system trying to present themselves as victims.
It comes down to trying to establish static rules to something that doesn't lend itself to a static ruleset.
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