FCC votes in favour of net neutrality

sigh. You really think Comcast is going to "take it on the chin" and not turn around with a rate increase the government approves so long as it's "neutral" even though it's only needed for bandwidth for Netflix and Google content?

Bandwidth is carefully forecast for peak periods. If the peak is 50% higher than it would be without Netflix and Google, 50% of what the public pays to support the infrastructure is to support those two companies' media. If everyone streams youtube and netflix then it's for the public good; otherwise it's for Netflix and their customers. As a Netflix legacy power user, Thank you!

So you're paying $70 a month for internet and use X amount of bandwidth, whereas I'm paying $70 a month and I'm using X x 10 amount of bandwidth, and that's not fair? Is that what you're saying?

You decided to make up different numbers, but yeah. The other solution I'd support is metered billing, so that each person pays an amount that exactly ties to their utilization. The weakness there, though, is that even metered charges subsidize the heavy content users, though not as much as flat rate.

Until a flavor of content you like is dropped into the slow lane.

First they came for Netflix, but I did not speak up for I did not use Netflix...

Okay, but is net neutrality (or lack thereof) going to directly affect content providers or consumers? I know it will trickle down to the consumers either way, but it is my understanding that a pay to play system would charge more to providers for faster internet, not the end user. In other words, with net neutrality regulations, I could still get crappy, slow cable internet from Time Warner for $15 a month.

You understand correctly. I'm saying they should charge content providers more to push more content through. And it's not a problem for small time content providers, because we aren't the ones they'll go after until we're big enough to handle the cost. Netflix then turns around and charges us more for unlimited movies. Seems more straight forward to me.

Okay, well I've started drinking, and I will be absolutely useless in this discussion before too long, but let me ask one more question. Assuming net neutrality is supposed to protect an "open internet", what has the status quo been? An open or closed internet? Because I've heard both sides of the argument refer to "how things have always been" in conflicting ways.

It all started when the cable companies noticed that a lot of people didn't need cable. Last I heard, they are charging 198.00 a month for the phone, internet , cable package, and that is only BASIC cable. WTF!? 200 a month and I still must go to iTunes to buy Game of Thrones? Outrageous. Anyway, the wild card? Sirius Satellite Radio. If Apple or Microsoft buy them out, they can build computers with the modems included. If you own the satellite, you have a hot spot globally, maybe to the moon.

We're going far beyond net neutrality. The FCC considered Title II the nuclear option, and it changes everything because there's already tons of Title II case law, plus state laws, mostly written when "telecommunications companies" meant either ITT or AT&T. Under the new definitions, all the Internet, from my house to Google, is telecommunications companies. If I call a local geek to hook me up, he has to hook me up, even if he's swamped. He might tell me to call someone else, but that doesn't matter because if he tells me to fuck off I can take him to court and see him sentenced to a $100 fine and two years in jail (Still on the books after all these years!)

Most of what you're familiar with can't exist under Title II because almost all Title II legislation was written when there was one company everyone had to deal with, and it offered one level of technology to everybody. You got one phone and had to pay extra for the second. It had one bandwidth, the same bandwidth that the President got. You paid one rate for the hook-up, taxes, and local calls. Long distance was tallied and billed separately. To change your long distance carrier, they have to keep an audio recording of your vocal approval, and keep that recording for one year after the switch. That's now in effect, too, and now applies to your wireless service. The FCC says they'll only implement parts of Title II, but as the dissents argued, they don't have the power to buck all the settled case law.

This means every dumbass in every state can start filing lawsuits to make the Internet behave the way they want, and the states can set profit limits on all ISPs, even the tiny ones, and require regulatory approval for any upgrades or investments. Making a profit will not be sufficient reason to allow them to innovate, as what they do has to be shown to be in the public interest, and every such meeting is open to hearing from every wacko out there who wants to shoot the idea down, just like getting approval for a new coal plant.

gturner-> <-telecom companies.

Well, there's the rub, isn't it? We have no agreement on what is meant by open Internet. That's why I focus on the question of who pays for what. I am also drinking, so....

Right, pure coincidence that after 3 years of service my speed would suddenly increase 4x after threatening to leave due to low speeds.

Have you considered bridge investments? If you don't have a bridge in your portfolio you have a huge hole. I've got a great deal on a proven winner for ya.....

No, we beat telecom companies senseless, and always have, because they were huge monopolies. We would only allow them to make small profits, forced them to treat all customers equally, and wouldn't allow people to have "premium" service at a much higher price. The Internet was different. There was virtually no regulation and everyone could make huge profits, so investment money poured in. The same happened with wireless.

Now all of them have just fallen into all the 1930's legal morass we inflicted on the telecom companies, which means no more huge profits, no more strategic investment based on brilliant ways to foresee what consumers will want in five or ten years, and few if any upgrades.

The FCC didn't go for net neutrality, they went for the nuclear option, quite possibly because none of them wanted to do anything to touch the Internet, and yet they were forced to by the White House and that $192 million from lobbyists. As Title II common carrier telecommunications companies, each state can now set their own Internet policies, regulations, fees, and taxes, and they can yank the license of any provider to do business in that state. Yes, providers have to be licensed now.

It is important to note that that isn't true. What you've really done here is introduced a first building block towards possible payment scheme, implicitly deciding that if 50% of the traffic is through Netflix, 50% of the costs should be allocated to that traffic. You might want to do that, but it isn't true that 50% of the cost relates directly to 50% of the traffic. If Netflix disappeared tomorrow, it isn't a given that Comcast could provide the same service as before for the remainder of its customers at 50% of the previous cost.

The real reason why Comcast wanted to get more money from Netflix is because Netflix has money, and its business depends on Comcast's services. It's clear why Netflix doesn't like that idea. But if it had been realised, they would have paid. At that moment, customers and new companies would have both been disadvantaged because Netflix and other huge players would have now monopolized the market. This introduces capitalist inertia to a sector that, so far, was one of the few areas of our economy that was truly innovative.

This is true. Much like with Obamacare, the inability of American politicians to compromise leaves you with a bureaucratic clusterfuck where a few short and simple regulations would have completely solved the problem, if lobbyists hadn't gotten free market shrills to oppose that half page at any cost. But also like with Obamacare, this is at least better than the only alternative your broken system would provide.

One of the worries is regulatory capture. Now that the FCC is in the business of managing the interests of Comcast and Netflix, the FCC will inevitably write rules that are tailored to managing Comcast and Netflix. If one day someone else has a completely different idea about how to approach things, it won't fit in the established regulatory model. AM and FM radio stays AM and FM radio no matter how many better ways we could use the bandwidth, because the bandwidth is regulated to maintain the existing AM and FM radio structure.

The status quo was an open internet up to about two years ago; not by law, but because it's the most straightforward way to implement the technology. Then Comcast and others started violating net neutrality. Reintroducing it as regulation rather than as a technical standard means we'll get the same level playing field for innovations as we had up to about 2013 -- you know, when no-one could figure out how to make money on the internet, and decades went past without any innovation at all.

The system wasn't broken, it was thriving. That thriving will grind to a stop, as predicted in the FCC dissents. Now that we can regulate profits and investments, do you really think billions in venture capital money is going to be pouring in? You'd be better off investing in something safe, like railroads.

As usual you are completely full of shit. Once the government broke up AT&T we had huge amounts of innovation in the telecommunications industry.

Apparently you missed this the first time I posted it, but where was this the case? I had the option of Comcast or.... Comcast. Where was my choice or their impetus for innovation?

Part of how we deregulated communications services was to allow phone companies to get around Title II and run services other than analog voice to your house. That's where DSL came from. Everything you've benefited from was the result of abandoning the 1930's government regulation environment and allowing competition between anyone. You can get internet from old phone companies, new phone companies, satellite companies, cellphone companies, cable companies, or companies that don't even exist yet.

That's all slammed to a stop, because under Title II there are layers of laws and regulations that will determine what you can and cannot access, how much you will pay, and where investment must go.

For example, in my state the battle between Netflix and Comcast, being a dispute about hook ups and costs, is now in the domain of the Kentucky Public Service Commission, run by a really bright lawyer and former mayor, but not exactly MIT's media lab.

Under KRS 278.530 about telecommunications connection disputes:

(3) In lieu of the procedure provided in subsection (2) of this section, the company desiring the connection may compel the connection upon reasonable terms by suit in equity in the Franklin Circuit Court or in the Circuit Court of the county in which the company making the demand resides or has its chief office in this state, and the court shall, by mandatory injunction, compel the physical connection of the wires and interchange of messages, and enforce the same by contempt proceedings and in the same manner that other mandatory injunctions are enforced.

Since Comcast and Netflix don't have their chief offices in any county here, the outcome will be decided in this building:



Franklin county doesn't have an airport, so the heads of Comcast and Netflix will have to drive there, but there are some good places to eat fairly nearby such as Steak and Shake. What gets decided in that building will override 30 years of technical development. That's what the nuclear option looks like.

As usual, lying sack of shit.

So the telecoms were able to get around these oh so burdonsome regulations for the last 40 years when it came to telecommunications, but the same telecoms can't when it comes to telecommunications.

Because Obama.

Gotcha.

Uh, no. They weren't "telecommunications companies". Until yesterday (or when the new FCC regs go into effect), they were "information companies". Information companies were exempted from Title II by Bill Clinton, Congressional Democrats, and Congressional Republicans, who knew that there was no way the brilliant and innovative leaps coming out of Silicon Valley should be regulated like telegraphy and vacuum tube radio. Those are the companies that built the Internet, as opposed to informing President Lincoln of Confederate troops movements. They've just become "telecommunications companies", and all the laws we have about what you can and cannot say about Confederate troop movements now apply, including a trip to the Franklin County courthouse.

This is not "net neutrality", this is the nuclear option.'

As usual, you are full of shit. Verizon, Century Link, AT&T et al are and have been telecommunications companies. All of them are direct descendents of either the independents or the Baby Bells. And all have been innovating and improving service for the last 40 years.

Stop. Lying.

In 1992 Congress passed laws exempting them from many of the burdens of Title II regulation. They exempted cell phone providers from the 1930's era phone regulations. In 1996 Congress doubled down on the deregulation, creating a huge wall between Information Companies and Telecommunication Companies, with definitions that allowed Telecommunication Companies to play at being Information Companies (which is how we got DSL). It was completely non-partisan, with Silicon Valley tech firms, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in agreement that these new, nearly miraculous advances should not be faced with the same onerous procedures we'd made Ma Bell go through for sixty years, as if they were selling water or electricity to rural folks.

A "telecommunications company" is what you had in the 1980's. They were able to support dial-up modems at 2400 baud. There was a lot of innovation on the "information company" side, pushing baud rates higher over existing phone lines that could not be upgraded without state and federal government approval. That became a wall, and George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and everybody in Congress realized that the old Title II laws were the problem, not the solution. So those were set aside and rewritten to exempt the new innovations so we could advance. That exemption has just expired. The old laws will now go into effect.

The starry-eyed young socialists trying to overthrow the imaginary corporate oligarchies didn't read the fine print that said, "If this contract becomes invalid, all control will revert to the deacons of the First Baptist Church in Jesus Lord our Name."

As usual you are completely and totally lying. Starting the moment after the government broke up the AT&T monopoly the telecommunications companies unleashed a torrent of innovation. Microwave, Fiber Optics, Cellular. All a decade if not decades before this sudden change in 1996 you are pulling out of your ass.

However, just for shits and giggles, lets pretend you aren't completely full of shit. Let's pretend we had no technological advances from 1930 until 1996... you are now claiming that 20 years ago Congress fixed the problems keeping us in the dark ages for those 80 years. So problem solved no?