FCC Chairman’s Proposal Will Radically Change The Rules Of The Internet

[skit75]

I enjoy luxury internet today without choice of competition. I consider myself also lucky that the only choice that I have is able to provide the connection I want. Cox is the only provider in my area but I get a 120 megabit/sec connection @ 73.99/month.

I have a co-worker who is stuck with a 768kb/sec adsl connection at ~16,000ft from the nearest switch and only sees about 128kb/sec that routinely drops. Right across the street from him his neighbor enjoys Verizon's FiOS service. This isn't some rural county in a flyover state. This is in Los Angeles, CA. The provider has no intention of ever changing this situation. It is true there might be a city line separating them on this street and that is where the monopolistic practices of the ISP's has infuriated many consumers.

 

[Bobby Stanley]

I live in Chattanooga as well and I have EPB as my ISP after being with AT&T and comcast. Comcast overcharges it's customers and who can download over 600gb a month which is thier limit on the downloads per month. I don't trust this since it will also mean censorship for all down the road. The internet isn't a public utility as the FCC chairman claims. You pay the price for your internet and it shouldn't be in government control. I heard that the FCC is going to take a vote on whether EPB can go outside the boundaries of Hamilton County to help force Comcast to reduce thier fees. Comcast has been going up in price every 6 months to a year claiming that it is needed.

 

[dragonflyher]

"Cable companies are not telecom companies. Note -'tele' in the name. Last time I checked, I don't need to dial into a cable internet service. Google is also not a tele company. Telecommunication laws only apply to telephone companies like ATT and Verizon for telephone services."

In Reply: These changes would classify Internet, or Broadband services specifically, as the telecommunications services they actually are. Providers will be held accountable to the same rules and restrictions that telephone service providers currently must abide by.

Yes, state and local governments will have more responsibilities as far as handling complaints, and regulating those offering Broadband services, but in all fairness most state Public Utility Commissions already do a pretty good job with this. May need to hire more employees to accommodate these changes but this too should be a good thing for most states in the long run.

FCC and FTC are both Federal Government Agencies supported by our taxes, which instead will be funneled back to state and local governments, along with any profits generated.

About time we begin to break down the monopolies many of these ISP's certainly have had on local areas. Internet should be (IMHO), & will be free for everyone in the very near future. Those who want better services and can afford them will certainly have more options at better prices with these types of regulations in place.

 

[towerman1]

Not all ISP's should be painted with the same brush. several of the proposed changes would kill certain operators. Our company operates a fixed broadband wireless network and serve very rural locations. the inability to throttle Netflix for example, would leave tower sites serving just a handful of high bandwidth users iwth everyone else waiting to get connected to the tower. A lot of operators are NOT Comcast. FFC/Wheeler really needs to think ALL of the issues through.

 

[skit75]

Not all ISP's should be painted with the same brush. several of the proposed changes would kill certain operators. Our company operates a fixed broadband wireless network and serve very rural locations. the inability to throttle Netflix for example, would leave tower sites serving just a handful of high bandwidth users iwth everyone else waiting to get connected to the tower. A lot of operators are NOT Comcast. FFC/Wheeler really needs to think ALL of the issues through.

With all due respect towerman1, if the customers can't use the bandwidth in the way that they want or expect to, then it is under-served or over-sold. While your company may not be as responsible as the big guys, it is using the same business practice that is really pissing people off.

 

[InvalidError]

With all due respect towerman1, if the customers can't use the bandwidth in the way that they want or expect to, then it is under-served or over-sold.

There is a world of difference between high speed for burst usage and high speed for streaming. Licenses to put up new towers and access more spectrum do not grow on trees and his company might not want to force everyone back to dial-up speeds just to curb Netflix usage - nobody wants to have to wait for minutes for web pages to load.

If people are using point-to-point wireless as their primary/only internet connection for bandwidth-intensive applications, it usually is not by choice so I am guessing his company is one of few, if not the only one, who is bothering to even attempt serving the area and the balance sheet might not look good enough to afford upgrades. I would not be surprised if his company's situation is that they bid on a governmental contract to provide internet access in an under-served area, turned out nowhere near as profitable as expected and now they are just waiting for their contractual obligations to end before bailing out of the market.

His company could probably switch to a burstable model like many fiber companies do: 2Mbps burstable to 20Mbps with a 20MB bit bucket. Streamers would no longer be able to hog all the bandwidth and people should be able to get decent page load times.

 

[JeffDC]

It's our only shot at saving the internet as a free two-way communications UTILITY.

 

[Guest]

"Cable companies are not telecom companies. Note -'tele' in the name. Last time I checked, I don't need to dial into a cable internet service. Google is also not a tele company. Telecommunication laws only apply to telephone companies like ATT and Verizon for telephone services."

In Reply: These changes would classify Internet, or Broadband services specifically, as the telecommunications services they actually are. Providers will be held accountable to the same rules and restrictions that telephone service providers currently must abide by.

Yes, state and local governments will have more responsibilities as far as handling complaints, and regulating those offering Broadband services, but in all fairness most state Public Utility Commissions already do a pretty good job with this. May need to hire more employees to accommodate these changes but this too should be a good thing for most states in the long run.

FCC and FTC are both Federal Government Agencies supported by our taxes, which instead will be funneled back to state and local governments, along with any profits generated.

About time we begin to break down the monopolies many of these ISP's certainly have had on local areas. Internet should be (IMHO), & will be free for everyone in the very near future. Those who want better services and can afford them will certainly have more options at better prices with these types of regulations in place.

I agree but doesn't Comcast provide dsl and email etc not just cable. Comcast is kind of hybrid of sorts and I would think it would also have to comply with the same rules, if not they should. I don't know all the variables with what is being proposed and what would benefit the public the most here. I don't think most folks know either. But I do think those who are in the know need to realize the public is angry on how this has been managed or regulated so far. This is not some special interest group it impacts...it impacts most Americans since most of us are using the internet in one fashion or the other. To disregard what the American public wants which is better service for less money can't be that hard of a mandate to keep in mind when deciding on the minutia related to all this. I would gladly pay a bit higher taxes locally to fund a better option than my horrific CenturyLink account. When I complain to local state agencies they all point their fingers back to the FCC and they are sick of the complaints from what I can tell since they can't do anything on it. They don't set rate increases or anything. I think they would dearly love to come down hard on some of these ISPs and I would love to give them the authority to do so. They have certainly caused enough complaints in my state. I hope the party is over for ISPs and I will be watching carefully how this all pans out. Believe me when 2016 rolls around and it is time to vote I will be voting for those who did something on this whole ISP mess. I am sick of being squeezed from every corner and I have had it up to here with income inequality. Something has got to change or I am retiring in another country and taking my U.S. dollars with me so I can have some dignity in old age. Regular consumers are getting taken to the cleaners on so many fronts. ISPs is just one of them. Healthcare is another huge problem. I hope the FCC and the White House are serious about fixing this mess. I am cautiously optimistic at this point.

 

[none12345]

FCC 'play nice.
ISPs 'na we wanna charge more'
FCC 'no really play nice, we dont want to have to classify you as a common carrier'
ISPs 'na, we want to charge more'
FCC 'really....ok here are some rules, play nice'
ISPs 'sorry were not a common carrier you cant regular us, <runns to daddy to tell on the FCC'
supreme court 'sorry they arent common carriers, they dont have to do what you tell them, but you have th eright to call them common carriers and tell them what to do if you want'
FCC 'really.....semantics?'
ISPs 'na na na na na we get to charge more!'
FCC 'ok common carrier'
ISPs 'noooooo, well sue you!'

 

[hixbot]

The repubs will never let this pass, the corporate lobbies control congress. We'll hear some story of government regulation is bad for the free market, but the truth will be that these monopolistic telecom lobbies will buy the 'no' vote.

 

[stevenrix]

It's not forbidden to dream on.
Public utilities paid for by the government? US senators will cry "Socialism is at our doorstep". Meanwhile Europeans enjoy cheap internet as a public utility in a free market economy, yes I did write the word "free market", instead of "regulated market". Perhaps nobody remembers this, but for the last 12 years there was no investment whatsoever on the infrastructure including the network infrastructure in the US, and the country was lagging behind many countries (Asian and European countries). So anything that can help to expand the Internet for the People is welcome. And it should not cost more than $5 a month for the Internet. In France I pay around $20 a month for internet and cable and wireless data all over the France and free long distance communication. In the US, just to get all of that would cost probably 10 times that price (around $200).

 

[falchard]

"Cable companies are not telecom companies. Note -'tele' in the name. Last time I checked, I don't need to dial into a cable internet service. Google is also not a tele company. Telecommunication laws only apply to telephone companies like ATT and Verizon for telephone services."

In Reply: These changes would classify Internet, or Broadband services specifically, as the telecommunications services they actually are. Providers will be held accountable to the same rules and restrictions that telephone service providers currently must abide by.

Yes, state and local governments will have more responsibilities as far as handling complaints, and regulating those offering Broadband services, but in all fairness most state Public Utility Commissions already do a pretty good job with this. May need to hire more employees to accommodate these changes but this too should be a good thing for most states in the long run.

FCC and FTC are both Federal Government Agencies supported by our taxes, which instead will be funneled back to state and local governments, along with any profits generated.

About time we begin to break down the monopolies many of these ISP's certainly have had on local areas. Internet should be (IMHO), & will be free for everyone in the very near future. Those who want better services and can afford them will certainly have more options at better prices with these types of regulations in place.

The FCC is not supported by our taxes. The agency is completely funded by regulatory fees much like the DMV. Their revenue comes from licensing out the RF spectrum, and approving ISPs for business.
The parts I mentioned are something completely different and change the industry for the worse in my opinion. There are a lot of regulatory statutes for telecoms that do not apply for other forms of communications. Do you need to dial 9-1-1 over the internet? The ability to assure an always on connection during a power outage is at the cost of bulky equipment and unnecessary infrastructure. Forcing companies to run a line out to someone off the grid is also a difficult and expensive tax.

I will just say it, other countries with faster internet speeds did not do it with top down approaches. There are 2 reasons they achieved faster speeds. Denser population areas and allowing more private competition. What are the chances in the US we can run a line capable of 25 mb/s to someone in the middle of Alaska? Its something you don't have to deal with in South Korea. On the other hand in San Diego where there are a number of competing ISPs, we enjoy speeds that are competitive with other services offered throughout the world in one of the densest populations in the United States.
If you look at the countries with leading internet speeds, you can see its due to a large amount of private competition. Those countries allowed dozens of ISPs to operate in an area and allowed some ISPs to lease infrastructure to other ISPs.
Now if we do a proper comparison of countries with similar economic strength, population density, and land mass as the US. We would need to look to China or Russia. They have similar results which should make sense.

What this proposal really does is to force other systems to run on the same system as ATT. ATT struggles with improving their speeds because of the archaic design of their system. Cable systems and pure ISPs run completely differently which allows them to divert more resources into better speeds. One of the main problems with net neutrality is it fails to fully utilize the strengths of a cable system.

 

[skit75]

A federal study found that 96% of the population had access to two or less cable broadband providers.
Source: Federal Study

See exhibit 4-A

The FCC website crashed due to the attention John Oliver drew to the subject of Net Neutrality. Sure the big cable lobbying arm has tons of cash. People commenting on Net Neutrality crashed the FCC website causing a news cycle that the lobbying arm could never buy.

 

[Guest]

A federal study found that 96% of the population had access to two or less cable broadband providers.
Source: Federal Study

See exhibit 4-A

The FCC website crashed due to the attention John Oliver drew to the subject of Net Neutrality. Sure the big cable lobbying arm has tons of cash. People commenting on Net Neutrality crashed the FCC website causing a news cycle that the lobbying arm could never buy.

Yes I saw John Oliver's bit on net neutrality and it was golden:
http://
Yes at the time the FCC did change their site to now include making formal complaints regarding downthrottling etc but before that time there was no category any of that would fit under. The FCC was reacting to a lot of pressure from the media. I watched it.

 

[bit_user]

I'm all for most aspects of net neutrality, but prioritization of voice or video chat and games makes sense as a way to reduce latency/lag. It doesn't seem like this will be allowed, but I think it should be.

IMO, the real issue at stake is end-user control. As an end-user, I think it's fine if ISPs even provide the option of paying for my realtime traffic to be prioritized, if need be. Internet access differs from conventional utilities in that there's a finite amount of bandwidth, and providers should have the flexibility to deliver the best service. That means QoS-based prioritization and billing models which reflect that.

The difference between my position and that of companies like Verizon is that they want to decide by themselves which traffic to prioritize. That's the problem. They should be able to define whatever billing model they want, but they ultimately need to leave QoS decisions in the hands of users.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm all for most aspects of net neutrality, but prioritization of voice or video chat and games makes sense as a way to reduce latency/lag. It doesn't seem like this will be allowed, but I think it should be.

IMO, the real issue at stake is end-user control. As an end-user, I think it's fine if ISPs even provide the option of paying for my realtime traffic to be prioritized, if need be.

The problem is that most hardcore Net Neutrality advocates believe "adequate network provisioning" would render any form of QoS unnecessary and they definitely do not trust ISPs with not abusing provisions for tagged priority traffic if allowed to use them. Likewise, ISPs do not trust subscribers, transit providers, peers, etc. with not abusing QoS either, hence the common practice of stripping, nulling or ignoring QoS fields at ingress through border routers.

The problem with disallowing QoS is that even in a congestion-free network, egress traffic spikes on a port can still cause milliseconds of jitter, so getting rid of jitter through brute force (keeping all egress queues nearly empty even during peak hours to minimize jitter) would require considerably more over-provisioning than achieving congestion-free (as in no dropped packet) routing.

Disallowing QoS altogether would prevent a whole class of high(er)-quality real-time services from ever becoming mainstream.

 

[bit_user]

Disallowing QoS altogether would prevent a whole class of high(er)-quality real-time services from ever becoming mainstream.

Sounds like we agree?

I think the solution for preventing abuse by consumers is to bill for it. If you're paying more for realtime traffic, you're going to be more careful about when and how you use it.

 

[InvalidError]

I think the solution for preventing abuse by consumers is to bill for it. If you're paying more for realtime traffic, you're going to be more careful about when and how you use it.

The hardcore NN fanatics would say it is unfair that people are allowed to pay more for preferential treatment since that might cause some services to be usable only by people who can afford the extra fees or cause ISPs to build their networks in such a way that people who want to use certain services with good QoS would be effectively forced to pay a premium, with the ultimate fear being that internet might become nearly unusable without paying the extra toll.

Personally, I think everyone should have the option of getting 128-512kbps of QoS-capable bandwidth for VoIP and another 2-5Mbps with burst capability for games or other timing-sensitive uses. The bulk of other traffic would still be non-QoS, so ISPs would still have to ensure they have enough bandwidth to maintain decent overall speeds.

 

[ubercake]

A federal study found that 96% of the population had access to two or less cable broadband providers.
Source: Federal Study

See exhibit 4-A

The FCC website crashed due to the attention John Oliver drew to the subject of Net Neutrality. Sure the big cable lobbying arm has tons of cash. People commenting on Net Neutrality crashed the FCC website causing a news cycle that the lobbying arm could never buy.

Even in those markets where there are two cable providers, it's like having two gas stations on different corners of an intersection staring at each other's prices on the large marquees all day and matching/fixing prices.

 

[bit_user]

I think the solution for preventing abuse by consumers is to bill for it. If you're paying more for realtime traffic, you're going to be more careful about when and how you use it.

The hardcore NN fanatics would say it is unfair that people are allowed to pay more for preferential treatment since that might cause some services to be usable only by people who can afford the extra fees or cause ISPs to build their networks in such a way that people who want to use certain services with good QoS would be effectively forced to pay a premium, with the ultimate fear being that internet might become nearly unusable without paying the extra toll.

Meaningful competition would prevent ISPs from building slow networks unless you pay the premium. And we actually have price tiers today. I live in a fairly competitive market, and I'm on the base tier and it's absolutely fine for my needs.

BTW, I don't care about pleasing the fanatics. A lot of them probably verge on being net socialists, in fact. I'm a capitalist, in that I believe markets are the best tool for managing limited resources. But markets need to be fair, and consumers need information, control, and meaningful options. That's why I support net neutrality.

 

[InvalidError]

Meaningful competition would prevent ISPs from building slow networks unless you pay the premium.

Easier said than done for infrastructure where the cost of entry is measured in billions of dollars and each extra competitor means splitting the potential subscribers N-ways, which increases the effective cost to reach subscribers by a similar amount. That's why infrastructure tends to be a natural monopoly and areas with more than two outside plant providers are uncommon. Most other types of infrastructure are mandated monopolies.

 

[Duckhunt]

Benghazi

 

[ubercake]

I think the solution for preventing abuse by consumers is to bill for it. If you're paying more for realtime traffic, you're going to be more careful about when and how you use it.

The hardcore NN fanatics would say it is unfair that people are allowed to pay more for preferential treatment since that might cause some services to be usable only by people who can afford the extra fees or cause ISPs to build their networks in such a way that people who want to use certain services with good QoS would be effectively forced to pay a premium, with the ultimate fear being that internet might become nearly unusable without paying the extra toll.

Meaningful competition would prevent ISPs from building slow networks unless you pay the premium. And we actually have price tiers today. I live in a fairly competitive market, and I'm on the base tier and it's absolutely fine for my needs.

BTW, I don't care about pleasing the fanatics. A lot of them probably verge on being net socialists, in fact. I'm a capitalist, in that I believe markets are the best tool for managing limited resources. But markets need to be fair, and consumers need information, control, and meaningful options. That's why I support net neutrality.

Meaningful competition would prevent ISPs from building slow networks unless you pay the premium.

Easier said than done for infrastructure where the cost of entry is measured in billions of dollars and each extra competitor means splitting the potential subscribers N-ways, which increases the effective cost to reach subscribers by a similar amount. That's why infrastructure tends to be a natural monopoly and areas with more than two outside plant providers are uncommon. Most other types of infrastructure are mandated monopolies.

This is where the ILEC/CLEC relationship became beneficial to consumers when it came to the telcos. Companies can compete in outside markets by leasing lines from the incumbent carriers of other markets. It allows for more choices and is really revealing of the amount of profit there is in communications when a company can lease lines from another carrier, sell service to customers for less than the incumbent carrier (they are leasing the lines from) and still turn a profit in the market.

The thing here again I would argue is that the cable providers should not be dictating the content that's coming to or going from our houses and should not be able to vary the bandwidth or connection speed based on the content. They should only be providing the service of transmitting the data at the speed they sell to their customers regardless of the type of data.

Big cable doesn't want to lose the content revenue of providing traditional cable programming which many of their former customers are finding they can do without. There is also an extremely large part of the younger population in this country who've never even required cable once they've moved out of their parents' houses. This is a dangerous trend and means lost revenue to big cable and big wireless. There's also a lot of money in leasing a 10-year old silver DVR box to a customer for $8-$12/month to customers who also pay for the programming. These things are already paid for within the first two years (paid by the cable customer) and the rest is profit. Multiply this for each box connected to a TV set and then throw in a leased router/modem (each around $6-$8/month). This is all lost revenue.

Rather than reacting in their customers' best interests and providing better or more customizable programming at a better value, because of their monetary influence on politics, they'd rather try to rid themselves of net neutrality.

The only reason there's even a net neutrality debate is because of the amount of money big cable and big wireless have to work with in the political arena and because they want the power and the profit that goes along with controlling content.

 

[BulkZerker]

The amount of derp coming from this thread is astounding.

1. There will not be "obama'net".

2. Your already being taxed for "net you Dont use". 1996 telecommunications act anyone?

3. In the past we had the net regulated under title 2 and we had more local isps than sperm in a money shot.

Because of tax subsidies that kept them going so they could dump money into infrastructure. We yanoed title 2 from them. They folded. The bigger telcoms gobbled all the dead lines up at auction. And we lost out big.

Its a shame we have to resort to title 2, yes. But the telcoms have forced it upon themselves.