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.
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.